I'm in a nice house in the woods in America, land of the free, right now. But this is what I think I would have done, based on my 50 years of reading and awareness of my own temperament:
–In the Warsaw Ghetto, I would have been a loyal resister and thrown myself into it body and soul–and surely died;
–Born in 1919 in Germany, I would served as a good German soldier in World War II and denied knowledge of atrocities/Holocaust to myself;
–Depending where and when I was born in Eastern Europe, I would have been a bundist or a Zionist;
–In '36 I would have cheered on the Republicans from New York and probably not gone over to Spain;
–In a Displaced Persons camp in Europe after the war, I would have tried to get my butt over to the U.S. but probably failed, and in any case, depending on my age, would have become a feverish/middle of the road Zionist;
–Born in '30, I would have been a Communist, and gotten swept up in the Rosenberg moment;
–Born in '46, I would have been a Freedom Rider in the South, and on the fringes of SDS, and engaged only slightly by '67 Six-Day War fever;
–Born in 1955 in Boston, I became an ambitious assimilationist writer and, after Iraq War, anti-Zionist;
–Born in Israel, I would surely have served in the IDF with complete engagement and full belief. In the years to come, I would have joined a refusenik/critics' group and at my age would have broken into open opposition to my government's policies.
–Born in the West Bank 25 years ago, I would be a protester of the apartheid wall and as I watched my writerly ambitions suffocated, an activist;
–Born in Gaza 19 years ago, I would be Hamas, and surely dead
