The Holocaust-fleeing grandma of President Donald Trump's son-in-law once criticized the U.S. for its reluctance in taking in immigrants.
In an eerie parallel to Trump's just-announced ban of refugees, Polish-born Rae Kushner — whose grandson Jared is married to Ivanka Trump — said in a 1982 interview:
"We had a problem. We didn't know where to run. There was no Israel like there is today. There was no place that you could legally go to. It was very hard to get a visa to the United States; it would take years and years. . .
"For the Jews, the doors were closed. We never understood that. Even President Roosevelt kept the doors closed. Why? The boat, St. Louis, was turned back. What was the world afraid of? I don't understand."
The interview — first reported by The Nation and part of the collection of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington — was unearthed amid the global furor over Trump's executive order that denies entry to citizens of seven Muslim countries.
Rae Kushner, along with her father and sister managed to escape the Nazis through a tunnel, then lived in the woods for nine months before smuggling themselves into Italy where they lived in a refugee camp, The Guardian reports.
More than three years later, relatives in the U.S helped the family get visas. Rae died in 2004.
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