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Matinee: 'How My Stepfather Escaped the Nazis'
27 January 2024
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 537th in our series of Saturday matinees today: How My Stepfather Escaped the Nazis.
We are taking a break from our usual fare for Holocaust Remembrance Day. A few months ago, Secretary of State Andrew Blinken told the story of his stepfather's survival as a 12 year old against the Nazi campaign to exterminate an entire population.
Blinken has his work cut out for him, shuttling around the Middle East to bring the war in Gaza to an end. We've long admired his considered approach, his fair dealing and strong hand. He represents what's best about this country. And the world is a better place for it.
But that's not saying the world is in good shape right now.
In telling this story, Blinken creates a modern parable for our times that remind us six million Jews were not wiped out by a single bomb but by the small steps that vilified and dehumanized them.
That vilification and dehumanization is going on right now as the governor of Texas defies the federal government to harm would-be immigrants and asylum seekers trying to navigate an impossible system designed, according to a Cato Institute report, "not to be followed by most people, but to keep most people out."
And it's going on right now as the presumptive Republican candidate for president uses Hitler's playbook to demean anyone whose skin is not white as "poisoning" America.
The Holocaust is not history. It's in our daily headlines.
So today, as we remember the consequences of that horror, let us resolve not to let it be repeated in our name. No one who dehumanizes the downtrodden should ever be our president.
Andrew Blinken will explain just why.