Stern, Ronald Taherzadeh, Henk Thien and Steve Tomlin. I would like to express my deep appreciation to Eugen Rytenberg for his invaluable contributions.
I was grateful for the opportunity to consult the collections of the British Library as well as the library of the British Esperanto Association, where the staff were very kind and helpful; and the libraries of the University of Geneva, Switzerland; Stanford University; the University of Califomia, Los Angeles; the University of California, San Diego; the Simon Wiesenthal Library at Yeshiva University, Los Angeles; as well as the Los Angeles and San Francisco Baha'f Libraries. The staff at the Stat- und Universitatsbibliothek of Bern, Switzerland, deserve special acknowledgement for their kindness and assistance beyond the call of duty.
My thanks are due to the staff of the Intemational Esperanto Museum in Vienna, Dr Walter Hube and Herbert Maerz, for their assistance and for the opportunity to consult documents and periodicals in the Museum's collections, as well as for many of the photographs which appear in this book. I would also like to thank Catherine Schulze of the Esperanto League for North America, and Archivist Hal Dreyer for their help.
I would like to acknowledge the following Baha'f National Spiritual Assemblies for the use of material from their Archives and for sending material to me: the United States, Hawaii, Japan, Austria, Germany, Switzerland; and the Spiritual Assembly of Urbana, Illinois. In particular I must mention the special assistance of Archivist Roger Dahl, as well as Elaine Schwartz, Dr Duane Troxel, Barbara Sims, Margot Zabih, Elizabeth Hackley and Eleanor Hutchens. To all those individuals who provided help though I didn't know their names, or may inadvertently have neglected to mention them, I am equally grateful.
I would like to express my special gratitude to the Universal House of Justice in Haifa, Israel, for its kind encouragement and assistance, and to the staff of the Audio-Visual Department and Research Department, Audrey Marcus and Ethna Archibald.
My warm appreciation goes to Russell and Ginnie Busey, Rose Lopez D'Amico, Anne-Marie Dupeyron, Mr and Mrs Sergei Blagoveschensky, and Charles and Hilda Pulley for their kindness, hospitality and help; and to Dr Ugo Giachery for his gracious attention, candid recollections and much tea and biscuits.
I am deeply thankful to Dr Maijorie Boulton for her personal assistance and warm hospitality; to Dr Celia Stopnicka Heller, for answering my questions; and to Dr Amin Banani, Dr David Ruhe and Mr Ian Semple for their encouragement: a kind word can go a very long way.
To those who read all or part of the manuscript and offered perceptive comments and valuable editorial and substantive suggestions, I am humbly appreciative: my editor May BaUerio, Gayle Morrison, Dr Amin Banani, Roan Orloff Stone, Jack Weinstein and JanJasion.
And finally I would like to acknowledge the members of the Zamenhof family including Dr Stephen Zamenhof and Dr Louis Zaleski-Zamenhof, who kindly gave of their time and recollections and reviewed the manuscript for accuracy; Dr Olga Zamenhof and Miss Mira Home, for their contributions; and for permission to quote from the published and unpublished works of members of the Zamenhof family.
Above all, without the support, love and patient hard work of Dorothy J. Heller I could never have written, and certainly would never have completed, this book.
PROLOGUE
Clouds of the Future
By two in the afternoon people had begun to gather outside the Zamenhof home at 41 Krolewska Street, on the edge of the Jewish quarter of Warsaw. It was 16 April 1917. The day was dark and rainy, but still they came, wearing solemn black, to the funeral of Dr Lazar Ludwik Zamenhof.
When the clock struck three, the procession began to make its way slowly toward the Jewish cemetery. The mourners followed the coffin, which was borne in an ornate black-canopied hearse. Even the two horses pulling the hearse were draped solemnly for the funeral. A sad-faced man with a white beard and a top-hat drove them.
Many of those who walked behind the coffin that day were poor Jews of Warsaw. They had known Dr Zamenhof as the good-hearted oculist who had treated them and their families for a few kopeks, or, when they could not afford that, for nothing at all. Most ofthose in the crowd were men, although a few women could be seen among the mourners, some wearing heavy black veils so thick one could not see the faces behind them. There were merchants and workers and young boys in student caps; middle-aged men in bowler hats, some even wearing silk top-hats and carrying canes; and bent old men with long white beards and the traditional long black caftan and cap of Eastern European Jews.
As the procession moved through the streets, more peoplejoined it. Unlike traditional Polish Christian funerals there was no elaborate decoration, no band playing Chopin's funeral march. At Jewish funerals the size of the crowd indicated the importance of the one who had died. The crowd that day was immense.
Among the mourners in the procession was a slight, thirteen-year- old girl with long, blond braids. She would remember that day for the rest of her life. Many years later, she would recalclass="underline" 'When, one gray, rainy day, the funeral procession turned slowly toward the cemetery, the streets in the quarter where he had lived so long were black with crowds of people. Those men, simple and poor, honored in the departed one a man who with great patience and devotion had cared for their eyes and for many had averted the terrible fate of blindness.' The
departed one was her father.
Most of the mourners knew Zamenhof only as the kindly physician. Beyond the borders of his native land, however, he was known as the creator of Esperanto, the international language which was already spoken by thousands of people in countries from Mexico to Japan. Although Dr Zamenhof had admirers all over the world, they could not be there that day in 1917 to pay him their last respects. The world was at war, and Warsaw was occupied by German troops. The borders were closed. Not even all the Zamenhofs could be there. Several members of the family had been in Russia when Warsaw was invaded and were stranded behind the front lines of battle, unable to come home.
Among the solemn procession of Jews who trudged sadly to the cemetery that day, one man stood out conspicuously - a German military officer. Major Neubarth, the harbor commander, who was an Esperantist, and another German were the only foreign representatives at Dr Zamenhof s funeral.
As was typical for an April day in Warsaw, it was cold, although the ice had already melted on the River Vistula. The trees in the Jewish cemetery were still bare as the procession passed beneath them bearing the coffin and carrying armfuls of flowers.
The mourners gathered around the little hill where the grave had been dug. It was a good site, given by the Jewish community of Warsaw for the resting place of one of its most beloved sons. After the rabbi's eulogy, several eminent Warsaw Esperantists spoke emotionally about Dr Zamenhof, whom they revered as Majstro, which in Esperanto meant 'master' or 'maestro'. One was Leo Belmont, a well-known poet. Ludwik Zamenhof- the mortal man - had died, said Belmont, 'but Ludwik Zamenhof - brilliant soul, creator of a work that lovingly encompassed all the people of the earth, prophet guiding them on the way of brotherhood . . . did not die, because he is immortal!' The world did not yet appreciate the value of Zamenhofs life work, Belmont told them, but, he predicted, 'His glory will be extraordinary: because I see clearly, through the clouds of the future, a time when in all the capitals of the world his monument will stand!'