Saving the Kattens

The Sunday Boston Globe Magazine carries a moving story by a Globe staffer whose German great-grandparents and grandmother were trapped in the Third Reich and saved by the intercession of Republican United States Senator John Danaher of Connecticut: “Saving the Kattens.” Be sure to read this one all the way to the end, where Senator Danaher’s grandson and then Senator Danaher himself appear.

HINDROCKET adds: This is indeed a great story. This thought also occurs to me: The Kattens’ experience is another reminder of the wrong-headed policy of the Roosevelt administration, which tried hard to discourage and frustrate the immigration of Jews from Germany and elsewhere in Europe to the United States. (To be fair, of course, the Roosevelt Administration’s policy reflected the shortsighted views of the American people generally.) When we consider the almost unbelievable contributions that the European Jews who fled the Holocaust have made to every facet of our civilization–the ecomomy, the arts, the professions, science, public life–it is truly painful to think of the contributions that could have been made by the far greater number who never made it here, if only we had had the sense to let them in. Their tragedy is–in infinitely smaller measure, of course–ours as well.
BIG TRUNK adds: Let us in any event honor the decency of Senator Danaher, Yale graduate, one-term senator, long-time judge of the DC and Second Circuit courts of appeals courtesy of President Eisenhower. Click here for his congressional biography.