I was stunned to have the fabric I needed to finish my last embroidered writer for my series of Lit Ladies, arrive EARLY! That almost never happens with an ETSY order.
Well done, https://www.etsy.com/shop/shopinthemaking !!!
My last writer took longer than the others to finish, not because of the fabric but, because I started to stitch her twice before finally getting the right feeling for her in my last canvas. Something about this reminds me of when I was a child and trying to read Anne Frank’s diary the first time. That she called her diary Kitty confused me and she seemed much older than I thought. I think I was around 9. I picked the diary up again to read as a teenager and was totally into it. By then, I was made aware that my own Dad and his mother had also lived in hiding in France during WW2.
Betsy Weitzman-Eisner’s parents were Polish Jews that had resettled in Scotland when Betsy was born in 1907. Betsy was recuperating from an illness in Switzerland when she met Grandpa Mischa. They owned a department store in Paris with some of Mischa’s many brothers. My dad was born in 1938, just as the Nazis were gaining strength and about to dominate Europe. Betsy knew several wealthy Parisian Jews who shopped at their store. She understood the danger as the wealthy started liquidating assets and fleeing. The Eisners sold their business and headed off in different directions. They thought there would be enough time to resettle somewhere else. While Mischa traveled solo on a luxury liner to establish a new home, the Nazis came to Paris. Mischa couldn’t go back and so, simply got off the ship in the USA. Probably slipping money and jewels to be able to.
But, Betsy and Dad were stuck in France. I don’t know the details of how it came together but they were brought to a convent. Betsy wore the Nuns habit and they grew out dad’s hair, styled it in bows and curls. He was dressed as a girl in hopes that any suspicious Nazi would not be checking for his circumcision.
At night, Betsy was instructed to wait by a harbor for a boat to take her and Dad to England. A secret operation financed by wealthy British Jews included Betsy’s remaining relatives. It’s sad to imagine that without her Scottish passport, Betsy & Dad would’ve remained in France during the worst part of those years and perhaps might’ve been discovered. Once they made it to London, they slept in the subways. My Dad remembers none of it but for a short time, he would panic at hearing airplanes after starting school in NY.
“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”
Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
Thanks so much for checking out my weirdo blog!
Have a wonderful weekend.