Jews separated from families during the Holocaust condemn US border policy

A group representing children hidden during the Holocaust are criticizing the US border policy of separating families seeking asylum.

“Separation of the family for us is probably the worst thing that ever happened to us,” says Rachelle Goldstein, who was separated from her parents in Belgium when she wasn’t even 3 years old.

Goldstein, the co-director of the Hidden Child Foundation, and her husband, Jack, who also was separated from his parents as a child, appear in a video released yesterday by the Anti-Defamation League.

The Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the southern US border has drawn criticism this week from across the political spectrum. More than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents, according to The New York Times.

“When you take a child away from the parents, from the home, from everything that they know, they are never the same,” Goldstein says in the video, adding that many children separated from their parents during the Holocaust had still not overcome the trauma.

“Most hidden children are now in their late 70s, 80s, some are even 90, and they still think about it, and it still hurts, it still aches,” she adds.

— JTA