Larry Bacow, the former president of Harvard, participated in a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where his mother was imprisoned. Ruth Wertheim, Bacow’s mother, survived multiple concentration camps as the sole survivor of her family. The commemoration highlights both the historical significance of the Holocaust and also the personal impact it has on descendants of survivors. Bacow stresses the importance of understanding the motivations behind immigration and the resilience of those who seek a better life in the U.S.
I never really talked much about my mother in my professional life until I became president of Harvard in 2018. That was a time in which the government was showing increasing hostility towards immigrants as well as refugees.
I thought it was important for people to understand that those who come to this country from abroad typically do so for a variety of reasons.
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