This story about the Manhattan doctor who blew up his town house is fascinating.
The guy seems to have had some conservative impulses:
If I felt anything remotely wrong, I’d drop in. But before I could get a word in about my health concerns, he’d sit me down and go on about Hillary Clinton and lawyers being the scourge of the United States. … America was the best place on Earth – the land of opportunity – [Bartha] always said, and he really was convinced that liberals had a plan to undermine the future success of the United States, that Hillary Clinton was going to bring down the country.
However, they were mixed with more peculiar stuff, as is often the case with unbalanced personalities:
“He praised Hitler while slicing me with a scalpel, but I thought he was just an interesting character.”
Interesting, perhaps, but I’m not sure I could sit still to have my flesh parted by a guy speaking approvingly of Hitler. The Hitler stuff is even odder, since: “the doctor … as a child lived in caves to escape the Nazis.”
You have to remember, though, that at the end of WW2, after a much-too-close acquaintance with Hitler and his Nazis, Romanians had to endure an even closer, and longer-lasting, acquaintance with Stalin and his communists. Romanians of the older generation, at any rate non-Jewish ones, are wont to compare the two experiences, with the Russians coming much the worse out of the comparison.
Another interesting point: The value of the Manhattan property may have INCREASED as a result of its having been blown up: