Sixty-seven years ago John Diebus and I crossed the stormy Atlantic on the USS General Ballou to the promised land: America. John was 14 and I was 8 at the time.

Recently John and I met for the first time since we set foot on Ellis Island. It was exciting and emotional. We both realize how blessed we were to be allowed to come to this country. Mom, my brother, and I fled our Transylvanian homeland (part of Romania) on a Red Cross train. John, his family, and the citizens of his town, fled the advancing Soviet army by wagon train.

Both his family and my family were Romanian citizens. We were ethnic Germans who had lived in Romania for hundreds of years. Ethnic Germans who did not flee were sent off to slave labor camps in Russia, where 15% of them died.

In communist countries (and under the Nazis) a person does not have inherent rights. What matters first is a person’s group or collective identity. There is a hierarchy of groups. Woe to you if you find yourself with the out-of-favor collective identity.