Lidia

On April 18 - the date had been put ahead to the nearest Sunday - the weather was mild and clear. An hour before the ceremony, several hundred people were already gathered, silent and respectful, near the entrance gate to the area where the tomb was located, near the front of the cemetery. Esperanto flags waved in the air above the monument, which was shrouded by a black cloth. The slope in front of the grave was landscaped with greenery in the shape of a five-pointed Esperanto star. Around the monument, holding Esperanto flags, stood an honor guard of students.

By eleven o'clock five hundred people had gathered, including representatives of the Jewish community, Esperanto societies and educational institutions, as well as reporters, photographers and some government officials. Several people had come from the provinces, and some, including Martha Root, from other countries.

The family and speakers arrived, and the crowd made room for them on the terrace beside the monument. At eleven o'clock the

spiritual mother and daughter

ceremony began. Professor Odo Bujwid ofKrakow cut the ribbon and unveiled the stone, as the choir sang La Espero. After several speeches, Adam Zamenhof came forward in the name of the Zamenhof family to place the first immense flower wreath at the foot of the monument. Then, one by one, others approached, offering their flower wreaths and speaking a few words of homage to Dr Zamenhof.

Martha Root had come as the delegate of the Baha'i movement. She stepped up to the tomb and placed white roses at the foot of the stone. Then, as she later reported, she 'spoke to the people the message oflove and esteem from Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Baha'i Cause and the greeting ofthe Baha'fs ofthe World. It was significant,' she noted, 'that all speeches extolled the spirit of Esperantism, its power to make the world "one great family gathering".'

At five o'clock that evening, the Warsaw Esperantists and the delegates who had come from other cities and lands gathered at a reception at the Zamenhof home. Martha Root was among them and described her feelings as she entered Dr Zamenhofs study, which the family had kept intact as a kind of shrine: 'All felt a thrill to walk up those steps where he had so often walked and visit the room where he had done much of his life work,' she wrote (apparently unaware that Zamenhof had lived in the apartment on Krolewska Street for only the last few years of his life).

'. . . His office contains, besides all the instruments and paraphernalia, a set of Esperanto books from the first leaflets to the last volumes, certainly it is the most interesting Esperanto library in the world. Here, there, everywhere in the office are gifts, Esperanto flags and banners, pictures of world Esperanto congresses. Mr Joseph Gabowicz, one of the best sculptors of Poland has made a bust of Dr Zamenhof which is so like him, that as it stood on the piano and the friends filling the room sang the "La Espero" it seemed as if the figure moved and lived; Dr Zamenhof s spirit was in their midst.'

After Leo Belmont's speech, Martha Root stood up. This was the moment she had come for, to talk about 'The Baha'i Movement as One Form of Homaranismo'. She quoted 'Abdu'1-Baha's words praising Zamenhof and Esperanto, and Dr Zamenhof s statements about the Baha'f Faith, as well as remarks he had made expressing his interest in the Baha'i movement as 'one of the great world movements which, like Esperanto, insist on the brotherhood of mankind'. If the words sounded familiar to Lidia they well should have; Martha had read the same quotations a year before in Geneva at the Baha'i meeting. After more speeches, one ofthe ladies sang songs ofBeethoven and Schubert in Esperanto.

Lidia became intrigued by Martha Root, who spoke about her religion so fervently, in Esperanto tinged with an American accent.

'Very soon I started wondering', Lidia later recalled, 'what made this woman, neither wealthy nor strong, wander about the world.'

Martha Root stayed in Warsaw for two more weeks. As she had hoped, she arranged to stay with the Zamenhof family. Zofia and Adam were at the hospital during the day, but Lidia, who had begun studying English, was at home. Lidia agreed to help Martha with her Esperanto, and Martha was to help Lidia with her English. 'I feel we shall have a wonderful time together,' Martha wrote to friends in America, 'and that we shall leam more than "languages". It will bring Esperanto and the Baha'i Movement closer together.' Martha moved into the Zamenhof flat, sharing Lidia's room. She intended to pay the Zamenhofs for her room and board 'and I hope pay generously, because their father gave his all to found Esperanto and they are working hard'.