Blog #16 Snow in Sedona for the new year!

Daughter Alicia Magal writes: It is snowing in Sedona today – December 31, 2014.  Glad we made no plans to go out, and will welcome in the secular new year at home!

My mother Nika was excited seeing snow this morning, and took a couple of pictures from her window.  She also took her first “selfie” on her new smart phone, since there was no one around to snap a photo of her with the snow in the background! 

I remember well the years she took my brother Will and me out of school to go skiing for a week in February when we were children.  Let me see now what she wrote, and I’ll send it out.

Start smiling please!  I have on my pants that fitted into ski boots from many decades ago when Fredziu took us to Aspen on our last ski trip together.  Today before New Year 2015 I just found this pair of forgotten ski pants in one of the boxes… incredible that I kept them all this time.  But today I wanted to wear them because it is snowing outside !!!!!!

These pants tell a fun story.  We were staying in Heddy Lamar’s cottage in Aspen Colorado,  swimming in her hot swimming pool  surrounded by snow and beautiful mountains. These warm pants that I found today I wore every day on that trip, since they were so practical and stylish!

We enjoyed skiing and swimming every day in this great combination of sun and snow  with good food and nice  people. WOW.   

    

Nothing is perfect in this life, so at 4 a.m. as we were returning to our home in Westchester , we finally found a run-down taxi (the one we had ordered never arrived) so in freezing weather with open broken windows, and  holding our skis, we arrived dead tired in our home in White Plains.

   

The next day  Fredziu looked at us and said, “I see we have our  limbs together, so now  the adventure in cold is over for us.  The time has come to decide where to go south  next winter.”

 

Greta Waldas, our artist friend from Wellfleet, Cape Cod, came to our rescue.  “Next winter you come to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico!”   She had a house there.

So we did! We kind of lived like young students in simple quarters, and the next winter we had the luck to meet a ponytailed young woman architect, who had built many homes.  We were at dinner with our new friends Anita and Carl Anton von Bleyleben from Austria who entertained many interesting ex-pats from America and Europe.  This woman told us about a beautiful, romantic town house that she was preparing for her and her husband’s retirement one day.  It was right in town on Los Chiquitos 2A across from the post office.  Unfortunately they would only rent it to us, and we wanted to buy it so we could stay there for many winters to come.

It had a beautiful door which was featured in a book on the doors of San Miguel, lovely Mexican furniture, and 3 terraces so I could hear  the music, which signaled yet another fiesta! We were so upset to find we could not buy it, but nothing we tried worked.

In the evening I took my visiting children to the airport and when I returned, my husband half asleep murmured “I think I bought the house on Chiquitos.”  I couldn’t understand what he meant, so I made him wake all the way up. “Tell me the story please!” So he said that while we were gone, the lady builder (so sorry to have forgotten her name)  called and said, “It is a woman's privilege to change her mind.  OK,  you can have it.”

So for 10 years from 1973-1983 our warm  painter’s  paradise lasted where I painted at Bellas Artes, we met with interesting friends, swam in hot springs, and enjoyed the mild winter weather, until one day  Fredziu could not breath at that altitude of almost 7,000 ft.  high. I had to get him out of there immediately.

Within a very short time I had to swap it for a nice home somewhere lower.  I hoped it would be anywhere but Florida, but you guessed it…it had to be Palm Beach, Florida. This begins another blog later, a whole new chapter.

Now I’m going to have hot soup and enjoy watching the snow fall.  In Sedona it is mostly decorative. Happy New Year to everyone!

P.S. Anne Crosman came over and took this picture of me outside my apartment in the Village of Oak Creek, Sedona.

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Nika’s Blog #15 Lonely on, , the Holidays

Life Begins at Ninety – Nika’s Blog #15

Lonely on the Holidays

Basically we are  lonely, even if we are surrounded by many people,  don’t you agree? Especially during Christmas and New Year.  Lots of people have no one to go to or celebrate with.  Yes, there are many good organizations providing food and help, but still many people are alone at the last chapter of their life.

