People Who Escaped Authoritarianism Are Sharing When They KNEW It Was Time To Leave

“My family fled along the coast on foot, separating children and adults so they weren’t all traveling together, hoping their odds were better that way. My grandmother and two aunts were caught and sent to the gas chambers at Treblinka. Mikhael was caught by the Gestapo in Southern France and summarily executed on the spot. Joseph developed pneumonia and died somewhere in northern Spain. 

My grandfather and father were smuggled into Portugal, got onto a boat, and eventually made it to New Palestine. After the war, my grandfather had had enough of the Zionists, and he was finally granted a US immigration visa and came here in 1947. I was born on American soil in 1961.”

—Pusfilledonut