Washington Blade: U.S. should create path to citizenship for ‘stateless’ people like me
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, a reminder of those in limbo.
by Henry Pachnowski
It’s International Holocaust Memorial Day on Jan. 27. As an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor I’m grateful to be among those still here to mourn. This year, I’m also grateful as a bisexual man to have finally recovered my green card after years as a “stateless” person. I hope the Biden administration and Congress do all they can to help more than 200,000 other Americans who are also stateless like I have been since the 1960s.
The Nazis took my parents against their will to a forced labor camp in Germany from Poland and I was born in Germany in 1940. After surviving World War II, my family remained in Germany until 1951 when we immigrated to the U.S.