A few weeks ago in this column, I mentioned that I grew up in New Jersey as a red diaper baby, that is, the child of Communists. As my sister, Harriet, liked to tell the tale, “I knew that they were card-carrying members of the Party because one day, looking for something in their bedroom, I found the cards.”
Their story is on my mind now as we hear reports of immigrants disappearing from their jobs, schools, and communities. Something similar shaped my parents’ lives 70 years ago, though what’s happening now, including here on Cape Cod, is more brutal. A campaign of extremism and lies made their friends and allies disappear.
My parents were Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe — my mother, Ruth, from Warsaw, Poland, and my father, Abe, from a village in what is now Belarus. To escape the chaos and violence of war and revolution, Abe’s family set out on foot across Europe and managed to reach the port of Bremerhaven and secure passage on a ship to America. Several children died along the way.
Abe wanted to become a rabbi but couldn’t because the family was too poor to pay the tuition. So, he went to work delivering newspapers and became politically active, working for immigrant rights, progressive labor causes, civil rights, and racial justice. He married Ruth, who joined him in the news delivery business. They started a family in the leafy suburb of Teaneck and, like many other idealistic young people, they joined the Party.
Through the 1940s, they had meetings at their house with a lively circle of friends and fellow travelers. They admired Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, Marian Anderson, Lena Horne, Arthur Miller, and other politically active entertainers and artists. They supported new immigrants who were struggling.
That life came to an end with the 1950s Red Scare, provoked by the extremism and lies of Sen. Joe McCarthy and the Un-American Activities Committee. My parents’ friends were blacklisted and arrested. Most lost their jobs, and some went into hiding. Abe and Ruth were able to keep supporting their family only because they owned their own business. But the FBI came to our house regularly to harass and threaten them. Their social and emotional lives disintegrated. They never fully recovered.
The U.S., however, recovered from the crisis, thanks to journalists like Edward R. Murrow and a Boston lawyer named Joseph Welch, who challenged McCarthy and turned the nation against him with one brilliant impromptu takedown on national television. Coming to the defense of a young, falsely accused colleague, Welch told McCarthy, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator; you’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
The year was 1954. It was somehow possible for Americans to pause and recognize dishonesty, cruelty, and indecency, and turn against corruption. The Senate voted to censure McCarthy late that year by a vote of 67 to 22.
