Lidia

That old typewriter, shrouded by its black cover, seemed almost a symbol of Ludwik Zamenhofs spiritual bequest. 'Months passed,' Lidia later wrote. 'On the little oak table the machine stood - closed. I hesitated a long time before I dared lift the cover again. And it seemed to me then that I was lifting the cover of the coffin . . .

'I began to type - the keys reverberated. Slowly, fearfully, as with wonder, like someone who awakens after a long sleep and asks where he is, who are those around him. And its wordless sounds seemed perhaps the most touching words of consolation . . .'

SEVEN

Pictures on the Canvas

The Zamenhof family was plunged into griefafter Ludwik's death, but Klara took it hardest. To those around her she seemed like a person who had lost her purpose in life. Lidia watched as her widowed mother aged 'suddenly, incredibly suddenly'. The mother's grief made a deep impression on her daughter, whose 'child's eyes', Lidia later recalled, 'could not help but see how your thoughts and memories flew back to the past, to happier days'. For the rest ofher lifeLidia would remember her mother's sorrowful Sunday pilgrimages to the cemetery and how she would come back from those walks 'aching and broken'.

Eventually, left with the care of the thirteen-year-old Lidia, Klara recovered from her grief. She plunged herself into Esperanto work, still fulfilling her 'sacred task' to carry out her husband's dream. Now her goal in life was to see a suitable monument raised upon his tomb.

In 1918 the war ended, and Poland became an independent nation for the first time in over a hundred years. The three empires that once ruled it had not survived the war: the emperors of Germany and Austria- Hungary were defeated, the tsar ofRussia overthrown by revolution.

But independence only brought fresh turmoil to Poland. The nation had been under foreign domination for so long that it had no experience governing itself, and its new government faced grave problems. Although the nation was now free, it was also poor and overpopulated. In the rural areas its peasant population was much larger than the land could support. Cities were crowded as well: there was nowhere for the landless peasants to go, and few industries to provide jobs. After the borders of Poland were finally fixed, the country contained a population that was only two-thirds Polish. The restincluded Ukrainians, Jews, Byelorussians, Germans, Lithuanians, Russians and Czechs. The presence of so many people who considered themselves of a different nationality from the rest of the population was a problem Poland was never able to solve.

Once again, the Jews suffered. The war had hardly ended when the pogroms began. The winter of 1918-19 saw ferocious outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence in 130 towns and villages, carried out with the support and participation of soldiers in the new Polish Army. Jewish shops were boycotted; homes were looted; synagogues were desecrated; hundreds of men, women and children were tortured and beaten; and untold numbers of people were killed. In several towns, large amounts of money were extorted from thejewish communities as fines for alleged disloyalty and as the price for providing protection against the violence, protection later refused them.

As a result of reports about the pogroms, which the Poles denied, the Allies decided that, as a condition ofindependence, Poland must sign a treaty guaranteeing full civil rights and religious freedom to its national minorities. Many Poles, however, resented this as an insult to the national honor. Poland's government never enforced the Minorities Treaty and in 1934 renounced it entirely.

After the war, great empires had fallen and millions of people lay dead, but the 'war to end all wars' and its aftermath merely laid the groundwork for new conflict. The territorial divisions made at Versailles and the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into republics released a wave of nationalism. Germany itself was left nearly intact, but the allocation of territory to Poland - even though that same land had been taken from Poland long ago - and of the Rhineland to France, was deeply resented.

France and Britain were determined to have revenge on Germany, to squeeze it 'till the pips squeaked'. But the humiliating conditions of peace and the impossible war reparations demanded of the defeated Germans, as well as economic crises and the political unrest sweeping the demoralized country were more than the weak new Weimar govem- ment could bear. In the chaotic years that followed, Germany's bitter resentment found its expression in rabid nationalism and virulent anti- Semitism, and the stage was set for the rise of Adolf Hitler.