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“He always said that God Bless America was his thank you to…” — Sidebar at 4:57

“He always said that God Bless America was his thank you to this country. That's Cheryl Kaskowitz, a historian of the song. He was a Jewish immigrant who'd come to the U.S. as a child, landed in the Lower East Side, fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe. Berlin wrote a first draft of it in 1918 during World War I with…”

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