Returning...

...Gay, Jewish, Mentally ill, and a sponsor of Gypsies in Romania

On the way out of town, I looked at the local peasants and thought that, if their forefathers had not burned down the houses of mine, mine wouldn’t have left. And I looked at what had happened to us in two generations, and looked at what hadn’t happened to them in two or three, and instead of feeling outraged by their history of aggression I felt privileged by it. Oppression sometimes benefits its victims more than its perpetrators. While those who are ravaging their neighbors’ lives exhaust their energy on that destruction, those whose lives are being shattered must expend their vigor on solutions—some of which can be exquisite. Hatred drove my family to the United States and its previously unimaginable freedoms.