(8-116) And the implication was always that somehow Harry's being passed over for promotion was Harry's fault.
(8-117) Hardly a hero's welcome home.
(8-118) None of us knew the extent to which he had defied his superiors.
(8-119) He did not talk of his disobedience.
(8-120 He did not brag of what he had done. The evidence was sealed shut.
(8-121) On the outside, the bound and taped package said simply: H.B. - Personal Notes - Marseilles - 1940.'' It gathered dust for 50 years.
(8-122) Yet, despite these travails, despite the silence, the love between Harry and Rose was strong.
Harry received
art lessons from Marc Chagall, and later helped Chagall,
one of the century's seminal artists, escape from France
to safety. The artist called him "bon ami," and wrote,
"Thank you with all my heart." (Photo by Lucretia
Bingham)
(8-123) As I grew up, the Mumford House, as they called their
center-chimneyed old Colonial house was my favorite place in the
world to be. The house rang with laughter and song. Laundry might
be piled as high as a mountain in the basement, flies might
cluster in the kitchen, children might sleep in every corner of
the house, even up under the rafters, but it was a warm and
anarchic atmosphere, in just the way a kid loves. Anything went as
long as you were polite and nice to the younger children and sang
grace at the dinner table. Meals were pretty haphazard affairs -
boiled potatoes, gray meat and chopped-up salads. And the motto
was, "If it's more than eight, don't wait!" And there always were
more than eight.
(8-124) Though Harry was a somewhat absent-minded participant in the daily running of the house, I often remember him helping with breakfasts. And he was always at the head of the table at dinnertime and led the family in singing grace.
(8-125) I was never too sure what he did with his time. His office was just off the dining room. And he was often in there reading, either books by Rudolf Steiner or about him and his anthroposophical belief system. And he worked on his design for the "Sportatron," a metal cage in which all sorts of athletic games could be played. The concept that never quite got off the ground, though he dreamed of having them constructed in spiral formation above the slums of New York.
(8-126) He was an ethereal presence in the midst of the chaos of his big family and and frequent houseguests. Theirs was truly an open house, in the best sense of the word. During the '70s I often drove up from New York City for the weekend, and no matter how often I asked to come, there was always an immediate welcome from Harry. He never hesitated or said it might be an inconvenient weekend. And though money was more than tight - the house was literally falling in around them - meals somehow always magically appeared. It was not in Harry's nature to turn anyone down.
(8-127) His daughter Abby writes, "My father was a very special man. I always knew it. He had such an air of dignity and grace, combined with gentleness and good humor. I was proud when he came to visit me at boarding school or to other events, and most touched when he dressed up so formally for my wedding and hired a limousine to take us to St. James Church where I was baptized, confirmed and married. It was like the time he made me feel so very loved when he designed and made a rocking horse for one of my early birthdays. I remember him working on it and smiling when I came to watch him. He exuded love. I understand now why Mother told me the people who worked with him in France wrote to her, `He is an angel.' "
"A mysterious woman
on a train stripped Harry of $100,000 and what remained
of his faith in an orderly world."
(8-128) But as the years went on, and Harry's physical majesty
faded a bit, a fanatical fire began to burn behind his thick
glasses that magnified his owlish gaze. He began to espouse some
strange beliefs. Some of the young wives and cousins tried not to
sit next to him at dinner time because he would fix them with an
uncomfortably intent stare and say things like, "Men used to be
clairvoyant. Able to see God and spiritual beings. Maybe," he
would awkwardly laugh, "Angels are sitting out on the wires
outside this house right now!"
(8-129) At first I liked sitting next to him at that dinner table. Though he could be dogmatic, I found that the more I challenged him, the more he liked it. He would smile and call it mental tennis. But as time went on, and his views became more extreme, they often upset me deeply.
(8-130) During the last years of his life, it was often his view on Jews.
(8-131) He even began to believe that the accounts of the Holocaust were exaggerated in order to raise money for the state of Israel. I once had to get up and walk away from the dinner table because he would not stop telling me that my soul was in immortal danger because I was married to a Jew. In a twisted way I knew he wanted to save me, but his thinking made me furious. For me, this has always been the most painful and troubling part of Harry's story.
(8-132) In some strange way, perhaps Harry sought forgiveness from his father, who was openly anti-Semitic, for having saved so many Jewish lives. I recently read a letter from my grandfather to Harry; its virulent anti-Semitism shocked me to the core.
(8-133) Billy, his youngest son, the one to unearth the box of letters and documents from behind the chimney, believes that Harry could not blame his troubles in the state department on those he revered - the boys from Yale and Groton who had hopscotched over him on their way up the state department ladder.
(8-134) It was too repugnant to imagine that those from his own social stratum had aided and abetted and even financed the Nazis. It was far easier to blame his troubles on a Zionist conspiracy.
(8-135) According to Bill, Harry even began to believe that some of the very people he had rescued had profiteered from the war. And that thought infuriated him.
(8-136) In that tape I made of him, Harry told told me, "I had learned too much about how the world was being run, being manipulated by the international bankers in London. And Wall Street. The state department listened to everything the bankers had to say. They had the power over the money. There are only about nine men so secret that it is not known who they are. They set the policy to rule the world. One of our Christian churches is infiltrated."
(8-137) Harry held the opinion that a number of these nine men were Jewish. He was convinced that a deal had been struck; The State of Israel could be allowed to exist if the corporations were not gone after.
(8-138) Ironically, John remembers his dad spending many hours with the Jewish men who owned the feed and hardware stores in nearby Colchester. "He loved hanging out with them and talking. He was always finding an excuse to go to the hardware store." And Harry was always kind and welcoming to my Jewish husband, even though he feared for the safety of my immortal soul.
(8-139) Given the current protests against the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, the notion of a worldwide collusion of money men is not considered as far-fetched as it once was. Where Harry got it all twisted up, says Billy, was in linking it to Jews. Billy believes it was his guilt about not getting all the more impoverished Jews to safety.
(8-140) "Dad was a pure humanist," he said. "He believed all people had a touch of the divine. But he had to have an `other' to blame for his betrayal, for his getting passed over. His loyalty to his father and class and Jesus was so strong that he began to think some of the wealthy Jews he helped escape were complicitous in this worldwide conspiracy. Which is why he hid the papers, because he was convinced they were out to get him."
(8-141) When Professor Elie Wiesel spoke at the U.N., something clicked inside for me about my Uncle Harry. Wiesel said, "A visa meant life, a refusal of a visa meant death. Why didn't others do it?" He asked, too, why it had taken so long to honor these righteous men.
(8-142) "We were depressed, silently mourning the 6 million worlds that had been lost. We were alone, abandoned by the world," Wiesel said. "They too (the righteous diplomats) were disowned, deprived of their livelihood and honor.Their solitude and ours merged. And that is what made them heroic."
(8-143) And as the television cameras whirred, and seven of Harry's children stood to be honored in his absence, I thought of how it had all come full circle. Of how Harry's actions are only now being redeemed.
(8-144) "It doesn't matter what he came to believe," said one Holocaust survivor. "What matters is what he did!"
(8-145) I now think that heroes need to be both a bit naÔve, yet also passionate. While storytellers can be the latter, we strive not to be the former. Harry's courage has inspired me to risk censure by telling this story as truthfully as I know how.
(8-146) If angels do exist, as Harry insisted, he is, at this very moment, smiling down on those glowing faces of his children and grandchildren and on the more than 6,000 souls who have him to thank for their existence.
