Lidia

Later, the German officer Major Neubarth came forward and solemnly vowed in the name of the Esperantists of Germany that they would not cease to follow the example of Dr Zamenhof. They would be faithful in their Esperanto work, he promised, until the end.

The ancient, sorrowful tones of the Hebrew funeral prayers drifted on the air. Slowly the coffin was lowered into the ground and covered over with earth. Flower wreaths were piled high.

For many years, among the marble monuments in the Jewish cemetery, only the simplest of tombstones would mark the grave of Ludwik Zamenhof. As the years passed, his daughter Lidia would return many times to this place, to the grave ofher father. But now that he was gone, who would carry on his work? Who would strive to achieve his dreams?

ONE

The Doctor and the Dream

Although Lidia Zamenhof was only thirteen when her father died, his work and his dreams would deeply influence her entire life. Indeed, Ludwik Zamenhof had a profound effect on all who met him: his kindly ways, his lofty ideals, had endeared him to thousands who embraced the language he had created. Although his sometimes overzealous admirers showered adoration on him almost as if he were a religious leader, he was a very private and modest man, and such veneration for his person embarrassed and pained him.

Sometimes, children of famous parents find the responsibility of that relatjonship burdensome and wish to make their own way in the world, independent of the great, hovering shadow of one they can never hope to equal. Zamenhof s children, on the contrary, all chose to devote their lives to the same fields of endeavor as their renowned father had. His son, Adam, became a doctor and even surpassed the elder Zamenhofs fame in ophthalmology. His daughter Zofia also became a physician, specializing in internal medicine and pediatrics. But it was his youngest daughter Lidia who would dedicate her life to the work that had been most dear to Ludwik Zamenhof: the struggle for human unity. As Ludwik had, in his time, Lidia Zamenhof would find her chosen road difficult and would face opposition, frustration and disappointment. But the light of the ideal would always be before her, as it had been for her father, a beacon of hope that shone even in deepest darkness. Because one cannot understand Lidia without knowing something of Ludwik, her story properly begins with his story.

Ludwik Zamenhof was born in 1859 to Markus and Rozalia (Sofer) Zamenhof. He was the first of nine children including Sara (who died in childhood), Fania, Augusta, Feliks, Henryk, Leon, Aleksander and Ida. Ludwik's great-grandfather, Wolf Zamenhof, had come from the province ofKurland, in the southwest part ofLatvia, but by the time of Ludwik's birth the Zamenhof family lived in Bialystok, in the district of Grodno, Lithrania, which at that time was part of the Russian Empire. Ludwik's childhood experiences in Bialystok, helatersaid, so profoundly affected him as to give the direction to all his future endeavors.

History had created in Bialystok a kind of crossroads where people from diverse cultures and nationalities came together, not in brotherhood but in hostility. Young Ludwik was most distressed by the fact that, often, they could not even speak to one another: the Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews of Bialystok spoke their own languages, and each group kept to itself, mistrustful and suspicious of the others. Ludwik learned quickly that he himself belonged to the group that, above all, was the target ofsuspicion and hatred: thejews.

Although Jews had lived in the region of Poland since medieval times, when they had come from Germany at the invitation of Polish kings and nobles, they had always been treated as outsiders -accused of being economic exploiters, reviled from the pulpit as killers of Christ. Through the centuries, although there were periods during which the Jews of Poland were protected by royal charter, they were repeatedly subjected to discrimination, segregation and brutality. At times they were restricted to living apart from the Christian population in ghettos. On occasion they were expelled entirely.

The Christians among whom they lived never understood the inner world of the Jewish community. They saw only that thejews dressed and acted diЈFerently, spoke a language that seemed strange to them, and followed religious rituals of an unknown nature. They eventually came to consider thejews a separate race, an inferior foreign nation, living in their midst.