The second reality that impacted my life was that my father left Poland at the age of 17 from a community which was not only very poor but from a country where anti Semitism pogroms and attacks on Jews were not uncommon While my father emigrated to the United States and escaped Hitler and the Holocaust many in his family did not For them racism right wing extremism and ultra nationalism were not political issues They were issues of life and death and some of them died horrific deaths 