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History Doesn’t Repeat, But It Rhymes: My Family’s Warning About Trump’s America
My Aunt and Mother lived through Hitler’s rise. Now, they’re seeing eerie parallels — and they’re terrified
Once a week, I visit my Aunt and Mother. They live together in our ancestral house and don’t go out often. We bring them food and other goodies, then hang out and chat. Lately, the conversation has turned to the lunacy of the Trump administration and how it’s frightening two little old ladies.
You see, my Aunt and Mother grew up in Germany during World War II in a northern city called Königsberg. That city was in East Prussia and fell into the hands of Russia after the war — it’s now called Kaliningrad.
They whispered to me about how Trump is acting like Hitler because they lived through it. We got to talking about ICE raids and deportations when my Aunt suddenly spoke up and said, “This reminds me of when I saw the Jews being loaded onto freight cars.”
I sat there stunned and asked her what had happened. She said it was in the early 1940s when she was walking with my grandmother over a bridge that spanned the freight rail yard. She remembers stopping when my grandmother gasped, “What are they doing with all the Jews?”
