New documents reveal Jared Kushner's immigrant family survived on benefits Trump threatens
Jared Kushner's immigrant grandparents survived on a slew of benefits the type of which his father-in-law, former President Donald Trump, has already weakened and threatens to dismantle, according to a new report.
Kushner's grandmother Rae and grandfather Joseph Berkowitz — who fled the Holocaust after World War II — were brought to the U.S. and supported financially by programs Trump commonly attacks, the Washington Post reported Monday.
"Seven decades later, their grandson became a top official in an administration that sharply restricted immigration and cut the number of refugees the country admits to its lowest level ever," Andrew Silverstein wrote.
"Trump, in his current presidential campaign, has pledged to suspend the refugee program, ban refugees from Gaza, and turn back asylum seekers."
It was 1949 when Joseph and Rae arrived in New York City from an Italian displaced person camp without any family willing to support them and just $2 in their pockets, according to the report.
The Kushners were sent to a Manhattan shelter called Capitol Hall, run by an aid group coalition that housed many of the 140,000 Holocaust refugees admitted to the U.S. between 1946 and 1953, the Washington Post reported.
"Echoing New York City’s current policy for arriving asylum-seeking families, the Kushners were given a room for 60 days, a food allowance, laundry service and help with clothing, medicine and other incidentals," the Post reported.
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They were also subjected to anti-immigrant rhetoric such as that echoed by Trump decades later, the Post reports.
“They were also afraid of taking us in,” Rae Kushner said in a 1972 Yiddish-language testimony for Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum. “They thought we were no longer human, that we were animals.”
Trump reportedly said at a recent rally in the South Bronx, 'They want to get us from within,'" according to the Post. "I think they’re building an army.”
The Kushners were paired with case workers and provided services that included a nursery, medical facilities, a kosher kitchen and free clothing, according to the Post.
Ivanka's husband Jared Kushner has kept quiet about financial assistance and claimed his grandfather began working immediately, but the Post questions this account.
“Two days after arriving, my grandfather showed up early at a construction site in Brooklyn, willing to work hard,” Jared reportedly wrote.
Writes Silverstein, "The case file shows that two weeks after their arrival, Joseph was unemployed."
But Silverstein adds, "The overall story is true" and reports four years after the Kushners arrived — Joseph reportedly assumed his wife's surname to duck congressional limitations on asylum seekers — they were building real estate in New Jersey.
By 1985, the Kushner's real estate empire would include more than 4,000 properties, the Post reports.
This is likely why Jared’s uncle Murray Kushner, 73, told the Post he recoils at “Trumpian casting of aspersions of immigrants and refugees as murderers and killers," according to the report.
“They’re looking for an opportunity to raise children and to be successful,” Murray Kushner reportedly said. “They’re all grasping at something. They just need an opportunity.”