LIDIA
The Life of Lidia Zamenhof Daughter ofEsperanto
by
Wendy Heller
GR
GEORGE RONALD
OXFORD
wendy heller was bom in California and is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied languages. She has published articles and books on a wide variety of subjects. Four decades after Lidia Zamenhof s death, her story was all but lost until Wendy Heller reconstructed it piece by piece from personal interviews, archival files, documents and rare periodicals that escaped the destruction of World War II. Lidia is her fifth book.
Cover illustration by Marjan Nirou
cieouceronalo, Publisher 46 High Street, Kidlington, Oxford 0x5 2DN
© wendy heller 1985
All Rights Reserved
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Heller, Wendy
Lidia: life of Lidia Zamenhof, daughter of Esperanto. 1. Zamenhof, Lidia 2. Bahais—Biography 3. Espcranto—History I. Title
297'.8ij'0924 BP395.Z3
ISBN 0-85398-194-9 ISBN 0-85398-195-7 Pbk
Printed and bound in Great Britain at The Cameiot Press Ltd, Southampton
Contents
Preface xi
Prologue: Clouds of the Future i
The Doctor and the Dream 4
One Who Hopes 11
The Inner Idea 18
Father and Daughter 25
Green Stars and Gingerbread Hearts 33
Something Is Guiding Us 41
Pictures on the Canvas 49
Geneva 56
Spiritual Mother and Daughter 68
Believer 77
Pilgrim 85
Cseh Teacher 88
An Independent Woman 94
Light and Shadow 105
From Place to Place 112
Forte, Kuraĝe, Elegante! 122
Let Our Star Be the Beacon 131
A Chord Played 137
Without Eggs and Without Chickens 145
Now I Am Flying 151
An Entirely New World 162
Sowing Seeds 171
The Gray House and the Garden 181
Who Can Foresee? 188
Green Acre 195Denied 202
Fragments 212
Now Is Not Their Time 223
A Wave of Evil 234
It Will Not Be Forgotten 242 Epilogue: Out of the Abyss 249 A Note on Sources 254 Index 257
Illustrations
Lidia Zamenhof Frontispiece
afterpage
Markus and Rozalia Zamenhof, Lidia's grandparents, 6
in 1878
Courtyard of the building where the Zamenhofs lived in the
1870S
Ludvvik and Klara Zamenhof
Number 9 Dzika Street 30
Title pages of the 'First Book' in Esperanto and Russian
First international Esperanto congress in Boulogne-sur-Mer,
August 1905
Lidia, aged 3
Lidia aged 5, in 1909
Adam and Zofia Zamenhof, taken around 1908
Dr Lud wik Lazar Zamenhof in 1909
Dr Zamenhof and dignitaries at the Bern congress, 1913 46
Part of the audience at the Bern congress
Klara, Ludwik and Zofia in 1912
Lidia, Klara, Adam and Ludwik, 1916
Dr Zamenhof in his consulting room at Dzika Street
The funeral procession, Warsaw, 17 April 1917
Lidia, the schoolgirl
Lidia's certificate of graduation 70
Lidia: the blond braids of childhood gone
Esperantists at the Jewish cemetery on the anniversary of
ZamenhoPs death in 1923.
Sketch of Lidia by O. Lazar
Martha Root
Esperantists at the Geneva congress in 1925
Formal unveiling of the monument on the tomb of Ludwik 78
Zamenhofin April 1926
The planting of the 'Jubilee Oak' during the Danzig congress,
1927
ILLUSTRATIONS .
afterpage
Family and friends 78
The Baha'f meering at the Antwerp congress in 1928
Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Baha'i Faith, 1922 86
The Shrine of the Bab on Mount Carmel, in 1930
In Arnhem, Netherlands, July 1930, at the Cseh teacher's course
Young French Esperantists paste up a poster advertising Lidia's 11 o Cseh course in Lyon Marie Borel, 'La Pastrino' The first course in Lyon, January 193 3 Arnhem, 1933: In the garden of the Esperanto House Relaxing between classes
Lidia awaits the unveiling of the monument to Ludwik Zamenhof in Bergen-op-Zoom An outing in the countryside near Lyon
Lidia demonstrates kato 126
Caricature, 1934
Lidia with her nephew Ludwik in Italy, 193 5 An alfresco meal in Rome, 1935 The introductory lesson in Moulins Lidia in Geneva, 1936
Speaking at the dedication of Zamenhof Street in Thiers, May 1936
Formal opening of thejubilee Congress, Warsaw, 1937
DellaQuinlan 174
Cartoon, 1937: 'Now I am flying from place to place!'
Part of the International Auxiliary Language Committee in 1941
The course in New York City 194
A group at the EANA Congress in Cleveland, July 193 8 The Peace Pageant at Green Acre The cast in costume
On board the PUsudski, awaiting departure for Poland 242
Fritz Macco in IVehrmacht uniform Jozef Arszenik, taken in Warsaw in 1956 Lidia's last postcard
'Those who follow the real Truth are faithful to it to the last 250
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breath, whatever they may receive on earth in return ..." All that was left of the house on Dzika Street in 1945 'Let the memory of them last forever.'
To
DorothyJ. Heller
If not now, when?
— Hillel
Preface
When in 1976 I first became interested in writing about Lidia Zamenhof, I knew very little about her and next to nothing about Esperanto, the language her father had created. I had read an article by Ugo and Angeline Giachery about Lidia, and it had evoked my immediate sympathy and interest, since, as a Baha'f from a Russian and German Jewish background, I had some things in common with Lidia. I was curious to find out more about her. How, I wondered, had a young woman of her era made the decision to forgo marriage and, during the difficult days of the Great Depression, to devote her life to being an itinerant teacher of the language invented by her father? And, given her extraordinary devotion to the Esperanto movement, how and why had Lidia Zamenhof embraced the Baha'f Faith?
There was no biography ofLidia available. I decided to write one; but it was not until 1980 that I was able to begin research for the project. Then I was faced by the question of where to begin. At first I despaired when I learned that the Zamenhof home, with all the family's papers, had been destroyed in the war. Nevertheless, I discovered, a significant amount of material had been preserved in archives in several countries as well as by individuals who had known Lidia and on whom she had made such an impression that they could not bear to throw away her letters, even after half a century had passed. In one case at least, much information was preserved intentionally with an eye to the future; during Lidia's visit to the United States, Mrs Della Quinlan persuaded her to leave behind the papers she had accumulated during her stay and donate them to the National Baha'i Archives in Wilmette, Illinois, for future researchers. This researcher would like to acknowledge with gratitude the foresight of the late Mrs Quinlan.
The search for the answers to my questions about Lidia Zamenhof led me to explore paths I had not foreseen when I began my project; in fact, through research trips and correspondence, that search took me all over the world. I began with the one Esperantist I knew of: Mrs Roan Orloff Stone. This proved to be the best thing I could have done. Not only did Mrs Stone provide many leads which eventually led to further sources of information, but because she had been a close friend of