Anne Frank, and What Is A Citizen?

By: Harrison Dale

Roughly 125 years ago, my grandfather, Harry, arrived on a boat as an infant, carried by my great-grandfather, Solomon. They fled what is now Belarus, escaping the pogroms and violence against Jews in the Russian Empire. They were chasing safety and the promise of a better life. Today, I live a proudly Jewish and American life, married to a Jewish Latina woman, raising a son who will grow up knowing both his Jewish and Latino heritage. It is no wonder, then, that the current administration’s actions against “undocumented” immigrants fill me with a deep and familiar fear. I fear for my Latino family, and I fear because of a Jewish history that remembers when safety was revoked overnight.

Recently, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz suggested that current ICE raids echo the story of Anne Frank. The backlash was swift. Critics insisted the comparison was invalid. They argued that Anne Frank and her family were citizens of their country, unlike those today who are here “illegally.” This argument fundamentally misunderstands the Holocaust. That event demonstrates with horrifying clarity how legal status can be stripped away far more easily than it is granted. According to the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, beginning in 1933, the Nazi government systematically revoked the citizenship of thousands of German Jews and political opponents. Their “legal” protection vanished by decree.

Many of those targeted by ICE today, like young Liam Ramos, are asylum seekers. Asylum is a legal process; they have documentation and a pending court date to regularize their status. To call them “undocumented” is often inaccurate. Their plight reveals the fragility of legality itself. One administration may recognize your lawful process, while the next may rip you from your family and detain you a continent away. The ground can shift beneath anyone’s feet.

Citizenship has always been a marker dividing “us” from “them.” Its very concept is tied to democracy’s origins in ancient Athens, where demos (the people) held kratos (power). But this “people” was narrowly defined. Only free men were citizens. Women, children, and the enslaved, who comprised 80-90% of the population, were excluded. Yet, as scholar Paul Woodruff notes in “First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea,” the system was malleable. After crises, Athenians adapted their laws to broaden participation, much as America has expanded voting rights over centuries.

This brings us back to Anne Frank. She was a citizen until she wasn’t. She hid, as many immigrants in America hide today, afraid to walk the streets. Her family applied for asylum in the United States. They were denied. This was a tragically common refusal in the years leading to the Holocaust. Anne was discovered, deported, and died of typhus in a concentration camp. Her death was not just murder, but a result of the deliberate, neglectful conditions of her imprisonment. Today, outbreaks of measles and other preventable diseases in American detention centers sound the same alarm. When we warehouse innocent people, we are responsible for the suffering that follows.

So, what is a citizen, ultimately? In this moment, it seems to be whoever the state deems desirable. The story of Anne Frank is not a distant tragedy. It is a warning of how quickly the protected can become the persecuted, and how paper rights can be rendered meaningless by those in power. We must confront a difficult truth. Citizenship is not a permanent guarantee. It is a construct that can be weaponized. But shouldn’t we strive for a world where the people within a nation’s borders can all live in safety and dignity? The test of our democracy is not how we treat those with the most secure status, but how we protect those whose status is most precarious. Their safety is ultimately our own.