> Stefan Mendel is a jew born during the Holocaust.
He was born earlier than the Holocaust (especially the holocaust in Romania). Not to dismiss your point, but it's a disctinction very important to the people born duing the Holocaust.
> He described how the economic state and ethnic persecution motivated him to find ways to raise the funds for getting his family out of Romania.
As a matter of fact, Jewish people were the only people able to leave communist Romania when the borders were closed. Ana Pauker, the Romanian foreign minister (herself jewish) brokered a deal with Israel to allow 4000 jews/month to emigrate to Israel. Several other rounds of exit visas given by the Romanian government to jewish people emigrating to Israel (with oil equipement and hard cash received in return) led to basically an exodus of most jews in Romania. As an anecdote, my hometown was 80% jewish when my parents were born and two years ago, the last jewish person passed away at a littler over 100 years of age. I also have jewish ancenstry.. To post some numbers, there were ~400k jews in Romania at the end of WW2 and less than ~10k when the Iron Curtain fell. A large part of (what I consider to be) Romanian culture was lost during the cummunist quest of rewriting history and creating a 'pure' nation.
Just to put things into perspective. The communist rule in Romania was brutal and criminal even after the Red Army retreated and was under 100% Romanian leadership, and was especially brutal against ethnic minorities. Jewish people actually targeted during the anti-semitic Stalin purge which echoed in Romania as well, as local aparatchicks used this to purge the jews out of government (Anna Pauker is also a victim of that - not to defend her, she was also commie trash but a victim of antisemitism nontheless).
I don't blame the guy for wanting out.