News of the death of Judge Nathan W. Gordon, coming as it does amid a national debate in respect of immigration, is a moment for reflection on the American heart. Gordon died last month at the age of 92, having presided for a generation over immigration proceedings in Newark and then in Los Angeles. He never forgot the struggles of his immigrant parents, and treated everyone who appeared in his courtroom with dignity and kindness.

Gordon’s own journey to the Immigration court was not an easy one. The youngest of eight children in a family that had immigrated from White Russia, he knew first-hand the pain of parents who were separated from their children. His his older brother was found excludable from the United States due to trachoma of the eye, and was sent back to Russia before the First World War.

Another brother and a sister perished before he was born. As a high school student in Trenton, New Jersey, during the depression, future judge had to take time from his school work to help his father in the roofing business. The grueling work built him up physically and gave him a life-long appreciation for manual labor. A veteran of World War II, he served as a surgical technician on an American army ship in the South Pacific.

Gordon joined the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1962, and worked as a naturalization examiner and trial attorney. As a judge, he once stopped a proceeding involving a woman from Liberia. She had been raped, and Judge Gordon was shaken not only by her testimony but by the hard time she was being given by opposing counsel. He called the counsel into an off-the-record side bar and demanded, “How can you call yourself a Jew?”

In 1987, Gordon transferred to the immigration court at Los Angeles, where he became known on the west coast for his compassion for those who had fled their home countries for a better life in the United States. He retired in 1999. Victor Nieblas, former national president of American Immigration Lawyers Association, spoke of Gordon’s courteousness, compassion, and capacity for understanding.

At the funeral, Captain David Becker, an Army chaplain and orthodox rabbi, eulogized Judge Gordon as a member of the “Greatest Generation.” An Army team played taps and presented the flag to Beatrice Gordon, the judge’s wife of 57 years. Gordon is also survived by his sons Louis, an immigration lawyer in his own right and a contributing editor of The New York Sun, and Fred, a daughter-in-law Hazel, and grandchildren, Anna, Albert, and Gideon, and a sister Rosalyn Rachlin.