Homecoming
Kessler's Father Returns from Transnistria
"I didn’t know who that strange man was."
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"When he was liberated-- Russian troops came through and liberated Romania at the end of 1944 beginning of 1945. He was freed, but of course he was sick. So they put him in a hospital for him to recover. He came back and when he walked into the apartment I didn’t recognize him. I hid behind my mother, and I didn’t know who that strange man was. I don’t know where he got the overcoat he was wearing, but it was four times too big on him. He was a mere skeleton of the man I remembered. It took a while for me to get used to it again, the idea that this strange man was my father."