Echoes from the Abyss: Holocaust Survivor’s Stark Caution to ICE Chief Resurfaces
In the charged air of a 2017 public forum on immigration, Bernard Marks — a survivor forged in the furnaces of Auschwitz and Dachau — rose with the weight of history behind his voice. Facing down then-ICE Director Thomas Homan, Marks delivered a blistering truth: “History is not on your side.” The sticker on his chest read “Keep American Families Together,” but it was the scars beneath that spoke loudest.
Marks, who bore the agonizing loss of his entire family — extinguished for no crime but their Jewish heritage — used his platform not for bitterness, but for warning. He lambasted the harsh tides of immigration enforcement and implored Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones to break ranks with the machinery of federal deportation. His plea was clear: do not become agents of a cruelty we’ve already lived once.
“I endured five and a half years in cages built by hate,” he said, not in anger, but in mourning. “Because we chose to scapegoat the vulnerable.” The room fell silent as he connected the barbarism of the past to the bureaucracy of the present — a chilling reflection of history’s tendency to repeat when forgotten.
Marks’s admonition has resurfaced like a lighthouse in stormy waters, echoing louder today as immigration battles again fracture the nation’s conscience. Before his passing in 2018 at 89, he never ceased to champion remembrance, justice, and the pursuit of a nation untainted by bigotry.
“We are capable of something kinder,” he once said. “A country without venom, a land that remembers.”
