' We realize how much her fate is bound up with anti-Jewish and anti- international elements in certain nations, and we can only pray that she be protected by the divine power.'
Immediately, the Baha'is and the Esperantists in America and Europe tried to act to help her in the way they thought would be best. 'We and the Esperantists as well have a heavy responsibility to do everything we can,' Horace Holley wrote Allen McDaniel. Mr Holley intended to 'convey to the Nazis our formal denial of the truth of the charges and possibly also we should try and bring pressure through the German Embassy.' He and the others sadly overestimated their ability to 'bring pressure' on the Nazis by formal protests. Nevertheless, Mr McDaniel contacted Ernest Dodge to try to make use of Mr Dodge's contacts in the US State Department. Once again, the Baha'is and the Esperantists found themselves having to cooperate because of Lidia - this time to try to save her life. But Mr Dodge wisely pointed out that 'even to write to her now to express the grief and sympathy of Esperantists or Baha'is might work to her disadvantage; since it is precisely her prominence as an exponent of both Esperanto and Baha'f principles which has caused those in control to hate and persecute her.'
Their efforts to exert influence through diplomatic channels failed. When contacted by the Baha'is, the First Secretary of the Polish Embassy pleaded helplessness and recommended sending a strong protest to Berlin. US State Department oflicials said they would take no official action as Lidia was not an American citizen. Unofficially they told Allen McDaniel they were willing to do what they could to ofFer advice in order to secure her release.
Mr McDaniel presented the case to the Swedish Legation in Washington, and the Counselor of the Legation agreed to transmit to Stockholm the Esperanto Association's and the National Spiritual Assembly's protests, along with evidence 'emphasizing the absence of any anti-Nazi propaganda during her stay in the US'. However, Mr McDaniel and perhaps even Mr Dodge did not realize that sending, as they intended, a packet of 'programs and newspaper publicity . . . which will indicate that the activities were confined largely to lecturing, conducting classes and other activities relating to the spread of Esperanto among the people of the United States and Canada' could only make things worse for Lidia if such material got into the hands of the Gestapo. Engaging in Esperanto activities had already been determined to be acting against the State in Germany. All the Gestapo chief in Warsaw needed would be a copy of one of the American newspaper articles mocking Adolf Hitler, such as the one that had appeared in the Philadelphia Record - if he did not already have a complete file.
The Swedish Foreign Office sent word that it was unable to take any steps in Lidia's favor, as the German government was not allowing Sweden to carry out the task of looking after the interests of Polish citizens in Germany, with which the Polish government had entrusted it.
Concern for the Zamenhofs grew when letters sent to 41 Krolewska Street were returned with a stamp from the Warsaw Post Office saying that the family was no longer at that address, new address unknown. Rumors immediately began to circulate. It was reported that Lidia had been sent to a concentration camp in Germany. Then, in early 1940 it was announced that Lidia was living in France, and her friends breathed a sigh of relief.
But weeks passed, and no word came from France. Lidia was not there; the rumor was false. Its source was traced to a woman in southern France who had claimed to have received permission from the French government for Lidia to visit her - but this was all.
In February 1940 a cryptic letter from Lithuania reached officials at the Universal Esperanto Association in Geneva: 'My cousins about whom you asked are ill, in a very bad situation and I absolutely cannot at this moment give you their address because their former house is destroyed. If the parcel which came to your address might be useful to them, send it to one of their relatives, for example to Mrs Feliks Zamenhof. . .'
In March more news came from Stephen Zamenhof, Lidia's cousin. He was in New York; he had gone to the World's Fair and was there when the war broke out. From his brother Mieczyslaw, who was now in Russia, he had learned that the whole family had been arrested immediately after the occupation of Warsaw. No one was allowed to see them.
Although Esperanto had been forbidden in Germany for three years, and in Austria since the Anschluss, the SS and the Gestapo had continued to consider the movement a threat to the Reich. An eleven- page internal report in 1940 was said to show 'detailed knowledge' of Dr Zamenhofand his philosophy ofHomaranismo. After the war, SS- Colonel Josef Meissinger, head of the Security Police in Warsaw, admitted he had received special orders from Berlin, probably from Reinhard Heydrich himself, directing him to imprison the Zamenhofs.
Adam was the first to be arrested. The Germans seized him at the Jewish Hospital, where he was Chief of Ophthalmology and had become Director of the Hospital after its previous director fled. On the same day, Adam's wife Wanda and sister Zofia were also arrested at the hospital. Henryk Minc, Wanda's brother-in-law, and Lidia were arrested at the Minc home. Henryk Minc was taken, it was believed, instead of Adam's son Ludwik, because the boy was ill and it was feared he might have typhus.
At last, through the International Red Cross, a message from Lidia got through to Mabelle Davis in Detroit. It was: 'All the family in prison. Our house bumed.' During the bombardment ofWarsaw, on September 25, an incendiary bomb had hit their house. Everything was destroyed: all their possessions, but most of all, the little shrine that was Ludwik Zamenhof s study - the great Esperanto library, the manuscripts and letters, the old typewriter on its oak table, the little broken paperweight in the shape of a dog.
According to Adam Zamenhof s son Ludwik, Lidia and Zofia were released after several months in the Pawiak Prison. But word that they had been freed did not reach abroad until March 1940. And there was no word about the fate of Adam in the Danilowiczowska Prison. A short postcard in German (as was required now) got through to the Isbrŭckers in the Netherlands. It revealed that Lidia and Zofia were living in Ogrodowa Street, in the Jewish quarter. The postcard said only: 'Dear Friends, Thanks for your card. How we are you probably know. Wanda and Ludwik live at 6-3 Foch [the Minc home], but we have no news of Adam. Heartfelt greetings from Zofia and Lidia.'
Now it was Hans Jakob, director of the old Universal Esperanto Association in Geneva, who was able to make contact with the Zamenhofs and to approach the head of theJudenrat (Jewish Council), the goveming body of the Warsaw Ghetto, to offer help. The rival International Esperanto League, with its headquarters in England, now at war with Germany, could do nothing to intervene. The UEA planned to send food parcels to the Zamenhofs and hoped that Joseph Dubin in Philadelphia might secure a teaching position in America - and with it a visa - for Lidia. A fund was established to help the Zamenhof family ifany ofthem were able to leave Poland. Some ofthe food parcels got through, but the efforts to get Lidia a visa failed.
One of those who was able to send food regularly to Lidia and her family was Mrs Gigi Harabagiu in Bucharest, Romania. She obtained permission from the Romanian government to send monthly parcels to the Zamenhofs in Poland, and in retum she received postcards in German from them thanking her for the packages. Usually Mrs Harabagiu sent one kilogram each of sugar, fat, flour, dried fruit and sausage. Once she was puzzled when Lidia wrote her not to send bread anymore. Knowing that the parcels might take a long time to arrive, Mrs Harabagiu had never sent bread. Apparently a customs official had stolen the sausage in the parcel, replacing it with a kilogram of bread.