The surveillance arm of the SS was the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service) or SD, under Reinhard Heydrich, a fierce anti-Semite whom Hitler himself would call 'the man with the iron heart'. By 1935 Heydrich had also become head of the Geheime Staatspolizeiamt - the Gestapo - an organization whose name would be known soon enough to all Europe as the embodiment of Nazi terror. Head of the SS Heinrich Himmler and SD chief Heydrich were well aware of Esperanto, its principles and the fact that its founder Dr Zamenhofwas ajew.
A month after the Minister of Education's pronouncement against Esperanto, Heydrich warned Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick about the increasing activity of the Esperanto movement and recommended that Esperanto groups in Germany be dissolved and their possessions confiscated. When the matter came to the attention of Josef Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels pointed out that if this were done, it would only show the world that such organizations were persecuted in the Third Reich. The foreign Esperantists and the international press, he feared, would use the opportunity to propagandize against Germany. Goebbels recommended that, rather than officially forbid them, the government should request the Esperanto societies *with some pressure' to dissolve themselves.
But three months went by and the Esperantist organizations stubbornly refused to comply. Heydrich complained to the Fŭhrer's deputy, Rudolf Hess, that the Esperantists were still working against the state and asked for a party order against membership in Esperanto organizations and for Goebbels to step up propaganda against the Esperantists. Martin Bormann issued the decree, and Nazi party members were henceforth forbidden to belong even to the New German Esperanto Movement, which had boasted of its good relations with the Gestapo.
Heydrich was not satisfied.
The Esperantists tried to continue their activities, though without many members, but in June 1936 Heydrich decreed in Himmler's name that all organizations of artificial language were to be liquidated by 15 July. All the Esperanto societies ceased activity. Esperanto publishers were closed down. At Hirt & Sohn in Leipzig, which had printed Lidia's first translations, the stock was burned and plates smashed. The Cologne-based newspaper Heroldo de Esperanto moved to the Netherlands. Reports reached abroad that individual Esperantists were being arrested. Although there would be some underground activity in the years ahead, especially among workers' groups, the Esperanto rrtovement was officially dead in Germany.
Heydrich gloated that Goebbels had been wrong: his action had not caused the storm of international protest that the Propaganda Minister
had predicted, but only one 'interference from the foreign press'.
Without the German Esperantists, the number of congress-goers in Vienna was small. Only 854 attended - it was the smallest congress since 1922. Neither were there any Esperantists from Spain, where bloody civil war hadjust broken out, or from the Soviet Union, where only socialist Esperanto groups were permitted - and soon even these would be suppressed in Stalin's purges.
At the opening of the congress, a representative of the Czechoslovakian Germans stood up and energetically declared that, in spite of all, the German people remained democratic, and the German Esperantists - faithful to Zamenhofs ideal. His outburst brought a storm of applause and cries of' Vivu!' but not much else.
Lidia delivered Shoghi Effendi's greetings to the congress at the opening session. She had arranged the Baha'f meeting herself, but, she wrote Martha Root, it 'was not very large. None of the meetings was large at this congress. I presented (with great approval of Shoghi Effendi) the letter of 'Abdu'1-Baha to the Central Organization for a Durable Peace in 1919. Do you know that La Nova Tago can no longer come out in Germany because Esperanto is officially forbidden there?'
The congress was also marred by the long-standing dispute among the leaders of the neutral movement, which reached a crisis point in Vienna. Some of the leaders were determined to move the headquarters of the Universal Esperanto Association from Geneva to London. During a working session, Lidia found herself in a heated discussion with General Bastien, president of the Association, about the subsequent fate ofthe UEA's library. 'We live in a dubious era', she reminded the audience, 'when fires are fed by books.'
Some Swiss who did not want the change insisted that the by-laws of the organization did not allow the move. To change the rules would require the delegates to decide the matter by a vote. A vote was then carried out, but some insisted it had not been strictly according to the rules. The two sides could not agree and the Swiss took the matter to court, which ruled in their favor. The faction - a large majority - that was determined to make the move now broke away from the UEA and formed a new organization called the International Esperanto League (IEL). Most members and national societies went over to the new organization, and the UEA was left with only a few hundred individual members. The Esperanto movement would not be reunited until after the war.
Lidia was among those who felt that the letter of the law had not been followed. But to her, the question of moving the central office from one place to another was not the most important issue. Above all, Lidia feared schism, and she urgently reminded the Esperantists of the damage that had been done to the movement by the Ido episode in 1907. 'Only in unity is our strength', she asserted.
While Zofia Zamenhof eventually joined the IEL, Lidia never formally transferred her allegiance to the breakaway organization and remained to the end of her life a member of the UEA.
One bright light at the Vienna congress was Lidia's address to the International Women's Conference on Wednesday afternoon. The conference theme was 'The influence of the political and economic situation in Europe on the situation of women'. The speech Lidia delivered was one ofher best - and most provocative. To read it today, in the light of history as well as current events, it is even more poignant. Her words are just as pertinent, if not more so, now than they were in 1936.
'Mankind consists of two elements,' Lidia began, 'the male element and the female element, or, speaking in the current style, the strong sex and the weak sex.' Until now, she told them, the strong sex had ruled in the world. For thousands of years, women, the weak sex, had been the slaves or the playthings of men. 'Let us look at the pages ofhistory. What do we read there? An unending series of battles and wars. Men made those wars.'
But, she told them, those millennia during which 'women bore the yoke of male rule' must come to an end. The fruits of the reign of men had become 'too bitter'. And that bitterness, she asserted, women felt more than did men. When there was no bread, who suffered for the children's hunger? When the call to war was sounded, who trembled for the sons sent into battle? When the news no longer came from the trenches, when all returned home except her son, whose heart bled more? It wasclear:'themonsterofwar. . . sank its claws above all into the hearts of women'. Those sufferings, she said, must fmally jolt women into throwing off their long oppression. 'Women must arise- they want to arise - they are arising!' she cried. 'Not to bring down the men, not to rip from their hands the scepter of rule and capture for themselves the reins ofthe world . . . no one wants that, even the most fanatic feminist. All women want is equality!
'"Mankind is like a bird with two wings,'" said 'Abdu'1-Baha. One wing is man, the other- woman. Before both wings are equally strong and developed, the bird cannot fly. 'And that second, till now weak wing, little by little is becoming strong. Women are entering all the professions and succeeding in them as well as men.'