Thomas Kolsky , Ph.D.

"Americans have a problem with complexity. We like simple solutions. And also, the American experience is very different from the European experience, which is important. We never had a world war like Europe. We are a country of immigrants. We are a country of making. I also believe that anti-Semitism can never take root in the United States. I have noticed one difference between American and European anti-Semitism. European anti-Semitism has very strong intellectual roots that go back to thinkers like Gobineau and others, as well as French and German literature. In the United States, it's very shallow. So the movements in the United States are not long lasting. That's my only hope. Now there's another aspect, and that's a lot of frustration. And many people in the United States are going to have a difficult time dealing with the transformation of the country. I've seen it over the last sixty years. When I first came here, you couldn´t see a single black person on television. Today you see a lot of them. During the epidemic, most of the doctors who spoke on television had Middle Eastern names, Persian, Arabic names. There are many representatives of colour in Congress. So for many of the old timers is´t very difficult to deal with this change."

"That's another goal that I have now. I want to start writing articles about my opinions, which I didn´t do before. As a retired person, I think retired people have a responsibility to speak out because now nobody can fire them anymore. That gives them enourmous freedom. And I treasure my freedom. They talk about freedom - I like to experience it. But the funny thing is, they don't. They all sitt in nursing homes waiting to die. And that's very sad."

"My parents were mainly trying to survive. I was also trying to survive. I don't they paying much attention to me. I almost think that I educated myself. My teacher had more influence on me than my parents. I had compassion to my parents, but I couldn't really communicate with them about very important things because we never had-especially by the time we were older and came to the United States-we never had a common language which we knew well. I got to understand German and I know German and Czech, but not to be able to discuss more advanced ideas. So we never got into philosophy, theology, or advanced politics. It was basically just common day language. So in a sense it was kind of a lone existence, but very heroic because I think my parents, without knowing it, gave me a lot of freedom. I had lots of freedom, and freedom can be confusing. So even I was confused by freedom. But I also learned from freedom. And to this day I still very, very much encourage people to think for themselves."

"My parents were social democrats when it came to politics. My father always told me, 'If you want to be a communist, you should spend some time in a labour camp. They'll give you good training there.' I remember them telling me that when they were in the camp... First of all, my father was working very hard and that made him well established there. Nevertheless, he was called him several times to the NKVD man who was in charge. Mostly at night. And the story went that at one point they sent my mother his underwear and said, 'That's all you'll have get of him.' Or they would come in and have a gun and food on the table and they said, 'Okay, eat,' and they wanted him to basically be an informer. And they refused to inform."