Why I Only Speak English

It’s nice to speak more than one language — but I don’t. My father spoke seven languages. My mother four. I only speak English.

But this wasn’t an accident. It was designed that way.

As children, my parents were interred in places with names like Dachau, Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, where they were berated, humiliated, beaten, tortured and starved. In spring 1945, both of my parents, near-death, were liberated by the Allies. They survived with the aid of army medics and Red Cross hospitals. Most of their family members were not so lucky.

They tried going “home” but found that their family houses were no longer theirs, occupied now by their former “friends” and neighbors. So, like other displaced persons (DPs), my parents found their way to the Allied-established DP camps in Germany, where, as teenagers, they married under the chuppah.

A few years later, with the help of a Los Angeles based businessman, they were “invited” to come and settle in the United States. And in 1949, they left Germany aboard the USS General Blatchford, a military frigate now commissioned to take them to their new home in New York City. Barely beyond teenagers, they were overcome with the excitement of a new beginning — sheltered by the safety of a country they already loved.

After a week at sea, they sailed into New York harbor, and from the deck of the Blatchford, they stood in awe of a woman with a torch, adorned with words inscribed by a Jewish American girl, not much older than them at the time: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

They were home. Safe and sound.

Filled with pride and protected by American democracy, my parents were happy and built productive lives with their three sons. My brothers and I were walked to school by heavily accented immigrants — and while their English certainly wasn’t perfect, they never allowed us to learn or speak any of the other languages they were more comfortable with and decisively more fluent in.

Disappointed in never having learned one of “their” languages, I later asked my mother why she and my father never encouraged it. Her answer was simple but complex. “We wanted you to be Americans.” She didn’t have to say more. I knew the rest.

Unlike her childhood, my mother wanted her children protected by American truth and values. She understood and cherished the strength and value of American democracy and the laws that are created, upheld and sustained in our nation’s capital, especially in that building, the one with the dome. The one that represented her safety and her freedom. The one that had given birth to the General Blatchford. And the one that she maintained comfort with, knowing that if asked, her children would respond without doubt or hesitation, “I am American.”

Unlike her childhood, my mother wanted her children protected by American truth and values.

On January 6, a president, whom my parents would have never supported, incited a mob to “be strong” and storm the Capitol. His son insisted that the Republican party belonged to his father and that anyone who disobeyed him would be dealt with severely.

Along with millions around the world, I watched in horror as the mob took over the Capitol building, the nucleus of my parents’ safety. The Proud Boys and others — adorned with shirts which read, “Camp Auschwitz” — were now in charge. They sat in the vice president’s chair. They flew the racist flag of the Confederacy. These Brownshirts were defiling our nation’s Capitol. And our president, seething with pride over it all, told them, “We love you. You are very special.” His daughter called them “Patriots” in a now-deleted tweet.

I watched as shocked CNN commentator David Axelrod said, “I am the son of an immigrant who fled a country because of things like this, who came to the United States because this was a country of laws … I am in tears today.” I thought, yes David, you are not alone … so am I. How would this ever be explained to my parents?

Then it occurred to me. My parents may not have spoken perfect English, but they made sure that their son did. They knew to raise an American with a voice tempered by their experiences and bold enough to speak out against such a man the minute he uttered dangerous untruths about “Mexicans.” One savvy enough to understand that hearing, “he will be good for our country” was an electrode pinned to my psyche, only because those same ominous words had been professed nearly 100 years before. And one smart enough to recognize at the onset that such an egomaniacal demagogue is critically dangerous.

Yes, like many, I was shaken and rattled. But I’m buoyed by knowing that my parents would want me to speak up to say that one man’s actions do not a country make, even if he is president. They continue to call to me from beyond the grave to insist that the cherished but fragile words of the woman in the harbor, so meaningful to them and so many others, still matter. And that these words must be upheld at any cost — even if it means forcefully calling out danger the minute it rears its ugly head.

I can only hope that you can hear them too.

Richard David lives in Culver City, CA, with his wife Rulla and their mashugana dog Molly. He attained his MBA from Loyola Marymount University and enjoys writing part-time.