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Holocaust survivor: Don't listen to Trump

Posted at 6:39 PM, Dec 08, 2015
and last updated 2015-12-08 19:39:11-05

A 78-year-old Holocaust survivor, who knows what it's like to be persecuted because of their religion, says Donald Trump's plan to ban all Muslim immigration brings back memories of a darker time.

“When the persecution came, It was scary, I was scared all the time. I cried a lot,” said Susie Fono.

Fono remembers like it was just yesterday. She was seven years old when her father was taken from their home, and they were forced to live in the ghetto.

“I keep saying somebody up there was watching over us," she remembers.

In 1944 she and her family were deported from Budapest when the Germans invaded Hungary. Holocaust survivors more than anyone know what it is like to be persecuted because of their religion.

“I’m 78 years old and I watch the news and I try to be objective, because of what we went through and I don't want anybody to have feelings against anybody. I’m just scared...because there are a few nutcases you cannot punish a whole society."

Folo says her mother would always say "there are good people and there are bad people." In fact it was a Nazi, who realized the Germans were losing, who took sympathy on her family and helped her father survive.

"I cannot discriminate because I was discriminated against. There is only one God, and there are just different ways people pray to that God."

The Executive Director of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee says Trump's remarks are troubling.

“What troubles me is when he tries to associate the groups of extremists, and to try to make those extremists as though they're representatives of the entire faith or the entire Muslim community.”