  

That brings memories to me now, at my age of 94, of when I was 23 years old and all alone, living under a false name - Maria Zylinska - in Warsaw during World War II, from 1943-4, and hoping not to be recognized as Bronislawa Felicja Kohn from Krakow.  I had bought documents supplied by the underground so that I could survive and not be found out as a Jew and therefore under threat of death.

Every day going to work kept me busy, and in the afternoons I was teaching English to 4  students who probably still talk with my accent if they are alive.

Then came Christmas and they asked me where I am going to celebrate.  I was afraid to say that I am all alone. Everybody was suspicious that maybe one is hiding from being discovered as a Jew.  Then one day a young woman in our office invited me to her home to their festive dinner. Well, I was elated not to sit alone in my rented room.

I fixed myself up as best I could.  I had nothing pretty to wear, as all had been stolen, but I was full of anticipation about my first Christmas dinner in a Polish home.  It would be quite a great event!! The father of my friend was a university professor.  There were a few friends invited as well as family.

     

Very soon the subject of the Jewish situation came up and led to a heated discussion – and they said  “Germans are terrible, but at least they helped us get rid of our minority, the Jewish  people.”  They said other things that they never would have said if they knew I was Jewish, but I got to hear how people talk when they feel “safe” and can speak about how they really feel.  I could not swallow the food and felt crushed.

    

Last year my darling daughter Alicia  (Rabbi and spiritual leader in Sedona, Arizona)  was invited with me to return to Krakow for a presentation, one of several talks I gave there and in Warsaw.  But this particular one that made a huge impression on me was arranged by a very dedicated Dr. Prof  Aleks Skotnicki who helps any survivors of the Holocaust.  Prof. Skotnicki, who is not Jewish, founded a Dialogue Center in Krakow so that young people learn about the Holocaust and the dangers of racism and intolerance. Such a place and such an attitude would have been impossible to imagine  before the war.

I cannot describe  my feelings as I stood in 2014 on the same spot where I should have been shot  in 1942 when I found myself walking at 5 a.m. through the fields of the Blonia Park near my home in Krakow before the night-time curfew ended at 7a.m. This was just after my parents and brother and thousands of Jews were rounded up in Wielicka to be sent to a death camp, and before my “adventure” in Warsaw with a false identity had begun.

Later on during that memorable June day in 2014 as I was talking to a full room of older and younger Polish people (including Piotr and Marysia Pozniak, the children  of my piano teacher who saved my life… but that is a whole other chapter) I finally had a feeling of peace at the end of my life, and trying to forgive.

 

Now that I understand how lonely we can be surrounded by hundreds of well wishers, I ask myself could I do something about  helping people in Sedona where I am so happy, surrounded by love and respect?  Nobody deserves to be alone and suffer being old and forgotten!

 

Dec. 2014

Daughter Alicia adds:  In this post my mother mentioned several scenarios that are more fully described in our book “From Miracle to Miracle: A Story of Survival” about Nika’s wartime experiences, escaping seemingly certain death time and time again.  But the main theme of why she wanted to write this message in her blog was that she sensed the pain and loneliness that people can and do feel at this time of family gatherings and supposedly happy, close reunions with loved ones… and that doesn’t always happen.  She does spread cheer wherever she goes – to stores, restaurants, synagogue,  the post office, anywhere. She dresses beautifully and with colorful flair, and strikes up conversations with everyone and invites them home, especially for breakfast early in the morning, or for coffee (with brandy and whipped cream) in the late afternoon. I think she DOES add to the friendly connections of people in our community.  And she does help people get some perspective on all the blessings in their lives, although she doesn’t say it that way.  I mean, compared to what she went through, we all should thank our stars for much smaller challenges.

So I’m sending this out now before the secular New Year turning to 2015 in hopes that everyone reading this feels appreciated and connected, and reaches out so they do not feel lonesome.  Or come by Nika’s house, and we’ll both cheer you up!

Nika and Alicia at Hanukkah

Life Begins at Ninety #13 Breakfast Adventure

 Daughter Alicia comments:

My mother Nika cannot leave her house without having an adventure.  She talks to strangers and they become friends.  She crosses the street or goes to the post office and people respond, help, laugh, and give her yet another story to tell.  Here is the adventure of the day:

 

 

Late last night, I got hungry and ate cereal with fruit at 2 am; then went back to sleep. This story would not have happened if I had my normal 6 a.m. breakfast.  Was not hungry in the morning so I left home to See Eric Haggard (talented  physiotherapist) working on my balance.    

