Yoan Vikyov asked Jack Barsky:

You talked about your mother and how she was the biggest influence. Do you regret that you never told your mother that you dident die? On Wikipedia it says that your mother searched for you and even send mails to Mikhail Gorbachev but at the end she never learned the true story. I feel really bad for you.

Jack Barsky There is almost no question about my life that I can answer without an addendum or caveat. Firstly, my mother had great influence on me as a child (most mothers do). Some of this was positive, such as discipline and work ethic, and some of it was not so good. She was very hard on the little boy - there were few to none signs of emotional love. As a result, I did not bond with her emotionally which made it rather easy for me to leave my German past behind and lie to my mother.
My mother never knew what happened to me until her dying day. As I tried to live out my life as an American I blocked out everything German, including the fact that I had been hurting several people, including my mother. At the time of her death, I was still not in a position to reconnect with Germany, but I do regret not having had a chance to do so.

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