A Forgotten Hero: Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish Humanitarian who Rescued 30,000 People from the Nazis

Folke Bernadotte. The name wasn't at all familiar. Who was this Swedish humanitarian? Why have we forgotten him?

Readers of the popular historical fiction novel The Lilac Girls  by Martha Hall Kelly know about the Polish women interred in Ravensbruck who were used for medical experiments, called 'rabbits' because they were merely lab 'animals.'''
In Kelly's novel, the women are told to board white trucks from the Red Cross, but some doubt their legitimacy. Another noted that "Himmler himself authorized Count Bernadotte of Sweden to take us."

A Forgotten Hero is the story of that Count Bernadotte of Sweden!

Shelly Emling begins the book with the German invasion of Poland and the removal of Poles to concentration camps through the personal story of Manya Moszkowicz. In the last days of the war, the Germans wanted to cover up the atrocities of the concentration camps, evacuating prisoners or killing them. Manya was taken on a forced march to Ravensbruck. And one morning she was in a group taken to the gate and told to board a white truck with red crosses. It didn't seem real. The women were given CARE packages, and that night they slept in real beds, clean and warmly clothed. Manya learned she had been rescued because of Count Folke Bernadotte.

Folke was related to Swedish royalty and made a career in the army. He became a volunteer for the Boy Scouts. He took on the leadership of the International Red Cross. Sweden was neutral during WWII, a choice made to preserve their freedom while Norway fell to the Germans and Finland to the Russians. Folke used this neutrality to gain access to Himmler. He wanted to rescue all the prisoners, but played his hand carefully, first asking to repatriate Swedish nationalists. The Gestapo head Himmler had vowed to remain loyal to Hitler but knew his country was losing the war; over time he allowed Folke access to more prisoners.

Folke's courage and faith were limitless as he bused the women out of the camp, coming under fire by Allied planes. He was able to secret out several thousand Jews, but his rapport with the Nazis and unwillingness to overplay his hand made him suspect by some Jewish groups. After the war, Folke was asked to mediate between the emerging country of Isreal and the dispossessed Palestinians. A radical Jewish group marked him for assassination.

For decades, Folke's legacy was forgotten by a chagrined Israel who buried the incident of his death.

Sixty years after his death Folke has reemerged from the shadows.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased
review.

about the author:Shelley Emling is a senior editor at AARP.org and editor-in-chief of The Girlfriend from AARP. Previously she was a senior editor at the Huffington Post for five years. She has worked as a foreign correspondent for the Cox Media Group both in Europe and in Latin America for more than twelve years, based in London for eight years. Shelley lives in New Jersey and works in Washington, D.C. Shelley is the author of several other books including Marie Curie and Her Daughters, Setting the World on Fire, Your Guide to Retiring in Mexico, and The Fossil Hunter.

A Forgotten Hero: Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish Humanitarian Who Rescued 30,000 People from the Nazis
Emling, Shelley
ECW Press
Published: May 2019
ISBN: 9781770414495
$26.95 US/$32.95 CAD/#17.99 Kindle

Helen Korngold Diary May 12-18, 1919

This year I am sharing the 1919 diary of Helen Korngold of St. Louis, MO. Helen was a senior at Washington University, preparing for a career as a teacher.

Helen Korngold, December 1919, New York City

Monday 12
School – Carol Party at Elks. Clara Marx, hostess. Had a dandy time – carnations for favors – delicious luncheon. Learned a little about 500. Home – practiced – wrote Satellites up & went to “Y” orchestra.

Tuesday 13
School – Rehearsal for Bado. Home at 9 o’clock Study. Maizie Rothman gets quite confidential.

Wednesday 14
School – nothing exciting

Thursday 15
School – rehearsal for Bado – home. Downtown – fitting at Cuqots – blue silk. Pretty. Rehearse with Miss Holmes.

