ODESSA, Ukraine – You may love it or dislike it, but no other city in Russia resembles Odessa. I guess I fell in love with Odessa for two reasons: my mother is from Odessa, and I feel at home in cities by the sea.
Isaac Babel, (1894-1940), native son and the city’s most famous writer, called it, ”the most charming city of the Russian Empire.” He claimed it was a city in which one could “live free and easy,” because of the Jews who make up nearly half its population. In Babel’s words, the town was “The Star of Exile.”
