PHOTO COURTESY OF SERENA ADLERSTEIN
Jews in the D
Never Again Action:
Inside the Movement Founded with Michigan ties, the activist group unites young Jews and undocumented workers … but its messaging has drawn ire. MATT HARMON CONTRIBUTING WRITER
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SEPTEMBER 3 • 2020
S
erena Adlerstein heard the phrase “Never Again” regularly throughout her Jewish upbringing. As a member of the Reform community, her lessons in Sunday school stressed the importance of preventing another genocide after the Holocaust. Often, warnings against forgetting the past came from those that lived through it, like Adlerstein’s grandfather Arno Goetz. His family fled Germany after Kristallnacht in November 1938, when Nazis set fire to Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses and killed scores of Jews. “I thought a lot about if I were alive during that time, what would I have done, and I also remember hearing from my mom saying that her father, my grandfather, would also frequently tell her, ‘Don’t think that it can’t happen again here,’” Adlerstein said. Conversations like Adlerstein’s with her mother are unfortunately a dime a dozen among the Jewish community. When she watches reports of undocumented migrants in the U.S. being detained and held in detention centers, Adlerstein sees these narratives of persecution and imprisonment as all too similar to sit back and do nothing. This is why, while working in Grand Rapids, she became one
