with us in helping Lidia enter Canada and entertaining her in Montrea. »
Everything hinged on the answer of the Canadian Esperanto Association. At last it came: they replied that the matter had so many complications that they had decided not to invite Lidia. It had been more than a year since they had first considered the possibility, they added, so they did not feel that they had come to a hasty conclusion in deciding against inviting her.
They did not know that their decision would ultimately mean for Lidia, although they certainly could not have been unaware that it meant, at the very least, sending her back to a continent on the edge of war.
Although Lidia had expected the worst, the Canadians' answer was a bitter disappointment. That letter 'settles the matter', she wrote Della. 'The Canadians aren't courageous enough,' she told Roan. 'They "see difficulties". Someone in Green Acre said: an optimist is a man who in every difficulty sees a possibility. A pessimist is a man who in every possibility sees difficulties.' It seemed to Lidia that 'our Canadian samideanoj belong to the second group'.
Thanking her for her efforts to get Lidia into Canada, Lidia wrote Della, 'I am very glad that you had the great spiritual joy which being with May Maxwell always gives . . . One feels closer to the Master ['Abdu'1-Baha] when one is with her. And if the constant care of my affairs, often full of difficulties, gave cause for those heavenly moments you experienced, I am all the more pleased.'
On learning the Canadians would not invite her, Lidia cabled the Guardian to ask his permission to go to Haifa. She did not know when she would have another chance to make a pilgrimage, if ever. Even so, she 'strongly anticipated' that the answer would be no. 'First,' she explained, 'now I understand better than I did nine years ago, what it means to go to Haifa, what a privilege it is, that such a privilege is not often received and that certainly one must deserve it, and second - because of the war in Palestine . . . Shoghi Effendi will know best and whatever he decides will be good. Probably I will go straight to Poland. Still, I boldly made that request because it is a chance I may not soon have.'
Dr Charles Witt in Los Angeles had invited Lidia to go to Califomia. She explained why she could not accept his invitation. 'Will I ever return?' she wondered. 'Only All-knowing God knows His own plans . . . And so, in spite of the feeling of unpleasant surprise, I try to serenely accept what has happened.' She would go first to Poland, she decided. Then perhaps to France. 'And perhaps', she added, 'some other plans will develop.'
The National Spiritual Assembly still wanted to try to keep Lidia in the United States, and Horace Holley wrote Lidia that they were trying to work out plans for her to take a teaching trip without conducting paid Esperanto classes. Allen McDaniel contacted Mr Dodge to find out if he could help extend her permit further, but Mr Dodge felt he had exhausted every means available to him in getting the extension of two months.
Then Shoghi Effendi's answer came: regret dangerous
situation in palestine necessitates postponement of pilgrimage.'
The word 'postponement' gave Lidia hope. Perhaps there would be another time; but when? She booked passage on the PHsudski sailing for Gdynia, Poland, on November 29.
Lidia had reacted first with shock and dismay - and fear - at the prospect of retuming to Poland. But after a time she became resigned to the fact, and as she had done before, she placed her fate in the hands of God. In a letter to Roan she wrote of her submission to whatever destiny had in store. 'Isn't it marvelous for a believer to have in every difficulty and disappointment the knowledge and consolation that he (or she) is guided by the Supreme Hand? And so thanks be to God for everything that in His wisdom He sends to me!' It is clear from her letters that it was somewhat of a struggle to come to this attitude. To a Baha'f Esperantist in Minneapolis Lidia wrote: it is a real disappoint- ment for me, very painful, but we must accept serenely what comes, and trust that God guides us on the way that is most right for us.'
Lidia was able to conceal her disappointment and pain from those around her. Dr Charles Simon, who accompanied her to a lawyer's office early in her efforts to extend her visitor's permit, many years later reflected that she did not seem 'particularly preoccupied or disturbed by her failure to have her visa renewed, as I think she was by this time anxious to return to her family in Warsaw.'
There was something, however, that terrified Lidia. 'Tomorrow', she confided to Roan, 'I have an appointment with the dentist, which makes me very scared.'
TWENTY-SEVEN
Fragments
Just when everything seemed settled, a new crisis arose. On October 28 by chance Lidia read in a Cleveland newspaper that under the law passed in Poland earlier in 1938, all Polish citizens abroad who did not ĥave their passports stamped by a Polish Consul would lose their Polish citizenship. The deadline for getting the stamp was October 29 - thenext day! There was no Polish Consul in Cleveland, and Della had Lidia's passport in New York.
Lidia wired Della to take her passport to the Polish Consul in New York City, but she was 'in extreme fear' that the stamp would be denied her because she was Jewish. The next moming Lidia received news from her family in Poland that the granting of the stamp was generally ieft to the discretion and good-will of the consular official', but if he refused to give it to her, she would not be allowed to enter Poland.
Della rushed to the Polish Consul, but he seemed unconcemed about any deadline. Afterward Della sent the papers the Consul had given her to Lidia for her signature. Lidia retumed them to Della with a letter. 'Perhaps you have read how much difficulty the PolishJews in Germany have had because of that law', she wrote. Mass deportations of Polish Jews from Germany had begun on October 29, the deadline for obtaining the passport stamp. 'If it should happen to me, here is the situation: I must leave America before the third of December, but I could go nowhere, mainly not to Poland . . .
'In the section asking about religion,' she continued, 'I said the following: official confession: Jewish. Faith - Baha'f. If anyone asks about that, you can easily explain the matter! You remember that I remained a member of thejewish community with the permission of Shoghi Effendi. And I had to say that, all the more because the Baha'i Faith is not recognized in Poland. Furthermore, it's a question here not of one's religious conviction, but of race!!!!!! Therefore, this is an important point against my favor.'
But Lidia's fears - in this case - were unfounded. Della took the passport to the Consul, who gave it the required stamp. Lidia would not be denied entry into Poland. But Della wrote afterward: 'O, Roan, when I received the papers from her, with enclosures of pictures that looked as though they hadjust been taken, my heart bled for her! Such a look on that face! . . . You can imagine how she feels that her own land is not closed to her.'
Thousands of Polish Jews who lived in Germany were not so lucky: they were expelled from Germany and transported to the border in boxcars. But because they had been stripped oftheir Polish citizenship, they were detained and kept in terrible conditions in a camp at the Polish border town of Zb$szyn. Finally international pressure forced Poland to admit them.
The crisis had brought about a change in Lidia's thinking. 'Truly', she wrote Della, 'a heavy weight fell from my heart and I thanked Baha'u'llah that He heard my prayers. Look how the circumstances change our attitude: some time ago I felt great regret because I had to leave America. Now I am happy that I can go to Poland.'