What Does It Feel Like to Lose Your Country?

The other day I encountered a posting from Mike Frost, a blogger I follow, titled So this is what it feels like to lose your country  He spoke of the loss and grief that comes when your home, your entire country is destroyed by fire, as was the case in Australia during the summer of 2019-2020.

The post evoked several memories of lost homes and countries. A few years ago, I was working into the Christmas holiday season along with a some colleagues who had also spent their allotted vacation during the summer months. A colleague and friend, a Chaldean Iraqi, invited me out to an Iraqi restaurant in the area, as a break from the monotony of being in the office during the holidays. For me, a Westerner of European heritage, it is always a treat to step outside my routine (and cuisine) to experience another culture. My friend wanted me to feel at welcome in his world, so he ordered up a sampling of Iraqi culinary delights, which needless to say, were delicious.

As I sat and took in the ambiance of the place, murals on the wall caught my attention. On the walls all around me were hand-painted images of village life in Iraq. I imagined these were images of life before the US invasion and subsequent flight of Chaldean Christians. It then dawned on me that my friend goes here to see pictures of a home country he can never return to. The thought saddened me.

Mike Frost's post reminded me also of my father, a refugee from Poland after it was invaded in World War II. He lost his family. The world and the people he knew were gone. Forever. He rarely spoke of his loss and grief. All he would say is "this is my country now". As I look back, I am also sad for his loss.

As a frequent visitor to San Francisco, I am also reminded of the homeless, refugees in their very own country. They are often economic refugees, unable to earn enough to keep a roof over their heads in the face of skyrocketing real-estate prices and stagnant wages. The addicted and mentally ill are also well represented among their number. They are truly refugees, although we don't think of them that way. The former are refugees, thrown out of the control of their own bodies, while the latter are refugees who have been thrown out of reality itself. When they are looked upon with revulsion or just simply ignored, when they are prosecuted or driven away by law enforcement, they are reminded of their status: they have no place in the land.

I live in Metro Detroit, home to a large community of immigrants, and now their descendants, of whom I am one. Metro Detroit is also home to a large Chaldean diaspora. A Lebanese diaspora. A Yemeni diaspora. A Balkan disapora. I could go on, but you get the point. America is home to a lot of ethnic groups, but we don't often think of the reason they are here. We assume that it is for economic opportunity, and often that is true. More often it was simply to escape persecution and violence in their homelands. That is even true for African-Americans who migrated from the South to flee racial persecution and poverty for economic opportunities in the North.

Nearly every one of the situations that cause people to lose their home and homelands are man-made. War and conflict certainly have a direct causal relationship to human displacement. Human-induced climate change also displaces people as ambient conditions and frequent catastrophes make areas uninhabitable. Religious and ethnic persecution add to mass of fleeing humanity. Today, there are over 70 million displaced persons world-wide by some estimates.

Perhaps the Biblical imperative to “not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners" (Exodus 23:9) is not such a dated concept. Rather it is a moral imperative. We should do everything we can to welcome the stranger. Everyone should feel welcome somewhere. We should also do more to change energy and defense policies which promote war and climate change, which in turn, drives people from their homelands. This will require much more of us who are privileged but not as influential as we could be. We will have to organize and engage the apathetic to make our voices heard. Otherwise, we too may find ourselves among those who know what it feels like to lose one's country.

Why am I Here? Perhaps as a Warning

I am the son of a refugee. My father fled Poland in 1939 just days after it was invaded by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Horse-drawn artillery and wooden biplanes had no chance against the mechanized forces of two world powers. He decided to flee to Romania. As fighter planes approached to strafe those fleeing, he dove into a ditch for cover. He felt the repeated thump of machine gun bullets impacting the ground. After the planes left and he felt it was safe to get up,  he arose to discover every other person in the ditch was dead. He just happened to be in the place that was between rounds.

I can't help but be a student of history, since my life is the product of it. It seems so ironic that I owe my existence to the rise of demagogue. Eighty-three years ago in Europe a man rose to power on the promise of restored national glory, renewed economic prosperity, and the defeat of foreign and domestic foes. He knew how to channel the public angst into wild-eyed devotion. Crowds were spell-bound before him. There was only one catch....enemies had to be named and destroyed. The rest is history, so to speak.

