Yulia Kahl

On my 8th birthday, on the 8th of January 1978, I boarded a train scheduled for 8:00pm. I was in Vienna, a long way from my birthplace in Leningrad, USSR, going to Italy where we would wait for 3 months for approval to enter the United States. It was a magical night; our train traveled over the Alps, I met other emigrant children, and we celebrated my birthday with a chocolate bar. I didn’t really understand it then, but it was a step of a marvelous journey that took my parents and me from a tyrannical country into the freedom of America. In the States, I learned English, and grew up like any other kid, of which there are so many types that the phrase is really quite funny. I earned my Master’s in Computer Science, worked as a programmer for IBM, raised a family, wrote a textbook with my father on Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, and taught AI at the College of Charleston. And then, I wrote "Hold Hands My Friends: Escape from Soviet Tyranny of Place and Mind," because I want my children, and as many people as I can reach, to never take for granted the gifts that the USA has given us and to know the alternative that lies never far away, if one follows an ideology fueled by envy and the desire for control.