Dear John,

I’m Albert Linder, a Holocaust survivor, devoted father and husband, a retired engineer, a true friend of ADL and an enemy of antisemitism.

I’d like to tell you about how I survived the horrors of the Holocaust and share my unique view of the appalling antisemitism we're seeing today here in America.

The events I am about to describe contain violence and may be upsetting.

When I was just five years old, my maternal grandparents were shot and killed in their home as they prepared for Shabbat one Friday in 1941. One hundred Jews were killed that same day in a pogrom in their Romanian village as Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric set antisemitic sentiment ablaze across Europe.

That same year, my family was forcibly moved from our home into a ghetto and ultimately a concentration camp in Ukraine, where we and 76 others were squeezed into our dreadful new living space — a barn meant for farm animals.

At the time, I really couldn’t understand what I was seeing. I was five years old. I just accepted it as “this is what is happening to me.”

Within our first few months in the concentration camp, a third of us were gone, including my paternal grandparents and my 18-month-old sister who fell victim to a typhus outbreak. I looked on as their bodies were removed from the barn.

I was eight years old on the day our camp was liberated by the Allied forces. After our liberation, my family started the exhausting walk hundreds of miles from the camp to our home in Romania. We started the long, slow journey in early 1944 when there was snow on the ground, and we arrived in the heat of June.

It quickly became clear that Romania was no longer a home for us. Thankfully, I was able to join family in America. I went on to learn English, get married, become an engineer and work for decades at IBM. I felt welcome in America, in my new homeland.

Though the devastating memories of the Holocaust never left me, I moved on believing the world would never witness such atrocities again.

Nearly eighty years later, I am astounded by what is going on in our country and around the world.

A year ago on Oct. 7, Hamas attacked Israel, and innocent Jews were slaughtered at home, at work and at play. The spike since that awful attack — in hate crimes, hate speech and vicious attacks against Jews — needs to be stopped.

Today, in my late eighties, I’m writing to you with this urgent request: Act now. We must continue to seek opportunities to support ADL in the fight against antisemitism, ignorance, bias and hate. There is much work to do, and our friends at ADL are the ones who can get it done.

I support ADL because of their long history fighting antisemitism and I understand the difference individuals can make. I’ve seen people’s eyes open when they hear firsthand the impact of antisemitism when I share my story.

Now is the time to take action.

The United States is a different place than Europe was in 1941. We have freedom and hope, and collectively we need to protect our home against the rise in antisemitism and hate — we can’t afford to take our freedoms for granted.

It is absolutely essential for Jews and our allies to speak up and act to protect our communities.

ADL cannot do this critical work without the support of people like us who are working to stop antisemitism and hate. Please make your first gift to ADL today.