History
Abraham Bernstein in traditional Hebrew garb when Visitor forces show up looking for the Maxwell family
Abraham Bernstein is the grandfather and patriarch in the Bernstein household and good friends with Ruby Engels. When the Maxwell family needs shelter to escape the Visitors, Abraham offers them the guest house in the back yard of the Bernstein home. Being a Holocaust survivor, he saw parallels between the Visitors' persecution of the scientists and the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
When a neighbour’s family, the Maxwells, need a place to hide, Abraham offered up the Bernstein pool house. Stanley, his son first disagreed with him and wasn’t going to allow it until Abraham gave him a heartfelt speech informing his son for the first time that during the Holocaust. Stanley already knew his own story, that Abraham had managed to smuggle his infant son out of Germany in a suitcase, escaping death at a concentration or death camp. However, Stanley had never been told by his father that his mother didn’t have a heart attack in the box car while being deported, but had made it to a camp and died in the showers after having her hair shaved. Abraham offered that if only someone had given them a place to hide, she would might still be alive. Furthermore, he stressed that if the family does not help the oppressed in their time of most dire need, they themselves will have not learned a thing. Stanley was convinced, despite the danger the prospect offered to himself and his wife, especially with Daneil having become a willing member of the Visitor youth recruiting program.
Abraham convinces his son, Stanley, that the Maxwells have to stay, or we haven't learned a thing.
Walking around town, he found some teens vandalizing a Visitor friendship poster with red spray paint. Abraham intervened and taught them to spray a big red V over the poster, for victory, inspiring the symbol of the resistance everywhere. He also told the kids to tell their friends and the concept soon became an effective symbol of the budding Resistance movement.
Soon after, Abraham was shocked and disgusted when his grandson threatened to turn the Maxwells in unless Robin agreed to marry him. Realizing what Daniel was going to do, Abraham aided the Maxwells in their escape and sat defiantly in the pool house and accepted that the aliens were going to arrest him.
Abraham never returned home and it is implied that he was killed. Before being arrested, Abraham wrote a heartfelt farewell note to his son and his daughter-in-law about the need to oppose tyranny, no matter the danger and sacrifices involved. The letter inspires the elder Bernsteins to be a shelter for the Resistance, gambling on the fact that they were previously arrested and tortured by the Visitors. Abraham believed that despite Daniel being an enthusiastic collaborator, there would be little suspicion that his home would house refugees.(V: The Original Miniseries)
Personality[]
Abraham is a toughened German Jewish immigrant who escaped Europe during the Holocaust, the systematic attempt by the Nazis to exterminate Jewish people and their culture, along with many other undesirable races and individuals in the 1930s and 1940s. Abraham recognizes quickly that the Visitors policies of persecuting scientists like Robert Maxwell, draws parallels to his experiences as a young Jew in Germany under the Nazis. He also sees his grandson Daniel's willing obedience to the Visitors as directly reflective of the Nazis own Hitler Youth program, where young Germans were given positions of power and prestige in their own communities as the rise of Jewish persecution took place.
Mostly offended and disgusted by his grandson's traitorous turn and by the Visitors' harsh policies of persecution and propaganda, Abraham quietly engages in defiant actions that help his son Stanley, his best friend Ruby and human teenagers to aid the budding Resistance movement. Abraham is very adamant that his friends and family realize that the alien species does not have peaceful intentions as they proclaim, but will likely try to conquer the Earth, much like the Nazis tried to conquer Europe and beyond.