Photos of Marianne Rubin, 89, and her powerful sign quickly went viral, reminding Americans that the threat of white supremacy is not to be taken lightly. Though Charlottesville was the epicenter of white supremacist rhetoric and rage on Saturday, organized hate exists throughout the country. At least 917 active hate groups are currently operating across the country, according to a February 2017 report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights advocacy group. For Rubin, the presence of white supremacist groups in the public arena carries disturbing echoes of her childhood as a Jewish girl in Nazi Germany. Rubin remembers Nazi soldiers coming to her apartment when she was six years old and attacking her family. “I knew something bad was happening,” Rubin told HuffPost. “They marched in and they pushed me down. Then they pushed my father down, and I saw him lying there.” The men proceeded to an apartment upstairs, she said, at which point the young Rubin shut and locked the front door. “My father never forgot it, and he thanked me for many days,” she said. Rubin and her parents managed to escape from Germany in the late 1930s, fleeing first to Italy then to France and finally making their way to the U.S. But not all of her family survived. Her grandmother, who initially left Germany with them, went back to try and help other family members escape. She died in the Terezin concentration camp in what was then Czechoslovakia. On seeing the reemergence of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups today, Rubin said: “It sends me beyond belief.” The 89-year-old said she hung up her sign from the rally outside her front door for all to see. Its message, she said, is directed to President Donald Trump. With a fiery spark and a touch of humor, Rubin said she’d like to tell the president: “Fuck you.” via @huffpost #theunsungheroines ⠀#boston #fightsupremacy ⠀