Friday 16
School. After buying a suit dark blue serge. Good looking. Home – fitting at Cuqots – rehearse with kids at Aunt Beryl’s. Home – dress. Saw Thyrsus present “Admirable” Crichton, Pauline & Arthur Sarason, Karol. Dandy time. Play was wonderful.

Saturday 17
School – home – played at neighborhood entertainment. Our initial appearance. J Orchestra. All went fine.

Sunday 18
Expect to study all day!

NOTES:

May 12

Clara Marx may be related E. Marx, 1300 Washington, who appears on the Elks membership in the 1913 Gould’s Blue Book.

“Y” orchestra a youth orchestra

May 13

Bado rehearsal; Helen played in the junior orchestra's initial concert on June 17.

May 15

Cuqouts appears to be a dressmaker, although I cannot find this name in the City Directory of businesses.

May 16

Thyrsus was the dramatic society at Washington University.

May 4, 1919 article from St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Admirable Crichton was a stage play written by James Barrie that addressed class issues, first produced in 1902.

From the February 29, 1907, Washington University Student Life:

“What's in a name? This was one of the chief topics discussed at the regular meeting of the Dramatic Club last Wednesday. After mature deliberation, the club selected for its official name, "Thyrsus," suggested by Prof. Holmes Smith and proposed to the club by Mr. Starbird. The name signifies a pine cone, which was the symbol of Dionysus, the Greek god of the drama. In selecting such a name, the club is doing wisely, as the former name was entirely too long and too ordinary, while "Thyrsus" is terse, sounds well, and has some significance." 

I wonder which navy serge suit Helen chose? The St. Louis Post-Dispatch paper Sunday, May 11, 1919, was full of advertisements for clearance and sales!

Book Club Read: Perfect Little World by Kevin WIlson

After I finished Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson I admit I was not quite sure what to make of it. Early on I enjoyed the humor. Midway the book dragged and the ending was predictable. But our book club found a lot to discuss and overall enjoyed this book.

The characters are quirky and damaged and although readers get to know quite a bit about them they never really felt 'real' to me and the idea of a community of parents and babies gathered for a ten-year study on childraising was bizarre.

The main character Izzy has pluck and has forged a way to survive in the midst of neglect and tragedy. Izzy's mentally ill mother's death caused her father to withdraw into an alcoholic depression. She finds a mentor in an older man at the BBQ joint who teachers her how to roast and pull apart whole hogs.

Izzy is bright but uninterested in education. Her mother had pressured for a college track in compensation for her own derailed career. Instead, Izzy pressures her art teacher to fail her! They become involved, their affair complicated when Izzy become pregnant--"the elephant in the womb," as Izzy puts it, overwhelms him.

The art teacher is depressive and can't deal with a baby although he loves Izzy. Izzy won't get an abortion. When the teacher commits suicide his mother comes to Izzy with a proposition: she will fund the prenatal care and birth of her son's baby if Izzy joins an experimental community.

Dr. Grind is the product of parents who developed a childraising technique which has left him with lasting problems. He dreams of a community where children are raised by a 'village' and are not dependant on one set of flawed parents. His system will support the children with the intention of allowing them to flourish to their full potential.

Izzy joins as the only single mother. Over seven years the families struggle to change their natural instincts while developing as a community. Healthy relationships are built but also unhealthy relationships evolve which threatened to dissolve the experiment.

Wilson implies that loving parents can inflict lasting damage on their children and that the children of distant parents can rise above and thrive. Dr. Grind's dream of a Utopian community that protects children only fails because adults are predictably imperfect. In the end, a perfect little world is whatever family we can cobble together.

The book club had a long conversation about the changing nature of families over their lifetimes. Specifically, how once families lived near each other and were a support group before suburban living reinforced the nuclear family as the norm.  A woman who ran a daycare said that she had observed all the problems encountered by the extended family in the book.

A Perfect Little World was a book club read. I thank the public library for a copy of the book.

But that's the problem, isn't it? We're mysteries to each other no matter how hard we try to prove otherwise. from Perfect Little World

WIP and TBR

Spring has come to Michigan! We have nesting birds in the yard, wildflowers have sprouted up, and the herb garden is green and flourishing.

