Commonality in ICE raids and the Holocaust

The article detailing the work of Osman Canales’ protests of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents seizing immigrants on Long Island includes a comment intended to justify the ICE agents’ actions [“LI activist helps track, monitor ICE,” News, Sept. 8]. “They have a job to do,” said Barrett Psareas, vice president of the Nassau County Civic Association. These words echo “I was just following orders” defenses of the Nuremberg war crimes trial after World War II. I’m sure it was not intended to hark back to that dark time, but I see parallels.

In the Nazis’ early days, that government did not admit to arresting Jews only because they were Jewish. Their arrests were cloaked as being for security and public order violations. But even before Adolf Hitler came to power, he convinced those who followed him that Jews were the “other,” different from real Germans.

It is a common strategy for authoritarians to identify and demonize “the other” to gain popular support. President Donald Trump is hardly the first to use this tactic, and, so far, it has worked for him. I hope, however, before too long, more old-fashioned American moral outrage, like Canales’, will surface, especially from the leader of Long Island’s largest religious denomination, Roman Catholic Bishop John Barres.

— Jim Morgo, Bayport

The article highlights Osman Canales and his various ICE protests. But when has Canales rallied for victims of fentanyl overdose deaths, marched for victims of homicide, gang assaults, or drug sales in the community? Has he taken his megaphone to immigrant communities and stood for victims of human trafficking, prostitution, drugs, and robberies, many of which go unreported from those communities?

— Andrew Siegel, Farmingdale

The article “NYS unveils new Holocaust curriculum amid rise in prejudice” [News, Sept. 9] was reassuring. I commend the state Board of Regents for unveiling a new curriculum aimed at teaching students about the Holocaust.

The need to understand history is vital if we have any hope of eradicating bigotry. Once hatred leaves the station, it leads to Auschwitz. The acceptance of hostility in society today creates fertile ground for the seeds of genocide. I believe being a bystander makes one complicit, and that is unacceptable.

I think young minds can be taught to be guided by their better angels. We have a choice to avoid regret and by not allowing history to repeat itself. “Never again” can’t be said enough times.

— Steven A. Ludsin, East Hampton

The writer was a member of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust and the first U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

I am not Jewish and had attended Catholic school. However, I was always aware of all that happened to the Jewish people during Adolf Hitler’s “Reign of Terror.” I believe we studied it in school, and I continue reading books about this horrible event.

I still cannot fathom that the Holocaust existed. It is about time that the New York State Department of Education covers the Holocaust in more depth. When I speak with young adults, they do not seem to realize what the Holocaust was about and the horrible things the Jews were subjected to. I wonder what is being taught in schools.

This is an important part of history that should always be covered in depth in classrooms so it never happens again.

I have wondered how anyone could subject other humans to concentration camps and gas chambers. This is why Israel became a country in 1948, where Judaism began, now the homeland of the Jewish people.

— Fortune Vilcko, Hicksville

The Gestapo made false accusations of how the Jews were responsible for everything wrong with Germany. My great-grandparents were Holocaust victims.

ICE is breaking the law, and that is why some of them may wear masks — to hopefully protect them against criminal prosecution one day. How often is law enforcement or their family targeted in retribution? It is rare, so that excuse stinks, as does its mission.

ICE rounds up good people, holds them without due process in horrendous conditions, and then deports some to countries they have never been to, housed in for-profit prisons, where some are brutalized by hardened criminals. What ICE does is contrary to democratic values.

— Robert Broder, Stony Brook

The summer I turned 20, in 1951, I backpacked through Europe. As the son of Holocaust survivors, I’ve always wondered why more average citizens didn’t expose their neighbors who became Nazis and members of the SS, their elite guard. I’d see people about my parents’ age on a bus and wonder if they had enabled the Holocaust just by not speaking up and revealing their neighbors.

I am seeing this with ICE now — and how we are enabling its members by not speaking up and exposing them. Police badge numbers are public. Don’t let members of ICE be invisible. Shame works.

— Stew Frimer, Forest Hills, Queens

The concept of ICE is great, but they have to fine-tune the operation to focus only on real criminals [“Manager at McDonald’s arrested by ICE,” News, Aug. 28].

— Dick Cardozo, Westbury