New York Docks, 1946 v. Tornillo, Texas, 2018: Which Version Of America Do You Prefer?

By Baxter

Gosh, we've just lost another distinguished photojournalist. But we guess that's what happens when you're well into your tenth decade.

Hard on the heels of Art Shay, Clemens Kalischer has died. At 97, he'd seen a lot of life — and not just through the lens of his camera.

Kalischer and his family escaped the Nazis in 1933 and made it to New York after being separated (and reunited) in a series of adventures so unlikely that even in the golden age of Hollywood they'd have been left on the cutting-room floor. Then in 1946, Agence France-Presse recruited him to record the arrivals of refugees from war-torn Europe. The result was affecting images like the one above.

Kalischer's photos of "Displaced Persons," depicting moving reunions of those who made it safely through the Golden Door, have special resonance now — and not in a good way. Because this is the photo that sums up America's treatment of refugees today:

In 1946, Democrat Harry Truman was President. Today, it's a sociopath and wannabe Republican dictator who tears migrant kids from their parents' arms and puts them in concentration camps. We can't help thinking that if Clemens Kalischer hadn't been 97 years old, he would have been down in Tornillo, Texas, this week, recording the suffering of 2018's displaced. We cats are sick about this, and we HISS.