In a moment that continues to echo across time, the emotional testimony of Holocaust survivor Bernard Marks during a 2017 public immigration forum has found new life—and powerful relevance—as debates over immigration and human rights intensify in the United States.
Marks, then 87 years old, rose slowly to the microphone during a heated public hearing in Sacramento, California. The event was intended to discuss cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities—an issue that had sparked passionate discourse across communities. Yet few in the audience were prepared for the sheer emotional weight that Marks would bring with him.
Wearing a simple sticker that read “Keep American Families Together,” Marks stood not just as a concerned citizen, but as a living witness to one of the darkest chapters in human history. What followed was a speech that would not only move the room to silence, but later move millions online. “I spent five and a half years in concentration camps because we picked on people,” he said, his voice steady, but charged with urgency. “You as law enforcement officers should not be going along with unconstitutional acts.”
He was speaking directly to then-ICE Director Thomas Homan and Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, criticizing the increasing collaboration between local law enforcement and federal deportation agencies. For Marks, it wasn’t a political issue. It was a human issue—a question of ethics, memory, and justice. And it was deeply personal.
A Life Marked by Survival and Loss
Bernard Marks was born in Poland in 1929. As a young Jewish boy, he was just 10 years old when the Nazis invaded. He and his family were forced into the brutal machinery of the Holocaust, eventually imprisoned in the infamous concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau. In those camps, Bernard endured starvation, forced labor, disease, and constant fear of death. Most of his family did not survive.
When he was finally liberated at the end of World War II, Marks emerged with a scarred body and a memory seared with trauma—but also with an unshakable sense of purpose. He vowed to speak out against injustice wherever he saw it. He moved to the United States, built a life, and became an active member of his community. But the horrors of his past were never far from his mind.
In 2017, as political tensions surrounding immigration policies rose to new heights, Marks could not stay silent. He believed the language being used to describe immigrants—especially undocumented individuals and refugees—was dangerously close to the same rhetoric used by the Nazis to dehumanize Jews and other marginalized groups in the 1930s.
“History Is Not On Your Side” — A Message That Still Resonates
His speech, just a few minutes long, became an instant reminder that history often repeats itself when people fail to listen. “History is not on your side,” he told Director Homan—a sentence that felt like both a warning and a plea. The audience responded with thunderous applause and emotional silence.
Bernard wasn’t accusing anyone of being a Nazi. But he was urging America not to fall into the same moral blind spots that allowed such atrocities to happen. He wanted officials to consider the human cost of their decisions, and to remember what happens when governments use fear and suspicion to turn neighbors against each other.
His warning struck a nerve not just because of what he said, but who he was. There are fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors left to share their stories in person. Each one who speaks out becomes a voice for the millions who never had the chance.
An Advocate Until the End
Even in his later years, Bernard Marks continued to speak at schools, universities, and public events, educating young people about the Holocaust and calling for compassion, unity, and human rights. He believed education was the key to preventing future atrocities.
He passed away in 2018 at the age of 89. But the clip of his speech—archived online and now being reshared across social media—continues to remind the world of his message. “We can have a better country,” he once said in an interview. “A country without hate. A country that doesn’t forget.”
His legacy is not just a warning from the past. It is a guiding light for the present and future. It is a challenge to all of us to stand against injustice, to speak up for the voiceless, and to ensure that “never again” is more than just a slogan.
Why His Words Matter Now More Than Ever
As modern immigration policy continues to evolve—with raids, deportations, family separations, and border controversies dominating headlines—many are revisiting Marks’s words as a moral compass in uncertain times.
His story reminds us that the fight for human dignity is ongoing. That behind every immigration case is a human life. That silence in the face of injustice is not neutrality—it is complicity.
In honoring Bernard Marks, we are also called to action. To remember history, yes—but also to shape a better future. A future where families are kept together, where fear doesn’t override empathy, and where justice prevails over cruelty.
And that, bree… is the kind of legacy we need to keep alive.
