Flashbacks from My Red Diaper Youth
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America
By JOHN ROSS

In the old sepia photo my sister sent me last month, friends and family are gathered around the old couple, Dr. Milton Leof and his wife Jenny, on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary. The living room of the apartment on Riverside Drive is crowded with lefties honoring one of their own - Dr. Leof lived through the Russian revolution and still believed in it. Sometimes when I visited, he would tell me stories of bloodthirsty Cossacks and six foot-deep snow drifts and how socialism would be victorious in the end.

In the photo, my drop-dead gorgeous mom is seated with Jean Boudin - they had gone to summer camp together in the 1920s. Leonard Boudin, Paul Robeson's lawyer who, with his partner the late Victor Rabinowitz, defended many notable commies, pinkos, and fellow travelers, is also sprawled on the couch, his arm thrown around button-eyed little Kathy for whom I sometimes baby-sat. My sister thinks that I.F. Stone is lurking in the back row - Izzie was the retiring type.

The photo was taken sometime between 1950 and 1952 at the height of the Cold War and terrible things were happening to these people and their friends. Comrades had been jailed, blacklisted, fled into exile, chose suicide over imprisonment, recanted. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg would soon be executed by the U.S. government for treason. Why then is every one smiling?

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