Thomas Buergenthal passed away this week at the age of 89. You may not have heard of him, but his story is worth knowing, and it is equally worth knowing that his story, unfortunately (or fortunately), is far from unique.

Buergenthal was born in 1934 to a Jewish family in Czechoslovakia. You can already see where this is going. Ghetto, arrest, Auschwitz, and a three day “death march” to Sachsenhausen which he survived with his mother at the age of 11. A Polish orphanage, a miraculous reconnection with his mother who was living in a small town in Germany and in 1951, when he was 17, he was sent to his aunt and uncle in Paterson, New Jersey (I am not sure about his immigration status then), where he was sent to high school and then to a small Christian affiliated college, Bethany College in West Virginia. Then, he studied law at New York University and got a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Harvard, and decided to specialize in international and human rights law.

His New York Times obituary then lists the jobs he had. I quote: “President of the American Bar Association’s Human Rights Committee, from 1972 to 1974; dean of Washington College of Law of American University in Washington DC from 1980-1985; held endowed professorships at the University of Texas, Austin, the State University of New York in Buffalo, and Emery University in Atlanta , where he was also director of the Human Rights Program of the Carter Center…….also served on the United States Truth Commission on El Salvador from 1992-1993, was a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the Ethics Commission of the International Olympics Committee” and he was vice-chairman of the Holocaust related Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Accounts.

From 1979 to 1993, he was a member of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and for a time served as its president, and he was – perhaps most importantly – the United States Justice on the International Court of Justice in the Hague, a UN tribunal, from 2000 to 2010. He then served as a law professor at The George Washington University in Washington. His memoir is titled “A Lucky Child”.

Quite a life story, to be sure. And Buergenthal was not the only European Nazi period refugee to find success. Look at Henry Kissinger, who just turned 100, or Elie Wiesel from a town in Romania, or so many others.

I am not sure what to make of this. Today, so many think that their children’s success will be based on going to the right elementary school (or even pre-school), or summer camp, or what have you. These Holocaust survivors often went to no school at all. So many today think that their children’s success will be influenced by what books they are exposed to, or by receiving information about gender characteristics or sexual preferences. The Holocaust survivor kids were exposed to situations well beyond reading about two male animals in a book who love each other – and if anything it made them better people, not worse.

What these people did have (beyond native intelligence and a background that sharpened their sensitivity to the world around them) was support and mentorship from everyone from relatives to strangers in the new world in which they found themselves. And they had a innate sense of confidence, I suppose, from having survived the ordeals of their childhood.

Which, of course, brings me to today’s immigrants, and especially the young immigrants, who have not yet reached the time of their lives where they are tied down by family obligations. These are also survivors – and we don’t hear (or don’t want to hear) enough of their stories. Shouldn’t they be given the same degree of support and mentorship, rather than be treated as insects that were able to sneak through the cracks in the wall? After all, they are – to a large extent – the future of this country. Shouldn’t we be giving them the chance to become its leaders?

As the Reverend Solomon says, in his radio messages, “not a sermon, just a thought”.