Peru’s President, Son of Jewish Refugee, Tells Trump He Prefers ‘Bridges To Walls’
Peruvian presidential candidate Pedro Pablo Kuczynski for ‘Peruanos por el Kambio’ (Peruvians for Change), makes a victory announcement to the press in Lima on June 9, 2016. Image by Getty Images
RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA) — The president of Peru, whose father was a Jewish refugee who fled the Nazis, told U.S. President Donald Trump during a visit at the White House that he prefers “bridges to walls.”
Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, born in Lima to a French Protestant mother and German Jewish father who fled the Nazis in 1933, gave Trump a gentle rebuke of his controversial proposal to build a wall along the border with Mexico, reported the Washington Post.
Kuczynski on Friday became the first Latin American president to visit Trump in Washington.
The U.S.-educated former Wall Street banker, who renounced his American citizenship to run for Peru’s presidency last June, took a strong stand against Trump’s “America First” agenda while many in the region remain silent.
Kuczynski, 78, told Trump he was interested in the free movement of people — “legally,” he emphasized.
Kuczynski harshly criticized Trump during the U.S. presidential campaign, joking he would cut diplomatic relations with the U.S. “with a saw” if Trump followed through on his pledge to build a wall with Mexico, which he compared to the Berlin Wall.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
