But we will not be part of that today.

Trump signed an executive order on Friday that suspends refugee programs and targets Muslims from certain countries. It’s hypocritical for Trump to be today’s avatar of hostility to immigrants, since his own family suffered from anti-German sentiment and pretended to be Swedish. But I’m indignant for a more personal reason — and I’m getting to that.

Kirk W. Johnson, a former American aid official in Iraq, fears that the executive order will bar military interpreters who have bled for America and to whom we have promised entry. He told me about one interpreter, nicknamed Homeboy, who ran through fire to rescue a wounded American soldier, and then was himself shot. Homeboy survived, barely, but lost his leg — and as he recovered, a grenade was thrown at his home by insurgents angry that he had helped Americans.

After years of vetting, Homeboy was approved for a visa for interpreters who helped the United States. Does Trump really want to betray such people who risked more for America than Trump himself ever did?

Yet if fear and obliviousness have led us periodically to target refugees, there’s also another thread that runs through American history. It’s reflected in the welcome received by somebody I deeply admire: Wladyslaw Krzysztofowicz. And this is personal.

Raised in what was then Romania and is now Ukraine, Krzysztofowicz was jailed by the Gestapo for assisting an anti-Nazi spy for the West. His aunt was murdered in Auschwitz for similar spying, but he was freed with a bribe. When World War II was ending, he fled his home as it fell into the hands of the Soviets.