   

Eric made me jump on the trampoline, then I tried to walk  touching one foot in front of the other with closed eyes, etc.   All very  tiring.

Eric never gives up.  He is  a natural healer and a nice man who cares  - a rare bird.

  

Then I got to rest a little and Eric brought water in a champagne glass--- round delicious  goat cheese and little chocolate with nuts.  Thus revived, I started again walking, jumping, feeling silly. For a former gymnast and a dancer not to be able to hold my balance perfectly, who would have thought it possible? 

 

After an hour of this torture (not really) I walked  down to New Frontiers health store, and bought goat cheese and other delicious items and decided to have well-deserved breakfast.  In front of me at the coffee  table was a young man helping himself  to delicious, strong coffee and sat down at the first table.  When I was through fixing my brew, I asked if I could  join the young man at same table.  He looked like many other young people visiting Sedona, searching for a different kind of life.  Sedona  provides  many alternatives, I understand.

   

To my delight this young man, Thomas Klien, an architect, told me a bit about himslef.  He came from Vienna to join a dance group and see the wonders around Sedona and the almost-frozen Grand Canyon national park.

 

We spoke German and I told him the story of my broken hip at 15 years of age, when I fell from a boy’s bike that was way too high for me.  No one could fix such a break at that time.  The prognosis was that the leg will get  shorter and one has to wear a big ugly black boot. 

 

When my father listened to all the  doctors explaining the sad situation, he immediately  bought a ticket to Vienna for us, carrying me on his arms to the railroad. He used a passport of his brother and brother’s daughter since it would have been impossible on such short notice to get passports for us. My cousin Minna   (daughter of his sister Mala)  worked in Unfallkrankenhouse  (hospital for fixing broken bones) in Vienna.  She was a young doctor working there, and explained  that there is a new great doctor Boehler experimenting with screws, nails, and weights on pulleys to fix a broken hip, preventing it from getting shorter, and thus permitting a normal life after therapy.  It was just in an experimental stage but we had nothing to lose, so the good doctor did everything to save my leg.

   

I was hanging all day ....well, my leg was hanging, strapped on a pulley with a weight pulling, pulling, pulling, and causing constant pain, but preventing my leg from receding  2 1/2 inches, and keeping it in the right place after the leg was reset. The pain was constant, and worse in the evening, when all pillows were removed so it really pulled.  I promised to be so good the rest of my life if only this pain would go away.

  

Well cheer up, from all this pain came a great advantage: I learned speaking  Viennese-German very well.  They put a huge cast on after a few weeks, and I could  hobble around  and saw theater where they gave me a special seat. 

 

I lived for this year in a palatial home of my Aunt and Uncle – across from the French consulate, a life  so different from our Krakow medieval lovely town in Poland.

 

I was permitted to sit around the table and look at these  lovely  actresses and actors and writers discussing their professional troubles and good things, all that helped me forget all my suffering. I was a young teenager and so grateful for being allowed to be in the company of these sophisticated bohemians!

  

Imagine telling this story from 1935 to the young man as we were eating our breakfast in the store so many years  later!  I asked  Thomas  when he  returns to Vienna to look up  Gusshausstr  17  to see if it really was as grand as I remember it.  This was “bashert”  I explained  -  it means  “it had to happen.” This was my first time ever having breakfast so late and not at home.

 

New adventures  every day -  WOW.

 

 

- Nika Fleissig

Please Read My Blog Here:
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Rabbi Alicia Magalwww.jcsvv.org
928 204-1286
"A Jewel of a Shul"

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Mission Statement:
The Jewish Community of Sedona and the Verde Valley is a welcoming, egalitarian, inclusive congregation dedicated to building a link from the past to the future by providing religious, educational, social and cultural experiences. We choose to remain unaffiliated in order to respect and serve the rich diversity of our members and visitors.


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