Subhumans in America

 Subhumans in America

As the son of Polish immigrants—people who survived the hell of Nazi forced labor camps—I grew up with a deep conviction that words carry immense weight. My parents were told by the Germans that they and so many non-Germans were nothing more than mules.  My parents also heard themselves and the other people in the labor camps described as untermensch, a term meaning subhumans. 

This was a key pillar of German racial ideology.  Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and Slavic peoples (such as Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians) as well as persons with disabilities and Black individuals were all seen as being subhuman. This term wasn’t simply an insult.  It was used to strip specific groups of their humanity.  By defining certain groups of people as biologically inferior, the Nazi regime created the moral and legal justification for mass expulsion, enslavement, and extermination.  

My parents and other Poles not only experienced this hatred in Germany.  They experienced something like it when they came to America as Displaced Persons after World War II.  As a child growing up in Chicago in the 1950s, I remember walking around the Wicker Park area with my father hoping to find an apartment to rent and seeing signs on buildings saying that the owners would not rent to Poles.  Also, we were often told that DP, the acronym for Displaced Persons, was just another way of describing us as Damn Poles, Dirty Poles, Drunk Poles, and Dumb Poles.  After spending years in slave labor camps and refugee camps, we were seen as stupid and lazy people who had come to America as refugees just to get a free ride funded by American taxpayers.  Poles again were seen as untermensch, subhumans, nothing but mules.

What amazes me is that 70 years later here in America, I hear the same thing, not necessarily about Poles, but about other people who don’t fit the description of what an American should be like.  When I went to college in the late 1950s, I took a history course on the Constitution, and one of the things it taught me was that people are equal.  The 14th Amendment states that "...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."  To me, this meant that all of us here in America were not untermensch, not subhumans.  We were all equally American.

I wish all Americans believed this.

Just a few days ago, I was reading about a lecture organized by the Maryland Federation of College Republicans that was given at Salisbury University, a state university in Maryland.  Jared Taylor—a self-described "white advocate" who is widely characterized by civil rights groups as a white supremacist—spoke on that campus on April 29, 2026. Arguing against cultural diversity, Taylor said that it is a form of weakness that creates national instability.  He also argued for racial segregation.  Whites should live apart from people of different cultures and races in order to preserve their own identities. Finally, he argued against immigration, saying it brings in people of different nationalities, cultures, races, and religions, and these differences will destroy America.  

Reading about Jared Taylor’s lecture, I thought about my parents and the Polish DPs I grew up with in Chicago.  So much of what he said brought back memories of how Poles were treated as untermensch by Nazi Germany and how we were treated by some Americans as Dumb Polacks when we came over from the refugee camps after the war.  

And I thought about something else.  I thought about the redistricting and gerrymandering that has gone on or is currently going on in 18 states prior to the midterm elections.  Most of the gerrymandering is by Republicans, and their intention seems pretty clear.  They want an America like the America “white advocate” Jared Taylor wants:  An America without diversity, an America of segregation, an America where immigrants are kept from our shores. 

They want an America that is not America.

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My column first appeared in the Dziennik Zwiazkowy, the oldest Polish newspaper in America.