The Golden Door: A Disturbing Regularity

My father, Benjamin, was born in the midst of a rallying cry for independence: the Indonesian National Revolution had been going on for two years before his birth in 1947 on the island of Java. His family, of half-Indonesian, half-Dutch descent, fled to Holland when he was still a child, but their political fears weren’t to be assuaged in Europe either. His father—who had been interned at a work camp when the Japanese occupied Indonesia during World War II—feared Stalin’s