Wild Violets

It has been a busy spring. After my two cataract surgeries, my husband underwent his second knee replacement surgery! I am super busy handling his chores along with my own.

But I am still keeping up with my quilt projects and reading!

I am hand quilting the Little Red Ridinghood quilt.

I am deciding on the borders on the Winter Houses quilt.

And I played making a quilt with some wool birds from the quilter's group free table and am nearly done with the applique. I will do more embellishment after they are sewn down.

I am now reading:

• LibraryThing win ARC  Make Me A City by Jonathan Carr about the history of Chicago.
• The Ministry of Truth by Dorian Lynskey about George Orwell and the writing of 1984.
• Why We Quilt by Thomas Knauer shares snippets on the quilting life.
• Jared Diamond's Upheaval. I have read about Finland, Japan, and Chile so far. What is so cool is that when I was a senior in high school my family hosted an exchange student from Finland. I became close to the exchange students from Japan, Chile, and Germany during that year. 
• Cesare by Jerome Charyn a love story and thriller set during WWII

On my TBR galley shelves:

• The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar
• Women from the Copper Country by  Mary Doria Russell
• We Are All Good People by Susan Rebecca White
• Out of Darkness Shining Light by Petina Gappah
• This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger
• The Book of Science and Antiquities by Thomas Kenalley
• The Vexations by Caitlin Horrocks

On Kindle:

After reading her new book Gold Digger I purchased Rebecca Rosenberg's novel Mrs. Jack London. My review on Gold Digger will appear on my blog soon.

I have Amy Stewart's Miss Kopps Midnight Confessions and Miss Kopp Just Won't Quit on my Kindle which I hope to read soon as the next volume Miss Kopp on the March is being mailed to me via the Kopp Sister's Literary Society.

Another book to come is Archaeology from Space by Sarah Parcak which I won on LibraryThing this month.

Upcoming Book Clubs:
Next month the library book club is reading Wiley Cash's novel The Last Ballad, which I read as an ARC. Wiley will be Skyping with our club!

The Barnes and Nobel book club is reading The Guest Book, which I also read as an ARC.

A Good American Family:The Red Scare and My Father by David Maraniss

Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe

In the years between my father's retirement and his recovery of grief over the early loss of my mother, he bought an electric typewriter and wrote his memoirs.  Dad took his pages to the office supply store and printed and bound them to distribute among his family and friends. Dad was very proud to know people enjoyed reading about his childhood growing up during the Depression in a changing world, his father's time as a volunteer fireman and building a gas station, his adventures in scouting and camping along the Niagara River, meeting my mother, and running the family business after his father's death until our move to Detroit where he hoped to secure a job in the auto industry.

I shared these memories on my blog and on Facebook, attracting lots of readers from our hometown. But there was much missing between these stories. He wrote little about his marriage and us kids. And stories that he told me that were more personal, or that Mom had shared, were left out.

We show the world who we hope we are, hiding the deepest pain and loss and hurt. The conflicted feelings of guilt and embarrassment of bad choices, the pain we wrecked on others, we leave buried in our own hearts. We carry these things alone. Which of us has truly known our father, or mother, or sibling, or spouse?

"The more I read the letters, the more I thought to myself: Why did he write them like a journal...if not for me to find them and give him a voice again, to show the determination, romanticism, and patriotism of a man who once was called un-American?" from A Good American Family by David Maraniss

David Maraniss had written about other people's stories, from Vince Lombardi and Clemente to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. He decided it was time to look into his own father's life. He had "desensitized" himself to what his father Elliott Maraniss had endured "during those years when he was in the crucible, living through what must have been the most tyring and transformative experience of his life."

In 1952, Elliot Maraniss was brought in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in Detroit, Michigan.

