Hamilton, Ontario 2005
“My father was in Hamburg as a child. He had a rather difficult childhood at home. But he was very intelligent. He also felt like a Hamburger. He was also interested in his Jewish identity. He felt like a German and a Hamburger. As life in Germany became increasingly difficult, he developed a strong sense of injustice. And there are Jewish ideas of justice, too, and that was important, too. When he was in the children’s home in Esslingen, he also had a more Jewish upbringing. When he came to America as a 14-year-old child… he once said that at the first school he attended—a Jewish school in New Jersey—he learned all about Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, The Declaration of Independence, all men are equal, etc., and shortly afterward, the family was in Richmond, Virginia, where one saw a strong separation between white and black, white at the top and black at the bottom. All these experiences strengthened his activism. He wasn’t alone in his activism. He had young friends who were also intellectuals, who shared similar views, who belonged to the left-wing political spectrum. And he did this between the ages of 14 and 16. At 16, he founded an integrated social committee at the university. There were many influences: psychological, difficult childhood, the influence of Judaism, the experience of community as a 13-year-old whose friends would ask him, “Why can’t you join the Hitler Youth?” All of this influenced his later activism.”