2013-09-22

Carl Alpert remembers Lidia Zamenhof

 Thanks to Neil Blonstein for publicizing this article and attendant information:

 “Interesting People I Have Met: Lidia Zamenhof” by Carl Alpert

From this little piece alone one can see the idealism and naivete of Lidia. She thought she could solve social problems by propagating Esperanto and the Baha'i religion throughout the world. In a way, her thinking was a step backward from her father's, which itself did not sufficiently engage the world politically. Lidia's innocence extended to her sojourn in the USA, which was far more extensive than her father's, but it had a curious twist: Lidia innocently crossed racial boundaries in the USA in a way that others would not have. There are many black Bahai's in the USA—I've known many of them myself—and Lidia cultivated a number of them in the 1930s.

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