I’m a first generation …
American.
In the months leading up to the official start of World War II in 1939, my Grandfather Benjamin (a jeweler in Vienna) shipped my mother and her two siblings ahead to New York City. Later, Bennie arrived – minus his wife, my mother’s mother. The why behind this missing person remains a Sambur family mystery. I’m positive it's not a feel-good story.
My other grandfather apparently had a premonition about Poland’s Nazi neighbors. Grandpa Abraham bought my father a one-way ticket on a slow boat to New York City. My dad said goodbye to his family and friends in the shtetl of Brzeziny. He never saw any of them alive again. He was 18 years old upon his arrival to the New World.
When people ask me about all of this, I wave it off as “Holocaust stuff.”
Yet what is Holocaust stuff to the children of survivors? It’s about immigration to another land with little more than memories, the clothes on your back and a piece of luggage.
So it’s no stretch to say I possess an inordinate amount of empathy for immigrants. My parents’ ability to escape the run-or-be-murdered antisemitism of Nazi-influenced Europe is the only reason I’m breathing air right now.
The world works in strange ways.
That history was on my mind when I recently left Durango's winter behind, seeking desert warmth and sunshine. I headed to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which straddles the Arizona-Mexico border – a land of stately saguaros, otherworldly mountains and organ pipe cacti.
Those are the natural wonders. Unfortunately, there is one very unnatural wonder too. No trip to Organ Pipe would be complete without a look at the border wall – a physical presence that is both mesmerizing and nauseating in equal measure. A 30-foot steel barrier that cuts across indigenous and migratory animal patterns that predate the age of nation-building. A shameless scar across an already stark landscape. The price tag? Twenty to twenty-one million dollars per mile.
Such a deal. Not.
The monument is also heavily populated by Border Patrol agents driving 4x4 pickup trucks. On a 42-mile loop road I encountered 12 Border Patrol units. I actually had a too-close encounter with one. The young male officer was barreling through a wash heading the wrong way on a one-way road. He shrugged sheepishly before he sped off once again. I have no idea what immigrant phantoms he was pursuing. No explanation was given.
Of course, this Border Patrol overdose begs the question: If the wall was such a deterrent, why the need for expensive trucks and personnel on the ground?
All this costly economic and ecological damage to stop would-be laborers who frame our homes, clean our hotel rooms and pick our produce. Yes, a few bad apples carry drugs – but smugglers are severely limited in how much they can transport on foot. Most drugs enter the country through legal border crossings, according to USA Today. Besides, if Americans didn’t crave the contraband, there would be no smuggling.
While hiking the monument’s trails, I discovered the detritus of desperation: a desert-bleached shirt, hat and trousers; a torn black garbage bag with empty containers of sugary juice drinks, sodas and salty snacks. I poked the remains with my shoe, trying to extract a story from the litter. How many were there? What was their destination? What drove them to risk everything to venture to a foreign land where they wouldn’t find a Welcome Wagon to greet them?
Here is my suggestion: Visit Organ Pipe National Monument. Walk its trails. Put yourself in the shoes of those immigrants. You might come away with a dose of empathy.
My parents and I would appreciate the gesture.
Jeff Sambur is a retired firefighter who reads, camps and hikes to pika colonies – pondering, over IPAs, whatever happened to the Woodstock Nation he was hoping to grow old in. He lives in Durango. Sambur will share his parents’ escape from Holocaust-era Europe at Congregation Har Shalom, 2537 County Road 203, on Sunday, April 12, from 4-6 p.m. The talk will be personal, informative and at times entertaining, ending on a hopeful note. In honor of his mother, savory vegetarian “Minnesota” soup will be served. Questions: jeffsambur@gmail.com.
