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- <text id=89TT1854>
- <title>
- July 17, 1989: American Notes:Chicago
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- July 17, 1989 Death By Gun
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 65
- American Notes
- CHICAGO
- A Sweet Homecoming
- </hdr><body>
- <p> When Abe Stolar left with his parents for the Soviet Union
- in 1931, his native West Side Chicago neighborhood babbled with
- Yiddish and Polish. Now Spanish fills the air around Humboldt
- Park, Murray F. Tuley High School has become Jose De Diego
- Academy, and the place where Stolar's home once stood is a
- vacant lot. But to Stolar, 77, back last week after 58 years in
- the U.S.S.R., it felt familiar. "It's wonderful," he said. "I
- feel 60 years younger."
- </p>
- <p> His father vanished into the Stalinist terror of the 1930s,
- but Stolar lived on. He served in combat with the Soviet army
- in World War II, but he retained his U.S. citizenship. After the
- war he worked as a translator and announcer for Radio Moscow.
- In 1975 Stolar got permission to emigrate to Israel. But as he
- and his family approached their plane, Soviet officialdom
- snatched them back -- and covered them in bureaucratic darkness
- until President Reagan took up their cause in 1985.
- </p>
- <p> Finally, nearly four years later, Stolar got the green
- light to leave in March. He and his Soviet-born wife Gita
- decided to return to his hometown on July 4. Once in the Windy
- City, Stolar donned an I LOVE CHICAGO button, took in a baseball
- game at Wrigley Field and mused, "I wouldn't be surprised if I
- decided to move back here."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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