• -
  • Interviews of, and Articles about, Sonia

 

Interviews of, Articles about, and Books that Include Sonia

Articles about Sonia are also contained in the section on Belgium.

Sonia Pressman Fuentes

About Us: Candid conversations about identity in 21st-century America

Sonia Fuentes escaped Nazi Germany in 1934
and came to the United States. [HERALDTRIBUNE
STAFF PHOTO / MIKE LANG]

I was born in Berlin of Polish Jewish parents, with whom I fled the Nazi regime in 1933. After nine months in Antwerp, Belgium we fled again when we were about to be deported to Poland and came to the U.S. arriving on May 1, 1934. I often wondered why Anne Frank's father, Otto, was denied permission to bring his family to the U.S. while my family was allowed in. I found the answer recently in a newspaper article. My family emigrated to the U.S. from Antwerp in April 1934; it appears that Otto Frank's efforts to  bring his family to the U.S. began in 1938.  By that time, the U.S. was cutting back on immigration and Otto Frank's efforts were also thwarted by bureaucracy and war.

I was a refugee to the U.S. I am a woman, a feminist activist, a Jew, a progressive, a lawyer, a public speaker, and a writer. The passion of my life has been fighting for women's rights. My first action in that regard was on March 26, 1963, at the age of 34, when I testified on behalf of the ACLU before the House Committee on Education and Labor in favor of the Equal Pay Act. I am deeply committed, however, to ending invidious discrimination against all groups in the U.S. and all over the world that are discriminated against.

©2018 The Washington Post