Daniel Stein, Interpreter

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A part from characters that I invented, real participants, real eyewitnesses, the spiritual children and friends of the real Daniel, are alive to this day. Father Michael Aksenov-Meerson is a priest in New York; his wife, Olya Schnittke, teaches Russian literature at Georgetown University; the brilliant Henri Volokhonsky, who formerly worked in the limno-logical station at Kinneret, now lives in Tübingen and is said to be studying Jewish texts. There are others I cannot mention in order not to cause trouble. Some have become rabbis, some engineers, some have entered a monastery. My good wishes and love to all that remarkable circle of people.

I thank all my friends, near and far, who were present, supported and helped me from the very beginning of this work till the last day: my dear and much loved Elena Kostioukovitch, Alexander Borisov, Pavel Men, Sasha Hawiger, Sasha Bondaryov, Pawel Kozhets, Michael and Olga Aksenov-Meerson, Mikhail Gorelik, Hugh Baran, Alexey Yudin, Yura Freidin and Elena Smorgunova, Tanya Safarova, Judith Kornblatt, Natalia Trauberg, Mark Smirnov, Mikhail Alshybaya, Ilya Rybakov, and Daniela Shultz.

I am especially grateful to my Israeli friends Sergey Ruzer and Lika Nutkevich, Moshe Navon, Alik Chachko, Sandrik and Lyuba Kaminsky, Sasha Okun, Igor Kogan, and Marina Genkina who with great generosity shared with me everything I needed, accompanied and guided my wanderings throughout Israel.

I am grateful for extensive and extremely detailed interviews to Arieh Rufeisen, Elisheva Hemker, and other unnamed heroes of this story.

I am greatly indebted to Professor Nechama Tec of the University of Connecticut and Professor Dieter Corbach, whose materials were extremely important in the preparation and work on this book.

I thank Natalia Gorbanevskaya for her heroic emergency aid in preparing the text for the press.

I beg forgiveness of all those I will disappoint, those who will be irritated by my outspokenness, or who will totally reject me. I hope my work will lead nobody astray but serve only to encourage personal responsibility in matters of life and faith.

My excuse is my sincere wish to tell the truth as I understand it, and the craziness of that ambition.

—LUDMILA ULITSKAYA