He was a newspaperman, a graduate of the University of Michigan where he had worked on the Daily newspaper and found kindred spirits dedicated to progressive values. Elliott married into a family committed to the perceived virtues of communism. He enlisted to serve in WWII right after Pearl Harbor. But the government was tracking communists, and although an exemplary officer, he was deemed untrustworthy. Instead of seeing action, Elliot was relegated to the Quartermaster Corps, and because of his passion for racial justice and equality, put in charge of a segregated African American unit. He put all his energy into growing the men into a stellar unit. He held an American optimism that people can overcome the obstacles of "race and class, education and geography and bias."

In the 1930s, communism seemed to be society's best hope for equality and justice, attracting people of progressive ideas. The attraction waned as Stalin took over Russia. Maraniss shares the stories of men whose high ideals brought them to the Communist Party. Some of his U of M friends went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, which was against American law.

"There are aspects of his thinking during that period that I can't reconcile, and will never reconcile, as hard as I try to figure them out and as much of a trail as he left for me through his writings." from A Good American Family by David Maraniss

A Good American Family is the story of his father and his generation of progressive idealists during the Red Scare. Maraniss plumbed the records to understand his father and reconcile the man he knew with the man who stood in front of the House Un-American Committee--was he a revolutionary or on "the liberal side of the popular front?"

Maraniss draws on his father's letters and newspaper articles and obtained access to government files. He tells the stories of the men behind the hearings and the grandmother who was paid to infiltrated the Michigan Communist Party and gather names. The overarching narrative is the story of how the Red scare was born and grew in power. The House Committee hearings were not legal court procedures and those on the stand did not have the protections offered in court hearings.

What is a 'good American family'? Can we hold and voice personal convictions that some deem threatening and still be considered good citizens? The book is a personal history and a record of the abuse of unbridled power unleashed by fear.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

A Good American Family
by David Maraniss
Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: May 2019
$28 hardcover
ISBN13: 9781501178375

Read about Maraniss's previous book Once in a Great City at

https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2015/09/once-in-great-city-detroit-story-by.html

The Welsh Fasting Girl by Varley O'Connor

While reading the first section of The Welsh Fasting Girl I thought it was all too familiar, too similar to another book I had read about a historical fasting girl. A young girl reportedly has stopped eating but is alive and well, her community hoping it is a miracle for in the mid-1800s faith is being challenged by science. The parents agree to a watch to ascertain the girl is not obtaining nourishment. A woman from outside of the community, an American journalist, comes to Wales to cover the story but becomes emotionally involved.

But halfway through the book, Varley O'Connor went in a completely different direction from the book I had previously read. Whereas the other book offered a wish-fulfillment ending, O'Connor's fasting girl does not survive. And this allows the novel to go into deeper territory, probing culpability and guilt in the family, community, culture, and laws of the time.

How could people not save the life of a starving girl? The doctors and nurses, the vicar, the parents, the sibling, all stood by, trapped by their own dark dreams and secrets as Sarah wasted away over fourteen days.

And what would drive a beautiful girl to embrace death?

Hysterical anorexia was identified as a specific disease in 1873, a few years after the death of the Welsh fasting girl. O'Connor notes that although records do not show that Sarah was sexually abused, a high incident of girls who fasted were in fact victims of sexual abuse.

The fictional American reporter, Christine, is a central character. As she writes letters to her reporter husband who never returned from covering the Civil War, we understand her perception of the people and events playing out. Her children grown, her beloved husband gone, she struggles with questions of identity and role in the world. She is young enough to miss love and old enough to have a life separate from her children.

After the trial to determine culpability in Sarah's death, Christine pursues further knowledge, several clues indicating that there was more to the story. And as she digs deeper, a complicated family web is unraveled.

O'Connor's tragic novel is beautifully written, her deep research contributing to a vivid sense of place and time. And although a work of historical fiction addressing the conflicts of the 1860s, the issues are relevant today.

I received an ARC from the publisher through LibraryThing. My review is fair and unbiased.

Hear an interview with Varley O'Connor on Biblio Radio here.

Read about the case at the Welsh Historical Society here.

