“The unthinkable has happened and now we must organize and proclaim our values," said Stuart Appelbaum of Donald Trump's election. | AP Photo Labor leaders, alarmed by Trump, reach for a German analogy

Hours after President Barack Obama tried to lower the country’s temperature by pitching Donald Trump as a “pragmatic” rather than an “ideological” leader, a group of top labor leaders compared the election results to the rise of the Third Reich.

Leaders of the Jewish Labor Committee -- a group founded in 1934 as a direct response to the rise of Nazi Germany -- reminded members on Monday night of their founding mission fighting totalitarianism and standing up for the most vulnerable. And they urged their members to regard the results of Tuesday night's election as an existential threat.


“Our founding principle was the importance of bringing together the Jewish community and the trade union movement to oppose the Nazis,” said Stuart Appelbaum, executive vice president of the 1.3 million member United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. “The JLC worked to get the State Department to issue temporary tourist visas to Democratic socialists who were immediate targets of the Gestapo.”

Appelbaum, a longtime ally of Hillary Clinton, also noted that “back in the 1930s, our founders saw the importance of building alliances and coalitions that could stand together for their values, and stand up against anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry.”

He added: “The unthinkable has happened and now we must organize and proclaim our values.”

The Human Rights Awards dinner at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan is an annual, klezmer-music filled tradition. On Monday night, hundreds of labor leaders gathered to honor the fashion chain Zara for allowing its employees the right to form a union in New York. But six days after the stunning election of Trump that labor unions across the country spent millions of dollars fighting against -- while many of their members broke ranks and voted for Trump -- the dinner transformed into something more: a somber history lesson over plates of filet mignon.

“They fought the Nazis in Germany,” Richard Lanigan, president of the OPEIU, said in his remarks, describing the group’s roots. Again, he said, “we may be going into a very dark period where intolerance is encouraged by elites. I came here thinking I might be making jokes about Jewish and Catholic guilt. I’m not.”

The dark warnings from the labor movement stood in stark contrast to Obama’s remarks on Monday. In a press conference, Obama praised Trump for tapping into an "impressive" enthusiasm among his supporters; expressed hope that the weight of the Oval Office would change Trump's temperament; and refused to comment on the appointment of former Breitbart News executive Steve Bannon as a senior White House adviser.

And it underscored the differing institutional responsibilities of the president -- who is hoping for unity and a peaceful transition of power -- and the labor movement, which is seeking to rise up as a reinvigorated voice for vulnerable Americans who fear what Trump’s ascent may mean for them.

At the dinner, labor leaders expressed more outrage about the incoming White House administration than they did about President-elect Trump himself.

“I myself am scared that someone called Steve Bannon will be steps away from the president,” said Tefere Gebre, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO. Bannon has been denounced by civil rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, for promoting white nationalist and racist views on his alt-right website.

Gebre added that reports that Joe Arpaio, the outgoing sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, is being considered for secretary of homeland security, “terrorized me.”

Gebre, who was born in Ethiopia in the midst of a civil war, described escaping to freedom in Sudan and then gaining political asylum in the United States at age 15. “It’s a tough day in this country to have an accent and be black,” he said. “I’m terrified of stop and frisk. I’m terrified of a deportation force.”

He implored the mostly white, Jewish crowd for help: “Would you hide me? Would you stand up for me if they come after me?”

Gebre issued a call to action to help millions of undocumented immigrants across the country by “assuring them that our America is not Steve Bannon’s America.”

The election of Trump -- who has said “having a low minimum wage is not a bad thing for this country” -- puts the labor movement at a crossroads. But on Monday night, its leaders said the challenges should be galvanizing as much as they are frightening.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Lanigan said.