CNN's Andrew Kaczynski was able to track Mandel's grandparents through records available online from ancestry research websites. Mandel had previously only referred to his grandparents as "hardworking ethnic immigrants," ignoring their special status.

Source: CNN

An Ohio Senate candidate who has pushed strong anti-refugee messages against Afghans and others is the grandson of refugees from Europe who settled in the Cleveland area with the aid of at least two resettlement organizations in the years following World War II.

Josh Mandel, a former Ohio state treasurer running for Senate for a third time, has come under criticism for harsh anti-Afghan refugee messages said in the weeks since the frantic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in which the US and nearly two dozen other countries have evacuated tens of thousands of Afghans.

Mandel has referenced "alligators" in tweets about refugees and suggested many will be terrorists. He has said "zero" refugees should be let into the US, claiming Afghan refugees will bring "covid" and "child brides." He has questioned "how many" Taliban fighters were on planes that left for the US from Afghanistan

And how was CNN was able to find out so much about their backgrounds that their grandson has never bothered to acknowledge himself? Online, publicly available records through the International Center on Nazi Persecution.

Records from the International Refugee Organization, available online through the International Center on Nazi Persecution, and ship records show that Mandel's maternal grandparents Josef and Fernanda Friedman were Jewish refugees who came to the United States from Italy in December 1949.

The ship which brought Friedmans was a military ship, which brought at least 14,000 emigrants to the US following World War II, according to the International Center of Nazi Persecution.

To all those journalists out there cheering on the welcoming of Afghan “refugees”:

You can keep feeding the alligators, but eventually you will be eaten as well. pic.twitter.com/FGyrG0f1gc

— Josh Mandel (@JoshMandelOhio) September 3, 2021

"It's un-American to use taxpayer dollars to resettle foreigners into the country when we have almost 40,000 homeless veterans in the US on any given night," Mandel wrote on Facebook.

Josh Mandel, Ohio Senate candidate who compared refugees to alligators, is grandson of refugees aided by at least two resettlement organizations https://t.co/9mGHiohDX6

— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) September 21, 2021