Noam Holdegreber

On a guided tour of the "House of the People" in Bucharest, the guide told us of a million square meters of marble, 35,000 tons of crystal; a carpet measuring 600 square meters and weighing almost two tons, woven on site; and the desire to make the building visible from space. A young couple, Romanians now living in Canada, asked angrily: "Why don't you tell us what existed here previously?" To build the "House of the People," entire neighborhoods were torn down, and more than 40,000 people...

This is the birthplace of the traumas that formed me. I wander among fears, memories, and nostalgia that aren't mine. Yash — my mother called it Yassi; my father didn’t call it anything at all — he had no reminiscences and no longings. Between the colorful Roma women who still sell fruit and flowers, and the courtyard of the police station where the pogrom took place, magnificent theaters and churches, tram cars that seem to date from that era, and the terror that someone might shoot a bullet...

At the International Court of Justice in The Hague, a little justice was done, if not inside the courthouse, at least in front of it. The...