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This was the best block in town--in the old Havana, in the Cuba my father knew. We approached the slightly-ajar, cracked door with the intention of knocking. A little girl answered. She did not reach my shoulders. She looked no more than eleven--scared, confused. She wanted to be rescued. "Como puedo ayudarte?" she said to my father. My father explained in Spanish that he lived there forty years earlier, and that he wanted to show his American family where he grew up. We entered. I am not a product of the ordinary here and now. Rather, my life has been shaped by dramatic ancestral events. My paternal grandparents, Samuel and Sara, emigrated separately from Europe to Cuba in the 1920's to escape anti-Semitism. They met in Havana and were married there in 1931; my father was born three years later. There, as in Europe, my family was discriminated because they were Jewish. However, it was the Castro Revolution, which curtailed many basic personal freedoms, that ultimately caused my relatives to flee the island.
Approximate Word count = 626
Approximate Pages = 2.5
(250 words per page double spaced)
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