Henry Kissinger could never erase his memories of the Holocaust. As was the case for so many other refugees, the United States was a “savior” nation for those suffering the extreme hatreds of the era. New York City in the late 1930s was filled with prejudices and tensions between ethnic groups, but German Jewish refugees, like the Kissingers, could at least establish new roots and make new lives for themselves. As a teenager, Kissinger attended George Washington High School and then night school at City College—an institution that educated many poor immigrants. To help support his family, Kissinger worked in a brush factory during the day. Life in the United States on the eve of the Second World War was difficult, but it was livable for a family that faced certain death in its original home
Explanation:
Henry Kissinger is one of the most controversial figures to emerge from the Cold War. He participated as a soldier, scholar, and statesman in many of the most significant policy debates of the period. He acted as an intellectual, diplomat, and White House official, implementing some of the most enduring shifts in international affairs. Most of all, Henry Kissinger appeared throughout the global media as a genius, villain, and consummate manipulator who wielded power at the most important points in recent history. Kissinger’s diverse experiences, and the varied public perceptions of them, captured many of the contradictions at the center of the Cold War. He remains influential and infamous in the early twenty-first century because those Cold War contradictions continue to characterize American discussions of foreign policy, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Israel and China.
Kissinger’s life in the United States began as a refugee, arriving in New York City, along with his parents and younger brother, at age 15. The family fled Nazi Germany just weeks before the Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews. The Kissingers were Orthodox Jews from Bavaria, descendants of rabbis and cattle merchants in the region. They considered themselves patriotic Germans who were proud of their country’s achievements, but they suffered the extremes of fascist anti-Semitism. Soon after they fled Germany, Nazi crowds attacked Henry Kissinger’s maternal grandparents. They both died at the hands of the Nazis, as did many other members of the Kissinger family who could not escape Europe.
