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Zamenhof is number 2
7. Lidia,aged3 8. Lidia aged 5, in 1909. From an
Esperantist magazine of the time
9. Adam and Zofia Zamenhof, taken around 1908
io. Dr Ludivik Lazar Zametihofin lgog
his ideas. Previously he had accepted the fact that people belonged to a religion not because they believed in it but because they were born into it. Now, however, he asserted that 'religion should only be a matter of sincere belief, and not play the part of a hereditary tool of racial disunity'.
The Homaranist, he wrote, should be able to say, 'I call my religion only that religion. . . in which I actually believe. . . IfI believe in none of the existing revealed religions, I must not remain in one of them only for racial motives and by so doing mislead people about my beliefs and contribute to endless generations of racial disunity, but I must - if the laws of my country permit - openly and officially call myself a "free-thinker", not, however, identifying free-thought especially with atheism, but reserving for my belief full freedom.'
Yet to have no religion at all was not satisfactory either. Zamenhof recognized that belonging to a religious community filled a social, if not a spiritual need; sharing customs, traditions and festivals gave richness to life. A person without religion lived a pale and prosaic existence. This could especially be seen among those secularized Jews of Poland who had completely withdrawn from Jewish tradition. In On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland Between the Two Wars, sociologist Celia S. Heller has noted that the lives of these people, who were neither practicing Jews nor Christians, cften had a 'spiritual emptiness' which 'seems to have resulted in a mystic yearning in some of their young'.
Zamenhof was clearly aware of the void which lack of religion left in the life of a child. Perhaps he saw it in his own little Lidia. 'A child', he later wrote, 'cannot be fed on abstract theories and rules; it needs impressions and a tangible environment. The child of a formally declared non-religionist can never have in its heart that joy, that warmth, which is given to other children by the church, traditional customs, the possession of "God" in the heart. How cruelly does the child of a non-religionist often suffer when he sees another child, perhaps very poor, but with a happy heart, going to church while he himself has no guiding rules, no festivals, no traditions!'
Zamenhof still hoped that Homaranismo would spread and attract followers so that people of any race or religion - especially those with no religion at all - could come together and share warmth and fellowship and traditions of their own, even as they affirmed their ethical ideals. Once Zamenhof might have hoped that by the time Lidia was old enough to learn about such things, a congregation of Homaranists would exist so that she could have such expenences. But in his revised edition of the Declaration on Homaranismo, Zamenhof deleted all references to the Homaranist temples he had once dreamed of. He concluded the Declaration, ho\vever, adding that those who were 'free-thinkers', having ceased to believe in their religion ofbirth, should form a community of their own. Once there was such a community, which the individual could 'join with full satisfaction for my conscience and for the needs of my heart', he must declare that community to be his official religion and must pass it on to his children. Until such a community was established, the free-thinker must 'remain officially enrolled in the religion into which I was born, but I must always add to its name the word "free-thinker" to show that I include myself in it only temporarily . . .' It must have been with some grief that Zamenhof wrote those lines, for they opened up the possibility, even the inevitability, of severing his last ties to Judaism.
FIVE
Green Stars and Gingerbread Hearts
The Ninth Universal Congress of Esperanto was to be held in Bern, Switzerland, in August 1913. As usual, Ludwik and Klara would attend. Adam and Zofia were in Lausanne, Adam working in the university eye clinic, Zofia finishing her medical studies. They planned to travel to Bern and meet their parents there. Lidia was now nine, and old enough to go along on the joumey. But Klara wrote Zofia confiding she did not know what to do about Lilka. The determined little daughter of 'Dr Esperanto' had stubbornly refused to leam his language, although she did understand the meaning of bonan nokton (good-night) and ĉokolado (chocolate).
Klara knew Lidia would be bored at the congress if she could not understand what was going on. And it would be embarrassing that Dr ZamenhoPs daughter did not know Esperanto. Klara did not want to take Lidia along, but she did not want to leave her at home either. Zofia and Adam conferred and decided to advise their mother to leave their young sister with a relative. But when Zofia and Adam met their parents in Bern they were astonished to see Lidia there too — speaking Esperanto.
Klara had found her own solution. She explained to Lidia that if she did not leam Esperanto, she? could not go with her parents to Switzerland. Of course Lidia wanted to go on thejoumey so, with the same strong will with which she had resisted learning the language, she began to try to learn all she could. After six weeks, she had leamed enough to satisfy her mother and obtain her permission to go.
As the train carried them toward Bern, Lidia must have watched in wonder the landscape that sped by outside the window. She had lived all her life in the crowded and grimy Jewish quarter of Warsaw, but here was a fairy-tale land of red-roofed chalets, milk-chocolate- colored cows grazing on slopes below the dark forest, and jagged snow-topped Alps. And then, at last, there was Bern, with its old towers and spires and fountains, and its whimsical sixteenth-century Zytglogge, the clock tower whose mechanical figures went through their antics to announce each hour. Under the arcades ofits streets were inviting tea-rooms and the tempting window displays of pastries and
candies and, of course, chocolate in every shape and variety.
The Zamenhofs, guests of the congress, stayed in a modest pension called Beau-Site across the Komhaus Bridge and quite a long walk from the Casino, where the congress would be held. A joumalist wrote of seeing some of them one day, on their way to their lodgings: Mrs Zamenhof, Zofia, Adam and 'Oh, I was about to forget - her nine-year-old ladyship, Miss Lidia Zamenhof, a very charming and (I beg pardon!) amusing little person'.
Although that last week of August 1913, the Bern newspapers were full of unrest in the Balkans, revolution in China and Mexico and other disturbing events in the world, they printed many articles about the Esperanto congress. 'Welcome!' cried Der Bund. 'From all parts of the world, by ship and by train, hundreds of people are traveling at this hour to the capital of Switzerland to the ninth Esperanto World Congress.
'They wear a little green star in their buttonholes, the sign of hope (espero), and they all speak the same lovely language . . . Origin or extraction, language and religion, do not form an obstacle for any of them during these days, as the common language and the peaceful attitude make all equal and remove all the difficulties that are common to other international conventions.
'All public and hidden enemies of the international auxiliary language should cast a glance at this mixed meeting . . . Many of them would then suddenly have a different opinion about the utopia they enjoy condemning with a superior smile.'