Photo by Emmanuel Kaiser-Veyrat

Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear. Of course no childhood is without its terrors, yet I wonder if I would have been a less frightened boy if Lindbergh hadn’t been president or if I hadn’t been the offspring of Jews.           The opening words of The Plot Against America, introducing a world where isolationist Charles Lindbergh is elected President in 1940, spellbound me. I muttered the words with unceasing curiosity and finished the novel in days. I contemplated the slow, sinister changes of America in a Nazi sympathizer’s vision and how different life would be from the America I know. How could a radical vision like this one be prevented from becoming reality? The concept of the road not traveled, and history itself, captivate me and give me a better understanding of the world.            My younger self dreaded these matters. In middle school I hated Social Studies. I thought I was wasting time learning specific details of events that couldn’t repeat. Unexpectedly, my thought process changed irreversibly by what my grandfather soon revealed to me.            One Friday, I complained to my grandfather about a low history grade and how “unnecessary” the class was. It wasn’t his first time listening to this rant, but this time he responded differently. He showed me a black-and-white photograph of a uniformed man with a forced smile. It was him in the Red Army, stationed near Russia’s eastern border.            We sat together for hours. My mouth hung open when he shared that his grandfather was murdered by Stalin’s henchmen. I shuddered when he revealed that his mother’s family fled into unfamiliar fields from a German bombardment of their evacuating train. Taken aback by my grandfather’s recollections of little freedom and choice in Soviet Ukraine, I understood why my family left. Realizing that they lived through turbulent times, I thought of the person I was hours ago as foolish and lost. A sense of urgency developed — the need to learn more.            I began reading novels and narratives. I watched footage and documentaries. I winced when a Nazi officer hurled a disabled Jew out of a window in “The Pianist.” My eyes moistened when Oskar Schindler sobbed, “One more...I could’ve gotten one more person.”           I wanted to understand the panic and determination of Londoners in 1940 and of Muscovites amidst evacuations in 1941, when they feared the worst. My question persists — what would happen in a world where Nazis overpower their enemies? I’m fascinated by the idea that if some powerful figure were assassinated or a general had planned differently, my family, and the world, could have been deeply affected.            These questions about the past made me realize that I needed to be part of the change. The Plot Against America helped open my eyes to the fact that history’s mistakes can repeat anywhere if we are not careful.  For this reason I have only recently begun to delve into culture, foreign affairs, and historical trends during my travels.           HIAS, an organization that brought my family to America, organized the Rally for Refugees in Manhattan, where I stood among an enormous pool of listeners and umbrellas, gathered to protest the ban on refugees escaping conflict and persecution in certain countries. Listening to speeches, I found the situation to be reminiscent of America’s strengthened restrictions against refugees in the 1930s. I realized the past isn’t just in the past.            I cannot imagine living in a society that silences me or targets me for my inherited identity. The history of civilization led to my birth in a time and place where my freedom is second nature. How will the past and the present influence my future, and what can I do?           The middle-school me ignored arguments at the Thanksgiving table, but now I use others’ perspectives to become more knowledgeable, involved, and open-minded. I plan on being an upstander, not a bystander. Unlike my younger self and many of my current peers who can’t bear the sight of maps or election statistics, I now understand the importance of studying the history that shaped today — to contribute to a new history and avoid past faults and horrors.