Judge Kozinski

Reason magazine interviews Judge Alex Kozinski:

Reason: What are your primary memories of growing up in Romania?

Alex Kozinski: That they threw rocks at me on the way to the synagogue for Sunday school. They also threw rocks at my father on the way to his synagogue. The Russians threw rocks at my grandfather on the way to his synagogue. So that’s the connection, in a sense, between Romanian and Russian Jews.

Reason: What about the statism in Romania? How did you react to that?

Kozinski: I was a very committed communist when I was there. I believed in communism, and I thought it was the wave of the future. When my parents applied to leave, I thought it was a good thing because I’d be able to educate the workers of the West that they were being enslaved by capitalist exploiters.

When we arrived in Vienna, I discovered bubblegum and chocolate. These things were nonexistent in Romania, and I immediately became a capitalist. I was easily bought off.