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| A preliminary review by U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s internal watchdog office found that Alex Pretti was shot by two federal officers after resisting arrest, but did not indicate that he brandished a weapon during the encounter, according to an email sent to Congress and reviewed by The New York Times [January 27, 2026]. |
We were both
ten years old,
and best friends,
the colonel’s
daughter
across the street
and I,
when he said
I think
you’re old enough
to see these
army newsreels,
from my days
back
in World War II.
Down into
the basement
we went.
Before he turned
out the lights,
we watched
as he took out
a giant reel
of sixteen millimeter
black and white film,
he fitted
to his old army
projector.
The two of us
watched in terror,
as people were
dragged from shops
and apartment
buildings,
thrown
to the ground,
and beaten.
With the same
fright in our voices,
we asked
what they
did wrong.
The colonel
stopped the film
and turned
on the lights.
What did they
do wrong,
he repeated.
Hitler—
a name
we knew barely
at a distance—
hated Jews,
he said.
The people
pictured here
were Jews.
In that quiet
fatherly tone,
I knew so well,
he looked at me
and said,
you’re Jewish,
aren’t you.
The next images,
forever fixed
in my mind,
showed mounds
of dead bodies
being bulldozed
into trenches,
at what he called
“the camps”.
A vile end,
I later thought,
for a people
doing nothing
wrong,
but approaching
their god,
in the Fuhrer’s eyes,
from the wrong
testament.
***
I can’t pick up a paper,
or see a newscast,
that doesn’t remind me—
as ICE grabs individuals
off the street,
or wades into crowds
with smoke bombs,
to break up protests—
of those images
the colonel
shared with us,
that day long ago.
We were still
too young
to understand
when he told,
how Hitler came
to control the truth
proclaimed
by print
and radio.
As truth today
seems to reincarnate
with each sunrise,
the colonel’s films
begin to feel
eerily familiar.
Have America’s
once welcome
immigrants,
incarcerated now
at every turn,
I ask myself,
become
yesterday’s
vilified Jews,
our government
more Hitlerian
by the hour?
And more
terrifying?
Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, and others here and abroad. His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, published by the New Mexico Museum Press. Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored over 290 poems, published on four continents.
