I never have that 'we were robbed' feeling when looking around now at where some of our contemporaries are.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Being robbed hurts - not physically, but from what it does to your pride.
All my life had been dominated by a sign, often invisible but no less real for that, which said: 'Reserved for Europeans Only.'
The authentic experience, where is that? Living the moment. That is something that we're losing.
It is not hard to feel like an outsider. I think we have all felt like that at one time or another.
If you think of 'Liberty Valance' or 'The Searchers,' there are moments in there that you'll never, ever forget... And it does not matter what century you are from.
When you're out of sight for as long as I was, there's a funny feeling of betrayal that comes over people when they see you again.
Even the most self-confident people, at one point of their lives, felt like outsiders or felt like they weren't being heard or seen or witnessed in some way.
The only places where I have found that simple human dignity, that respect for the other man, and the gracious feel of tolerance and humanity have not been either among the heroes of the class-struggle or the 'thinking men' but among my simple 'backward' people.
I've always felt robbed of something by people not knowing I was a Jew.
I began to feel that, in a sense, we were all prisoners of our own history.