>>6767369Bernard Sanders was born on September 8, 1941, in Brooklyn, New York City.[10][11][12][13] His father, Elias Sanders, was born on September 14, 1904 in Słopnice, Poland (then the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia),[14][15] to a Jewish family; in 1921, Elias immigrated to the United States at age 17.[14][16][17] His mother, Dorothy Sanders (née Glassberg), was born in New York City on October 2, 1912,[18][19] to Jewish immigrant parents from Poland and Russia.[20][21] Many of Elias's relatives back in Poland were killed in the Holocaust.[19][22][23]
Sanders became interested in politics at an early age: "A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932. He won an election, and 50 million people died as a result of that election in World War II, including 6 million Jews. So what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important."[24][25][26][nb 1]
Sanders lived on East 26th Street in Midwood, Brooklyn.[29] He attended elementary school at P.S. 197 in Brooklyn, where he won a borough championship on the basketball team.[30][31] He attended Hebrew school in the afternoons, and celebrated his bar mitzvah in 1954.[32] Bernie's older brother, Larry, said that during Bernie's childhood, the family never lacked for food or clothing, but major purchases, "like curtains or a rug," were difficult to afford.[33]
Sanders attended James Madison High School, also in Brooklyn, where he was captain of the track team and took third place in the New York City indoor one-mile race.[30] In high school, Sanders lost his first election, finishing last out of three candidates for the student body presidency. Not long after his high school graduation, his mother died at the age of 46;[19][23] his father died a few years later on August 4, 1962, at the age of 57.[15]
