Jerry Springer:… Any job I’ve ever had it’s been the same constituency, it’s been middle and low-income people that need a voice, that need help, that need whatever. So, even in my entertainment, that’s my base. In politics, it certainly was my base. When I practiced law, it was my base. This is who I am.

54 years ago, this week, I came to America. I was five years old. Most of my family had been killed in the holocaust in the camps in Germany and Austria during World War II.

[Podcast host] Alex Blumberg: The speech that you’re hearing now is one Springer delivered back in January of 2003 to a group of Ohio Democratic county chairs. There was no press there. And the only reason we have it on tape is because an audience member recorded the whole thing on a personal tape machine from his chair. He probably thought that it’d be a joke, but he was so moved by the speech that he took the tape and had it duplicated at his own expense. He sent it around to all the county chairmen around the state, the idea being, here’s a guy with a message for us.

In the speech, Springer gives his standard economic spiel and also condemns America’s current foreign policy as arrogant and bullying. And then he ends with his own story of first coming to America with his refugee parents on a boat from Europe.

Jerry Springer: We came over on the Queen Mary, January 19th to January 24th, a five day voyage over to America in 1949. And, when we arrived, my very first memory was my mom waking me up and saying, “Jerald, we have to go up on the top deck there.” One of the decks of the Queen Mary. And all I remember-- because the rest has been told to me. I was only five-- but I vividly remember everyone standing out on top of the ship and the deck there-- there were about 2,000 passengers on board-- packed together, packed together. And what I remember, other than being freezing, is that nobody said a word. It was absolute quiet.

And we were passing the Statue of Liberty. And my mother told me later on, as I got older because, obviously, I wouldn’t remember exactly what I’d said, but she remembers me asking her what are looking at and what does it mean? And she said, in German, eines tages, alles. One day, everything.

The Statue of Liberty means everything. We take it for granted today. We take it for granted. Remember, the Statue of Liberty stands for what America is. We, as Democrats, have to remind ourselves and remind the country the great principles we stand for. This is a place of protection. This is not a country of bullies. We are not an empire. We are the light. We are the Statue of Liberty. Thank you for having me.

[APPLAUSE]

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/258/transcript