So pardon me when I sense a darkening cloud casting its shadow over our country. A demagogue has arisen who knows how to work a crowd. He has said he will "Make America Great Again".  He has blown by all boundaries of civility, all the lines that his opponents and predecessors would not dare cross. The truth of what he says does not matter. His character does not matter. That he has stiffed countless people that have worked for him does not matter. That he says outrageous things about minorities, women, and even veterans is excused as forthrightness. He has named our enemies which somehow all happen to be people of color. He has talked about mass-roundups, internment, and deportations. He has talked about the exclusion and public marking of religious groups. He has talked about legitimizing racial profiling and searches. He has talked about muzzling the press because "they say bad things" about him.

Some of us are going to vote for him because we believe in him. Some of us are going to vote for him because we despise "her". Some of us will vote for him because we are afraid. Some of us are going to vote for him because he has thrown us a bone about some issue dear to our hearts. Some of us are going to stay home because our candidate lost the primaries. Some of us will stand on principle and vote third party. We will say to ourselves, "so what if he gets elected, we will only have to put up with him for four or eight years. What have we got to lose?" Everything!

Let's not delude ourselves about constitutional limits and protections or that we are a nation of laws. Constitutions, amendments, and protections of the law operate under the assumption of  a collective good will. That if things don't go my (our) way, we will live to fight another day through the legal process and perhaps through a change of national conscience. In our past, universal suffrage and the Civil Rights struggle were able to advance in this way. In our past however, there have also been reversals:  the Japaneses internment, Communist witch-hunts, and the Kent State massacre, to name a few. It doesn't take much to throw constitutional protections out the window when it suits a collective national will. Just a little fear will do it.

So why then am I here? I very nearly was not. Perhaps I'm here as a warning. History does repeat itself.

A Hundred Years

Aleksandr Ogonowski
August 25 1914 - March 15, 1995

On this day one hundred years ago, my father was born in Rzeszów in the Galicia province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. World War I was just getting started. Four years later the Armistice was declared and Rzeszów would be part of a newly independent Poland. My father grew up during the next twenty years, did his time in the military, and returned to civilian life. In August 1939 he had just turned 25.

On September 1, 1939 Nazi troops began the invasion of Poland. Seventeen days later, the Soviets invaded from the east. To avoid capture he made a run for the Romanian border. On one occasion,  he recalled laying in the ditch by side of the road as planes strafed those fleeing. He felt the repeated thump of machine gun bullets impacting the ground. After the planes left and he felt it was safe to get up,  he arose to discover every other person in the ditch was dead. He just happened to be in the place that was between rounds.

He made it to Romania, then to Athens, Greece. At Piraeus he boarded a ship to Marseilles, France and then made his way up to Paris. He remained in Paris a while, employed as an aircraft machinist. When France was invaded, he had to flee again. He rode his bike to the coast and boarded a ship bound for England. Because of  the ever-present danger of U-boats, the ship took a circuitous route to England and remained at sea for days. The was no food on board. All he had to eat was a sandwich shared with him by a married couple.

He survived the voyage and made it to London. His skills quickly landed him a job in the aircraft industry. Unfortunately, aircraft manufacturing was a principle target of Nazi bombing. As a result, his company moved the operation to Canada. He then emigrated to the US, got married, had children, and now I am here....one hundred years after my father was born.

A hundred years is a long time.  It is a full century of human history. When my dad was born, tanks were just being introduced; horse-drawn artillery was still the norm. Planes were fabric-covered wooden-framed bi-planes. Radio communication was by Morse-code. Voice telephone was in its infancy.  But decisions were being made. Decisions whose consequences are still unfolding today.

For the most part, I have been lucky. My decisions were not made under duress. Yes they were pivotal, such as whom I would marry and whether I would have children. But they were not forced decisions. On the other hand, history forced decisions on my father. Two armies invaded his country....should he stay or flee? If he had not decided to flee, you would not be reading this story. Had he stayed, he would have almost certainly perished, if not in battle, then in a mass-execution in the woods. My existence is the consequence of decisions that were made at definite points in history, a hundred and one years ago, seventy five years ago, and fifty nine years ago.

So here I am today, one hundred years after his birth. My life going forward will be the product of my decisions, the decisions of others, and circumstances over which I have no control. I will pray that the circumstances over which I have no control, I will respond to with grace. When I do come to the "forks in the road", the points of decision, I will pray that my decisions will "tip the scales towards the good" as Maimonides put it. I believe that the little acts of cruelty and the little acts of kindness multiply over time. Of all the stories my father told me, the story of fellow refugees sharing their sandwich with him is the one I remember most vividly.