Legacy of Courage/Preface

Preface

A life that began in the Austro-Hungarian Empire of Franz Joseph, spanned two World Wars, and played out on three continents is not an easy one to chronicle. Three main sources have sustained my effort. The first was Ola’s memoirs, which she was persuaded to write while still in Africa and which were dedicated to her three granddaughters. In the introduction she admits that she was never a proper grandmother telling stories of the past; the memoirs were an effort to remedy that shortfall. These memoirs were written on the thinnest of onion-skin paper without recourse to punctuation or paragraphs—a true stream of consciousness flow. It took me a year to edit them into a conventional structure in which they could be copied for the granddaughters and in this I was helped by Linda O’Neil, a returned Canadian pioneer to Zaire. Linda’s help was not limited to editing for she contributed profoundly to my under- standing of Ola’s African experience. Another Zaire pioneer, Paul Hanbury, generously shared stories of Ola.

During the decades that Ola and I lived on different continents, weekly letters flew between us, and it is on these that I rely heavily for the period that post-dates the memoirs.

During the years of our wandering in Europe, keeping ahead of the invading forces of Nazi Germany, Ola’s stories of her childhood and youth in Poland served as an anchor in our peripatetic lives. Even after we settled in Canada she continued, in response to my frequent requests, to recount the events in that other world which the war effectively wiped out. As I grew older these stories took on a more mature reflection. Recollections and confidences led to a

particularly close mother–daughter relationship. And it is from the empathy thus developed that arose my strong desire to share the story of this remarkable woman, my mother.

My special thanks to May Hofman for her discerning and discreet editing, and to Edyta Radwillowicz who conscientiously reinstated the special accents and marks that are needed to make Polish words and names authentic.

Let me throw out a challenge to the children of pioneers all over the world. Record what your parents have done and experienced. The world of the early pioneers, those that responded to the Guardian’s call in the Ten Year Crusade, has vanished. The history of the Bahá’í world is being written in every island and territory.

Suzanne Schuurman, March 2008