It was harder for some of my ancestors than for others. Some arrived in the US decades before WWI, having come for business reasons. Others fled the Czar’s persecution and oppression with barely the clothes on their backs. Some were wealthy when they arrived, and became wealthier. Others struggled and suffered for years before finally achieving prosperity.

I am grateful to them all.

He stopped in Paris where we had relatives who had a textile plant and who urged him not to bother with the arduous voyage to the US but just stay there and join the family firm. Another Polish Jew he met there was on his way to England and suggested that my grandfther just make the much easier trip across the Channel. My grandfather told me once he thought about it and indeed spent an extra week in Paris considering it. Eventually he decided that America was his goal and here he came; his US port of entry was Galveston, not the usual place for Jews to enter the country.

You can guess what happened to the Paris branch of the family and I think of this story frequently when I read that the tide of British anti-Semitism, which receded after the war, has now surged back more thoroughly and nastily than ever.

I have many, many regrets in my life. One of them is that I never said, “Thank you, Grandpa, for letting me be an American.”

I am well aware of our manifold faults but this hardly stops me from loving America and being grateful for being an American. I rather wish teh president of the United States had a similar inclination.