This year my mother, Nelly Harris, turned eighty. In the course of her life, she never spoke out publicly. She felt she didn't have the academic or professional qualifications to do so, but now she says she can no longer sit quietly. It's worth listening to her words:

My only credentials are my life experience-first as a refugee from Soviet Russia, later as a refugee from Nazi-occupied France, and, eventually, at the age of 18, as a new arrival to America, who went right to work and hasn't stopped.

An unknown elderly woman may not be given the time of day in our youth-oriented and celebrity-obsessed society, but I owe it to myself and my three grandchildren to at least try. My conscience demands no less.

I'm worried about the resurgence of global anti-Semitism and the ho-hum reaction it has elicited from many who should know better.

I was too young in Moscow, where I was born in 1923, to understand the gale-force winds of anti-Semitism that propelled my parents to get us out while they could in 1929 and resettle in Paris. But I recall as if it were yesterday the advent of Nazism in Germany in 1933, the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, Kristallnacht in 1938, and the invasion of France in 1940.

I discovered that a seemingly quiet, comfortable, and secure life can be turned upside down almost overnight.

I learned what it is to become a refugee, to experience unbridled fear, and to be enveloped by uncertainty about tomorrow.

I saw how people I knew were prepared to abandon me the moment they realized the risk involved in being associated with a Jew.

I heard with my own ears the cries of "Death to the Jews" from Nazis and their Vichy collaborators in France.

I felt the horror of my brother's arrest by the Vichy regime and planned deportation to the death camps; he was miraculously saved, but his girlfriend was not as lucky.

I found out that my dear cousin, Mila Racine, two years older than me, had joined the Organisation juive de combat, the French Jewish resistance movement. She transported Jewish children to the French-Swiss border until she was arrested in October 1943 and sent to Ravensbrück. From there, she was transferred to Mauthausen and was killed five weeks before the war's end.

I experienced the world's lack of sympathy as my family rushed from one consulate to another in the south of France begging for entry visas to somewhere, anywhere, just so long as it was far away from our nightmare. Of course, had Israel existed at the time, I can only wonder how many Jews with nowhere to go might have been saved.

In the end, my parents and I were among the lucky ones. Eventually, after traveling to Spain and Portugal, we crossed the Atlantic and arrived in New York a month before Pearl Harbor. (My brother arrived separately.)

Incidentally, perhaps it is people like us-those who found refuge from political and religious persecution-who can truly savor what America stands for. The sight, through tears of happiness, of the Statue of Liberty as our ship entered New York Harbor in November 1941 is something I'll never forget. I know the U.S. has its imperfections, but, believe me, it is unlike any other country in the world.

I was eighteen and went to work immediately. So did my brother. We barely spoke English, but it didn't matter. Our family needed the income, and my parents were in worse shape than my brother and me. We had no outside help, nor did we expect any. As it was, we had received the biggest gift we could have prayed for-our very lives-thanks to American visas. By comparison, the rest was a piece of cake.

In the postwar years, anti-Semitism in America existed, but it certainly wasn't life-threatening, nor was it particularly fashionable. As Jews, we encountered, at worst, small impediments in our own lives. While we heard about anti-Semitic barriers in certain elite neighborhoods, clubs, and corporate suites, that world was so far from us that it didn't really register.

The one thing I regret is that, in the 1950s and 1960s, my friends, all with backgrounds pretty similar to my own, and I were so busy trying to integrate into America that most of us didn't pay enough attention to instilling a serious Jewish identity in our children. In our immigrant milieu, our Jewish identity was pretty much taken for granted; no one really disowned it, though some played it down. In any case, it usually took a back seat to embracing an American identity.

I'm sure there are many explanations for this, not least that we had paid a high price in Europe for our Jewish identity. Moreover, I suppose we weren't all that eager to stand out as being different in our adopted country. After all, this was the time of the "melting pot" theory of America. Even so, in hindsight I realize how much we deprived our children of, though, given my son's chosen career path, maybe I'm being too hard on myself or, more probably, miracles do happen.

Now, in the waning years of my life, I smell something troubling, and it frightens me. Jews seem to be fair game. Whatever the possible reasons, they don't alter the basic bone-chilling facts. Anti-Semitism may ebb and flow, but its resilience and ferocity are astonishing. Recent events remind us that it doesn't take much of a pretext-Israel, Iraq, 9/11, currency fluctuations, Arab stagnation, Muslim resentment, you name it-for anti-Semitism to surface in one form or another.

I shouldn't be at all surprised, yet, even after eight decades, I confess I can't for the life of me understand the concept of demonizing entire groups. Of course, I've heard the explanations, but, deep down, I still don't get it. I suppose I have at least as much reason as the next person to hate, having been uprooted twice, but I find I'm not capable of doing so.

Or maybe my surprise stems from the fact that each generation clings to the belief that history moves forward, and that life will be better for our children than it was for us. And there's no question of the remarkable progress that's been achieved. The life circumstances of my son and grandchildren have been infinitely better than mine, but the story can't be allowed to end there.

The increasingly long list of attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets in the last couple of years is by now depressingly familiar, or is it?

I meet some Jews in New York who just don't seem willing, for a variety of reasons, to acknowledge the situation. Maybe either they're too self-absorbed, or they minimize the potency of anti-Semitism, or they're too convinced of their own safety, or they don't feel a visceral connection to fellow Jews around the world, or they're detached from Israel, or they principally blame Israel for the current problems, or they think that Jewish organizations are exaggerating the situation, or whatever.

While the 1930s were most assuredly another era, I saw Jews in Paris watch the events of that decade unfold and believe, until the very last minute, that somehow they were immune. Some chose not to lend credence to the eyewitness reports of Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria who streamed into France, including my future husband. Others decided that, by dint of their wealth, social standing, or connections, they were above the fray. And still others were too busy criticizing fellow Jews for bringing this on themselves.

Let me be clear. I'm not suggesting that we're witnessing a replay of the 1930s. In fact, I'm not sure it's useful to spend too much time comparing situations; they're very different. For starters, today's anti-Semitism isn't government policy in any country with a significant Jewish population-far from it. And that's not the only difference.

Nonetheless, I've learned a few things along the journey of life.

First, Jews can never afford complacency.

Second, sometimes people mean what they say. When Hitler began ranting and raving about the Jews, he wasn't taken very seriously, was he? When Islamic radicals call for the killing of Jews wherever they may live or Israel's total destruction, they shouldn't be underestimated or dismissed out of hand.

Third, things can get better. I've seen astonishing progress with my own eyes. Look, for example, at the establishment of the state of Israel, American support for Israel and the Jewish people, the Israeli peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, the disappearance of the USSR, the onset of French-German friendship, and the Jewish success story in America. But life has also taught me that things can get worse. Our ability to imagine must go in both directions. A firm grasp of history may not be the be-all and end-all, but it does offer valuable lessons.

And fourth, freedom is a precious gift. It must be defended. Heaven forbid, we should ever take our freedom for granted.

I never thought I would live to see the day when "Death to the Jews" was again heard, as it has been in Europe, the Muslim world, and even North America, much less read the unsettling cover story in New York magazine (December 15) entitled "The New Face of Anti-Semitism."

I am eighty and my future is largely behind me, notwithstanding someone's foolish claim that "life begins at eighty." But my three grandchildren have their lives ahead of them. Looking around today, I can't help but worry about the kind of world that awaits them. Maybe, at the end of the day, I'm no different than every grandmother in every generation. Still, I can only hope they'll hold their heads up high as Americans and as Jews and never stop fighting for-and dreaming about-better times to come.