More on Lili and Heinele

So what happened to Lili and Heinele?  (I have gotten several queries.)

Here is a partial answer:

Yes, “Heinele” DID get to the USA, in August, 1946.  His new name was Charles or Charlie.   My parents took him in, which must have been something of a challenge to them, though when I asked about this, my mother said, no it wasn't...it was something they knew they had to do.  There was never a question about it. (Besides, she added, she got rid of my Aunt Regina, who I hadn't realized was living them up until then, and MUCH more difficult than Charlie.)  I was a toddler and my mother was pregnant with my sister and we all lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx!  Charlie slept on the sofa in the living room.  He didn’t speak any English, didn’t want to speak German, and nobody else knew any Czech.   But Charlie was as wonderful as his Aunt Lili said – he quickly learned English, caught up in school and lived with us (we eventually moved to a house in Queens) until he got married and went into the Army and then got his BS and MS degrees at night, and had a career as a research chemical engineer.  One of his batteries was on the lunar landing module for the Apollo shot to the moon.  

More important, he was a real “mensch” – a wonderful, kind and thoughtful family person (he had three daughters and 6 grandchildren), whom everybody liked and who always made the effort to make sure that everyone in the family was okay.  He and his family lived in Matawan, NJ. 

A dedicated runner and fitness person, he died unexpectedly of a heart attack when he was out for a run one morning in 2000, at the age of 68.   Since he was thought to be the healthiest person in the family, this was a total shock to everybody, and it is one of the few deaths I have never really gotten over.

Interestingly, Charlie never talked about his experiences during the war, and nobody ever asked him.  I think everybody assumed  that was the right thing to do.  It wasn’t until the movie Shindler’s List came out and his synagogue asked him to give a little talk as part of a Holocaust memorial program that he wrote down his experiences, and so far as I know, that talk was the only time he spoke of them.  In that talk he said:  “Some maxims I try to live by:  ‘The harder one works, the luckier one gets.’  And,  ‘It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,’ which you will recognize as a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt.”  I think that combination of optimism and hard work was what enabled him to create his new life. 

I think that fills you in about “Heinele.”  His aunt Lili (Leonie in the letters) and her husband also eventually came to the US.  For some reason, they wound up in Seattle, Washington, and I don’t think I ever met them.  They are both dead now.