The Welsh Fasting Girl
Varley O'Connor
Bellevue Literary Press
Publication May 7, 2019
$16.99 paperback
ISBN: 978-1-942658-62-7
ebook ISBN: 978-1-942658-63-4

Helen Korngold Diary: May 5-11, 1919

This year I am sharing the 1919 diary of Helen Korngold. Helen was a student at Washington University in St. Louis, preparing for a career in teaching. I researched Helen and the people, places, and events mentioned in the diary.

Helen Korngold, December 1919, New York City

Monday 5
Practiced with Selma Levinson – School. May Day practice. Home – Practice – study.

Tuesday 6
School – practiced with Selma – Home –

Wednesday 7
Practiced – School. Played for Wednesday Musicale. It was real exciting. Wrote to Summer.

Thursday 8
School – not much excitement – home – received news of my election to Wednesday Musicale. Quite pleased. Sophie Stampfer – Mary Stillman – Harry Vogel & Dan Wolf coming over. Membership meeting. Bed at 12 bells.

Friday 9
Spent all day reviewing 138 for regiment – Harry Goodman came here. Glee Club concert in the evening with Pauline & Arthur Sarason & Karol. Had a good time.

Saturday 10
School. Dreadful exam in Hist. Pauline Carps, Grandma’s & home. Practiced & then took bath & to bed.

Sunday 11
Sunday School – Study – Satellites with Nat Aaronberg. Good time.


NOTES:

May 5

A Selma Levinson appears in the 1917 St. Louis City Directory living on Waterman St. She was a student.

May Day is a traditional and ancient springtime rebirth celebration dating to the Druids and adopted by the Romans.

May 7

The Wednesday Musicale was perhaps part of the Wednesday Club, which was founded in 1890 for civic improvement and for continuing education and advancement of the arts for women.

May 8

Mary Stillman on the 1910 St. Louis Census was 12 years old and living with her father Isaac (age 42, Yiddish, immigrated in 1884), mother Nettie (16), and siblings Maynard (14) and Edmund (10). Isaac was a merchant of gent’s furnishings according to the census and the St. Louis City Directories.

The 1920 Census shows Mary, age 23, living at home. Mary was not employed. According to his death certificate, Isaac died on March 10, 1936, of a burst appendix. Nettie (born Oct. 31,1874) died on July 25,1957, of heart disease according to her death certificate. They are buried at Beth Hamedrosh Hagodel Cemetery in Clayton, MO.

A December 22, 1929 story in the Jefferson City Post-Tribune reads, “St. Louis, Dec. 21—When the bandit appeared, he shouted, “Oh look at all the policemen at the door.” That is what Isaac Stillman, clothier, did here yesterday and the robber fled.”

Harry Vogel: There are several persons who this could be.

May 9 (University holiday)

Harry Goodman could be a number of persons in St. Louis, such as the 22-year-old son of Russian immigrant Simon, age 70, and Pauline, age 64 who appear on the 1920 St. Louis Census. On the 1916 St. Louis City Directory a Harry Goodman is listed as in ‘pants’.

Glee Club was an organization of Washington University.

St Louis Dispatch Article, May 11, 1919

Pauline Francis Sarason was in Helen’s Senior Class. She appears in the 1917 Washington University yearbook Hatchet on the Varsity basketball team. She received Final Honors in her graduating class in 1919. Final honors were awarded on the basis of having taken twenty half upper-level courses in the Junior and Senior years.

May 11

Nat Aaronberg may be Nathan Aronburg, the youngest of seven children to Max and Anna Aronburg. Max was a Polish/Russian immigrant born in 1848 who was a merchant on the 1900 St. Louis Census. On the 1920 Census, Nat and his mother Anna are living alone together and Nat was a clerk in a jewelry store. On the 1930 Census Nathan and Sadie Aronburg appear; Nathan is a sales manager in a jewelry store.

Ads from the Sunday, May 11 St. Louis-Post Dispatch: