Happy birthday to Czechoslovak politician and Army General Lev Prchala, born on 23 March 1892! He sent this handwritten letter and his Curriculum Vitae to Pavel Fabry in 1956 from London, where he was living in exile. I have included the typewritten response from Pavel confirming that he will represent General Prchala for “Compensation for Persecution”.
*Update 14 May 2025: This post has been moved to the top of the page, the previous post was deleted. My sincere appreciation to Miroslav Kamenik, who kindly sent me his translation of Gen. Prchala’s letter and C.V., which I have transcribed here – thank you!
“11 Oct 1956 Dear Doctor, First of all, let me kindly thank you for your warm greetings forwarded to me by our friend Dr. Pauliny-Toth. He also stated you were ready to take care about my case by West-German offices. As you know, it is about a compensation for losses suffered in my property, service pension [MK – soldier], health of myself and my wife and possible some kind of pension. Attached is my CV as well, let me kindly ask you about the estimated costs related with my case. My personal circumstances are not such that I could send you the usual fee and advance payment for expenses. Of course, I am ready to cover your fee and all costs when the result of my case will be positive [MK – i.e. from future profit]. Awaiting your kind reply, Yours faithfully, Prchala”
“C.V.
*23 March 1892 [born] in Polska Ostrava, Frydek area, Silesia [MK – Empire of Austria-Hungary]
Roman Catholic, married with Lucie Seebode *9 August 1901 Kuokkala Finland, resident in St. Petersburg (Russia), evangelical
Children – son Ladislav Vladimir *5 Feb 1920 in Batarejnaja, Siberia (Russia), now resident in Buenos Aires, Argentina; daughter Lucie Marie *29 July 1921, died 9 Oct 1936 in Kosice [MK – Slovakia today]
Education – Gymnazium [MK – classic high school] with exam; 4 semesters of Law in Vienna; Military school in Paris 1921-23
April 1914 – activated in Inf. Regiment 13 in Krakow [MK – Cracovia, Poland today], sergeant.
August 1914 till June 1916 in the field/ eastern front of WWI
Since June 1916 in Russian captivity, in rank of lieutenant
June 1917 till August 1920 in Czechoslovak legion in Russia (or Siberia), then returned to newly established Czechoslovakia in rank of Colonel, as the commander of the III. Czechoslovak division in Russia [MK – in charge of retreating battles, towards to Vladivostok]
Autumn 1923 till autumn 1925 commander of the 1st mountain brigade in Ruzomberok [MK – Slovakia today], since autumn 1924 in rank of Brigade General
1925 till 1931 Commander of the XII. Inf. Division in Uzhorad [MK – or Uzhhorod, in Ruthenia/Subcarpathian Ukraine/Russia in Czechoslovak times, now part of Ukraine], since 1927 in rank of Division General
Autumn 1931 till autumn 1933 Deputy Chief of Staff in Prague
Nov 1933 till 1938 Army Commander in Kosice [MK – Provincial/Land’s military commander in Slovakia +Ruthenia], since January 1935 in rank of Army General [MK – highest rank]
September 1938 Commander of IV. Army in Brno in time of Munich [MK – expected attack from 3rd Reich, Prchala in the area of most expected fights]
Since 5 October 1938 till till 19 January 1939 Commander of Army in Slovakia
19 Jan 1939 appointed minister of the II. Czechoslovak Republic for Subcarpathia [MK – 1 of 3 ministers of this part of CZ]
16 March 1939, after 15th when Czechoslovakia had been occupied by Germans, Lev Prchala turns back to Prague to newly established so-called Protektorat Bohmen und Mahren and has been forced into retirement. It is prohibited to leave the Protektorat, possible only with special approval by German Military office.
25 May 1939 fled secretly to Poland, with wife and son, where he organized the Czechoslovak Legion for the fight against Hitler.
17 September 1939 arrested by Soviets in eatern Galicia [MK – most probably Zalishchyky in todays Ukraine, history was not very kind in/to this area…], then released and passed to Romania.
27 October 1939 till June 1940 in France, in June fled to England – since 26 June 1940 in UK, living in London [MK – next words not fully legible, probably meaning “stateless, on state support”, this corresponds with the date of Prchala’s naturalization officially done by UK in 1961]
Army general had to escape from Protektorat in May 1939 in order to avoid capture/avoid death by execution, because he was the only General of Czechoslovak army strongly against the capitulation to Hitler, well known to the people of Czech lands, and Gestapo as well. Many personal damages and harm are connected to the escape. He left all his belongings which he had acquired and saved in 20 years, and was exposed to persecution and harassment by the Czechoslovak capitulators like Dr. Benes and his followers, even in friendly foreign countries. The result is not only material but also in the matter of the failing health, including his wife. She had to pass two operations and suffers nervous disease [MK-?], he suffers from angina pectoris.
Material losses: Four room flat + kitchen + office equipment: furniture, carpets, clothes, silver, porcelain, glass incl. Crystal glass, piano, paintings, books, 6 Persian carpets – 150,000Kc [MK – Czechoslovak Crowns in 1938 prices] and 40,000Kc in shares and cash.
Losses due to the forced retirement between May 1939 and May 1945 about 600,000Kc [MK – other potential losses unknown, not legible]
Here are more letters from General Lev Prchala to Dr. Pavel Fabry (Vlado’s father) from 1958. I have also included duplicates of letters from Pavel. Thank you to Miroslav Kamenik for translating many of the letters here!
From Lev Prchala, 29.3.58
Vážený pane doktore, drahý příteli,
již dlouho jsem Vám nepsal. Byl jsem dosti vážně churav a ještě dnes nejsem ve své kůži. Trpím rheumatickými bolestmi svalstva a rychlým úbytkem váhy. Není vyloučeno, že je to ve spojení se zdejším podnebím, je však také možné, že jde současně o neuralgii způsobenou celkovým stavem mých nervů. Nebylo by divu, povážím-li co jsem za svého života musel unésti. Právě nejnověji mému zdravotnímu stavu a nervovému systému neprospěl dopis Regierungspräsidenta z Köllnu, jehož opis přikládám.
Byl bych Vám velmi povděčen, kdybyste mi laskavě co nejdříve oznámil svůj názor a poradil, co dále dělat. Doufám, vážený pane doktore, že jste alespoň Vy zdráv v lepším švýcarském klimatu a jsem se srdečným pozdravem
Váš oddaný
Prchala
→
Dear Doctor, dear friend,
I have not written to you for a long time. I have been quite seriously ill and am still not myself today (in my senses?). I suffer from rheumatic muscle pains and rapid weight loss. It is not impossible that this is connected with the local climate, but it is also possible that it is at the same time neuralgia caused by the general condition of my nerves. It would not be surprising, considering what I have had to endure in my lifetime. Most recently, my health and nervous system have not benefited from the letter from the Regierungspräsident of Köln (Cologne, Germany), a copy of which I enclose.
I should be very grateful if you would kindly let me know your opinion as soon as possible and advise me what to do next. I hope, dear Doctor, that you at least are well in the better climate of Switzerland, and I am with cordial regards
Your devoted
Prchala
[Translation: Miroslav Kamenik / 17.4.2025]
From Pavel Fábry, 5.mája 1958 (5 May)
Typewritten in Slovak language
Vysokovážený pán Generál,
Vzácný Priateľu!
S netrpezlivosťou očakávate moje oznámené riadky. Chápem velmi dobře situáciu. Ale ako z priloženého záznamu napamäť vidíte, nelením, ale na každom mieste a kroku sa starám, aby sa otázka riešila. Tým referentom je nie kuzávidieniu. Na jednej strane státisíc žiadostí a na druhej strane denne dostávajú úpravy a úpravy, ako prísne vposudzovaní pokračovať. Žialbohu sú medzi nimi aj rôzne elementy, ktoré sa cítia v minulosti dotčení, keď sa oprenasledovaní nácistmi jedná. Ťažko o tom písať.
Tendencia, aby sa pokračovalo nie na odškodnění z politických dôvodov, ale z dovodu národnosti má svoje úspornépozadie, lebo tam sú odškodnenia veľmi nízke.
Preto musíme držať líniu politického dovodu. Nuž veď politický minister bol pre politické smýšlania prenásledovaný. Veď Bundestagsabgerdneter Wenzel Jaksch v jeho objemnej knihe /520 strán/ Vás viackráť spomína a posledná spomienka je na Vašu politickú činnost a úlohu na Východe Republiky.
Velmi by bylo záhodné, aby sme sa sišli. Viem, že sú to veľké náklady – ale myslím že do Paríža by to nebol veľký výdavok. Prípadne v Bonne / dačím by som aj ja preddávkove prispel/ a prebrali by sme to v rámci mojho memoranda – v ktorom Ste medzi šiestimi – a prehovorili s Prezidentom Wiedergutmachungs Kommission des Bundestages a samým poslancom Jakschom. Prosím Vás mne v tomto smere podať Váš náhľad a dobu, kedy by sme sa mohli stretnúť. Nemajtežiadne pochybnosti že odškodnenie dostanete.
Pri tejto príležitosti by som chcel aj žiadost Rückerstattungu podať – mám ju pripravenú, len chcem niektoré otázky prehovoriť.
Očekávajúc Vaše vzácné zprávy a pokyny zdravím Vás čo najsrdečnejšie do skorého videnia
Váš (not signed Fábry)
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Highly Exalted General,
Dear Friend!
You eagerly await my announced lines. I understand the situation very well. But as you can see from the enclosed memoir, I am not lying, but at every place and step I am making sure that the issue is addressed. Those clerks are not to be envied. On the one hand, hundreds of thousands of applications and on the other hand, they receive daily adjustments and modifications as to how strictly to proceed in the assessment. Unfortunately, there are various elements among them who feel aggrieved by the Nazi persecution in the past. Hard to write about it.
The tendency to continue not on reparations on political grounds but on grounds of nationality has its economical background, for there the reparations are very low.
Therefore, we must hold the line on political grounds. Well, after all, a political Minister has been persecuted for his political views. After all, Bundestagsabgeordneter (MK – member of Parliament) Wenzel Jaksch mentions you several times in his voluminous book /520 pages/ and the last memory is of your political activity and role in the East of the Republic.
It would be very convenient for us to get together. I know it’s a big expense – but I don’t think it would be a big expense to go to Paris. Possibly in Bonn / I would also make a contribution in advance / and we would discuss it within the framework of my memorandum – in which you are one of the six – and talk to the President of the Wiedergutmachungs Kommission of the Bundestags and to the Member Jaksch himself. I would ask you to give me your insight in this regard and a time when we could meet. Have no doubt that you will receive compensation.
I would also like to take this opportunity to make a request to the Rückerstattung – I have it ready, but I just want to ask a few questions.
In anticipation of your kind messages and instructions I greet you most cordially until I see you soon
Yours (not signed Fábry)
[Translation: Miroslav Kamenik / 17.4.2025]
From Lev Prchala, 14.V.1958
66, St. George’s Drive, London SW1
Vysoce vážený pane doktore, drahý příteli!
Srdečný dík za Váš dopis ze dne 5.V. t.r. (MK – 5. května tohoto roku). Plně s Vámi souhlasím, že se musíme držet politických důvodů v mé záležitosti. Souhlasím také s Vámi, že je nutné, abychom se sešli. Domnívám se, že nejlepší místo pro nai schůzku by byl Bonn. Byl jsem totiž pozván do Stuttgartu na Sudetskoněmecký sjezd a mám již volnou letenku do Stuttgartu. Jedná se nyní o to, kdy bonnský parlament bude zasedat, abychom tam našli Jaksche a Frenzla – zda to bude v posledním týdnu květnovém anebo v prvním týdnu v červnu. Snažil jsem se to již vypátrat, ale ani na telegram, ani na telefon nedostalo se mi odpovědi. Proto navrhuji: až se to dozvím ve Stuttgartu, zaslal bych Vám okamžitě o tom telegrafickou zprávu, v níž bych také navrhl den naší schůzky v Bonnu. Můj telegram můžete očekávat dne 23.V. t.r. – Vás bych pak, Vážený pane doktore prosil, abyste mi telegraficky sdělil, zda s mým návrhem souhlasíte.
Dnes se uvidím s Dr. Paulinym a budu jej informovat o Vašem dopisu.
Očekávaje Vaši laskavou odpověď ještě do Londýna,
jsem se srdečným pozdravem
Váš oddaný
Prchala
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Highly respected doctor, dear friend!
Sincere thanks for your letter of 5.V. this year (MK – 5 May this year). I fully agree with you that we must stick to political considerations in my matter. I also agree with you that it is imperative that we meet. I believe that the best place to meet would be Bonn. I have been invited to Stuttgart for the Sudeten German Congress and I already have a free ticket to Stuttgart. The question now is when the Bonn parliament will meet so that we can find Jaksch and Frenzel there – whether it will be in the last week of May or the first week of June. I have already tried to find out, but neither the telegram nor the telephone has been answered. I therefore suggest that when I hear about this in Stuttgart, I should send you a telegraphic message immediately, in which I would also suggest a date for our meeting in Bonn. You can expect my telegram on the 23rd of May – I would then ask you, Dear Doctor, to tell me by telegraph whether you agree with my proposal.
I shall see Dr. Pauliny today and inform him of your letter.
Expecting your kind reply still to London,
I am your devoted
Prchala
[Translation: Miroslav Kamenik / 17.4.2025]
From Lev Prchala, 19.6.1958
t.č. Rieneck 235 bei Gemünden am Main
Vysoce vážený pane doktore, drahý příteli,
přijměte, prosím, ještě jednou můj srdečný dík za Vaši obětavou a přátelskou pomoc. Můj krátký pobyt v Bonnuve společnosti Vaší milostivé paní choti a Vaší mně zůstane ještě dlouho milou vzpomínkou na vzácné lidi a krásné Slovensko. V příloze dovoluji si zaslati 6 mnou podepsaných formulářů a jsem s ruky políbením a se srdečným pozdravem
Váš
Prchala
PS: 27. t.m. budu již zpět v Londýně, 2 Cleve Rd., NW6
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(at that time) Rieneck 235 bei Gemünden am Main (Germany)
Dear Doctor, dear friend,
please accept once again my heartfelt thanks for your dedicated and friendly help. My short stay in Bonn in the company of your gracious wife and your [daughter – TB] will remain for a long time a pleasant memory of the precious people and beautiful Slovakia. Enclosed I take the liberty of sending you 6 forms signed by me and with my hand kisses and warm regards
Yours
Prchala
PS: I shall be back in London, 2 Cleve Rd., NW6 on the 27th of this month.
[Translation: Miroslav Kamenik / 17.4.2025]
no date – Karlspreis / Sudetendeutscher Tag Stuttgart, 25.5.1958???
(Reichsbahn-Hotel & Bahnhof-Turmhotel Stuttgart, Hans Loeble)
Vysoce vážený pane doktore, drahý příteli,
vracím Vám tímto mnou podepsanou kopii (zázrkami?). Lituji, že jste nebyl přítomen na dnešní evropské oslavě, která se mimo každé očekávání skvěle vydařila. Mluvil jsem s poslancem Frenzelem a smluvil s ním schůzku na 10.6.1958 v Bonnském parlamentě. Jakše jsem nestihl, poněvadž odjel na pohřeb svého bratra, který prý náhle zemřel. Těším se na shledanou s Vámi v Bonnu a to dne 10.6.1958. Budu bydlet v hotelu Krone (?) naproti hlavnímu nádraží.
Milostivé paní ruku líbám, Vás srdečně zdraví Váš oddaný
Prchala
PS: Přeji Vám i Vaší milostivé paní chotišťastnou cestu.
→
Highly respected doctor, dear friend,
I hereby return to you a copy signed by me (by miracles?). I regret that you were not present at today’s European celebration, which, beyond all expectations, was a great success. I have spoken to MEP Frenzel and arranged a meeting with him on 10 June 1958 in the Bonn Parliament. I was unable to meet Jakš because he had gone to attend the funeral of his brother, who is said to have died suddenly. I look forward to seeing you in Bonn on 10.6.1958. I will be staying at the Hotel Krone (?) opposite the main station.
I kiss your gracious lady’s hand and send you my heartfelt greetings from your devoted
Prchala
PS: I wish you and your gracious lady a happy journey
[Translation: Miroslav Kamenik / 17.4.2025]
From Lev Prchala, 2.7.1958
Vážený pane doktore, drahý příteli,
srdečný dík za Váš ctěný dopis z 28.6.1958, jakož i za přílohu, kterou Vám přiloženě vracím. Děkuji také za lístek z Gemünden, který mi zaslala Vaše milostivá paní choť do Rienecku. Nyní jsem opět v tom zaplakaném Londýně a marně vzpomínám na krásné chvíle, které jsem v Bonnu prožil va Vaší a Vaší milostivé paní společnosti. Dejž Bože, aby páni v Kölnu moji žádost příznivě posoudili. Pak bych měl po starostech a letěl bych rovnou do Ženevy, abych Vám, vážený pane doktore, osobně poděkoval a milostivé paní složil svou poklonu. V Německu jsem obdržel také dopis od svého přítele Dr. Hönigera, bývalého majora justiční služby v Košicích, v němž mi sděluje, že chce s Vámi navázat spojení a dát své služby k Vaší disposici. Je to velmi čestný chlap, sportovec, který po Mnichově vydržel v armádě až do posledního okamžiku a nechal se pak pensionovat. Rozhodně nepatřil k těm Němcům, kteří v neštěstí ??? opouštěli potápějící se loď.
Milostivé paní ruku líbá, Vás srdečně zdraví, Váš oddaný
Prchala
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Dear Doctor, dear friend,
my heartfelt thanks for your esteemed letter of 28.6.1958, as well as for the enclosure which I am returning to you. Thank you also for the note from Gemünden, which your kind wife sent me in Rieneck. I am now back in that weepy London and I am vainly recalling the beautiful moments I spent in Bonn in your and your gracious wife’s company. God grant that the gentlemen in Cologne may consider my application favourably. Then my worries would be over, and I would fly straight to Geneva to thank you personally and to pay my respects to your ladyship. In Germany I also received a letter from my friend Dr. Höniger, a former major in the judicial service in Košice, in which he tells me that he wishes to make contact with you and place his services at your disposal. He is a very honest man, a sportsman, who after Munich lasted in the army until the last moment and then retired. He certainly wasn’t one of those Germans who abandoned a sinking ship in a disaster.
I kiss the hand of the gracious lady, I greet you warmly, your devoted
Prchala
[Translation: Miroslav Kamenik / 17.4.2025]
From Lev Prchala, 22.VIII.1958
2, Cleve Rd. London NW6
Vážený pane doktore, drahý příteli!
Srdečný dík za lístek z Bonnu a za Váš ctěný dopis ze dne 17. t.m. ze Ženevy. Je mi opravdu líto, že došlo k nedorozumění ohledně mého zastoupení. Došlo k tomu tak, že po Vašem odjezdu ze Stuttgartu mne navštívil Dr. Höniger, jejž jsem požádal o svědectví ve věci mého pronásledování z politických důvodů. Dr. Höniger byl totiž majorem justiční služby v Košcích a může býti důležitým svědkem v mé věci.
Bohužel Dr. Höniger, který je nyní sám advokátem v Západním Německu (bydlí v blízkosti Stuttgartu), učinil více – ve saze mně prospět. Než jsem od něho žádal. Ukázal jsem mu při osobním setkání odpověď kolínského presidenta a tu Dr. Höniger – ač jsem jej výslovně upozornil, že Vy jste mým právním zástupcem a požádal, aby se s Vámi přími dorozuměl – napsal přímo Regierungspresidentovi dopis z 12.6.1958 o prodloužení lhůty. Při tom – patrně, aby svou intervenci blíže odůvodnil, užil – jak z opisu vidno – rčení, že jsem jej „pověřil péčí o mé zájmy“.
Není pochyby, že tak učinil v nejlepším úmyslu v obavě, aby nebyla promeškána lhůta. Bylo by mně velmi líto, kdybyste se z toho důvodu rozhněval na mne nebo na Dr. Hönigera. Sám Vás prosím, abyste mi laskavě prominul, jestliže jsem snad věc „zbabral“, ale současně, abyste se na Dr. Hönigera nezlobil, že Vám hned nenapsal, jak bylo jeho povinností a oč jsem jej také požádal. Na druhé straně by však bylo opravdu škoda, nepoužít jeho služeb a rozsáhlých styků, které mi nabídl ochotně ze staré známosti. Ostatně si vzpomínám, že po návratu do Londýna jsem se Vám zmínil o Dr. Hönigerovi v dopise, který jsem Vám hned napsal. Nyní napíši Dr. Hönigerovi do Winnenden znovu, aby neopomenul přímo s Vámi se dorozumět o meritu věci. Byl bych opravdu šťasten, kdybyste se dohodli o spolupráci a společném postupu.
Dr. Locherovi jsem vyřídil Vaše vzkazy. Byl však v posledních týdnech opět churav srdeční chorobou, vzniklou z loňského úrazu. Slíbil však, že Vám napíše přímo, jakmile zdravotní stav mu dovolí.
Ještě jednou Vám děkuji za Vaši neúnavnou péči a obětavou činnost za nás všechny a jsem s rukypolíbením milostivé paní
Váš oddaný
Prchala
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Dear Doctor, dear friend!
My sincere thanks for the note from Bonn and for your esteemed letter of the 17th of this month from Geneva. I am really sorry that there has been a misunderstanding about my representation. It happened that after your departure from Stuttgart I was visited by Dr. Höniger, whom I asked to give evidence on the matter of my persecution for political reasons. Dr. Höniger was a major in the judicial service in Košice and can be an important witness in my case.
Unfortunately, Dr. Höniger, who is now himself a lawyer in West Germany (he lives near Stuttgart), has done more – in an effort to benefit me. than I had asked of him. I showed him in a personal meeting the reply of the President of Cologne, and here Dr. Höniger – although I had expressly informed him that you were my attorney and asked him to communicate with you directly – wrote a letter dated 12.6.1958 directly to the Regierungspresident for an extension of time. In doing so, apparently in order to further justify his intervention, he used – as can be seen from the description – the phrase that I had ‘entrusted him to look after my interests’.
There is no doubt that he did so with the best of intentions, fearing that the deadline would be missed. I should be very sorry if you were angry with me or Dr. Höniger for that reason. I would ask you to forgive me if I have perhaps “botched” the matter, but at the same time not to be angry with Dr. Höniger for not writing to you immediately, as was his duty and as I had asked him to do. On the other hand, however, it would be a real pity not to use his services and the extensive contacts which he has offered me willingly out of old acquaintance. Incidentally, I remember that on my return to London I mentioned Dr. Höniger to you in a letter which I wrote to you at once. I shall now write to Dr. Höniger in Winnenden again, so that he may not fail to communicate directly with you on the merits of the matter. I would be very happy if you could agree on cooperation and joint action.
I have conveyed your messages to Dr. Locher. However, he has been sick again in recent weeks with a heart condition arising from an accident last year. But he has promised to write to you directly as soon as his health permits.
I thank you again for your untiring care and dedication on behalf of us all, and I am hand in hand with the gracious lady
Your devoted
Prchala
[Translation: Miroslav Kamenik / 17.4.2025]
From Lev Prchala, 21.X.1958
Velevážený pane doktore, drahý příteli,
srdečně děkuji za Váš ctěný dopis z 20.X.1958, jakož i letecký lístek, který přiloženě vracím. Velmi lituji, že nemohu vyhovět Vašemu přání a přiletět do Paříže. Jsem opravdu churav a kromě toho zabraňují tomu i jiné překážky. Promiňte!
Milostivé paní uctivě ruku líbá, Vás srdečně zdraví Váš oddaný
Prchala
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Dear Doctor, dear friend,
I thank you very much for your esteemed letter of 20.X.1958, as well as the air ticket (MK – air ticket), which I enclose. I regret very much that I am unable to comply with your wish and come to Paris. I am really sick and there are other obstacles preventing it. Excuse me!
Gracious ladies respectful hand kisses, I greet you cordially
Your devoted
Prchala
[Translation: Miroslav Kamenik / 17.4.2025]
From Lev Prchala, 16.XI.1958 (viditelná změna v rukopisu, těžko čitelný / hard to read handwriting)
L.Prchala
2, Cleve Rd.
London NW6
Vážený pane doktore a drahý příteli,
srdečně Vám, drahý příteli, děkuji za Váš dopis z 13. t.m., jakož i za přiložený šek na Ł100 (GBP), 20 dollarů a 50 swiss francs v bankovkách.
Nevím, čím jsem si tuto Vaši laskavost zasloužil a jak za ni poděkovat. I když tyto peníze považujete za zálohu na eventuální rentu (?) a doplatky, nemohu přece než prozatím upřímně děkovat a obdivovat Vaši důvěru k mé osobě a Vaše dobré opravdu křesťanské srdce.
Snad Bůh se nade mnou smiluje a dopřeje mi, abych se Vám mohl odvděčiti za Vaši laskavost a za Vaši namáhavou a obětavou práci, kterou si dáváte s mou záležitostí. Jsem přesvědčen, že bude korunována úspěchem.
Věřte, že bych se rád byl dostavil do Paříže, ale zaprvé selhalo moje zdraví a zadruhé že to moje sociální závislost na Czech Refugee Trust Fund a na maličké penzi, kterou týdně pobírám, které téměř neumožňují každé moje cestování. Penzi (Ł 2-7-0) bych musel před odjezdem na čas mé nepřítomnosti z V.Br. Vypovědět a Cz.R.T.F., v jehož domě bydlíme, musel by k cestě dáti svůj souhlas. To je moje situace, jež je kromě toho tím komplikovanější, poněvadž mám ženu, která na těchto soc. podporách je závislá stejně jako já. (?) pomoc by byla renta z Německa, která by nám poskytla možnost slušnější existence a trochu větší svobody.
Co se týče doplnění mé žádosti o náhradu za ztracený majetek jsem Vám rád k dispozici, prozatím bohužel jen zde v Anglii. Jsem šťasten, že spojenými silami se nám podařilo zmařit intriky sl. J. (Jenček?). Správně jsme odhadli již v Bonnu, kdo se za (?) touto ….ou skrývá a čas potvrdil náš posudek. Je to lekce pro p. presidenta v Kolíně, ale bohužel i pro Vás, jemuž za dobrotu a šlechetnost se odplatilo strašným nevděkem.
Doufám, že jste se přes tuto nemilou a bolestivou příhodu již šťastně přenesl a že Vaše zdraví tím příliš neutrpělo.
Modlím se za Vás a za Vaši vzácnou pani manželku, za Vaše zdraví a štěstí a jsem
Váš oddaný
Prchala
PS: Žena děkuje a upřímně za Váš milý pozdrav a posílá srdečné pozdravy Vaší choti a Vám, drahý pane doktore a příteli.
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Dear Doctor and dear friend,
I thank you most heartily for your letter of the 13th instant, and for the enclosed cheque for £100 (GBP), 20 dollars and 50 swiss francs in notes.
I do not know what I have done to deserve this kindness and how to thank you for it. Even if you consider this money as a deposit for the eventual annuity (?) and supplementary payments, I cannot but for the present sincerely thank and admire your confidence in my person and your good truly Christian heart.
May God have mercy on me and grant that I may repay you for your kindness and for the laborious and devoted work you are putting into my cause. I am confident that it will be crowned with success.
Believe me, I would have liked to have come to Paris, but firstly my health has failed and secondly it is my social dependence on the Czech Refugee Trust Fund and the tiny pension I receive weekly that make any travel almost impossible. The pension (£2-7-0) would have to be paid to me before I could leave for the time of my absence from Great Britain. I would have to give notice and Cz.R.T.F., in whose house we live, would have to give his consent to the journey. This is my situation, which is all the more complicated because I have a wife who is as dependent on these social benefits as I am. (?) Help would be an annuity from Germany, which would give us the possibility of a moredecent existence and a little more freedom.
I am happy to be of service to you regarding the completion of my application for compensation for lost property, unfortunately for the time being only here in England. I am happy that by joining forces we have been able to thwart Ms. J. (?) intrigues. We correctly guessed back in Bonn who was behind … (not legible) and time has confirmed our assessment. It is a lesson for Mr. President in Cologne, but unfortunately also for you, whose kindness and generosity have been repaid with terrible ingratitude.
I hope that you have got over this unpleasant and painful episode happily, and that your health has not suffered much.
I pray for you and for your precious wife, for your health and happiness and am
your devoted
Prchala
PS: My wife thanks and sincerely for your kind greetings and sends her heartfelt regards to your wife and to you, dear doctor and friend.
“I have observed this in my experience of slavery,–that whenever my condition was improved, instead of increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.”
[…]
“He told me I could go nowhere but that he could get me; and that, in the event of my running away, he should spare no pains in his efforts to catch me. He exhorted me to content myself, and be obedient. He told me, if I would be happy, I must lay out no plans for the future. He said, if I behaved myself properly, he would take care of me. Indeed, he advised me to complete thoughtlessness of the future, and taught me to depend solely upon him for happiness. He seemed to see fully the pressing necessity of setting aside my intellectual nature, in order to contentment in slavery. But in spite of him, and even in spite of myself, I continued to think, and to think about the injustice of my enslavement, and the means of escape.”
[…]
“I had a number of warm-hearted friends in Baltimore,–friends that I loved almost as I did my life,–and the thought of being separated from them forever was painful beyond expression. It is my opinion that thousands would escape from slavery, who now remain, but for the strong cords of affection that bind them to their friends. The thought of leaving my friends was decidedly the most painful thought with which I had to contend.”
[…]
“It was a most painful situation; and, to understand it, one must needs experience it, or imagine himself in similar circumstances. Let him be a fugitive slave in a strange land–a land given up to be the hunting-ground for slaveholders–whose inhabitants are legalized kidnappers–where he is every moment subjected to the terrible liability of being seized upon by his fellowmen, as the hideous crocodile seizes upon his prey!–I say, let him place himself in my situation–without home or friends–without money or credit–wanting shelter, and no one to give it–wanting bread, and no money to buy it,–and at the same time let him feel that he is pursued by merciless men-hunters, and in total darkness as to what to do, where to go, or where to stay,–perfectly helpless both as to the means of defence and means of escape,–in the midst of plenty, yet suffering the terrible gnawings of hunger,–in the midst of house, yet having no home,–among fellow-men, yet feeling as if in the midst of wild beasts, whose greediness to swallow up the trembling and half-famished fugitive is only equalled by that with which the monsters of the deep swallow up the helpless fish upon which they subsist,–I say, let him be placed in this most trying situation,–the situation in which I was placed,–then, and not till then, will he fully appreciate the hardships of, and know how to sympathize with, the toil-worn and whip-scarred fugitive slave.”
–From chapters 10 and 11 of “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself”
Thank you to Fabian Schneider, and to his parents, for permission to share this message, in connection to the letters of Frano Tiso I published back in 2016. It gives me great pleasure that my work has had a positive impact, and that I can meet so many lovely and interesting people from all over the world because of Vlado!
15 August 2024
Dear Tara Burgett,
I’m writing to express my gratitude for your work on the Fabry family history website, particularly for publishing the letters from Fraňo “Franz” Tiso, whom I (*1994) have an interest in.
My interest in Mr. Tiso stems from a family connection – he was a friend of the Schneider family in the latter half of the 20th century and a regular guest at our home [in the Eichstätt Landkreis in Germany]. My father (*1955), spoke highly of him and credited Mr. Tiso with convincing my grandmother (*1929 ✝2019) to send him to a specific type of high school, significantly impacting his education. Tiso and my father would also often discuss (first in person and later in the form of letters) science and technology, which became my father’s calling until his retirement. I too am a software developer these days.
My father stresses Tiso never tried influence him ideology-wise, but to he was always delighted to see him because of his science and technology interests. Tiso would gift him copies of the Stafette magazine, which is like Highlights or National Geographic Kids from a US point of view.
A few years ago, my father brought him up again after many, many years. He mentioned that Tiso was involved in diplomacy before 1945 in Slovakia. I had since learned about Nazi collaborationist regimes and the last name clicked with Jozef Tiso. Looking into him, I soon found a declassified CIA document that looked like an indication of a propaganda operation. While I never found hard proof of that, I have kept doing on-off research into this friend of the family.
Much like the Vichy French, he hated communism so much that even after the liberation from the Nazis, he would resort to stirring up the Cold War and lionize a man responsible for the murder of Poles and Jews in the tens of thousands. I do not believe that rejecting this sort of stance makes one a communist, either.
I do not know any members of my family who would appreciate this sort of militarism and nationalism. The same grandmother that hosted Franz Tiso protested the deployment of Pershing II ballistic missiles. I remember her being opposed to the Second Gulf War, though she was somewhat past protesting in the streets mobility-wise. My dad says when they discussed politics over coffee, it was limited to economic policy of the day. I would have loved to talk to her about Tiso, but by the time I started my research, my grandmother was unable to speak for neurological reasons.
It’s a stark reminder of the often troubling nature of post-war politics and personal relationships. These revelations have deeply shaped my understanding of denazification, the challenges of post-war reconciliation and the need for anti-fascism.
Despite my personal disappointment, I’m grateful for the access to these primary sources. They provide an unvarnished look at history, allowing us to confront uncomfortable truths and develop a more nuanced understanding of this period. In a sense, I am even grateful for the disappointment, because I would rather know than not know.
Thank you again for your dedication to historical preservation and for making these documents easily accessible. Maybe you do not always immediately see the effect, but efforts like yours make all the difference in our ability to critically examine history.
The assassination of Alexei Navalny is meant to strike fear and terror in our hearts, to silence us and crush our spirit. But we are not just flesh and blood, we are more than our bodies, we are spirit, and our spirit cannot be crushed. They killed Navalny but they cannot kill his spirit! My heart is with Yulia, I stand with her in resistance to those that murdered her husband, that took away the father of her children.
Vlado hugs his father Pavel good-bye, Prague 1946
The following photo is of Vlado, which was taken by an unknown photographer at the crash site in Ndola; it was included in the film “Cold Case Hammarskjold”, and I captured this photo off my television set. This photo, and others in the film, have since disappeared. The Rhodesian autopsy report confirms this is Vlado. He is not as badly burned as the others, I recognized him immediately. It is the very last photo of him that I know of, there may still be other photos that exist of Vlado and the others who died with him. This is not how I will remember him! Like Navalny, he fought back against violent mercenaries and powerful men that wanted him dead, and he paid the price. He is my hero! He died on his own terms, brave and courageous, motivated by love and not fear!
“There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.” – Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
Archival assistance and emotional support from Farfel. Swissair ticket stubs from 29 December 1960 to 10 February 1961; Vlado’s father, Pavel, died of a heart attack in Berlin 19 December 1960. Sabena ticket stub appears to be from 1956, date is unclear. St. Bernard medal retrieved from the Albertina crash site, Ndola, 17-18 September 1961.KLM postcard addressed to Vlado, care of the United Nations, New York, N.Y., “The Flying Dutchman”, Douglas DC-6B.KLM postcard reverse, 29 December 1957: “Dear Vlady, Happy New Year to you and all the best wishes for you from an old friend. I think I won’t see you somewhere in N. York, I am getting married and my new home will be in Curacao…” Farfel picks his favorite postcard from Vlado, sent from former Leopoldville, Democratic Republic of the Congo, now Kinshasa.Reverse of postcard from Vlado, 12 August 1961, to his mother, “Maminka”, Madame Olga Fabry. A better look at the real photo postcard from Vlado, purchased from the “Stanley-Hotel, Avenue Moulaert”.Vlado’s signet ring, retrieved from the Albertina crash site, Ndola, 17-18 September 1961.
“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” – Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
My name is Tara Burgett, I am an independent researcher and archivist, and the author of this blog dedicated to Vladimir “Vlado” Fabry. My husband, Victor, is the nephew of Vlado, the only child of Vlado’s sister, Olinka. When Olinka passed away in 2009, we discovered a trove of papers and photos stuffed in old suitcases in the house in New York; recognizing their importance, we packed them up and brought them to Washington state, and since then I have made it my mission to share the family story with the world.
Vlado and sister Olinka with his Buick and Bambi hood ornamentVlado and Olinka in Switzerland
“Sheila considered her time in New York to be some of the happiest days of her life. She roomed with her dearest friend, a gorgeous Czechoslovakian socialite named Desa Pavlu. The two of them must have left a trail of broken hearts throughout Manhattan. Sheila had a proposal of marriage from a young man named Arthur Gilkey. She declined, and shortly thereafter, he perished while ascending K2. Sheila was also courted by a chap named Vladimir “Vlado” Fabry. Vlado died with Dag Hammerskjold[sic] in The Congo[sic]. It seems that Vlado may have been connected with the CIA. Sheila said she could never see herself marrying Vlado because of his “very round bottom”.”
The more time I spent reading and translating the letters and documents, the more I realized how important it was that I speak up for Vlado and his family. The Fabry family were the targets of intentional and malicious slander, in revenge for their fierce resistance to both Nazi and communist invasions of Czechoslovakia, and sharing their archive has been my way of setting the record straight.
Vlado and his mother Olga Fabry – Maminka – Geneva, 17 April 1948
Vlado studied Law and Political Science at Comenius University in Bratislava, following in the footsteps of his father, Pavel Fabry, who was also a lawyer. Before joining the United Nations Legal Department in 1946, Vlado served as Personal Secretary to the Minister of Commerce in Prague. Vlado and his father were both very romantic and unconventional characters, who loved music, poetry, travel, and all kinds of adventure; they were not afraid to stand up for their beliefs, even in the face of danger and threats of death.
Vlado hugging his father good-bye at Prague airport, June 1946Vlado and Pavel in Switzerland
After the communist coup d’etat in 1948, the whole family were forced to flee Czechoslovakia, and lived as political refugees in Switzerland. Vlado was often on the move, working for the UN in many countries, including New Zealand, Indonesia, Ghana, Egypt, and Congo, but he would stay with his parents in Geneva whenever he was on leave, at 14 Chemin Thury.
Vlado and Maminka in SwitzerlandVlado with his parents, Geneva, Switzerland, 14 Chemin ThuryBreakfast in Geneva, 14 Chemin ThuryVlado at work, Geneva, Switzerland, 14 Chemin Thury
Vlado was loved by many of his colleagues at the UN, for his kindness and hospitality, and for his enthusiasm for skiing, mountain climbing, as well as his intellect and charm.
Vlado in Geneva
I could say more about his personality, but I feel the letters Vlado left behind, and the letters of his friends and family who knew him, say it best. He was an example of courage that anyone who knew him tried to follow, and is an inspiration to me, personally.
Condolence letter from Mary Sheila Dean MarshallLast photo of Vlado and Dag Hammarskjold, from Daily Express, included in letter from Mary Sheila Dean MarshallCondolence letter from Cynthia KnuthCondolence letter from Zeno F. MarcellaCondolence letter from John A. OlverCondolence letter from Bernard T. TwightCondolence letter from Marty and Don DaviesFriends of Vlado, in Geneva, Marty and Don DaviesCondolence letter from Constantin A. StavropoulosCondolence letter from “Dody”Condolence letter from Lucy T. Briggs, daughter of Ambassador Ellis O. Briggs, who served in the Foreign Service – she is the friend that gave Vlado “Bambi” – which you can see Vlado attaching to the hood ornament of his Buick, in the header photo of this blog.Condolence letter from Monique Cegel (now Madame Rime), Vlado’s personal secretary in former Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, room 632 Le RoyalTribute to Vlado from Elspeth Young
My husband Victor is the nephew of Vlado Fabry, the only child of Vlado’s sister Olinka. When Olinka passed away in 2009, we discovered a trove of papers and photos stuffed in old suitcases in the house in New York; we packed them up and brought them to Washington state, and since then I have made it my mission to share the family story with the world. The photo above shows one of these suitcases, which was originally owned by Ivan S. Kerno – Slovak lawyer and family friend, who was Assistant to Secretary-General Trygve Lie and was head of the United Nations Legal Department. We have many letters from Ivan Kerno, but here is one from Garden City, Long Island, New York, from 1946, the year Vlado joined the Legal Department of the United Nations; addressed to Vlado’s father, Pavel Fabry, in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, to our family home that is still illegally occupied by the Russian Federation, since the coup d’etat of 1948.
In June 1946, Vlado Fabry left his position as Personal Secretary to the Minister of the Interior in Prague, to join the Secretariat of the United Nations in New York. He packed his bags, said farewell to his friends and family, and said good bye forever to Czechoslovakia. The following photos are from Prague, showing Vlado at an undated political gathering, and his departure in June at the airport on a Swissair flight to Zurich.
For the past 6 days, I have been translating the 1956 testimony of Grandma Fabry from German to English, which was not easy since I am not fluent in German. The urgency of war has pushed me to act quickly. I want everyone in Slovakia to know what our Grandmother went through when the Russian communist leaders stole our family home in Bratislava in the coup of 1948. She resisted with all her might against both Nazis and communist oppressors for years, she did not give in.
My husband Victor and I have already donated the family home in Bratislava as a national gift to the people of Slovakia, and I have demanded no more accommodation for Putin and his mafia, but I will repeat myself for the third time. I am calling on the President of Slovakia, Zuzana Caputova, and Slovak Prime Minister, Edvard Heger, to expel all diplomats from the Russian embassy immediately! Take heed of Grandma Fabry’s story, the cruelty she endured, do not delay to stop Putin! Stand united with Ukraine and fight back!!
Affidavit of Olga Fabry nee Palka from Bratislava, Slovakia, currently political refugee in Geneva, 14 Chemin Thury in Switzerland.
Curriculum Vitae I. Before the Persecution
I come from an old industrial family, I was born in Liptovsky Svaty Mikulas, Slovakia on November 18, 1895, so I am 62 years old. All of my ancestors made a major contribution to the economic development of Slovakia, at that time still within the framework of the Austrian monarchy. My Grandfather, Peter Palka, was one of the founders of financial development in Slovakia, organizing the first savings banks and laying the foundations of the largest pre-war Slovak bank. My father, Viktor Palka, continued this tradition and his life’s work includes the development of the Slovak paper industry. My ancestors played an important role in public and church life, and my father’s bequests for charitable purposes were also noteworthy. I was the only child in this family, and therefore my parents tried to place the greatest value on my upbringing.
After completing secondary school, I was sent to one of the best higher institute for girls of the then Austro-Hungarian monarchy in Vienna, in the Graben, for further academic training, and I completed these studies in Vienna. My parents tradition and this first class education gave me the future direction for my C.V.
In 1919, I met the then High Commissioner of Slovakia, Dr. Pavel Fabry, and got married. There are two children from this marriage. The son, Dr. Jur. Vladimir, currently Legal Advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and the daughter, Olga, currently a librarian at the United Nations in Geneva.
Following the tradition and education described above, I devoted myself to social activities with deep understanding and zeal. In particular, concern for working girls, who had to work outside of their parent’s home, has become my life goal. The World Organization of the Young Women’s Christian Association, the Y.W.C.A., was my example. With the help and advice of this organization, I co-founded the Slovak Y.W.C.A. First I served on the select committee and later as President. Or course, this was an honorary position without salary and without any income. I kept this position until I was expelled from Bratislava by the Nazi rulers. Under my presidency, several dormitories and catering kitchens were built, where the working girls, regardless of faith or nationality, were given accommodation and board or boarding for a very small fee, which did not even cover the management. Several hundred girls were carefully looked after every day. In addition to this activity, I was a board member of several social institutions. My own financial resources at that time allowed me to support these institutions financially. In fulfilling my family duties and the above mentioned social work, I was hit by the surprise attack on Slovakia by the Hitler regime.
II. During the Persecution
My husband, who in his public activities was one of the most zealous advocates of the democratic creed, was of course a thorn in the side of the dictatorial rulers and, as was well known, he was the first Slovak to be arrested by the Nazi regime and, with some interruptions – due to serious illness and damage to health – was held for almost two years in concentration camps, deportations, confinement under police guard, etc. As a faithful wife, I had to bear these persecutions with double concern. With the changing arrests he was always dragged out of sleep at night, and I had to run around for days – even weeks – just to find out which prison or concentration camp he is in, or where he was deported again.
My mental anguish was indescribable and I was repeatedly subjected to hours long interrogations, often at night. The frequent house searches were always intentionally carried out at night. Until my health reserves were available to me, I endured all this nerve-wracking bullying with courage and self-sacrifice – but these constant debilitating shocks meant that I often suffered nervous breakdowns after inhumane interrogations and examinations, and only the self-sacrificing care of the board of the University clinic, of Prof. Dr. Derer and his colleagues, was able to prevent the worst. After the severe attacks I suffered, I had to stay in bed for days – even weeks – and endure the regime’s repeated harassment. In this state, exhausted by mental suffering, I was then struck by the direct personal persecution of the Nazi rulers.
As I stated in the first part of my C.V., I was President of the Y.W.C.A. Institutions that provided housing and board for the working girls. These houses and kitchens were modernly furnished for both accommodation and catering for a capacity of more than a thousand girls a day, and the Nazi rulers wanted to get hold of them for their Nazi “educational center”. As President, I resisted with all my might – supported by the public and the hundreds of working girls who enjoyed the benefits of our institutions – to make these social houses available to the devastating anti-social activity of Nazis. I was, for this reason, subjected to several harsh investigations in the Ministry of the Interior, and even at the institutions night searches were carried out, to unearth any material against the institution, but without any success. I stayed strong.
The accounts were then blocked under impossible charges, whereupon I, together with my husband, provided the necessary financial resources, and the girls also helped with the collection. Naturally I have the resentment of those in power, not just on my husband, but directly concentrated on me. I was threatened with stricter measures, but true to my commitments I made with the working girls, I did not back down. That is why those in power were just waiting for a suitable opportunity to carry out their threats against me.
The Nazi envoy Killinger in Bratislava instructed the government to immediately “rent” our villa on Haffnerova in Bratislava for his personal use. My husband, who was previously transferred from the concentration camp to the clinic just to be cared for at home, but under constant police surveillance (the policemen were in the hall of the villa day and night), let the government know that he will never, under any conditions, rent our villa to Ambassador Killinger – whose deeds he knew well. The police and the Gestapo broke into the villa that same evening.
First they searched the house for hours and, upon presentation of an expulsion order, formally kicked us out of the villa under inhumane conditions. We were only allowed to take one dress and one pair of underwear with us, and when my daughter, who was 11 years old at the time, was crying and demanding her school books and school work, she was pushed away and shouted down. At midnight, in the pouring rain, we were led to the train station like criminals, and my husband and son were taken away to the confinement location with additional police escort and again guarded with police.
I suffered a severe nervous breakdown and was taken to relatives with my daughter. The villa was sealed, but every night a Gestapo detachment came in to inspect the villa – whereby some items of value always disappeared. When I recovered from the nervous breakdown, I was immediately expelled from the city and confined in a village near Piestany, then on to Martin and again to Mikulas, under constant police surveillance. The public was so outraged by this action, that the envoy Killinger did not immediately “rent” the villa. But those in power had achieved their goal regarding the Y.W.C.A. Under the pretext that I was expelled and cannot exercise the office of President, a provisional management was set up with the aim of liquifying the institution. When the institution was liquified as such, the buildings, kitchens, etc., were simply confiscated as unclaimed property, and assigned to the Nazis reformatory with all the valuable furnishings.
However, the persecution measures against me continued to be physical. I was suddenly ordered back to Bratislava from the place of confinement with the instruction to wait in front of the door of the villa, until I received further instructions. I waited there under the supervision of a Gestapo policeman in the bitter cold from morning to night. Tired from the night’s journey, I could not even stand on my feet in my weakened condition, and when our gardener offered me a chair from the garden shed, he was shouted down by the Gestapo police officers. I was ordered back the next day to the front door of the villa, but received no instruction until evening. This was repeated for some days. In the severe December cold, my feet became frostbitten and I contracted muscle and vein inflammation, so that the doctors stepped in energetically and I had to be transferred into medical care.
Then a Gestapo officer appeared and told me that if I rented the villa immediately, I will be given all the things from the villa, except for the furniture, and I can return to Bratislava. But I had to stand by my husband’s decision. I was threatened with more severe “measures” besides confinement. The outrage against the envoy [Killinger] was so great on the part of the population, that he was transferred to Yugoslavia[Romania – T.B.], because his “Femegerichte”[?] were found out in Bratislava. After his departure I was informed that I can return to Bratislava, however, my husband continued to be confined with our son.
How cynically they wanted to increase my mental and physical suffering, I have to mention that the Minister of the Interior, when he left me standing for days in front of the villa, gave a radio speech in which he made the most humiliating spot about me personally, saying, among other things:
“If you want to see a little repeat of the wailing of the Jews at the Wailing Wall of Jerusalem, go to the front of the Fabry villa on Haffnerova, there you will see a woman, one of the most stubborn opponents of the National Socialist Order, leaning against the wall of the villa, crying, lamenting.”
Yes, they even directed mobs in front of the villa who laughed at me!
Of course I did not cry, although the cold during the hours brought tears to my eyes. I could not look forward to returning to the villa.
The repeated arrests of my husband, his inhumane persecution, plus my persecution, the constant humiliation, seizure of assets, the political trials against my husband, fines of Millions, etc., and this with all humiliating accompanying circumstances, my nerves and my whole state of health were so badly damaged by the public scorn, that I was ordered by specialists to the sanatorium in the Tatra mountains. After long weeks there was a temporary improvement.
But the cup of torment was not yet fully exhausted, when I heard the news that my husband was sentenced to death for providing assistance to the people to be deported, and for thwarting the deportation of the residents of the district. In the radio broadcasts, our whole family was subjected to the basest abuse, and finally I had to escape from the threat of arrest and danger to my life, on the coldest night of March 1944, to a remote forest village, spending hours wading in snowdrifts between two moving fronts. It is only thanks to the compassionate care of the villagers that I stayed alive. Perhaps the later news that my husband was freed by the resistance movement during the changing battles for the town of Mikulas, and taken to a safe hiding place, gave me back my life back. I had to learn quite apathetically with the same news that the Gestapo, after the death sentence, confiscated all of our mobile assets onto several trucks and were taken away. All valuables deposited in the bank safes and precious jewelry collected from generations. After the front had been moved, I was again transferred to the sanatorium in the Tatras for weeks of care.
III. After the Persecution
Both our home in Mikulas, as well as the villa, were badly damaged by bombardments and plundered by the retreating troops. The reaction of the four hard years had changed my state of health more and more intensively. I went to Switzerland to be with my daughter who was studying in Lausanne at the time, but already in Zurich I had to be taken care of by Prof. Dr. Frey.
After returning[to Bratislava], I had to watch as the Bolshevik tendency is gaining ground in seven-league boots. The fight against the danger was hopeless because of the incomprehensible attitude of the West. The violent coup organized by [Valerian] Zorin succeeded and the Iron Curtain rolled down. I managed to make another trip for the Y.W.C.A. Headquarters meeting in Geneva, where I met my son. The events in Czechoslovakia had persuaded me not to return, all the more so since my health had deteriorated so much that I had to be taken care of by Prof. Dr. Saloz in Geneva. After weeks, the care had to be extended again, for which the Swiss authorities offered me a helping hand.
So then I got the news that my husband was thrown back into prison by the communist rulers. As we were later told, at the request of the then Secretary-General of the Hungarian Communist Party, the notorious [Matyas] Rakosi. It was revenge for my husband’s actions in 1919, when he fought against communism as High Commissioner, when the Bolshevik detachments broke into Slovakia. After 7 difficult months in prison, my husband managed to escape from the communist prison, in January 1949, and to get to Switzerland. Since then we live in Switzerland.
Since I entered Switzerland with only a small suitcase, and my husband fled in only a dress [Pavel Fabry disguised himself in a nun’s dress to escape. T.B], and everything from our home was confiscated, we have remained completely penniless, and relied only on the help of our son.
In memory of the 16 who died in Ndola, here is some of the collection from my mother-in-law, Olga Fabry, who carefully saved all the documents and mementos I share here. Vlado was only 40 years old when he died, a man who was very much loved by his family and friends, and my thoughts are with all the relatives around the world who remember their family on this day. The struggle against racism and white supremacy continues for us, let us not forget their example of courage to resist, and to fight for justice.
Program from the first wreath laying ceremony at UN Headquarters, one year after the crash, 17 September 1962:
Invitation from Acting Secretary-General, U Thant, to Madame Fabry:
Letter and commemorative UN stamps from U Thant to Olga Fabry:
Signatures from UN staff were collected from all over the world to fill this two-volume set of books in memory of Vladimir Fabry:
Signatures from UN Headquarters in New York include Ralph Bunche, and his wife Ruth:
Signatures from Geneva Headquarters and a message from John A. Olver:
Telegrams from friends in every country:
Among them, a message of sympathy from the King of Sweden relayed through Ralph Bunche:
And a cable from Jozef Lettrich:
UN cables express the loss of a dear friend and highly valued colleague:
Newspaper clippings from 1961 and 1962, the first one with a photo of Olga Fabry and her mother at the funeral in Geneva, Switzerland:
The investigation will coming up for review in the General Assembly, and for those who think we should give up and be quiet about it already after all these years, Dag Hammarskjold said it best: “Never, “for the sake of peace and quiet,” deny your own experience or convictions.”
On November 4, 1959, while Vlado was working in Beirut as Legal and Political Adviser to the UNEF in the Middle East, there was a fight between four Egyptian and six Israeli jets at the border of the two countries. Here is a letter from Vlado’s father, Pavel, written the following day, which has a news clipping in German referencing this event. I can’t properly translate the Slovak, but it shows Pavel’s usual sense of humor, in the format of a mock newspaper front page – especially the magazine image he altered to look like Vlado, with his nose in a book at the beach, surrounded by women trying to get his attention, ha! He was so funny. I’ve included a couple photos of Pavel, showing what he looked like around this time.
Who was Fraňo Tiso? When I first posted the image of his postcard to Vlado here, back in March of 2013, I was frankly too horrified to consider that he could be any relation to Jozef Tiso, that there were probably lots of people with the last name of Tiso. But considering the political connections that Vlado and Pavel had, that Fraňo was the former Slovak Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and that I also have letters from Fraňo to Pavel concerning his communication with Franz Karmasin (letters from Karmasin posted here), this Fraňo was very likely the cousin of Jozef Tiso; he is mentioned briefly in James Mace Ward’s “Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia” (published 2013, Cornell University Press); from chapter 7, “Sacred Convictions, 1939-44”, page 206:
“Although still pro-German, [Jozef] Tiso also wanted greater independence, a desire that led to a sharp foreign policy turn: détente with the Soviet Union. In addition to general issues of sovereignty, the economics of German domination increasingly troubled him. His idea of the state was for “national” property to come into Slovak hands. Instead, German-held shares in Slovakia’s industry exploded to over half in 1942. The Reich meanwhile consumed around three-quarters of Slovak exports, paying in devalued credits instead of hard cash. Seeking relief from such economic dependence and exploitation, Ďurčanský as foreign minister looked east. Diplomatic ties with the Communist state offered markets, an ally for revising the Vienna Award, and the prestige of Great Power recognition. Despite a lifetime of anti-bolshevism, Tiso supported the strategy. He later claimed to have welcomed the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact, expecting it to facilitate the solution of “European questions” on the basis of the ethnic principle. In his first presidential address, he proposed Slovakia as “a mediator…between…the Slavic and German worlds.” Soon, he was courting “extensive economic relations” with the Soviets not only by exchanging ambassadors (sending to Moscow his cousin Fraňo) but even by congratulating Stalin on the anniversary of the October Revolution.”
“The fate of the Jewish population had been given more attention in Slovakia than in the Czech lands, mainly because of the involvement and complicity of the clero-fascist Slovak regime, headed by the Catholic priest-president Dr. Jozef Tiso. The role played by the Catholic clergy in Slovakia during World War II conformed with the antireligious propaganda of the Communist Party.
The initial attempt to review the birth of the Slovak state was made by the pre-war minister of justice Ivan Dérer, in his Slovenský vývoj a ľudácká zrada, fakta, vzpomínky a úvahy (The Slovak state and the treachery of the L’udaks: Facts, memories, and thoughts). The first writer to set a novel against the backdrop of the years of Slovak independence was Dominik Tatarka in his Farská republika (The Parish republic). Tatarka depicted the misguided policy and the corrupt leadership that ultimately led to the wholesale deportation and destruction of the Jewish population. Other authors, such as Hela Volanská and Katerína Lazarová, portrayed the heroic stance of Jewish participants in the Slovak National Uprising. The History of Modern Slovakia, the first in-depth study to disclose the policy of the Nazi puppet regime and to describe at great length the persecution of Slovak Jewry, was published in New York in 1955 by Dr. Jozef Lettrich, a chairman of the Slovak National Council who had fled after the Communist coup. The role of the Hlinka Guard and the Jewish plight were analyzed by Imrich Staňek, himself a survivor, in the 1958 Zrada a pád: hlinkovští separatisté a tak zvaný Slovenský stát (Treachery and downfall: The Hlinka separatists and the so-called Slovak state), written from a strictly Marxist-Leninist viewpoint.
The capture of Adolf Eichmann in May 1960 by the Mossad and his subsequent trial in Jerusalem were widely covered in the national press and media. Eichmann, notorious for engineering the deportation of both Czech and Slovak Jewry, was of major interest to the local population. (He had commuted between Berlin and Prague, where he resided in the elegant, confiscated Rosenthal villa, in the Střešovice district.) The Czech and Slovak press sent special reporters to cover the proceedings of the trial. One of these reporters, the writer Ladislav Mňačko, later published a book portraying Eichmann’s satanic role in the Holocaust. The testimonies given at the trial by survivors appeared frequently in the press and in Věstník ŽNO, the weekly bulletin of the Jewish Religious Communities in Prague. Many of these related to the wholesale deportation of Slovak Jewry orchestrated by the [Jozef] Tiso regime. During one of the sessions of the trial Eichmann’s claim that “the Slovaks gave away their Jews as one spills sour beer,” from Life magazine’s interview with him, was quoted. Widely repeated in the international press, this assertion provoked reactions among leading Slovak figures in exile. The Munich-based Fraňo Tiso, in an effort to whitewash the Slovak wartime leadership, published an article in which he stressed the endeavors of the “moderate parish regime” to save Jews from deportation. In response, Edo Friš took up the topic in the article “In the Background was Heydrich,” published in the Bratislava weekly Kultúrny život. The controversy focused on the visit of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich to Bratislava on April 10, 1942. Friš challenged [Frano] Tiso’s claim that the reason for Heydrich’s visit was to pressure the Slovak government to continue implementing the Final Solution. Citing documents referred to in The Destruction of Slovak Jewry, published some months earlier, Friš stressed the initiative and involvement of the Slovak leaders in the mass deportation of Jews; the aim of Heydrich’s visit, Friš added, was to assist the Slovak government in formulating a fallacious reply to the Vatican’s March 14, 1942, protest against the deportation of Jews. This was the first discussion of this sensitive issue in more than a decade.”
Here is another perspective of Fraňo Tiso, from the article “Slovak Historians In Exile In North America, 1945-1992” (published 1996), written by M. Mark Stolarik, Chair of Slovak History and Culture, University of Ottawa, Canada:
“Finally, another émigré journalist briefly settled in the Dominion and produced a significant work of scholarship. He was Dr. Fraňo Tiso (1894-1974), the former Slovak Ambassador to the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1941. Tiso fled Slovakia in 1945 and settled in Canada in 1950. In spite of his advanced age, he studied at the University of Montreal and in 1956 earned a Ph.D. in history. He published a portion of his dissertation on “The Empire of Samo, 623-658” in 1960. In 1957 he moved to West Germany where he edited the newspaper Slobodné Slovensko until his death.”
Obviously, I am very unsettled that I have these letters, I don’t know what to make of them yet, but I am publishing them here because I want to know the truth about the Fabrys, even if it shatters my whole lovely narrative about them – this is about history and not fiction.
ZÁPIS
V snahe, v terajšej vážnej, pre vývin udalostí v Strednej Europe smerodatnej dobe, podniknúť všetko, čo by nášmu ujarmenému slov národu pre jeho budúcnosť zo štátotvorného stanoviska prospešné bolo a v snahe vyjasniť si mnohé nesprávné tvrdenia, ba i obvinenia vedúcich činiteľov počas trvania Slovenského štátu – stretli sa v Mníchove v dňoch 18. a 19. februára 1959 v Hoteli Bayerischer Hof členovia Exilu a to Frant. TISO, predseda Slov. Národnej Rady v Zahraničí, odb. pre Spolkovú Nem. Republiku so sídlom v Mníchove a Dr. Pavel FABRY, t.č. v Ženeve a vo voľnej, viac hodín trvajúcej rozprave prejednali všetky aspekty vážnejších udalostí, ktoré od roku 1918 na osud slov. národa vliv maly.
Uľahčila tento rozhovor tá okolnosť, že sa Dr Fabrymu podarilo zachrániť vážne, pôvodné dokumenty historického významu z rokov 1918 – 1920, poťažne z rokov 1944 – 1948., a ktoré v jeho, v práve chystanej knihe prejednávané budú.
V rámci tohoto rozhovoru oboznámil Dr Fábry, Frant. Tisu s niektorými vážnými dokladmi, pri čom váhu kládol na dokumenty jeho jednania ako Povereníka Slov. Národnej Rady v roku 1918 o zabezpečenia samobytosti Slov. národa.
Taktiež si držal za vážnu povinnosť oboznámiť Fr. Tisu s pôvodnou dokumentáciou zásahou nácistických orgánov z Nemecka, Gestapa a Sicherheitsdienstu ako i nem. nácistických Sekretariátov, ktoré náležite vyvracajú v konkretných prípadoch, menovite posledne sa javiacu tendenciu, akoby tieto zásahy smerujúce na osbné prenasledovania slovenských občanov, sihajúce na ích slobodu, na ích životy a mučenia, páchané boly iniciatívov vládz a jej orgánov v Slov. štáte, čo Fr. Tiso so zadosťučinením berie na vedomie a potvrdzuje niektorými konkretnými prípadmi, ako Dr. Fábry, a udalostiami, ako na príklad, že Prezident Tiso trikráť odmietol podpísať zákon o prenasledovaní židov a nikdy ho nepodpísal. Týmito vyjasneniami budú môcť byť na pravú mieru uvedené mnohé mýlne trdenia a mýlné stanoviská a uľahčiť cestu ku mnohému dorozumeniu.
Táto rozprava vedená bola v prvom rade prehlásením, že obaja súčastnení, ktorých v ích doterajšom konaní viedla vždy úprimná snaha, za v dobe daných okolností pomôcť svojmu rodu a berú za toto pred Bohom, národom a vlastným svedomím vždy a všade zodpovednosť.
Preto sa rozhodli, na základe v rozprave zistených okolností všetko potrebné podniknúť, aby vytýčený cieľ mohol byť uskutočnený, ktorého podrobností a postup pripravia do stretnutia najbližšej príležitosti.
Do tej doby overia tento záp-is svojím parafom a prosia Všemohúceho aby žehnal ďalšie kroky ích úsilia.
Dané v Mníchove, dňa 19. februára 1959.
Dr. Pavel Fabry parafuje:
Frant. Tiso parafuje:
Napísané v dvoch exemplároch parafom potvrdených.
————————————————————————————————–
München, 28.februára 1959
Veľavážený pán Advokát!
S priateľom ing.Filom som sa mohol v Bonne dobre porozprávať, čo – chvála Bohu – tiež prispelo k vzájomnému porozumeniu.
Bola v reči aj Vaša vec. V najbližších dňoch stretnem sa s pánom Birknerom / nie Brinker, ako ste ho Vy spomínali pri našom rozhovore / v Stuttgarte a dozviem sa, aké úzadie má jeho podanie a čo by sa dalo vo veci robiť. Poznám ho ako charakterného človeka, ktorý istotne nie je pod vplyvom Vami spomínaného človeka. Podanie muselo sa stať na zaklade nejakéko omylu alebo podfuku. On sám ho istotne nekoncipoval. Mám dobrú nádej, že aj táto vec príde do poriadku.
Prosím Vás pekne, pán Advokát, napíšte mi dôverne, kde a za akých okolností povedal pán súdruh Mikojan to, čo ste mi tu spomínali /47 – 24 – 32 – – 50 miliardov dol. / Stojím ešte stále pod dojmom počutého a jeho aspektov. Raz ma zalieva horúca vlna radosti a nádeje, po nej zasa pochybovania, či to vôbec bolo povedané pánom súdruhom Mikojanom, či je to vôbec pravda, či Vás niekto nepodviedol, alebo či to nepovedal vo forme a podstate celkom inej. Upokojte ma, prosím, udaním prameňa!
Rád by som počuť, že zdravie Vám a Vašim milým dobre slúzi.
V očakávaní Vašich zpráv pozdravujem Vás srdečne.
Keďže prem mojim odchodom do Pariza nemohol som sa stretnúť s p. št. sekretárom Karmasinom, aby som s ním pohovoril v zmysle toho, na čom sa dohodli pán Filo a Birkner, napísal som mu list a vysvetlil, že nemôže byť ani v jeho záujme, aby povstal proces a aby sa rozprestierali pred nepritaeľskou verejnosťou veci, ktoré najradšej zabudnúť treba.
Odpoveďou napísal mi p. št. sekr. Karmasin toto:
“Die Beilage in Angelegenheit Dr. Fabry habe ich erhalten. Ich bin an Dr. Fabry weder positiv noch negativ interessiert, ich war es auch nie. Nun hat aber Dr. Fabry behauptet, dass er über meine Veranlassung von der Gestapo verhaftet wurde. Das ist eine glatte Unwahreit und ich kann nun keine Erklärung adgeben, dass ich ihn tatsächlich verhaften liess. Ich habe im ganzen Leben niemenden verhaften lassen, also auch Dr. Fabry nicht, ganz abgesehen davon, dass ich gar nicht die Möglichkeit hatte, jemanden verhaften zu lassen. Es müsste also erst Dr. Fabry seine Behauptung widerrufen, dass er über meine Veranlassung verhaftet wurde, denn ich kann Ihnen nicht zustimmen, wenn Sie schreiben, dass mit einer Zurückziehung niemand zu Schaden kommen kann. Ich z. B. Schon! Denn wenn ich meine Erklärung zurückziehe, heisst das, dass ich Weisungsbefugnis an die Gestapo hatte, was nie und nimmer stimmt, und ich komme in Teufels Küche.
Ich lege bestimmt keinen Wert darauf, in einen Prozess verwickkelt zu werden und aus diesem Grunde zusätzlich noch in die Öffentlichkeit gezerrt zu werden, aber mit einer einseitigen Zustimmung von mir ist es nicht getan.
Ich halte es für das zweckmässigste, wenn die beteiligten Herren sich zu einer Aussprache zusammenfinden würden, damit man gemeinsam Mittel und Wege suchen kann, um die Angelegenheit zu bereinigen.”
Z listu vidno, že aj Vy ste spravili chybu, keď ste p.Karmasinovi imputovali čin, ktorý on nespáchal. Ale aj to vysvitá z listu, že sa neuzatvára pred pokojným riešením veci. Hodno by bolo, uskutočniť jeho návrh.
V Bonne som Vás hľadal! Už ste boli odcestovaný. S týmto v súvislosti rád by som Vás usistiť, že nijako sa Vám nenatískam ani vo veci vypísania otáznych statí z “Grenzbote”; ale mohol som očakávať, že mi dáte alebo Vy, alebo priateľ Filo na vedomie, že to už nie aktuálne. Bol by som si moj opravdu drahý a takmer na hodiny rozpočítaný čas ináč zariadil. Takto som odmietol 15 prednášok.
Nie je to však nešťastím. Som Vám rád napomoci aj v budúcnosti, len prosím o dodržanie dohovoreného; či už priamo medzi nami, alebo cestou tretej osoby dohovoreneho.
Byt chvála Pánu Bohu už mám! Dobrí priatelia mi ho sprostredkovali, začo som im hlboko povďačný!
Prosiac, aby ste Milostivej panej Manželke odovzdali úctivý rukybozk, pozdravujem Vás srdečne.
Last August, I took another look through the family collection of books about Czechoslovakia. What I found was a copy of “HISTORY OF MODERN SLOVAKIA” by Jozef Lettrich, which had, sadly, been overlooked in a damp corner of the house.
But in spite of mold damage, I put it in a mylar sleeve and kept it nearby, because the book mentioned Pavel Fabry (Vladimir Fabry’s father) as one of the first to be imprisoned in a concentration camp on March 30, 1939, in the state prison of Ilava.
I recognized the book immediately, since I had seen at least a half dozen photostatic copies in my archive from page 144, underlined in the same places, which Pavel must have referred to in his case for reparations in Germany.
From Chapter Two, “Under the Swastika”, pages 143-144:
“When prisons were no longer adequate, the Slovak Government issued an order on March 24, 1939, “concerning the imprisonment of the enemies of the Slovak State.” […] This order authorized the Minister of Interior to “arrange for the jailing of persons whose past and present activities give reason to fear that they would continue to obstruct the building of the Slovak State.” The Minister of the Interior was further authorized to create “a camp for the detention of such persons in which prisoners would be compelled to perform physical labor.” Vojtech Tuka lost no time in transforming the old state prison in Ilava into a “security camp,” the first concentration camp in Slovak history. The Ilava prison thus became the home of Slovak democrats–of authors, priests, teachers, newspapermen and statesmen, as well as of simple farmers, workmen and students. The first inmates of this camp, brought there on March 30, 1939, were: Anton Štefánek, Ján Ursíny, František Zimák, Ján Pocisk, Ferdinand Benda, Karol Hušek, Ján Paulíny-Toth, Jozef Rudinský, Pavel Fábry, Andrej Djuračka, František Třešnák, Hana Styková, Vinco Mihalus and Jozef Lettrich, three Members of Parliament, two Senators, three journalists, the Chairman of the Slovak National Party, and an actress from the Slovak National Theater. Others soon followed. In the few years of existence of the Slovak State more than 3,000 persons were to pass through the gates of the Ilava concentration camp. Some remained a few days, some for months, and others for several years. They were all sent to Ilava without trial , without judgement, without indictment, merely upon a denunciation and by administrative order of the Ministry of Interior. Tuka, on April 15, 1939, made the following characteristic statement, “Those who spread alarming rumors and false reports are obstructing our way. We have made arrangements to handle all of them in Ilava. Many of them are there now and many others will follow them there. It is your duty to denounce these instigators to the police and the Hlinka Guards, and the Slovak Government will take care of them.”
I now have another copy of this book, in very good condition, signed and inscribed by Jozef Lettrich on the title page. It was only after this that I looked at the title page of the copy I found, and it was also inscribed.
Title page from second copy.
From the copy that belonged to Pavel Fabry.
When I finally started to read it, it dawned on me that this book was written by the same Jozef Lettrich that was in prison with Pavel, and that I had letters from Lettrich – Chairman of the Slovak National Council in Czechoslovakia, who was an exile living in the United States. So I went back to the boxes. I was amazed by how this one book began to illuminate what I had missed before: letters to and from Milan Hodza – Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia; Jan Pauliny-Toth – lawyer and politician; Peter Pridavok – Chairman of the Slovak National Council in London; Juraj Slavik – Czechoslovak Ambassador to the United States; General Lev Prchala; Emil Stodola, and Kornel Filo. Pavel Fabry was seeking reparations for many of these people and others in Berlin, as their lawyer, so I have some of their testimonies, in Slovak, German and French.
But then I found two letters from Franz Karmasin, one of them signed. Franz Karmasin was state secretary for the German Minority, under President of Slovakia and Catholic Priest Jozef Tiso: an anti-semite who collaborated with Hitler and was key in making the Slovak State the first Nazi ally in the Final Solution, deporting tens of thousands of Jewish people to their extermination – he was hanged after WWII; Karmasin was also senticed to death but escaped prosecution and was living in exile in Munich. From what I was able to translate, Karmasin seems to be arguing against something Pavel said about him – and he begins his first letter in praising Pavel on his son Vlado – The Hague and Nuremberg are also mentioned. There were no letters from Pavel to Karmasin. I’ve transcribed the letters here for others to translate.
Dipl. Ing. Franz Karmasin
München 8
Trogerstaße 32
München, den 8-7. 1959
Herrn
Dr. Paul Fabry
14 Chemin Thury
Geneve
Sehr geehrter Herr Dr. Fabry!
Unsere gestrige Aussprache hat mich sehr stark an Aussprachen in der Heimat erinnert. Ich glaube, diese angenehme Atmosphäre gibt es nur jenseits der Karpaten. Ich bitte, es nicht als Anmassung zu betrachten, wenn ich Sie zu Ihrem prächtigen Sohn beglückwünsche. Er hat großen Eindruck auf mich gemacht und ich freue mich wirklich von ganzem Herzen, dass die slowakische Sache so einen hervorragenden Vertreter ihrer Interessen besitzt.
In der Kanzlei habe ich mir dann den sehr dicken Akt “Dr. Fabry” vorgenommen. Ich war froh, dass ich dies erst nachher getan habe, ich wäre sonst kaum zu der Besprechung gekommen. Ich habe sehr stark den Eindruck, dass Sie in der Darstellung und Beurteilung der Situation der Deutschen Volksgruppe in der Slowakei sich weniger von Tatsachen, als vielmehr von Gefühlen leiten liessen. Ich kann es verstehen, umsomehr, als die Grenzen zwischen Reichsdeutschen und Volksdeutschen von Aussen her nicht immer sichtbar waren und vor allem die Situation der Volksgruppe und der Volksgruppenführung nicht für eine öffentliche Diskussion geeignet war. Aber in Ihren Ausführungen sind Sie doch etwas hart, ich darf Ihnen das in aller fahrens mit Ihnen und Ihrem Herrn Sohn über diese Dinge diskutieren, jetzt ist nicht der geeignete Zeitpunkt dazu. Ich will Ihren nur zu bedenken geben, dass der deutsche evangelische Bischof Scherer, für dessen Ernennung ich mich übrigens sehr stark eingesetzt habe und fast alle evangelischen u. katholischen Pfarrer Mitglieder der Deutschen Partei waren und dass die Deutsche Partei bei den Nürnberger Verfahren ausgeklammert wurde, obwohl man den Aliierten bestimmt nicht Unkenntnis der Lage vorwerfen konnte. Auch das Dokumentenmaterial, wenn man es vollinhaltlich zur Kenntnis nimmt, spricht eine andere Sprache als Ihre Darstellungen. Die Offenheit, mit der wir gestern gesprochen haben, verpflichtet mich, Ihnen das zu schreiben.
Die Zusatzerklärung habe ich lt. Durchschlag an das Regierungspräsidium, an Dr. Virgano, Herrn Minister Dr. Tiso und Herrn Birkner geschickt. Ich bin gespannt, wie sich die Angelegenheit weiter entwickeln wird.
Hochachtungsvoll!
(Karmasin)
Copy
Dipl. Ing. Franz Karmasin
München 8
Trogerstaße 32
München, den. 8.7.1959
An das
Regierungspräsidium
Köln
Zeughausstr. 2-4
Sehr geehrte Herren!
Betr.: Dr. Paul Fabry
Ich habe die verschiedenen Schriftstücke im Falle Dr. Paul Fabry, soweit sie mir zur Verfügung stehen, nochmals durchgesehen und darf meine seinerzeitige Darstellung wie folgt ergänzen:
Ich habe dargelegt, dass die Behauptung, Dr. Fabry sei durch die Gestapo verhaften worden, falsch sei, da sich auf dem Gebiete der Slowakei keine Gestapo befunden hat. Dagegen hatten z.Zt. der Besetzung des slowakischen Staatsgebietes rechts der Waag während der Tschechenkrise durch deutsche Truppen Organe des Sicherheitsdienst Dienst gemacht. Ich glaube mich erinnern zu können – ohne es allerdings beschwören zu können -, dass durch die deutschen militärischen Kommandostellen Angehörige der Hlinkagarde (HG) und der Freiwilligen Schutzstaffel (FS) diesen Organen als Hilfskräfte zugeteilt wurden. Inwieweit sich diese im Zuge der revolutionären Ereignisse Übergriffe zuschulden kommen ließen, entzieht sich meiner Kenntnis, vor allem aber meiner und meiner Mitarbeiter Verantwortung. Sie unterstanden, falls sie sich in die Dienst der Deutschen Wehrmacht oder des SD begeben hatten, nicht mehr der Befehlsgewalt der Volksgruppe.
Zu dieser Ergänzung fühle ich mich verpflichtet einerseits, weil Aussenstehende die Unterschiede zwischen SD und Gestapo nicht ganz klar waren, andererseits weil mir im Interesse meiner ehemaligen Mitarbeiter selbst sehr viel an der Klärung dieser Angelegenheit liegt. Ich bitte, die Ergänzung in diesem sinne zur Kenntnis zu nehmen.
Here are a few videos of Dr. Hendrick Verwoerd, who has been called the “Architect of apartheid” for the policies he put into practice during his time as Minister of Native Affairs and as Prime Minister of the Republic of South Africa.
Recently, in a speech to the Democratic Alliance’s Federal Congress, Allister Sparks listed Verwoerd as one of the “really smart politicians” he had met in his 64 years as journalist in South Africa – but he also included his friend and colleague Helen Zille – an anti-apartheid activist and journalist, who put her life in danger to expose the cover-up of Steve Biko‘s death, calling her “the smartest political tactician of all.” I think the assumption by those upset with his inclusion of Verwoerd, is that they think he admires him personally, when he only called him “smart”. Verwoerd was smart, in that he knew how to manipulate public opinion for personal gain and to turn human rights backwards – when Dag Hammarskjold met with Verwoerd in January of 1961, Brian Urquhart wrote in his biography of him “He had felt that he had been speaking to Verwoerd across a gulf of three hundred years”. But to better understand why people are upset to even hear his name, you must hear Verwoerd in his own words.
“Our policy is one, which is called by an Afrikanns word “Apartheid”. And I’m afraid that has been misunderstood so often. It could just as easily, and, perhaps, much better be described as a policy of good neighborliness. Accepting that there are differences between people, and that while these differences exist, and you have to acknowledge them, at the same time you can live together, aide one another, but that can best be done when you act as good neighbors always do.”
“The Republic is the only sure and stable friend that the western nations have in Africa. We are here to stay, and we are here to aide all others in whatever they may need and can get from us. We have, for a very long time, developed in South Africa a nation of our own – friendly, prosperous, progressive. We hope that the rest of Africa will become likewise.[…] Of course there has been sensational journalism and conditioned reporting, which created the impression that there would be great difficulties ahead of us. We have no doubt at all this will pass. Certain restrictive measures had to be taken recently, mainly to insure to protection of the masses – of all races who seek peace and order. Therefore, a stable government will continue in South Africa.[…] Here the solution is sought by openly retaining the white man’s guiding hand; which elsewhere is the hidden guarantee of industrial development, and even good administration.”
In 1966, Hendrick Verwoerd was assassinated, stabbed in the chest and neck while at his desk in Parliament, but it wasn’t the first attempt made on his life. Six years earlier, at the Johannesburg agricultural show, he was shot in the head twice. This video shows that earlier attempt.
A special thanks to Anna Bergman (Justice for Dag Hammarskjold on Facebook), who has been helping me identify the people in the photos of Vlado at work, which has been a challenge. Though many are still untitled, it’s made me realize just how much information I haven’t included, so I have added what I have to this collection of photos today. Click on images to enlarge.
Beginning with his mission to Indonesia (1948-1951), here is the bearded Vlado, grinning as he waits his turn for inoculations.
Here is the reverse of the photo, with a Slovak note written in Vlado’s script.
Vlado’s identification card for the 1949 Round Table Conference on Indonesia.
The only notes on this photo is “Fabry” and a photo copyright that says “Indonesia”.
The next set of photos are from his time in British Togoland (January-August 1956), as U.N. Observer – he was there to help when the people voted to join the Gold Coast. This is a titled U.N. photo from the personal collection, which says:
“PLEBISCITE FOR BRITISH TOGOLAND, British Togoland, April 1956.
Headed by the United Nations Plebiscite Commissioner, a team of U.N. observers is in British Togoland in preparation for the plebiscite to be held on May 9, in the Trust Territory.
Here, at work with hurricane lamps on the terrace of their quarters in Jasikan, Buem-Krachi district, are U.N. observers Vladimir FABRY [incorrectly identified as on the left.TB] and Jan Van WYCK, both of whom are U.N. staff members.”
Another titled U.N. photo, which says:
“PLEBISCITE FOR BRITISH TOGOLAND, British Togoland, April 1956.
Headed by the United Nations Plebiscite Commissioner, a team of U.N. observers is in British Togoland in preparation for the plebiscite to be held on May 9, in the Trust Territory. Here, led by an interpreter, U.N. observer Vladimir FABRY is crossing the Wawa river on his way from Papase to Manida with registration assistant N.S.K. JAWUZOH.”
Titled U.N. photo, which says:
“PLEBISCITE IN BRITISH TOGOLAND, HO, British Togoland, May 1956.
The plebiscite held in British Togoland on 9 May resulted in a vote of 93,365 in favor of uniting the U.N. Trust Territory with the neighboring Gold Coast. 67,442 voters, including majorities in two southern districts, supported the alternative continuation under U.N. trusteeship pending final determination of the territory’s status.
Observer [incorrectly labled W. Fabry.TB] and U.K. Registrations Officer R. WEST-SKINN walking thru [sic] bush and cocoa plantations on their way to village of Dumevi (Akan district).”
Vlado wrote a note on the back of this in Slovak, which says: “The terrace in Jasikan, with Van Wyck and Bokhari.” Bokhari is at left, Vlado is forward right, with a cigarette in his hand – he smoked about two packs a day, but I’m not judging, I love the horrid things, too – but not quite as much as he did.
Patras Bokhari was a very important person in the UN, who was also a fantastic speech writer. Here is a link to his first press conference as Under-Secretary of the United Nations – he calls himself “the poor man’s Hammarskjold”, but he tells a great story about their January 1955 trip to Peking to convince Chou En-lai to release American fliers held prisoner; who had been shot down and were being held for investigation for “violation of Chinese territorial air”. When those airmen were eventually released, it was because of the devoted diplomacy of Hammarskjold, no thanks to meddlers like John Foster Dulles – Hammarskjold said of him “the special characteristics of Mr. Dulles have made it extremely difficult for me to maintain even in the most modest way the contact which I need with Washington on the Peking issue.”
This is a titled U.N. photo, which says:
“PLEBISCITE FOR BRITISH TOGOLAND, British Togoland, April 1956.
Headed by the United Nations Plebiscite Commissioner, a team of U.N. observers is in British Togoland in preparation for the plebiscite to be held on May 9, in the Trust Territory.
This picture shows U.N. observer Vladimir FABRY making his way through a kapok forest neat Dumevi, in the Akan district.”
One last titled U.N. photo, which says:
“PLEBISCITE FOR BRITISH TOGOLAND, April 1956.
In preparation for the plebiscite to be held in this Trust Territory on May 9, registers of voters have been on display for a period to permit claims and objections. In the town of Ahamansu in the Jessikan district the British registration officer, Mr. R. WEST-SKINN, hears a man who allegedly could not establish residence in the township. Mr. West-Skinn’s assistant, Mr. LARTEY, stands behind him, and at the left is United Nations observer Vladimir FABRY.”
This photo is titled “Volta” – obviously, the Volta river.
Titled in Slovak “…Togoland…15/2 [1956]”.
Untitled, found in the British Togoland collection. Those are his “quarters” behind him.
When you have no running water, and only a limited supply of it every day, you take advantage of a good rain shower – what a happy guy! Titled “Jasikan”.
Untitled, a U.N. observer gathers people together outside the Togoland Congress Office for a photo.
Another from Jasikan, British Togoland, February 1, 1956. I’ve included the Slovak notes from the reverse of one, which suggests the photos have something to do with registration for the election.
Untitled, in the British Togoland collection. Could this be election day?
Untitled, Egypt.
Untitled, Egypt.
This photo – and the six others that follow it – are all untitled, but it’s a possibilty that this was one of the meetings between the UNEF and the UAR.
Untitled, Egypt. Vlado is exiting the tent, far right.
The two sphinxes – untitled.
Really, there are no photos from Vlado’s time in the Congo but a few. Here is an untitled photo, possibly Congo, with him arriving on a Sabena plane.
This photo, and the following photo, were sent to Vlado’s sister Olinka by Sheila Dean Marshall in her condolence letter; which Sheila collected from the DAILY EXPRESS in London, and are stamped on the back with the copyright. This is one of the last photos taken of Hammarskjold and Vlado before they boarded the DC-6 on September 17, 1961, headed to Ndola on what would become their final peace mission. This was the first version of the photo I found.
Here is the full expanded photo, which includes Sture Linner at left, reading. Found this much later. On the back, Sheila writes “Vlado before they took off in the aeroplane.”
Untitled photo, possibly from his time with UNEF.
Photo of unknown flight – I’ve included the Slovak notes from the reverse. Help with Slovak translation is always appreciated.
This photo and the next are both untitled, taken at United Nations Headquarters in New York.
This last photo is untitled as well. I wonder why Vlado’s secretary is typing on top of a duvet? The old typewriters were so loud, maybe it muffled all the noise. I like the photo of Vlado at his desk – I have his copy of the Petit Larousse by my own desk.
Dag Hammarskjold with Danny Kaye, Marion Anderson and Ezio Pinza
First United Nations Staff Day, 8 September 1953, UN photo
Vlado’s invitation, from the personal collection
If anyone deserved a special day of recognition, it was the UN staff of 1953, who had been slandered by the U.S. federal grand jury on 2 December 1952, saying that there was “infiltration into the U.N. of an overwhelmingly large group of disloyal U.S. citizens”. Secretary-General Trygve Lie gave the FBI carte blanche of New York Headquarters “for the convenience” – and this was after he gave his resignation, on 10 November 1952; which he gave under pressure of McCarthyism, and the Soviet Union’s refusal (for years) to recognize him as Secretary-General because of his involvement in Korea. Hammarskjold was sworn in on 10 April 1953, and he did all he could to defend and support his UN staff, and managed to get the FBI removed from UN Headquarters by November 1953.
With appreciation to the author, here are excerpts from chapter 3 of Brian Urquhart’s biography of Hammarskjold:
“On January 9 [1953], President Truman, by Executive Order 10422, introduced a procedure by which the U.S. government would provide the Secretary-General with information on U.S. candidates for employment and would empower the U.S. Civil Service Commission to investigate the loyalty of Americans already employed by the UN. In the same month, the Eisenhower administration’s new representative to the UN, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., as one of his first official acts asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate all members of the U.S. mission to the UN as well as U.S. members of the Secretariat itself. For the latter purpose Lie permitted the FBI to operate in the UN Building, for the convenience, as he explained it, of the large number of Secretariat officials who would have to be interrogated and fingerprinted. To the Secretariat, the presence of the FBI in the “extraterritorial” Headquarters Building symbolized yet another capitulation to the witch-hunters.”
[…]
“Another problem inherited from Lie was the presence of the FBI in the UN Building. The extent of that agency’s activities was revealed on June 20 during an incident in the public gallery of the Security Council, when an American agent in plain clothes attempted to take a demonstrator away from the UN guards. Hammarskjold demanded a full investigation of this incident and protested vigorously to the U.S. mission. He had also learned of the case of a senior official who had been given a detailed questionnaire on his relations with various people and his views on Communism. The fact that the official had felt obliged to reply raised in Hammarskjold’s mind a serious question of principle. Did a government have the right to question a respected official of the UN with a long and good record of service on the basis solely of suspicion and rumor? Surely the proper course was for the government concerned to tell the Secretary-General of its suspicions, leaving it to him alone to decide what action, if any, should be taken and what questions should be put to the official concerned. He therefore instructed the members of the Secretariat that until he could get the FBI off the premises their reaction to inquiries about their colleagues could in no circumstances go beyond the duty of everyone to help the law. A member of the Secretariat must make it clear that there were questions that, as an international civil servant, he had no right to answer and these included questions relating to his UN work and to the activities of the UN itself, as well as the political or religious views or past relationships of himself or of his colleagues. This meant, in fact, that only nonpolitical criminal activities were a legitimate subject for investigation by the FBI. In November 1953, making use of the opportunity provided by a remark to the McCarran Subcommittee by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover that the extraterritorial status of international organizations in the United States made it impossible for the FBI to operate on their premises, Hammarskjold asked for the immediate removal of the FBI from UN Headquarters.”
But there was still the matter of the American staff members that had been dismissed or terminated by Trygve Lie because they plead the Fifth Amendment when investigated. Hammarskjold wasn’t able to make everyone happy with his decisions, but I feel he was trying to avoid giving the McCarthy crowd any kind of foothold for future harassment.
“During the summer a U.S. federal grand jury, the International Organizations Employees Loyalty Board, and two U.S. Senate Subcommittees continued to investigate present and former American Secretariat members. On August 21 the Administration Tribunal, the Secretariat’s highest court of appeal, rendered judgments in twenty-one cases of American staff members who had appealed against their dismissal or termination by Lie for having invoked the Fifth Amendment during investigations by the U.S. authorities. The Tribunal found in favor of eleven of the applicants, awarding compensation to seven of them and ordering the reinstatement of four. Hammarskjold declined to reinstate the four on the grounds that it was “inadvisable from the points of view which it is my duty to take into consideration,” whereupon they too were awarded compensation. His decision simultaneously dismayed a large part of the UN staff, who believed that their colleagues should have been reinstated, and enraged the anti-UN faction in the United States led by Senators Joseph McCarthy and William E. Jenner, who saw it as a recommendation for the payment of some $189,000 in compensation to traitors. The attitude of the senators was later reflected in the U.S. opposition in the General Assembly to Hammarskjold’s request for an appropriation to pay the compensation awards.”
For further context, you can read the speeches Hammarskjold gave to the staff in New York and Geneva in May of 1953 on the Dag Hammarskjold Library website.
From 1949 to 1951, Vlado was working for the United Nations in Indonesia, during the time of independence from the Dutch. Due to the complications of being a political exile from Czechoslovakia, Vlado had only a temporary passport – until October 1952, when he finally received his UN Laissez-Passer. Here is one alternative ID, a ‘Tourist Introduction Card’ from the Government of India: Sumitro Djojohadikusumo (not to be confused with General Sumitro)was the only Indonesian with a doctorate in economics after independence in 1949, and had been Deputy Head of the Indonesian delegation to the UN Security Council, so he and Vlado were colleagues. While going through the 1951 box of papers again, I found two letters – one for Vlado’s sister and one for his mother, with Indonesian letterhead, handwritten and signed by Sumitro. It shouldn’t surprise me that Sumitro came to be friends with Vlado and his family, and that their example of kindness moved him to open his heart to others, but I had no idea how fond he was of Vlado’s sister!
Stockholm, June 15, 1951
Merea Guerida,
Enfant-terrible? Non, – enfant cherie with eyes as lovely as ever to remember and a voice as sweet as ever can be: sweet, soft and gentle –
You asked me (“a penny?”), when I wrote those words in my brochure what I referred to: a general truth, people in Indonesia or personal reflections? I think it was a combination of all three. You see, I have long learned to see situations of Indonesia always as an integral part of a general trend, the strive for betterment, the urge of mankind for improvement and progress, although many times specimens of mankind itself seem to turn the clock back more or less deliberately. Nonetheless, all of us individually have our responsibility as to the fate of others —
Then, general truth has particular significance only if one can attach to it, personal reflections. I told you that evening (la ultima noche) alongside the lake looking towards Geneva, against the background of mountains and twinkling stars, the lesson I learned from you and your parents. I do not exaggerate – your brother I think can tell you how much under control, reserved and reticent I usually am when meeting people – but how strikingly touched I was, when I met with such generous welcome and kindheartedness from all of you. And I compared my own attitude in the recent past, shying away from gatherings and from people (- though many of them were out for quick profits and complaints, maybe you remember I told you.) My time in Geneve taught me that only through kindness and understanding can you make people understand. Needless to say that my time in Geneva is inextricably connected with the shining, lovely personality of Olga Irene. (remember again, I do not exaggerate, wherever you are concerned.) Now, Carisima[sp?], till next time, for I hope you will continue writing me from time to time, for never shall I forget….
Ever Yours,
Sumitro
Here is the letter he wrote to Mrs. Fabry, with an apology regarding Vlado’s sister:
Dear Mrs Fabry,
Having arrived in Stockholm yesterday I hasten to send you and the other members of your family, my greetings and best wishes. By this time Dr Vladimir, your son must already be with you and I do hope that all of you will have a lovely time together. I think back of my sojourn in Geneva with more than a great deal of pleasure and gratitude towards you all.
Also, I would like to take this opportunity to extend to you my profound apologies for the fact that Olga came home so late that Monday-evening. I have no justifiable excuse really and should have been wiser at my age — With kindest personal regards and all my best wishes for you, Dr Pavel Fabry, Vladimir and Olga,
Sincerely yours,
Sumitro
I wonder if Sumitro got a scolding at the door from Maminka? He didn’t sound very sorry about coming home late in his letter to Olga!
From the personal collection, here are just a few more photos from two of Vlado’s most important missions: UNEF and the Suez Canal Clearance Project. I am not able to identify the people Vlado is with, but I am hoping that will change when I make my first visit to the United Nations Archive in New York in a few months, to do further research. I have a lot of hard work to do before I even get there, but I am happy for the challenge. Thanks to all the good friends who encouraged me to take this step, I’m looking forward to sharing some of my discoveries here.
Here are some more photos that Vlado took, while acting as Observer to the United Nations Plebiscite to British Togoland in 1956; which includes some of the fantastic architecture he saw there.
(For greater detail, please click on photos to enlarge)
In 1956, Vladimir Fabry was assigned as Observer to the United Nations Plebiscite in British Togoland; which would vote to join the Gold Coast in May of that year, and on 6 March 1957, would become part of Ghana – the first African nation independent from colonial rule. Exciting, hopeful times for Africa, and Vlado was lucky to be there, to be a part of it.
The first three photos are from the UN photo collection, showing Vlado at work. The other photos are of the people Vlado met while he was there – the future independent people of Ghana. In two of the photos, you can see a man making Kente cloth on a loom – amazing!
With deep respect for Dag Hammarskjold, and all those who died with him, here are the photos from Vladimir Fabry’s funeral in Geneva, 28 September 1961. I’ve also included a postcard photo of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Geneva, the location of Vlado’s memorial service.
John A. Olver, who had been Chief Administrative Officer for the UNOC, and was asked to accompany his fallen friends on the the Pan-Am flight around the world (The first stop was Leopoldville, then Geneva, Malmo, Stockholm, Dublin, Montreal, and last, New York), gives his reflections of this day in his memoir “Under Fire With Dag Hammarskjold”; which is part of “Dag Hammarskjold Remembered: A Collection of Personal Memories”, edited by Mary-Lynn Hanley and Henning Melber:
“As morning light started to appear we arrived at the Mediterranean, and then flashed across that same sea I had crossed in the other direction so recently. By early morning the high mountains began to appear, and suddenly, or so it seemed, the great white tower of Mont Blanc speared upward below us. The view was unusually sharp and clear, and it occurred to me that Dag Hammarskjold, passionate mountain lover, would have enjoyed this moment. I glanced over at Knut [Hammarskjold].
“Yes,” he nodded, “Dag would have liked this.”
Now began the descent for Geneva, down the length of the long, blue lake with the tidy Swiss city waiting for us at the far end. The familiar bump of landing was felt again, and my watch confirmed that the leap from the heart of Africa to the heart of Europe had been accomplished with split-second timing: it was precisely eleven in the morning.
The plane was towed to a large hangar at one end of the airport, and we disembarked into a glorious Geneva day, to join the silent ranks of thousands of mourners. We were home again, yet somehow we felt lost and far away.
In the hangar, the authorities of the city and canton, long accustomed to important ceremonies yet personally affected by the loss of a world leader whom they had come to know well, had set up a small chapel where last respects could be paid to the Secretary-General and his companions. There was a catafalque upon which the Hammarskjold casket would rest, accompanied by a book in which mourners could inscribe their names. In a few minutes, the casket was in place, and a long procession, stretching far out along the side of the airfield, began to form and move slowly into the hangar and out again. We saw in the endless line the faces of family members, friends, and persons from all walks of life and from offices of the United Nations, and the many other international organizations, plus the diplomatic corps and representatives of the Swiss Government.”
One of the most touching tokens of respect to the memory of Vlado, is a large, two-volume book set, embossed with the UN emblem, containing the collected signatures from every UN staff member around the world. Among the signatures of the European Office of the United Nations in Geneva, is this brief homage from John A. Olver:
“He perhaps came as close as humanly possible to being the ideal international civil servant. Certainly his example will endure lastingly in the Secretariat as an inspiration to us all.”
And from another Geneva staff member, whose signature I cannot decipher, there is this:
“I knew him to be a man of courage and of tenderness. It was a fine combination born of a fine mind and of an instinctive respect for his fellow man. When you see a young man growing in stature with the years and being consistently true to the things in which he believes, it leaves an impression that stays with you. Vladimir was just such a man. I shall remember him and be thankful in that memory.”
When reading biographies, I’m always disappointed when letters are quoted in part and not printed in full, because I’m interested in even the mundane details of a life. Vlado’s life was anything but mundane in 1957, and his letters tell a great story – Mary Liz was just one part of it. I’ve also included here correspondence from General R. A. Wheeler (a.k.a. “Speck”), Oscar Schachter, Vlado’s sister Olga (Olinka – who we learn has had a head injury that postpones a wedding to man she later decides not to marry); and Don Sullivan, who sent a poorly phrased letter that pushed an exhausted Vlado too far, showing that even someone as intelligent and respected as Vlado had his bouts of insecurity. And though I have not included the letters of Vlado’s Maminka and Tatulo, they make an appearance here in their own charming way.
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9 May 1957
Dear Vlado,
Thank you for your letter of 29 April. We had been wondering why we had not heard from you for so long a time, but I am glad to learn at long last that you had a particularly enjoyable assignment and that you found General Wheeler and the rest of the group so congenial. You may recall my discounting the story which you got about possible difficulties in working with the General. I am glad that your relations turned out to be as I anticipated. Stavropoulos told me that you had requested about five weeks’ leave and I am certainly agreeable to your taking it. I am terribly sorry to learn of Olga’s accident but I hope that by this time she has entirely recovered. We had heard somewhat indirectly about the forthcoming wedding but we were not quite sure of the date. I hope you found your parents well and in good spirits. Please give all of the family our warm regards. We look forward to seeing you on June 20th.
Sincerely,
Oscar
Oscar Schachter
Dr. Vladimir Fabry
14 Chemin Thury
Geneva
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UNITED NATIONS SUEZ CANAL CLEARANCE GROUP
ISMAILIA
15 April 1957
Dear Mr. Fabry:
Mr. and Mrs. Connors and I cordially invite you to buffet supper at our residence at 6:00 p.m. Sunday, 21 April.
As we near the end of our Mission here, we wish to express our sincerest appreciation for your loyal and efficient assistance throughout our strenuous task. It will be a great pleasure for us if you are able to come to our farewell party.
Will you kindly let Miss Picard know if you can come.
With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
R. A. Wheeler
Special Representative of the
Secretary-General
United Nations
Mr. Vladimir Fabry,
UNSCO
Ismailia.
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16 April 1957
Vlado darling –
Just wanted to wish you a Happy Easter! And tell you that a package is on its way to you. However, I had it planned so that you would get it on the 20th and now I see in your last letter that you’ll be leaving Egypt on just that date. Honestly, I could scream! Aside from that, I think it’s wonderful that you[‘re] leaving – finally.
– Have a good vacation –
Love
Mary Liz
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CABLE
6 MAY 1957
PEREZGUERRERO UNTAB CAIRO
FOR FABRY FROM GENERAL WHEELER
QUOTE MOST ENJOYABLE VISIT WITH YOUR PARENTS AT AIRPORT ALSO WITH SECGEN AND DOCTOR BUNCHE WHO LEARNED MY ARRIVAL THROUGH TELEPHONE CALL TO UNATIONS HEADQUARTERS BY YOUR MOTHER STOP DISCUSSED OUR OPERATIONS FOR TWO HOURS WITH SECGEN AT AIRPORT STOP INFORMED HIM MANY THINGS WE DISCUSSED BUT STILL PLENTY FOR YOU TO DISCUSS BUT DON’T BELIEVE HE WILL REMAIN LONGER THAN ONE WEEK HOWEVER NOT URGENT SINCE CAN WAIT UNTIL YOUR RETURN STOP THANKS YOUR HELP ON MY DEPARTURE STOP BEST WISHES FOR HAPPY HOLIDAY UNQUOTE
PANOMNIPRESS
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6 May 1957
Dear General,
I hope you had a good trip, arrived safely and found everything just as you expected. Your poor little left-over here is quite busy and rather sad; Egypt and life in general without you just isn’t quite the same.
Nothing in particular happened since your departure except that two packages arrived with some workshop instruments. Basil just came from Ismaïlia; everybody there remembers you and of course they all miss UNSCO and you in particular. I reviewed and revised the Syllabus and it is being typed now. If we can finish typing it before the pouch closes, you will find it enclosed, if not it will have to wait until the next pouch. Yesterday and today I worked on Chapter XV – Administration and Finance and tonight I plan to tackle the concluding chapter. I will send you a copy of both separately with Friday’s pouch to complete your set of the provisional draft of the report.
I am enclosing the clippings of two articles from local papers which I think might be of interest to you. I spoke this morning with Aly Khalil and he will send to you an English summary of any interesting articles that appeared in the Egyptian press at the occasion of your departure. I am also enclosing the apportionment of cost of hire of salvage vessels to the individual wrecks, but unless you cable me and instruct me so, I shall not append this information to the report. Whoever wants to take the trouble can prepare a table for himself from the operational chart of work done on the wrecks. Your two albums received from Col Younes were given to the Information Centre for pouching whenever their weight permits.
I think that’s about all, except for my best wishes for a very pleasant vacation.
Yours respectfully,
Vlado
P.S. I sent a little thank you note and a few flowers to Mrs. Idriss also in the name of all the others who were invited on Friday afternoon; I am mentioning this only so that you are not surprised if you hear about it.
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10 May 1957
Dear General,
Please find enclosed two copies of the revised draft of the Syllabus, as well as two copies of the first draft of Chapters XV XVI of the report. The only gap in the report now is the description of the “extraordinary feats” of our salvage crews in Chapter XVI, paragraph 5, which as you may remember, Jack Connors undertook to provide; I might try my hand on it when preparing the final draft. If you have any comments to make on what I said in these two chapters, please cable me.
I worked quite hard since you left and spent all my days and evenings in the office. But my work is progressing very slowly and I am still only about halfway through the report. There are so many things that give rise to second thoughts or flash danger signals when re-read, that making a second draft is nearly like writing the report anew. I am also trying to work out the language so that it would require minimum changes when the draft is finalized at Headquarters. I expect and hope to be able to send you the complete revised draft by next Friday’s pouch. As agreed, I will send a copy to you directly to Washington; three copies to you at Headquarters in a sealed envelope to be held until your arrival; and one copy to be held at the UN for Mr. Connors.
Thank you for your kind cable from Paris. I also got a letter from my mother who of course is enthusiastic about you but felt very sorry for you that you were deprived of your nap during the Geneva stopover.
You have probably read about the Secretary-General’s visit to the Middle East. I have asked Shastri to bring to the Secretary-General’s attention my presence here and my availability to report to him on UNSCO if he so wished, and also obtained the necessary visa so as to be ready to travel to Beirut or Jerusalem at a moment’s notice. But there was no reaction to my message so far and I assume that he has probably too many other things on his mind right now. In any event, by your meeting with him in Geneva the need for an immediate oral report has, I believe, been largely obviated.
I hope you don’t mind my bombarding you with papers during your vacation. After all, you don’t have to read them.
Respectfully yours,
Vlado
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14 May 1957
Vlado darling,
You’re probably thinking that I’m very silly for bringing this up, but I can’t help thinking it’s important — polio vaccination. Everyone here is getting vaccinated (that is, everyone under 40) so I think if you can, you should. The germs have to go somewhere & they’re going to be a lot more virile too. Of course you’re healthy and never catch anything but since everyone else is doing it…..(that’s what the doctors say).
It’s going to be so good to see you again Vlado — I can hardly believe it’s only a few more weeks. We’ve got so much lost time to make up.
Wish I had time for more but I’m on my way to work now and have to dash.
Take it easy on those Swiss mountains.
Love from Mary Liz
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COPY (CABLE)
16 May 1957
DRACO 253 FOR FABRY FROM WHEELER
GRATEFUL YOUR LETTER TEN MAY STOP EVEN BACK HOME WITH ALL ITS PLEASURES I STILL FIND MY PRIORITY INTEREST IS YOUR WORK IN CAIRO STOP YOUR DRAFTS ARE MOST EXCELLENT AND YOUR PROGRESS PHENOMENAL STOP WILL BE PLEASED TO RECEIVE COMPLETE REVISED DRAFT STOP SECGEN HAS APPROVED MY LEAVE TILL JUNE FIRST WHEN I WILL RETURN NEWYORK STOP HOPE VERY MUCH YOU CAN SOON BEGIN YOUR LEAVE WHICH YOU HAVE SO WELL EARNED BEST WISHES
KATZIN NEWYORK
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23 May 1957
Dear Mr. Fabry:
Since I have returned to New York I have been doing some of the completion work required here in the Suez Canal Office. Unfortunately, the question has arisen here by others on the date you were supposed to depart from Cairo. My only reply was that according to the best of my knowledge you were due to depart from Cairo approximately 10 May or the latest 12 May and had planned to spend just a couple of days visiting Luxor. I was advised today that on 20 May you were still in Cairo and were planning to leave there on 22 May. This was quite a surprise to me, but my only reply can be that any arrangements about your delay must be due to a special arrangement with General Wheeler in connection with the report. However, you know that it is rather difficult for us to visualize what type situation developed which required your stay in Cairo as late as 22 May.
In a letter received today by Mr. Frerker it was noted that you planned to arrive Monday or Tuesday in Rotterdam. Therefore I am writing this letter to you via the Information Officer in order that it may reach you on Monday. I have been instructed to inform you that you are to finish your work within two days in Rotterdam and mail all papers in your possession to me here at Headquarters. As a result we will assume you are on annual leave beginning Wednesday, 29 May. Furthermore, relative to your extended stay in Cairo from 10 or 12 May to 22 May, I think, for per diem purposes, you should submit a report on your requirements for your continued stay in Cairo. Pending the receipt of this report I have no alternative but to consider your stay in Cairo from 12 May to 22 May as on personal annual leave.
I am sorry to have to write you this type of letter, but when we discussed this matter in Cairo I told you at that time that the officials at Headquarters take a rather serious view of mission personnel staying in the area beyond the agreed departure time, unless there is adequate and full justification.
Regards.
Don Sullivan
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26 May 1957
Vlado darling,
You’re post-card arrived on Friday as a big surprise. Here I was thinking you were enjoying yourself in Europe when all the time you were slaving away in Egypt. I would have written if I knew you were still there but I figured that, since you were on vacation and with your family etc., you wouldn’t miss not getting a letter from me. Thank you for that particular card, too.
Also I feel that anything I may write seems so trite, especially compared with what you would tell me. I mean, there you are making history and really tidying up this world of ours and here I am telling you about the latest movie I’ve seen. Which reminds me that Karol took me out a while ago and we saw the “Bachelor Party” – very good, people were so real. But before we left each other (to go home) he asked me to try & arrange something with Helse – just the three of us. And I did – about 3 weeks ago we went out & had a very good time. First to the Beekman Towers for a drink, then to Gay Vienna, & we had dessert at the Cafe Geiger. It’s fun playing cupid.
Actually, the last movie I saw was “The Mountain” and thought it good from the climbing point of view and the photography but the main character was a little too good to be true. I just couldn’t believe it was Spencer Tracy either.
But I do other things besides go to the movies, I assure you. Just finished Greene’s “The Quiet American” & was very amused, although I realize he must have been feeling sort of bitter when he wrote it. Yet I can’t help feeling that he does like us after all. (Maybe I say that because I’m just like a lot of Americans who can’t see why they should have any enemies.) But there was one part I liked & that reminded me of someone I know. He is describing the girl he’s in love with (she is Vietnamese) & how “…she is wonderfully ignorant. If you were speaking of General Thế [leader of Vietnamese forces] in a conversation, she’d interrupt to ask who he was.”
It had a happy ending, which was nice. Some people say he’s pessimistic – I don’t know as all I ever read by him was some short stories and the “End of the Affair.” I must read The Heart of the Matter, tho.
Hope you come home early in July since I’ll be going away the 29th to Cape Cod but not with the family (they were so vague about when they would go, I went ahead & made plans with a girlfriend). We’ve got to go hiking together!
I’ve been waiting to wear your skirt till you return but I’ve shown it to all my friends & they all agree that it’s just beautiful. I don’t know who actually purchased it and whether you mentioned whom it was for but you may tell the person who bought it that I appreciate and enjoy it so much. Thank you again, you’re a prince.
All my love,
Mary Liz
Remember what you said before you left about keeping to myself. You know, I am (in the way I think you meant) but not just because you said so, but because I want to.
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V. Fabry.
Rotterdam, 6 June 1957
Dear General,
I trust you have received my letter from Athens and I hope you were able to decipher it. It took me nearly a week to shake off my flu – I would probably not have had the patience to stay in bed that long, but my mother was with me and I had to obey higher authority. She also convinced me that it would not make sense to fly off to Rotterdam on a Friday and we spent three wonderful days in Rhodos, basking in the sun and enjoying the sea and sights. As it turned out, there was no need for me to have a guilty conscience about delaying the Salvor’s operational report: it is still in preparation, and only today was I able to see the draft of its third section. I was pleased to note that our information is more accurate in many respects that that available to Salvors, and the comparison of our draft reports was decidedly not a one-sided affair. I am writing to you under separate cover on the results of my inquiries here.
I had a very disagreeable surprise upon my arrival here: a letter from Mr. Sullivan informing me “that it is rather difficult to visualize what type situation developed which required your stay in Cairo as last as 22 May” and that he has no alternative “but to consider your stay in Cairo from 12 to 22 May as on personal annual leave”. Mr. S. instructed me to finish my work in Rotterdam within two days and to mail all papers in my possession to him. He told me that officials at HQ take “a serious view” of mission personnel extending their stay without adequate justification; the whole tenor of the letter clearly indicates that I am very much in the dog-house.
I feel quite certain that Mr. S’s letter was not written on your instructions. In any case, I can’t believe that you would have such a low opinion of my honesty and loyalty to my duties to have authorized a letter questioning my integrity and placing a black mark on my record. I have swallowed quietly and without complaint many an undeserved slight and insult caused to me, and I always tried to assuage the feelings of other mission personnel when they were incensed by Mr. Sullivan’s tactlessness or arbitrary manners. But this time I was too deeply hurt to let things pass without comment. It is not for me to say whether I managed to do an useful job, but I certainly worked hard and long hours up to exhaustion. Since you left Cairo, there was only one evening when I quit my desk before 2 a.m.; I did not even take the time to have a look at the museum or a haircut. I have of course no witness for the solitary evenings spent in the office, but Mr. Perez-Guerrero dropped in occasionally and can testify that I was never idle and quite worn out by the time I left Egypt. Excuse my getting so emotional about it, but I resent very much Mr. S’s implication – and his placing it on the record – that I was goldbricking and trying to swindle the UN out of per-diem or leave. Maybe he cannot visualize how anyone can work hard when his superior’s back is turned, but I happen to be one of those queer characters who take a pride in completing their jobs for the sake [of] achievement and who feel unhappy as long as something is left undone.
I still consider myself bound by your instructions to send all my communications concerning the report in a sealed envelope addressed to you, and I am therefore disregarding Mr. Sullivan’s directive to send my papers to him. On the other hand, I cannot but obey his injunction not to spend more than two days in Rotterdam; I am therefore regretfully sending on some of the Appendices in an uncompleted form, not having had the time to prepare a clean copy or (as in the case of Appendix O) to select and annotate the relevant material. I assume it will have to be done in New York.
It was a wonderful mission, and having met you and worked for you was one of the nicest things that ever happened to me. I am glad and proud to have been assigned to UNSCO and will always look back with pleasure at the time spent on this assignment (even though my sincere efforts will apparently end up with a blot on my record). I only hope that my work was not quite useless and that you found my services to be of some advantage. I am looking forward to see you and Mr. Connors at Headquarters by the end of this month.
Respectfully yours,
Vlado
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11 June 1957
Dear Vladimir,
Thank you for your letter of 6 May from Cairo, of 27 May from Athens and of 6 June and 7 June from Rotterdam. There is no need for me to tell you again how very much I appreciate the fine work that you have done in completing our report. It is a most excellent job that I am very proud to sign. I am sure that its thoroughness, accuracy and completeness will impress the Secretary-General.
I am informed here that a short report is desired from us by 15 June. We have, therefore, decided to submit under date of 13 June the syllabus that you prepared and which we are forwarding as you wrote it except for the following changes in paragraph 2, Survey of Obstructions:
“44” obstructions changed to “43”.
“five” to a dumping ground changed to “six”.
Last sentence changed to read, “Thus, the total number of wrecks which were removed by the United Nations Clearance Operation was 30, although two additional wrecks which had been worked by the Anglo-French salvage fleet were re-worked by the United Nations forces, one of which was re-floated”.
I will, therefore, write a letter to the Secretary-General saying that our report on field operations of UNSCO will be completed and submitted to him before the end of the month; that enclosed is copy of the index of its contents and also copy of the list of appendices; that the report, exclusive of the appendices, will contain about 200 typewritten pages; that there is herewith also submitted a syllabus of our report which, it is suggested, could serve as the desired brief report on our field operations.
I don’t know how this letter and our syllabus will be handled by the Secretary-General. Colonel Katzin mentioned that he will be writing a few pages for his report to the S.G., but I don’t know whether it will be a separate one or will become a part of ours.
Our complete report will be forwarded to the S.G. about 20 June. We want to submit it as soon as we can complete our careful review and can finish assembling the appendices. Colonel Katzin is going to Rotterdam late in June and, of course, would like to have our report before he departs.
Regarding your letter of 6 June in which you referred to a letter from Sullivan, I knew nothing about it until I received your letter. Needless to say, I am very unhappy about any possibility of your receiving any black mark against your record by having done your duty in accordance with my instructions, and I assure you that I have taken the precaution of informing all those involved that you were working under my orders.
I had a talk with Oscar Schachter, and I am sure he understands the situation. He asked me my views about extension of your leave until 5 July, and I replied that it had my full approval as you have completed the report most satisfactorily in every respect.
I suggest that, if there are any administrative problems in your case, they can await your return for discussion. Naturally, I would be available for any reference that is needed, but I am sure that there is nothing serious for you to worry about.
I propose to return to Washington and my old job at the World Bank at the end of June. If necessary for me to return to New York thereafter, I will look forward with great pleasure to reunion with you.
With my warmest good wishes
Most sincerely,
R. A. Wheeler
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12 June
Dear Vladimir:
Copy for you.
Have a happy vacation.
As ever,
Speck
SUEZ CANAL CLEARANCE OPERATION
12 June 1957
Dear Mr. Stavropoulos,
Now that Mr. V. Fabry has completed his assignment with the Suez Canal Clearance Operation, I wish to thank you most sincerely for making his services available to us. In writing the report of our field operations, he has performed a valuable and important service to our Mission, for which I shall always feel grateful to him.
I wish to commend him highly for his intense application to our work and for his quick grasp of the technical side. He showed unusual ability in clearly and accurately preparing reports of complicated technical operations.
I admire Mr. Fabry not only for his high intelligence and professional competence but also for his fine personal character, honesty and integrity.
With best wishes,
Most sincerely,
R. A. Wheeler
Special Representative of the
Secretary-General
United Nations
The Legal Counsel
United Nations
New York
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12 June 1957
Vlado darling,
This is just a note. Because I think you might misinterpret a silence. But all I want to do now is wait until I see you. You do understand.
All my love
Mary Liz
P.S. Your package did not arrive yet. But thank you anyway for remembering.
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14 Chemin Thury
Geneve
20 June 1957
Dear Mr. Schachter,
As it will take some time before Vladimir can write himself, I thought I better give you the bad news: Vlado came from Holland all drawn out and only a shade of himself, complaining of indigestion. He thought that perhaps the intestinal ‘flu which he caught upon leaving Egypt was coming back. But his fever was getting worse and worse, hovering around 104, with peaks up to 105, and finally last Saturday his doctor conceded that it looks like an infectious hepatitis. You just cannot imagine in what state the rest of the family was…We were all very worried about Vladko, especially the high fever, and until the diagnosis could be stated, we were all in a panic. The doctor said that his body fought the outbreak of the disease very strongly, and it was not until yesterday that it could be proved that Vladko has in fact jaundice of the tough virus type, contracted sometimes between 6-12 weeks ago. It is too early to say yet how long it would take to cure him, but it is usually the matter of 2-3 months. The doctor also said that the ‘flu he had when leaving Cairo was apparently part of it. I am very sorry for Vladko, he was so much looking forward to spent his leave with us, and now he is suffering in bed. My poor parents had just too much this year, first my accident, and now this bad illness and all the worry and anxiety it brings with it. Well, let’s hope that there will be no further complications and that about 2-3 months he will be feeling well again.
I was, and all the family was sorry to hear that you are not coming this year to Geneva. It would have been lovely to see you again. How is Molly? And how are the young ladies? I hope all goes well for you.
Please excuse this letter, which is rather shaky. I am still not quite well, it seems that my head is still not in a right place, and now it will be 3 months since the accident happened.
Kindest regards from my parents and Vladimir, all our best wishes for you, Molly and the young ladies.
Affectionately yours,
Olga
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25 June 1957
Dear Vlad:
Last night I met Stavropoulos at a party and he said that he had received a letter from your sister telling of your illness. I am greatly distressed because I feel certain that it was brought on mostly by your devoted attention to our report, working intensively and for long hours at a time without sleep.
I just wanted to send you a note of good wishes for your speedy recovery. Please write me the good news that you are feeling fine again.
I am returning to Washington tomorrow. Jack will meet Katzin in Rotterdam on July 1st to negotiate certain items of cost and expects to be back home by July 10th. The World Bank will continue to be my employer as I will be back at work on the old problems that are not as susceptible of definite solution as is canal clearance.
My residence address is 2022 Columbia Road, N.W., Washington 9, D.C., telephone Executive 3-6360, extension 3931.
Please remember me kindly to your Mother and Father.
With best regards,
Sincerely,
Speck
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SUEZ CANAL CLEARING OPERATION
26 June 1957
PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL
Dear Vlad:
Just a note to tell you that during a farewell talk last night with Andy Cordier, he decided that he would ask you to prepare the report that the Secretary-General will submit to the General Assembly, or, at least that part of the report pertaining to our field operations. He said that I would be requested to come up to New York for reviewing this report before its submission.
Andy also said that decision has not yet been made concerning how our report will be handled but he suggested, and I agreed, that perhaps it should be printed by U.N. as a basic document because so many governments are interested in having copies of our detailed report. In fact, several representatives have already spoken to me about it and of course I always refer them to the Secretary-General.
I hope you are improving rapidly. I will be glad to see you again. I am leaving here in a few minutes to return to Washington.
With best regards,
Yours sincerely,
Speck
R. A. Wheeler
Special Representative of the
Secretary-General
Untied Nations
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26 June 1957
Dear Olga,
I was greatly distressed to receive your letter of 20 June telling of Vlado’s illness. I can only tell you how much we hope that he will speedily recover and that he will have the vacation to which he has been looking forward and which he has so well deserved. His work in Suez has received the highest possible praise from General Wheeler who, in addition, has told me of the great respect and warm affection which he has for Vlado. Vlado has undoubtedly been too modest to tell you of this, but I am sure your parents will be happy to hear of the high regard in which he is held by those who have worked with him.
We are sorry to hear that you too had not yet gotten over the effects of your accident, but I hope that by the time this letter reaches you you will be completely well. Perhaps you will be able to come with Vlado when he returns to New York.
Molly joins me in sending our love and best wishes to all of you. Please let me hear from you as to how Vlado is getting on.
Sincerely,
Oscar
Oscar Schachter
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30 June 1957
Darling –
Although I couldn’t believe it when Karol told me, it’s really no wonder after the super-human feat you accomplished. I only hope you haven’t suffered too much. I know it has been awful for you and not only physically. But Vlado, the only way you’re going to lick this thing is with Rest & Diet. And complete rest – you must force yourself not to think of international affairs for now. And you can force yourself if you really want to.
A friend of mine, who is a doctor, came down with it last spring and had to stop seeing her patients for a length of time. It was hell – she has a real vocation, she feels – but she did it. And now she’s cured.
You’re so healthy anyway that you should recover easily & quickly. Don’t forget I took care of people with Hepatitis, so I know what I’m talking about.
You know I miss you terribly, especially now it is hard. But I have beautiful memories. Like the night we went to the concert at the U.N. You kept looking at me from time to time and I was torn between listening to the music and wanting to look back at you – which I did. It’s so good to have the records of the music – that is your Overture to Egmont, & my Beethoven #7 & Scherzo from Midsummer Night’s Dream. I wonder why we love music – is it just because of the collection of harmonious sounds or does music contain something intangible. To continue through with my remembrance – Afterwards we went for a drink to Bemelman’s Cafe & talked about how stupid conformity was. And I knew right then that I more than liked you.
I’ll never have to ask myself why I love you Vlado.
You said that night that you felt comfortable with me. I hope this is always true because even though we haven’t had time to talk about everything, I think we feel the same about a lot of things.
It’s time for bed now so I’ll say good-night and please be good to yourself, darling.
Vlado, a.k.a. “King Throstle Beard”, at work in Indonesia
Before I begin with the letters of 1952, there is one letter from January of 1951 that needs to be included here first – from Madeline – who met Vlado when he spent 3 weeks in New Zealand in 1950, and she was a big fan of his beard. She writes to him again, one last time in January of 1952. Also included in the romantic cast of 1952 are “Sweet Little Darling”, a.k.a “The Little One”, and “Guapa mia carinosa”, a.k.a. “My sweet tenderheart”. There is also one letter to Boka, Vlado’s Secretary at the UN. I almost need a chart to keep track of their names! Vlado must have had a hard time getting to know a girl, never being in one place very long, and he must have felt lonely.
New Zealand Government Tourist Bureau
The Hermitage Mount Cook, New Zealand
January 1951
Dearest King Throstle Beard,
It was the nicest Christmas surprise receiving your letter and the pictures. The pictures, I think, are very good, and I’ve just now been having a peep at them. I received your letter on Christmas Eve, so you can see how good Santa is to some of his favourites. I really was beginning to think that brilliant young diplomat ex. room 17 P/B had forgotten all about poor little insignificant Madeline Long, frequenter of room 17, but not of the bath. because King Thros. does like a little privacy/ Though Madeline found it very hard to leave room 17, and King Thros. helped her not one little bit. I don’t know that I can do much about that job of Inspector-General of the New Zealand Tourist Trade, but you could be a little old hermit at the Hermitage, and I could clean out your cave, and steal you a bone when you get hungry. You don’t like the sound of that? You should have been here Xmas Eve. We looked under all the tables and beds for a man with a beard, but nary a whisker could be found.
Everything has been very gay, and the weather just perfect. Last night the most beautiful moon was looking so lonely, with no one to sit under her, and I did think that Vladimir Fabry might have popped in for just a half hour or so, but then he probably would have found it rather hard to get away, because there is a transport strike on just now, and he would not have caught that 1.p.m. bus to Queenstown. My, I wish that strike had happened a couple of months ago. I do feel unhappy for you having to spend Christmas in that Mad house that you call it. Seems so far removed from anything of that nature here, except of course, when everybody goes a little mad with gaiety especially Madeline Long. Know her? I don’t think you should. I’ve been playing lots of tennis lately and doing a good deal of climbing, but somehow or other, somewhere along the way something happens to my wind, and I look a great sad sack. I’m going away to stay in one of the huts for a couple of nights soon, feel that it would be just grand to be way up in the mountains on these balmy nights. Could you ask Vladimir if he would like to join me? Or maybe he’s just too busy telling all those madhouse inhabitants how to get out of one sticky bit into another. It’s so hot today I could sit here with just nothing on and be quite happy, or maybe a blade of grass to keep the locals happy. I thought I had better use my speedy typewriter, because you probably would find it rather difficult to read the things I write down. I was going to send you a cable and wish you a very happy New Year, but when I looked up the little book of words and saw the exorbitant charges, I quickly shut it again, and thought I had best settle for a letter. When a girl is saving her all to travel and see something of this wide wicked world before she is too old and senile to care anymore, that’s when she begins to think that money is money, and a little more is better that a little less. Afternoon tea is on and as we have a regular circus in the office every day now for that little event, I can’t concentrate on what I’m saying to Vladimir, and that would never do. I do hope you find a wee moment to write me again, and tell me what is happening to your present and your future. I too have thought of you so, often, but I never dreamt you would be doing so of me. And even if we should never see each other again that you should write and let me have your feelings is something very precious to always have with me.
Much Love,
Madeline
Great Neck 4/1/1952
Milá Boka,
Above all, thank you for your two letters,- really, I would have never dreamed to hope that you would write me so much, the ratio used to be normally 3 to 1 in my favour,- but I do appreciate it, and I was very pleased and happy. I hope that by now you have recovered from the strains of family-life and that no permanent damage was inflicted on you. My mother wrote me that she liked you very, very much / which does not surprise me/, and the next line was that she wishes me for the new year a fine bride /and a grandchild/ and that she hopes that I will make the best possible choice. I wonder how much the second line was a reflection of the sentiments expressed in the first! I was very glad to hear your voice on Christmas, it was a very nice present, but it made me a little bit sad to think how perfect it would have been to be for the Holidays in Geneva, and having around me EVERYBODY I like. I was a bit scared of Christmas first, in Indonesia I was all the time looking forward to this one when I would be back from the “exile” and in surroundings where I could really feel in a holiday mood. Then I suffered the invasion of Milan and his friends during Thanksgiving,/it was really awful/, and looked with great apprehension at the arrival of Ivan. But he is the real opposite of his brother as far as consideration for others is concerned. We got quite friendly together always consulted each other on our moves and tried to respect each others wishes, and as a whole had a good time. I liked his friends, and of course their age and interests were more in line with mine than in Milan’s case. So it was quite nice. For Christmas Eve I had your father and Tana, Tana Makovická, Milan Ondruš and Karol, – we made up the Christmas tree together, had a Slovak dinner, gave each other presents, and has Slovak music from the records, as well as something less than music from our throats /meaning that we were singing/. Also a nice roaring fire and the scent of pine – and smoke all over the house. Also for New Year’s Eve I was with Tana, we had dinner with Milan O. at your place, and then went together to a terribly stuffy party where we saw the New Year come to the accompanying of Bible- reading, and kept singing “Drink of my eyes and you will not need any wine” – and there was no wine. So we decided that to welcome the New Year with a glass of milk could bring its wrath, postponed its arrival officially for one hour, left the party at 12.40 and dived for the next bar, where we properly wetted our thirsty throats with champagne, and drank our homage to it in this more appropriate liquid. After that we went to a party of Tana’s Airlines-friends, and had a good time,- finishing in New York, and with a hamburger and coffee at Prexy’s /the radio was admonishing us the whole evening that “death has no holidays, and if you have to have one for the road, make it coffee”, so I obeyed/. We became quite good friends with Tana, and I like her quite a bit now. Well, to come back to your letters and to answer your questions therein:- the green light refers to The One an Only One /what did he do in London, by the way, and why did he not come to expect the New Year in your company/, green of course being the “go ahead” sign, and “no turns allowed while the light is green” is a common traffic sign on boulevards, which I adapted to your case as meaning that you cannot enter any Lovers Lanes on the side while you still drive full speed on the main road of your desires, with The One giving you the “go ahead” sign, but only as far as he is concerned and not for turning towards others. A bit complicated as I wrote now, but I guess you will understand now what I meant. I gave a present to Shine, but not Virginia, – and I received nothing from either. Also I gave my present for the grab-bag at the Office party. As far as the župan [trans.: bathrobe or dressing gown.-TB] is concerned – I have my own intelligence service, but not Olga. I am glad you liked it, I hope my mother bought what I wanted. How did you get on with my papa – I hope he didn’t throw any tantrums while you were there, he gets so easily excited. Why did they not take you out on a car trip to the mountains – is Uncle Bucko ill, or what? As far as my job is concerned, the following developments took place: 1./ I saw Szeming-Sze, and the Geneva job is definitely out of the question. 2./ Marshall Williams told me that they intend to fill the Trusteeship post by internal promotion,- but nothing has been decide so far. 3./ They do have a post in Narcotics, – in Rey’s Section, they considered me and asked for my file just before Christmas. As far as I learned form Lande, I would be satisfactory except that Rey would like to have somebody English-born, as all of his Section are non-Englishmen and he has difficulties in drafting reports, etc. He told me, however, that if they would not find anybody else, or if I had enough push, my chances would be good. 4./ I saw Martinez-Cabanas and Barbosa, the Personnel Officer of TAA on several occasions. They have now two posts in my grade – and area officer for Bolivia /where I can hardly qualify because of lack of Spanish/, and one for Eastern Europe and the Near East. I would be very keen on the second job, it would be ideal from many points of view, and I think I could make a success out of it. But apparently they want to have somebody from the area, and are now in touch with the Yugoslav Government to get them a candidate. I could not speak with M-C about the job / I learned about it from Barbosa only the day before his departure/, and B. was rather reluctant about the whole thing. I had the impression, however, that it would not be impossible to get the job if M-C would agree, and if Hausner /who is Barbosa’s Superior/ would state that job-less staff members have to be given priority consideration before outsiders are recruited. I will ask Olga to take it up with M-C, and perhaps you could find a way of getting Hausner interested – unless, of course, you think that I should not overdo it and push myself too hard for this particular job. I aslo received and assurance that there may be further jobs in their new budget, but it is not expected that they would be approved before February,- so I would have to remain on my present post until March at least. Well, I think that’s all – I heard nothing more about Human Rights – did you? And please, do continue to be a sweet girl and keep me posted on what is happening at your end of the world!
All the very best in the New Year and lots of love,
Vlado
Suva, Fiji
15th Jan 52
Good Morning King T.
I was entirely delighted and surprised to receive your card, but as you see from the above it had to leave the Hermitage and come across to Fiji. I have been going the usual round of living here since May last year, and loving it. Such an entirely different life – much more romantic than that dull unimaginative New Zealand. It had its moments of course, when the King Throstlebeards of this world decided to hop around the mountains for a few days. Just imagine you living in great big New York! I think it a good thing that you have left that horrid Indonesia, because from what I have heard and gathered from running my little eyes over newspapers from time to time there seems to be a lot of stray bullets and even worse things popping round over there. It would be just terrible to think of bullets sneaking around that nice beard. (You are still wearing it I presume.) Have been extremely lucky here with accommodation – in common with the rest of the world today there seems to be a perpetual moan over the housing situation.. However, your friend Mad Long has got herself all set up in one of the prettiest little houses around. It has been built about two years only, and is nice and clean and modern and – everything. Living with another girl of course, and we have a Fijian girl to do all chores. I have often thought about you and wondered what you are doing, so you can just imagine how nice it was to receive your card. As you have probably guessed I am working with Tasman Empire Airways, and using their writing paper and time for my letter writing. The office is undergoing extensive renovations, and by this time next week I shall be sitting in one of the most swept up business places in Suva. In fact, we’re trying to persuade our Manager to put us into sarong type of frocks with hibiscus flowers tucked in odd places on our persons, just to have a tropical effect you know. You can just imagine how this conservative British atmosphere would react. I guess you have much more interesting and necessary things to do than read letters from me to you. Many thanks again for remembering me at Christmas, and lots of nice things to you for the New Year. I am enclosing a small picture of me taken at the back of the house looking ever so tropical.
Mad Long
Great Neck
10/3/52
My dear Little One,
It’s ages since I wrote you last / you see, I admit it freely/, but I have not forgotten you nor stopped to feel towards you the sweet, soft and warm longing that I had ever since we parted last summer. It’s just that I didn’t feel like writing, or that I had a lotsfull of other things to do, or that I was much too tired to write, or some other thing happened. And also, I did not get so much to hear from you to be coaxed into a real effort of writing – to wit, I received only one picture-postcard the last two months. I believe that you will be probably back from your skiing holiday by now,- and I hope that you managed to have lots of fun without getting any parts of your anatomy into a loose-flapping state. Also, that you got some sun after all. Also that you do not think any more of skiing as something difficult, but that you ski by now as easily as you think /or rather that you came to that blissful stage of skiing where it is enough to think of a movement,- and lo and behold, your skis and body do it all by themselves!/ I sincerely hope that I may have a chance to see you perform before this years snow melts completely away, although I still have no concrete clues as to whether and when that may be. I did quite a bit of skiing this year myself, practically every weekend since New Year. That also partially accounts for my backlog in correspondence – and sleep. The winter was rather mild around NY, so I had always to drive at least 700 miles each weekend to get to and from the snow – and that’s nearly as much as from Holland to Switzerland. I didn’t get any chance so far to get away for longer than from Friday 6 p.m. to Monday 9 a.m., and consequently had to spend practically every Friday and Sunday night, or at least the greater part of it, behind the steering wheel. My former skiing partner from the Tatras is now in New York also, so we usually went together, and it was a bit like old times again. Unfortunately, he does not drive, and anyhow, he usually slept the whole journey through. Occasionally we took along some company, but usually I had only Little Carrot Nibbler /remember the little fellow?/ and memories of you to keep me company. I tried also to keep up my horseback riding, and occasionally manage to squeeze in an hour or so before going to the office. But mostly I am just too tired and sleepy to get up at six, and besides it is not such a pleasure to ride now on soft ground and in the usually cold and wet and dark mornings. So I seldom ride more than two days each week. Helenka’s Slovak cooking and my sedentary life ganged up on me, and I have gained 15 lb. since I came back. I’m a real fatty again. It is true that after each weekend’s exertions I manage to lose three or four pounds, but that only increases my appetite, and before Tuesday is over, the weight is back again, usually with interest. I guess I better become reconciled with the idea of a nice potbelly. My social life continues very active. I had invitations to some of the plushiest events of the Mardi-Gras season, and the moths didn’t get much chance to get into my tails and dinner-jacket this year. I am getting quite cynical about those things which worries me a bit,- the other evening I caught myself calculating the real-estate and property value of each girl with whom I went to dance and felt quite ashamed. But I made a few friends among the Wall-Streeters, and I am now following closely the Big Board, share-value analyses and earning-prospects, and hope to use the stray bits of information which I am getting from here and there to improve a bit my financial situation by putting my savings to work for me on the Market. With nearly half of my salary going to Geneva, and life in New York being expensive as it is, I sorely need some additional source of income. If only one would have more time for those things – but the UN is such an old fashioned type of Organization which demands its employees to work for the money it pays them, so I have to steal the time from where I can, mostly sleep and correspondence and reading. Besides, I started to learn Spanish, and that takes some of my time too. I still do not know what my future assignment in the UN will be – ce n’est que le provisoire qui dure seems to be a very true saying, and my temporary assignment to the Legal Department still continues. But I already have my eyes cast on something – the post of legal adviser to the Technical Assistance Administration, it’s a new, important outfit, where I might have chances to advance, an interesting and central job, and a chance to learn a lot. The post is still in doubt, the Legal Department doesn’t want to give up its prerogatives and let another outfit create a legal post, but I think that it will be set up eventually, and then I will have to go really to work to beat the competition which probably will start for the post. But at least I know now what I want. Well, I think I wrote you about all what there is new about me. Still two questions to answer from your 1/1 letter: I spent Christmas in my house, having invited a dozen homeless Slovaks and made a real Slovak Christmas Dinner, with Slovak songs, traditional dances under the Christmas Tree, gifts, and so on. I enjoyed it a lot. For New Year I had four invitations into private homes, and I took them in turn,- the stuffiest first, and the gayest at the end. And what did you do?
The letter ends here, with the last page missing. We learn soon enough why Vlado is learning Spanish. But first, the most amusing letter of 1952 is the last letter from “The Little One”:
The Hague
17th April 1952.
My dear Vlado,
Here at long last is a letter from me. I am so sorry that it took so long, but lately I have been very busy. The reason for this is, now please hold tight to your chair or whatever you are sitting on, that I am going to be married. It is all rather quick and I would have written before had I known it myself, but as my husband to be has to be back in Indonesia in the beginning of May we decided to get married before he is going. I have no idea what you will think of this, but as you suggested in another letter that I had better look out for a husband, I don’t think you will mind too much. I am awfully sorry in a way, as it will be ages before I will see you and there will be no more holidays with you, but one can’t have ones cake and eat it too. I sent you an announcement of my marriage in the hope that you can read enough Dutch to make sense out of it. But before you got it I wanted to write to you myself. I hope you will wish me luck as I am sure that I will be very happy. I’ll write to you at a later date and a bit longer, if you want me to, but at the moment I have not got much time. I hope that you will write to me.
Love,
“The Little One”
Room 3478 NY, 20.11. 1952.
My sweet tenderheart,
I am going to write to you in English – it will be good for your practice, and besides I am too tired and involved in other thinking to make out anything comprehensible in Spanish. It’s nearly eleven at night, but I am still in my office waiting for my secretary to finish typing some drafts which I have to correct and get out to the night-shift for documentation. I am retroactively paying for my vacation, and have to make up the lost time. My trip here was pleasantly eventful,- while waiting in London for my plane-connections I had the chance to see the Lord Mayors Show, a big medieval pageant with all the trimmings of tradition, glitter, costume and showmanship that the English can still so well produce /the Spaniards also, I don’t doubt that, but I never had the opportunity to see and compare/. Then, after a very rugged flight with icing conditions up to 8000 feet and 250km/h headwinds above, our plane was forced to change course and land in Iceland for refueling. After persuading the authorities that I was not carrying mouth-and-hoof-disease, and an assorted waiving with Laissez-Passer and other documents, I was permitted to leave the international airport, hopped in a taxi, and went exploring the countryside. I could not see much in the darkness, but still managed to get some good views of one of the geysers in the car’s headlights, and get an impression of the force of the waterfalls from their thunderous ramblings, their spray and the darkness of the abyss in which the river disappeared./I sent you a picture of them how they look in day-time, hope you had received it./ New York greeted me with sunshine and a summery breeze so warm that I felt silly even in my light coat. I can’t imagine Geneva in snow. Most of my time I spent apartment hunting, a rather difficult predicament in view of my expensive tastes and thinning bank-account. I finally had to make a compromise /slanted quite heavily in favour of the bank-account/ and settled yesterday for a place on 37 East 83rd Street in Manhattan /which, incidentally, is my new address if you should care to write me/. It’s what they call here a three-and-half room apartment, consisting of a small bedroom, a fairly large living room, a kitchen in a wall closet, and entrance hall in which, if one is thin, it is even possible to turn around, and a good-sized bathroom with a three-way shower compartment nearly as big as the bedroom. That part is the only luxurious one, and I am looking forward to some pleasurable loafing in combined water streams coming from above, below, and the three sides. The address is a good one /which is very important here/, but in spite of the fact that the apartment is on the top floor I don’t have any penthouse-like view, because the houses all around me are even higher. I also don’t have any terrace nor fireplace,- but then, I am paying some 150 $ a month less than in any of the places which had such frills, and that is also something. So as a whole I hope I did not make a mistake, and shall be able to stay there for a few months until I get tired of it. By the way, I did not have time to write all this to my family /nor will I presumably have time to do so in the near future/, so if you should Olga please relay to her the information. I am moving in this weekend. I am thinking back with little tinges of sorrow of my wonderful Geneva days – and I am experiencing something I never felt before, a feeling of loneliness and emptiness. I got so accustomed to look forward to your company in the evenings and over weekends, that somehow my subconscious came to expect it as a rightful due and not as a godsend which does not belong to the undeserving, and feels cheated and unhappy now that it does not have it. On the other hand I lost the interest in my other friends that I had here, and as a matter of fact I did not look up any of them so far. There is a vague feeling of longing and of missing in me, and the work I have is a not so unwelcome escape from it. Well, I see that I wrote more than I ever have to anybody except my family and that I am letting myself be carried away by my feelings even here in the atmosphere of stark reality and competitive fight for survival. What an “unamerican activity”! If somebody should read this I might get involved into an investigation as a “bad security risk” or one who “puts loyalty to a particular person or persons above that to the Cause”. I better stop putting things on paper. But you might by now know, even without my writing it, what goes on in my heart. Hasta la vista, guapa mia cariñosa – and I hope I can make it soon.
Love,
Vlado
New York 25.12.1952.
Guapa mia cariñosa,
It’s Christmas day and I am remembering those with whom I would have liked to be on these Holy Days. I wrote to my family yesterday, and today it is first and foremost to you that I am sending my greetings, my best wishes, and my love. I am in a slightly melancholic mood thinking of you all and regretting of not being able to be with you. And this year in particular I could have had around me all those I like, as you were at our home for Christmas dinner. However, I should not grumble, as my friends took care to make my own holidays as nice as they can be for a lonely bachelor. As a matter of fact, I had two Christmas celebrations: last weekend I was invited to a family which celebrated earlier because one of its members is expecting a baby just about now, and yesterday I had dinner under the Christmas tree with my Slovak /and some Czech/ friends, and then a party which lasted until 8 a.m. Today I had the traditional x-mas lunch of choucroute-soup with spare ribs and sausages, and another party is coming up tonight. So I could not exactly claim to be deserted, although it still does not help me from feeling lonely – nothing can replace the presence of those one loves and misses. I received your letter yesterday morning. From its feel I could guess that it contains a gift, so I did not open it until evening, when we were discovering our gifts under the tree. But then of course I was subject to all sorts of jealous questions, especially from Karol Krcmery and had great difficulty to hide away your letter. The handkerchief joined your menu guide in a place of honour on my dresser, it will be used only on exceptional occasions deserving such high esteem. I hope that my letter arrived in time and that the needle of the barometer did not move during the transport. If it did, put it back in the place where you know best it belongs. By the way, you know now what L K means, don’t you? With best wishes for the New Year, and a special wish for both of us: that we can spend a lot of it together!
Lovingly,
Vlado
When I read this last letter for the first time, I was really frustrated, because the initials “LK” are engraved on a few things, and I still don’t know what that means! After 1952, there is not much romance to be found, until 1957, when Vlado meets Mary Liz. Those letters will be posted next, in a series.
At last, here are more love letters from Vlado. In 1951, he was just 31, so he was having a good time, dating lots of girls, and not interested in settling down to marriage. “Sweet Little Darling” is given more than a few hints about his need to be free, but her last letter to him is not until April of ’52; which I will include in the next post. Teckla M. Carlson (who has another letter here)was a travel agent from Spokane, who made friends with Vlado while travelling in Europe, and she appreciated his colorful letters, too. “Boka” was Vlado’s secretary and friend at the UN, and he seems to tell her everything – lucky for her, and us!
New York 22.8.51
My Sweet Little Darling,
Just a short note to let you know that I arrived well and that I am thinking of you all the time. I didn’t feel it maybe so strongly when my family was around me all the time, but now that I am on my own I realize how much you have become a part of myself and how it hurts to be separated from you. I am still not sure whether I love you enough to overcome in me the resistance against the taking of such a binding and definite step as a marriage is, and neither am I sure how lasting my feelings for you are and whether they would suffice to give me the power to transform myself into an understanding and forgiving creature for the long years of married life. But if longing for somebody’s presence is a sign of love, then it is a fairly strong one in my case. This longing is getting more constant and persistent now. Before it came mostly at special occasions, when I was seeing something that I would have liked you to see also, when I had some nice food or went to a good show, when the sun was shining and I felt like taking you out for a drive and stretching out at some flowery meadow, or (most often) when I was climbing into my lone bed. But now it is here all the time,- even while I am working I feel a compelling urge to dash out somewhere and meet you for a while, for a few words and for a few kisses.
My future is still as hazy and as muddled as it was when I was leaving. All the effort and goodwill that I tried to invest in my boss in Geneva seems to have dissipated into nothing – and not only am I in no position to choose an assignment which would bring me nearer to you (as I was half-ways promised in Geneva), but I will have a hard and uphill fight for maintaining my bare job. Things look quite bad here. Moreover, there are difficulties in my immigration status – they refused to admit me properly without a valid passport,- and unless I can do something about it I will be in a nice mess. Everything seems to be gone wrong since I have returned – even my driving licence is messed up, I had my third speeding ticket just before I left in 1949, I have forgotten all about it, but not the Bureau of Motor Vehicles which promptly suspended my licence and I just don’t know what I will be able to do about it. So you see, I need a bit of good luck or at least something to compensate me for all the adversities,- and now I am without you.
I am staying at the Beekman Tower Hotel, 3, Mitchell Place, New York 17, NY. It’s quite nice, high up in the clouds, with a view of the East River and most of New York, and only two blocks from my office. But the room is very small, I have no place to move around myself or my belongings, and it’s much too expensive in the long run. But without the possibility to drive I can’t go anywhere else. So you can still write me there for some time to come.
Otherwise there isn’t much about me to report. Write me soon, my Darling, if I cannot see you I long the more for something that would materially establish a nearer contact.
Love, Vlado
Great Neck 7/10/1951
My sweet Little Darling,
Here I was, waiting impatiently for a letter from you (nothing came since the one dated 9/9), and when it finally came, there were only 79 words in it, including date and signature. I was a bit disappointed, but then, I didn’t write any more since 3 September either, didn’t I? So I am trying out now whether the old maxim “if you want to receive long letters often, you must also write some from time to time yourself” will prove true, and I’m switching from the meager postcard diet to a fatter meal of a letter.
I was thinking a lot about you, specially the week you were alone in the house, and I was quite seriously thinking of inquiring at the KLM whether they had not some of their stewards sick so that I could get a job on the NY-A’dam run for two or three flights, preferably over the weekend. But then I remembered that stewards have to take care of babies and mothers on the plane, and I am quite sure that I would be no good at that,- and by the time I came around to thinking of some other possibility, the fortnight was over. So we have to postpone it for some other time – or maybe you could get yourself a job as a Stewardess – you would be awfully good at it, and you would have a rather nice house waiting for you at this end to receive you every time you land, with all the trimmings, including a pre-warmed bed if you still like to have it. Quite seriously, don’t you think it would be a nice job – you wouldn’t need to fuss over your shorthand, you could make good use of your language knowledge, helpfulness, and charming self, it would solve your travel-itch, and you might even land a nice husband if you should decide you want one (provided, of course, he wouldn’t mind that I would continue to see you).
Sorry I didn’t come around to send you some more of the pictures – I simply don’t find time to do anything. But it’s high up on my must list, to go to town and have some more enlargements made. I didn’t even touch my camera since I came back from Europe, and so you will also have to wait for snaps of the house. I also made a note to get hold of the “I am late, I am late” record.
I am quite pleased with life at my new place, and I am getting on quite well with my co-resident, mainly because I never see him. My housekeeper got very Americanized while I was away, she is grumbling if she has to work after dinner, and she made me a cheese-cake the other night with commercial cottage cheese, instead of making the cheese herself. But still, it’s quite pleasant to have every day one’s clothes freshly pressed and laid out, to have one’s food properly prepared, and to be rid of all the unpleasant worries about the small things of one’s home. It’s also nice to be out in the open country, near golf and riding stable, although sometimes I grumble a bit about having to drive every day a hundred kilometers through New York traffic to get to the office. It takes a bit too much time, and with social engagements, professional reading to catch on, and personal business to take care of, it leaves precious little time for myself. Most of it I spent unpacking, checking and rearranging my belongings – I never realized before I had such masses of them – and getting settled. Over weekends I played furiously golf, last week I managed to make 45 holes on one Saturday, wearing out two partners for 18 holes each, and making the last nine a solo. I also found a riding stable near-by, and twice got up at 5.30 for a stroll and canter before leaving for the office. I have to try hard to do something to keep my fat tummy down after the treats it gets every morning and dinner from my cook. I cut out lunches completely, but then I am having chops or a steak every morning on top of my ham-and-eggs, and Slovak desserts at dinner don’t constitute a reducing diet either. Yesterday I went swimming, and then made six miles in a brisk trot along the beach, until I had to admit shamefacedly to my companion, the girl [Boka.-TB] with whom I also usually play golf(by the way we are very old acquaintances, and she knows me much too much to think any good of me – to answer your question), that I couldn’t run any more (she couldn’t either, by the way, but was bluffing to stop me running first). And to-day it’s pouring cats and dogs, so I’m staying at home and will do some reading.
Last Monday I had a phone-call from a girl I met five years ago in Cuba. I had forgotten all about her in the meanwhile, and as she identified herself only by her first name, I had to leaf through stacks of old correspondence to find a reference to her second name when I went to call on her. After all, you cannot barge-in into the Waldorf Astoria and search for a Miss Coquitta Idontknowwhatelse. But I found the name finally, although it made me more than an hour late for my appointment. And she was a bit disappointed apparently that I didn’t quite respond to her temperament – well, I’m not quite the same as I used to be five years ago in Cuba, and besides she didn’t please me any more as much as she did then. You know the old story,- I have met somebody in the meanwhile whom I like so much, much more, and although I still am not above meeting another nice girl, and having fun with her, I think I ceased to be quite the “free agent” I used to be before. But it was quite an amusing game, keeping aloof and watching her getting more and more excited and temperamental as I continued to remain amiably and graciously, but correctly, polite.
The week before last I was invited to participate in a meeting of the so-called Czechoslovak National Council, where they were discussing their future policy. I got quite disgusted with some of the dear old politicians, they seen to have overslept some twenty years, or else being in a backward development and on their way to fossilization. But it was also quite pleasant to be for two evenings in a dream-like atmosphere, where the restitution of the old order in my home-country was a naturally accepted reality. I refused, however, to be dragged into any of the groups, and intend to remain independent and apart of emigree politics.
Well, I guess I made up in the size of my letter for the gap in correspondence. I am now awaiting eagerly a dozen of long, long and longing epistles from you.
Love, Vlado
Palace Hotel, Madrid, Spain
Oct. 19th 1951
Dear Vladimir,
I think so many times of our little trip from Geneva, Switzerland by train to Basel, by airliner to Brussels and our sight seeing trip together in Brussels. I lost your card with your new address so if you write me again please give it to me again. Have spent one month here already 8 days in Switzerland 10 days in Scand countries and 10 days in Spain now I leave tonight for Paris for one week and then to Jerusalem for 10 days. Then I go home, hope to be there by Nov. 15th if all goes well. Please do write to me in Spokane.
Your traveling companion, Teckla M. Carlson
Thursday night.
My sweet little Darling,
I could really slap myself into the face for the way I am behaving towards you. I just don’t deserve it that nice girls like you should care for me – and sometimes I wonder how you still manage to do so. When I am looking at my father and mother – both wonderful people, kind and human,- I can’t understand it where this nasty egotistic streak in me came from. In my better moments I fight against it and here and then I am even able to suppress it for awhile. But then it comes up again and somehow I always achieve to hurt most those people to whom I have most to thank for. I do realize my caddish behaviour, and it make me thoroughly unhappy, but I don’t seem to have enough willpower or stamina to make myself act otherwise – or at least not in time. I do want to do good, and at the end I usually wind up making a thorough mess of everything and spoiling everything. What a curse to have a devil like that warring inside!
And I hate the telephone. I was never very good at it, even for strictly business calls, but I never thought it could be so awkward and difficult to speak over it to somebody I love. I just simply couldn’t tell you any of those things I would have liked to – how much I miss you, how I long for your tenderness, for your love, for your companionship, for the fun and giggles we had together, how empty and lonely I feel sometimes, how I would like to talk to you, show you things and take you places, kiss you and hug you, feel your soft, warm and loving presence near me, touch your smooth skin, press you in my arms,- and many other things which I don’t even feel like writing. Instead I spent precious minutes in a silly argument. I loved to hear your voice – you sound terribly British over the phone, much more than when you speak to me directly – but it only made me realize to more your absence. My mind just refused to click properly, and I kept arguing around in circles. Oh darling, everything is so much easier when I can see you and be near you!
I don’t think, however that it would have made much sense to meet you here in Geneva. Apart from the complicated and expensive travel for you, the conditions and atmosphere under which I am living here would not have been conducive to a happy being together. My family is definitely jealous of you (or anybody else who “dares” to diminish by a few minutes the time which they can spend with me), I have work to do and duties towards my job to keep in mind, I would have been torn in between all this, and unable to behave humanely. You know how tense and upset I can get about such situations, and how unpleasantly I behave in such cases. We had such a nice time together, and I try frantically (and without success) not to do anything that would spoil the memories of it. Besides, I took an engagement for this weekend to go out with my new boss, and I simply could not cancel it now. I know it’s egotistic and nasty of me to state that to you, who has done everything for me – but that’s how I am, always looking for my own good more than for other people’s feelings.
I think it will be much more fun to be together in London – we will be all for ourselves, without anything to bother us except parting. The exposition is supposed to be quite good, we can go to some theaters together, and I already wrote to my friend there to get me some introductions into the poshier nightclubs – we will be finally able to “make the town” together. I phoned for accommodations immediately after I talked with you, they were full at the Cumberland, but I got two communicating rooms at the Grosvenor House. They are sending me also the theater plan so that I can make reservations in advance. Tomorrow I will get you your plane ticket – I will choose a late plane on Thursday night, so that you will arrive at about the same time as I, and you will miss only one day (Friday) in your office. I am leaving London Sunday morning, the latest possible plane which will bring me to New York in time for office on Monday,- and that gives us two full days and three nights,- except for a few hours on Friday when I will have to take care of some of my father’s business, and maybe an hour more to see my friend, whom I cannot completely disregard as he is arranging the nightclub introduction for me.
Darling, however much I am looking forward to the chance of being together with you, I would rather miss it than cause you thereby troubles and difficulties. I have no right to demand such things from you, and it would make me very unhappy and spoil our being together if it should be in any way detrimental to the relations with your family or to your good name. We must be reasonable about it. It’s all my fault, stubborn, egotistic bachelor-perseverance, but things being what they are we must face the consequences. So please, darling, think it over well, and don’t hesitate to cable me if you think you cannot make it.
It’s getting light outside and I better finish. I still have a contract to go through for my father, and a hard day tomorrow (or rather today) at the office. That’s all I can report about me – work; I did little else since I returned, haven’t been out anywhere except for a small drive with Mom and Sis on Sunday. And I am feeling very blue, unhappy and lonely without you!
Be happy, my sweet little darling.
Love, Vlado
11.11.1951.
Milá Boka,
I feel lonely without you – nemám sa ku komu íst poradiť a nemám nikoho na kom by mi záležalo a s kym by mi robilo radosť deliť sa o prijemné zážitky. Not that I would be short of girls,- but it’s not quite the same.
Tana I see quite often, and she looks quite well and moderately cheerful. She had been afraid she had stomach ulcers, but her doctor said she only had anemia / no wonder she has it, the way she is scared of fresh air and outdoor exercise/,- but personally I think it’s all just nervousness and quite an overdose of introspection. What she seems to need would be some boy-friends in whom she could get interested,- but she doesn’t seem to want it. I escorted her to a party of AirFrance people, and there were quite a few good lookers who showed interest in her, but she just sat in her corner and didn’t seem interested at all. Well, somebody might come one day and sweep her off her feet, I only hope it will be a boy who will appreciate her and who will be worthy of her. I am going again to visit her this afternoon; I am giving a dinner to her boss / Mrs. Eshaya/ and she wants me to meet another Roumanian girl whom I should also invite. But you will probably hear more from herself.
My weekend in Boston was very successful – I was invited to a family in one of the very nice residential suburbs, and they had five girls in the house / age 1 to 22/, plus two more whom they asked to come for the occasion. Although it’s only a few miles from the city, they have very nice unbroken forests all around, and I spent most of Saturday cutting a trail through them. I also met a rather fascinating divorcee from the Gardiner family, and to my great surprise she appeared at the last moment at the train and traveled with us coach although she had a Pullman ticket. She asked me to call her up at her New York apartment – but she is not in the phone book and the operator could not locate a phone at the given address. So I don’t really know what to think of it. I would have had no time to do it anyhow, I had socially a very busy time. Rhoda Neilson / my friend’s from Djakarta who are divorcing/ came to New York and we saw each other a lot. I also made friends with an English girl, who seems to be quite taken by me, and very pleasant company, and with a Swedish-born American, who plays double for somebody in Seventeen, who probably doesn’t care a bit for me but who is a master in the art of making one feel that she is enjoying his company. Besides, she is physically exactly the type for which I go.
I didn’t play much golf since you left, the weather was not too good. I planned to go yesterday / and it is one of those lovely Indian Summer days/, but then I started raking leaves in the garden, collecting wood for the fire-place, and doing similar chores, and it kept me busy until after dinner. Last Saturday we had the first snow – it melted quickly here, but was beautiful upstate where I went for a drive.
Tana Makovická sent the copy of the letter from Schwelb to Dr. K., but she wouldn’t let me have a look at it. She only told me it is not hopeless; but I did not see any vacancy listed any more in the new edition of the bestseller. The P-3 in Trusteeship, territorial research division, is still posted as vacant, also a job in the Narcotics Division / P-3/, about which I had told Dr. K. Friday afternoon. I received a reply from Barbosa about the job in the Reports Division of TAA – informing me that my application was not successful in the Junior Promotion Board. I will try to find out why, and will try to see what else I could get there. From your end I would appreciate to look after the Trusteeship job and see whether I could get anywhere in Human Rights. If not, let me know please and I will ask Dr. K. to see Steinig about the post in Narcotics. Also please check on Olga about jobs in Green’s office and in Economic Affairs in general, and on jobs in the Refugee office. And let me know what the score is, please.
How are you doing? – And how is Costi?, give him please my very, very best, I’m really sorry that I cannot see him, but then, he is probably much happier in Paris than he would be here right now anyhow. And how do you like Olga / but honestly/, do you think she ever will be able to stand pat on her own feet and make headway, or do you consider her rather the protection-requiring type? I hope she is not too much nuisance for you. You may meet my mother too, there was an indication in her last letter that she might go to Paris to have a look if everything is OK. I hope they will let you alone, though,- I remember how you “liked” “stará” [translation: “old lady” or “old girl”.-TB] and I surely would hate it to see my family included into the same category.
Thanks for your nice little missile from Halifax – it cheered me up a lot. Write to me again soon, please.
All the best in everything, Vlado
Great Neck, New York 2.12.51.
Milá Boka,
Thank you for the birthday wishes – really sweet of you not to forget about it! You really make me feel ashamed, I tried to rake my brain but I forget completely when your birthday comes up. Will have to do some sneaking in AW’s files to find out.
I am glad you are getting on alright with my sis – I was a little bit nervous how it would work out and scared that my family would encroach upon you / you know I do not want too much competition/. She didn’t write me a line yet / neither did I/,- but antiscribitis runs apparently in the family. Is she still épris by her Dutchman or did she get somebody else for a change in her silly-sweet little head? I hope you impress her with the advisability of looking after sausage kings, specially Latin American ones. And how are your chances looking – or is it still and always The Only One, and no turns allowed while the light is green?/ Is it green, by the way?/ I have quieted down a bit, my divorcee went back to Chicago, and I never found the other one. Also skipped the would-be-actress, it was nice for a change, but it would have probably run into too much money if I would have tried to keep it up. The English girl is still around, we usually drive out together Saturday or Sunday, and have dinner here, and about once a week I have dinner at her apartment in Manhattan when her room-mate is out. My girl-friend from Holland is coming to Paris on the eleventh, I asked her to look up Olga, so you can also look her over a bit and tell me what you think of her. If only she was like you are, or only if you loved me like she does, my household problems would greatly advance towards a satisfactory solution. Still, my private life is not unsatisfactory at the moment, although I am spending more money on food and expenses than I thought I would, and I just don’t find the time to do all the things I want. The approach of Christmas is worrying me a bit, all the cards I will have to send, and the gifts – although I think I will not give gifts to anybody but my family and Helenka, don’t you agree?
I am also getting a bit worried about my job since the end of the year approaches and I don’t know whether you can carry me on after that. I saw Barbosa, but he was not hopeful at all. Hausner is also gone. Do you know anything about the Human Rights job, or is that out? And what about Trusteeship? I saw Lande from Narcotics again and took him out to lunch, he told me that the post in his Division is still not filled, but that it is entirely up to Steinig to decide. Could you please let me know how things stand at your end? Balinski is coming back by the end of the year, and I am sure that Krczkiewicz[sp?-TB] will try to push him into the trusteeship job, so if something is to be done, it has to happen before he returns. Did Olga find out anything about jobs in Economics or in the Refugee office?
I didn’t see too much of Tana the last two weeks, but I have two dates with her for the next. I phone her from time to time, and was glad /and rather surprised/ to hear lately that she feels physically fit. Your Daddy being with her helps probably to make her forget her troubles. It also rather surprised me that she likes to…
…and the letter cuts off here on a humorous and somewhat intriguing note. She likes to…what?
I will be publishing the letters of 1952 next, so I hope you are as amused and enamored by the private life of Vlado as I am, and will return to read more.
From the estate of Vladimir Fabry, here are a few items of interest. First, the “Notice of Death” from Ndola, Northern Rhodesia:
(click images to enlarge)
The same notice would have been sent to the families of the other crash victims, who should be remembered here for their sacrifice:
H. A. Wieschoff
William Ranallo
Alice Lalande
Harold M. Julien
Serge L. Barrau
Francis Eivers
Per Hallonquist
Nils-Eric Aahreus
Lars Litton
Nils Goran Wilhelmsson
Harald Noork
Karl Erik Rosen
S.O. Hjelte
P.E. Persson
The post mortem of Vlado says his body was badly burned, and that he was identified by a monogrammed signet ring, so it was surprising to find this letter, and to learn I was in possession of at least one artifact from the crash:
November 9, 1961
ESTATE OF VLADIMIR FABRY
Memorandum re contents of a sealed package delivered by Geneva Headquarters of United Nations to Miss Olga I. Fabry on October , 1961.
The box was tied with brown cord and the cord sealed with a metal U.N. seal. Attached to the box was an envelope from the United Nations Organization in the Congo marked “Urgent, Confidential”, addressed to Mr. John Olver of the the European office of the United Nations in Geneva. The envelope was marked “If Mr. Olver is absent, to be opened by Mr. A. Marx, Chief of Personnel.”
On opening the envelope it was found to contain a letter marked “Confidential”, dated September 29, 1961 addressed to Mr. Olver and signed by Mr. B. Grunzweig. The letter concerned the estate of the late Dr. Vladimir Fabry and stated that the writer understood that the package contained partially destroyed or burned money, travellers’ checks and notebooks belonging to Dr. Fabry. It was requested that the package be delivered to Dr. Fabry’s family, since it might be possible to recover some of the money contained therein. A copy of the letter is attached hereto.
On breaking the seal and opening the package, it was found to contain an envelope in which the following documents and currency were enclosed, all party burned and in the case of some of the currency, badly burned and difficult to decipher. The badly burned currency was in a separate envelope. On the top of the package of burned currency there appeared to be a partially burned folded bill on which the letters “llars” appeared. From what could be seen of the bill, it appeared to be U.S. currency, the denomination unknown. The bills in this package are compacted and stuck together, and they are badly burned. For that reason no attempt was made to separate these bills in order that the same in their present condition might be presented to the proper U.S. officials for examination.
The other contents of the envelope are the following:
1. A number of identification cards of the late Dr. Fabry.
2. American Express travellers’ checks partially burned on one side although readily decipherable, consisting of seven checks of $20 each bearing serial numbers Z35-790-419/425.
3. U.S. currency partially burned along one side but decipherable, consisting of 3 $10 bills and 5 $1 bills.
4. 2 Swiss 20 franc notes, partially burned along one side but readily decipherable.
5. 3 Belgian franc notes in denominations of 20, 50 and 100, respectively.
6. One singed blank airmail envelope.
7. One St. Bernard’s medal.
Though I have looked, I have found no sign of the burned notebooks. Here is all that remains from the crash, from the last moments of Vlado’s life, one St. Bernard’s medal, which I now carry as my own good luck charm:
Having spent so much time thinking about the life of Vlado Fabry, it has been impossible not to care about the way he died, and to want to know the truth about what happened. I’ve been reading every book and article I can find on the subject, but, for me, just reading the 1962 reports of the UN and Rhodesian Commissions investigation of the crash has been very revealing, especially in regards to Fouga Magisters which, I am convinced, shot down the Secretary General’s plane and caused it to crash on the night of 17/18 September, 1961. There were many Africans who saw one or two smaller planes following the DC-6 SE-BDY, but when they were interviewed by the Rhodesian and UN Commissions, they were treated like ignorant children and their testimonies were dismissed as fantasy. I learned a lot more about their treatment in Goran Bjorkdahl and Jacob Phiri’s excellent 2013 article for INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING, Eyewitnesses: The Hammarskjold Plane Crash. From the article, here is one particularly awful comment from UN consultant Hugo Blandiori:
‘Thus, when it is taken into consideration that some of the African witnesses had lack of knowledge in air-plane identification, were of limited learning and might have been motivated by personal or political reasons, it becomes difficult in assessing the truth of their statements…As a consequence, I am of the opinion that the testimony of the African witnesses to the effect that they saw one or two small crafts flying along with SE-BDY just prior to its crash, has to be accepted with a grain of salt’.
I have provided here a few excerpts from both the Rhodesian and United Nations Commission, in order for you to appreciate the context of the following letter, which was written by former High Commissioner of South Africa, H.L.T.Taswell, on 29 September 1961, and was found in the archive of former Prime Minister of the British territory of the Central African Federation Sir Roy Welensky. A scan of the letter was sent to me by an anonymous source. I’m not positive if this particular letter is still considered “TOP SECRET”, but it won’t be anymore. It belongs in the public domain.
“At the outset we would say no reason was suggested, and we cannot think of one, why anyone who might have been able to attack this aircraft from the air should ever have wanted to attack it as it carried Mr. Hammarskjold on the mission he was then undertaking.”
(Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Report of the Commission on the Accident Involving Aircraft SE-BDY, chaired by Sir John Clayden, Chief Justice of the Federation, presented to the Federal Assembly, Salisbury, Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland; February 1962; Annex III, p.20, par.10)
“On landing at Leopoldville [the morning of 17 September 1961], [Flight Engineer] Wilhelmson had reported that SE-BDY had been fired on at the takeoff from Elisabethville. A thorough inspection of the aircraft was accordingly carried out under the supervision of Chief Mechanic Tryggvason of Transair. In the course of the inspection it was found that number 2 engine (inboard port) had been struck by a bullet, which had penetrated the engine cowling and hit the exhaust pipe. The exhaust pipe was replaced and the plane refueled to a total of ten tons.”
(…)
“The Commission further notes that no flight plan for the SE-BDY was transmitted to Salisbury. The Commission has taken into consideration the conditions existing in the Congo at the time and in particular the danger of an attack from the “Fouga Magister” which explains this departure from the rules governing commercial aviation. Indeed, the system of aeronautical communications cannot ensure the secrecy of messages”
(…)
“It is also relevant to observe that, because of the danger of an attack from the “Fouga Magister”, most of the flights in the Congo at the time were undertaken at night”
(…)
“The possibility of other aircraft being in the area of Ndola at the time of the crash was examined. Since the “Fouga Magister” of the Katangese Armed Forces had been operating against the United Nations in Katanga, the possibility of its reaching Ndola was examined by the Rhodesian Board of Investigation and the Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry. It was established that it could not have made the flight from its normal base in Kolwezi to Ndola and returned to Kolwezi since the distance is greater than its operational range. It was also stated by its captain and others that the “Fouga” was on the ground at Kolwezi the night of 17/18 September and could not have operated that night. This evidence is not entirely conclusive since the captain admitted before the Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry that on at least one occasion the “Fouga” had taken off from an unpaved track. While this track was said to be at an even greater distance from Ndola, nothing would appear to preclude the use of a track within range of Ndola. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that the “Fouga” was in the vicinity of Ndola on the night of the crash.”
(…)
“The Commission has, however, been informed that no radar watch was maintained in the Ndola area during the evening and night of 17 September 1961 and, therefore, the possibility of an “unknown aircraft” cannot be entirely excluded.”
(…)
“Certain witnesses testified that they saw or heard a second, or even third, plane. In particular, some of these testified that they saw a second smaller aircraft flying close to SE-BDY after it had passed over the airport or immediately before the crash and that the smaller aircraft was beaming lights on the larger. The Commission visited with some of these witnesses the spots from which their observations had been made and endeavored to obtain an understanding of their testimony. The Commission considers that several of these witnesses were sincere in their accounts of what they believed they saw.
The Commission is also of the opinion, however, that those witnesses may have misinterpreted their observations and reported some incidents which may not in fact have occurred in the way or at the time that they believed when they testified before the Commission.”
(United Nations General Assembly, Report of the Commission of the Investigation into the Conditions and Circumstances Resulting in the Tragic Death of Mr. Hammarskjold and the Members of the Party Accompanying Him, chaired by Rishikesh Shaha (UN A/5069); 24 April 1962; par. 69, 82, 89, 135, 136)
“TOP SECRET”
Salisbury S.R.
29th September, 1961
Dear Mr. Jooste,
As you will know, I had correspondence, during your absence, with our Minister regarding a suggestion made by Mr. Harper, Leader of the Opposition in Southern Rhodesia, that we assist in the establishment of an English language paper in this territory. The Minister’s reply is dated 5th September, 1961.
I have since had a further talk with Mr. Harper and explained the position to him. He will be visiting South Africa one of these days to have a discussion with Minister de Klerk on our Immigration laws. I will write to you again in due course on this matter.
Another approach for the establishment of an English language paper in Southern Rhodesia has since been made to me. It comes from quite a different quarter – namely from Mr. John Gaunt, Independent Member for Lusaka West, Northern Rhodesia, in the Federal Assembly. Particulars of Mr. Gaunt, taken from page 940-92 of the Who’s Who of Southern Africa 1961 are attached.
Mr. Gaunt is a colourful, outspoken and irrepressible politician who has a considerable following in this country. I would be inclined to describe him as the Arthur Marlow of the Federation. He is a fighter, a strong protagonist of the maintenance of white civilisation, yet not a supporter of our Government’s policy in its entirety. At the same time he is not an open or malicious critic of ours but a good friend.
A summary of what Mr. Gaunt had to say during the interview is attached.
Very briefly, his suggestion is that we make about £300,000 available through commercial interests in South Africa for the establishment of an English language paper here. This would be in opposition to the Argus press which is dedicated to the appeasement of “black nationalism” and aims at inducing whites to hand over control to a black majority as quickly as possible.
If £300,000 seems a great deal of money it should, he says, be borne in mind that it is barely the cost of a medium size commercial aircraft.
Mr. Gaunt does not feel that the proposed paper could dedicate itself to applying our racial policy in this country. The position here has already changed too much for that. But what it could do is ensure that the present constitution is rigorously adhered to. The Governments in Southern Rhodesia and the Federation should not be allowed to use the present constitution just as a temporary measure and as a means of sliding towards a still more liberal constitution.
Mr. Gaunt also feels that this paper would be able to further South Africa’s interests greatly by concentrating on favourable positive information. Such a paper if air mailed to South Africa each day could also serve a valuable purpose in our country and would assist the Government.
Mr. Gaunt would like to be made editor-in-chief so that he could give the correct slant to reports. He does not want to be responsible in any way for the financial side.
To me this idea of an independent paper has great appeal. Any opposition here is completely frustrated through having no paper. The Argus group is so powerful, moreover, that it could go far to breaking even the most established politician who does not follow its particular line – and I do not exclude Sir Roy Welensky.
Nearly two years ago Anglo-American and NST[? abbreviation unclear] withdrew their financial support of the United Federal Party. It looked then as if they were going to support Todd who was given a tremendous boost by the press because of his liberal line. Now the U.F.P. are following the liberal line themselves, Todd is in the background, Anglo-American and NST[?]have, I hear, restored their financial support of the U.F.P. and the Argus press are supporting the party. That the United Federal Party have been forced to toe the line by Argus press is no secret to us in South Africa.
The future say of the white man in the Government of this country does not look rosy. Banda has control in Nyasaland, Kaunda may, through British action, still attain a similar position in Northern Rhodesia. Southern Rhodesia’s new constitution could be merely the first step towards giving greater say to the black man here. The Federal constitution when revised must follow the pattern of the constitutions of the three constituent territories. That means infinitely greater say for the black man in the Federal Assembly. Such say will have to be very considerable indeed if Banda is to be induced to stay in the Federation.
Sir Roy and the United Kingdom are already at loggerheads over the talks on the Federal constitution. Sir Roy wanted them now. The United Kingdom wants postponement, no doubt with the object of further appeasement in Northern Rhodesia and conditioning of white feeling to a black majority government.
There is strong and bitter feeling in this country against the United Kingdom. Given an independent press it could be fanned to a point where the United Kingdom could be seriously embarrassed, and where Southern Rhodesia could still be saved, where it could break from the Federation and become independent. There are many influential men here would gladly grasp a weapon like an independent paper.
There are many seeds of discontent. This week we heard rumours of a serious division in the Federal Cabinet. The Deputy Governor of the Bank of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, told me only a few days ago too that the financial picture here is far from rosy. The “expected” recovery after the Southern Rhodesia referendum has not materialized. The number of people who voted “yes” at that referendum and now feel they were duped and should have voted “no” is increasing. Properly exploited this discontent could have a marked influence when Southern Rhodesia goes to the polls in about a year’s time.
If the United Federal Party and the Argus press continue unchecked, it is merely a matter of time before our buffer zone north melts away. With an independent paper we could stave that day off and could even preserve the Southern Rhodesia[border? word obscured]with its 215,000 whites(2,630,000 blacks).
As Mr. Gaunt points out it is surely to our interest to have the main struggle for survival take place in Southern Rhodesia rather in South Africa.
A Canadian group is now negotiating for the purchase of African Newspapers here. One can imagine the kind of vitriol the Canadians would be capable of using against us.
The “Citizen”, Mr. Gaunt says, could be bought by us for a song. An immediate start could be made with a paper. Improvements could follow.
The Argus will try to kill any independent paper and financial losses must be expected. But would they not be worthwhile? We are fighting for our lives. They are fighting for a black majority government, for cheap labour and greater profits.
H.L.T. Taswell
High Commissioner
This letter perfectly illustrates how propaganda works, and it’s a history lesson on racism, and the lengths men will go to defend their right to it. Even though the Fouga Magister is a small fighter jet, the sentence about an independent paper being less expensive to purchase to defend their racial policy than “a medium size commercial aircraft” gave me a chill, because this written only 11 days after the crash. No wonder they hated Hammarskjold so much – what was the fragrance of life to the African was the stench of death to white rule.
In 1961, even in the midst of the Congo Crisis, Vlado was doing all he could to help his family. Conor Cruise O’Brien’s observations of Vlado, in his book To Katanga and Back – that he did nothing but work and hardly slept – were fairly accurate for the time he knew him, because it seems that he was spending every spare moment attending to the unfinished legal cases of his father, Pavel Fabry, who died December 19, 1960.
From February 2, 1961, here is a letter to United Nations legal counselor Oscar Schachter from Vlado’s Maminka:
Dear Mr. Schachter,
I am sorry to take your valuable time and to disturb you with this letter. It is only the serious situation and the emergency in which I find myself after the death of my beloved husband that urge me to write this letter.
As you may know my husband was working for some years as an international lawyer with the German Government on war reparation. My husband devoted not only his effort, time, money, but finally his life to this cause. Unfortunately it was not permitted to him to finish his affairs as he died so very suddenly in the middle of his unfinished task. Vladko who was always a remarkable son is now sacrifying[sic] all his free time besides his work and his vacations to work until late at night on his father’s affairs. There are many difficulties, many hard problems to be solved, which will need patience, time, travelling and possibilities of good communications.
All these are problems which I cannot face alone, and the only person to solve them and to continue the unfinished work of my husband is my son. If we had to take a lawyer, we would have to do it in many countries of Europe and my husband has indebted himself already too much to afford so many lawyers. It is therefore only my son who is the only person to help me out in this.
My health has been weakened by the sudden loss of my husband. When I learned about the transfer of my son to Congo, it was another shock for my heart illness. I am unfortunately unable to cope alone with the situation I have mentioned as much as I don’t like to ask something, I am driven to it by this emergency. It is furthermore a situation which presents itself during our life, such as accident, illness, death and its consequences, etc. I would like to ask you to help me, Mr. Schachter. You have always been very nice to us all, a real good and understable[sic] friend and I would like to ask you not to let me down now, when I most need it.
I wonder whether it would be possible to arrange a transfer for my son to Europe – Geneva or elsewhere – so that he could easier communicate and work to finish my husband’s most urgent cases. I have never asked you anything before and I would never have, but as you can see it is a very serious situation and I am in an emergency.
It is very difficult for me to write this letter and I am doing so on my own, without my son’s knowledge. Would you please consider it as such, a desperate personal demand for help.
Many thanks for everything you will do for me to help me out. Kindest regards to Molly and to you.
As ever yours,
Olga Fabry Palka
Vlado’s mother also wrote Constantin Stavropoulos for help. Here is a personal telegram she sent to him, dated February 11, 1961:
To give balance to the glowing eulogies of Vlado, I offer two charming letters that he wrote from 1953.
The first is written from New York, 3 March:
Guapa mia,
I think it’s something like two months since I wrote you a decent full letter, and you would have the undeniable right to be quite angry if I hadn’t warned you about my extremely bad writing habits. Even so, please divide your anger equitably between me and my office, for we are both solidarly and undivisibly[sic] guilty for the long delay in my letter-writing. My Committee met from January 5 to February 22, and it was more of a mad-house than ever. I enjoyed the work very much, and so I did probably more than would have really be required of me, with the end result of spending and average of 70 hours a week in my office. Add to this the time one has to spend on various official parties and other quasi-mandatory occasions, the time for dressing, eating, household chores and – unfortunately – a bit of time that one unavoidably spends sleeping, and there remains just enough left to do the minimum of reading to keep in touch with financial events and other news that one cannot afford to miss. Apart from the lack of time, my mind was too preoccupied and too tired out to write a decent letter anyhow. You are not the only one who had to bear up with me during these last two months – my own parents didn’t hear much from me either, and I had to refuse nearly all private social engagements and pleasures. At one point I got so tired, after having worked until 3 or 4 in the morning for several days in a row, that I bumped with my face right against the steel edge of my car’s roof – and then was so preoccupied that I did not notice that I had hurt myself until the blood covered my left eye and I suddenly realized that something is wrong with my driving. But don’t worry, my beauty – sic! – is not affected – at the emergency ward of a hospital where I stopped I was given a thorough stitching, and they did such a nice job that there is practically no scar left.
The last two weekends I was catching up a bit on my body’s craving for exercise – I had worked all weekends since Christmas and so had not been out on the fresh air except for the 10 or 20 meters from the door to the car – and went skiing. Of course, to go skiing here is not so easy as in Geneva – Stowe, which is the nearest place with good trails and good snow, is 600 km away, so one has to spend most of Friday night and Sunday night driving. There are no wide open slopes either, just trails through woods where one has swing it around like in a slalom. The trails are of course of varying steepness and difficulty, from easy softly sloping ones for beginners to steep twisters, and towards the evening when they get iced up from the hundreds of skiers who hurtle through them. some of these trails can be a real challenge even for experts. Both weekends I had a carful of friends with me, to save on transportation expenses, and last weekend we rented an entire floor of a house, complete with a large living room with a big fireplace, and with kitchen, and the girls cooked our breakfast and dinner so that we did not spend too much money.
To correct the impression that all of my life was only work I must add that I also managed to go to two balls, one Latin American affair given by the Brazilian government and the Pan-American Union, with two orchestras flown in from Rio, and an excellent gay atmosphere, and one extremely fashionable “high class” American ball, which was much more stuffy but very interesting because it was “the” exclusive ball of society. Last week I resumed accepting dinner invitations – which I had to refuse while the Committee was meeting because I would have never found the time to go, and yesterday I gave myself a little bachelor-dinner party for fourteen guests. It was a bit of a problem to fit in everything in my small apartment, and I didn’t start shopping and preparing for the party until five in the afternoon because I was tied up in the office, so that when my first guests came I was still out getting ice and they had to wait for a few minutes before I came back and let them into the apartment. I couldn’t of course give them anything as fancy as your little Chinamen-eggs, but while they were having drinks and in-between keeping up conversation I managed to prepare some hors-d’oeuvres salad with tongue, ham and salmon, and while they were eating that I cooked my lobster-dish, something like a langouste cardinal, which I had learned how to do while visiting some friends near Boston last year, and then we all swarmed over the fondue pot and everybody dunked into it right in the kitchen-cupboard and was delighted at the extravagant delicacy. So you see, it’s much easier to satisfy guests here, you don’t have to go into so much trouble and formality. Around two in the morning I called for volunteers for dishwashing, and in less than half-hour all the hundreds of dishes, glasses and silverware – which I had rented for the occasion – were stacked away and I could compliment my guests out and go to bed.
Well, I think that’s about all the news for now. I am looking forward to a bit more varied life now, want to see some plays and do more skiing – and in reverting to the nice things I will be thinking more of you.
Love,
Vlado
This second letter was written from Geneva, 26 December:
My dear one,
You must excuse my rather disorganized(and probably hardly legible)first letter – I wrote it between appointments in an effort to give you news of me as soon as possible. But this purpose was thwarted when I discovered that in addition to the airfield strike, also postal employees were on strike in France, so that sending the letter from Paris would have simply meant its getting lost in the piles of amassing mail which was being left uncollected. Really, France managed to get itself in a mess again – no president, no air traffic, no mail – and everything so expensive that I didn’t dare to buy anything. The theaters also were rather disappointing – a general air of decadence and negativity pervades the selection of plays, their direction and production, and to some extent also the performances of the players. If I didn’t have business to take care of, I would have probably left disgustedly the first night – as it was, I left disgustedly the third night.
The trains for Geneva were sold out, so I left through Basel and Lausanne, leaving Father behind for another day. In Lausanne, I had a big surprise – my mother walked suddenly through the carriage looking for a place to sit – she was at a wedding there, and neither of us knew that the other will be using the same train.
I had a very nice Christmas Eve, just the four of us, mother prepared a big Slovak Christmas dinner, and it was all very sentimental and mellow, each of us had shining eyes and tears ready at the slightest provocation. We all went together to church, and I even joined then in Confession and Partaking of the Cene, which I had not done for quite a few years. Yesterday I made another concession – visiting relatives and friends – but I managed to be carried away by the spirit enough to enjoy all of it. On Christmas Eve, we had phone calls from all over Europe, – Madrid, Stockholm, Munich, Zurich – friends wishing us Merry Christmas and welcoming me here, – it was all very sweet and comforting to know that there are still friends around who will go into so much trouble to make us feel good. I was also surprised at the number of people who sent us gifts and cards, many of whom I could hardly recall.
There is practically no snow anywhere, and skiing prospects look very gloomy. All the major roads across the Alps are still open – something nobody can ever recall having happened at Christmas. Even if there should be snow now, it would not have enough base to permit mountain-crossings, and so I will have to postpone skiing until at least the second week of January. In the meanwhile, I shall probably leave for the Cote d’Azur next Monday or Tuesday, and stay there for a week or so. I shall let you know what next.
I haven’t thanked you yet properly for your Christmas wishes (or rather, for Mona Lisa’s) – I had not seen the card when I was phoning you from the air-terminal, having eyes only for your picture, and there was no more room on my letter from Paris. How is dear ML, does she behave (and do you)???
I thought of you at Christmas time, and I shall be thinking of you when the New Year arrives (and quite often in-between, before and thereafter). I am wishing to you and to your mother all the very best for the coming year, and as a special little wish for myself I add that of being with you very, very often.
Love,
Vlado
After taking a little break to study and travel, I decided to return to share more about Vlado. I’ll be posting more letters and translations here soon, and I hope you’ll enjoy them with me.
Here are two statements made at the service of Vladimir Fabry, at the Evangelical Lutheran Church, in Place du Bourg-de-Four, Geneva, on Thursday 28 September 1961.
The first is given by Mr. Constantin Stavropoulos, Under-Secretary General for Legal Affairs of the United Nations:
We are gathered here to pay our last respects to a man who devoted his life to the pursuit of freedom, peace and justice. He gave unsparingly of his great intellectual and physical powers to these ideals, undeterred by dangers, hardship or even death itself.
Vladimir Fabry’s early manhood was spent in fighting for the liberation of his country and for its re-construction after the Second World War. With peace again established, he turned to the United Nations.
In 1946, at the age of 25, Vladimir joined the Secretariat of the United Nations, having already gained a Doctorate in Law and Political Science from the Slovak University, and having completed graduate studies in Economics at the University of Bratislava. He was to have a devoted, useful and successful career. His adaptability, sound judgement and capacity for hard work soon established how invaluable he was on missions requiring such qualities. His assignments were many, and of ever increasing responsibility. In 1948 and 1949 he served as Legal Affairs Officer with the Security Council’s Committee of Good Offices in the Indonesian Question. Thereafter he saw service with the United Nations Plebiscite in Togoland under United Kingdom Administration and with the Suez Canal Clearance Operations. His service as Legal and Political Adviser to the United Nations Emergency Force in the Middle East was, early this year, cut short by his being sent to Leopoldville as Legal Adviser to the United Nations Operation in the Congo. Throughout all these missions he won universal commendation, respect and affection. The measure of regard in which the Secretary-General himself held Vladimir may be seen from the fact that he chose him as a companion on the important mission to Ndola that ended in the tragedy which has occasioned universal grief.
Vladimir Fabry was also throughout his life an enthusiastic sportsman, expert skier, horseman and mountaineer. Here, as in his professional career, he was always ready to extend a hand to those less talented and skilled as himself. It is my sad duty today to convey, on behalf of the United Nations, to his family, and in particular his mother and his sister, the most sincere and heartfelt sympathy. I want them to know that I, and all the others who worked with him and counted him as a friend, join in their grief. I want to extend to them the thanks of the United Nations, and of all who believe in it, for the devoted and talented service which Vladimir gave to the Organization. I want to repeat, too, what I have already conveyed to Mrs. Fabry – namely my hope that she may gain some consolation from the thought that her son’s life was a happy and useful one in the service of some of mankind’s highest ideals. His devotion and integrity as an international civil servant will long be remembered by all of us, and he will find his memorial in the history of those who fought for justice and humanity.
The second statement is given by Mr. Gurdon W. Wattles, a fellow Legal Adviser at the United Nations:
I wish to express to you all the profound sorrow felt at the death of Vladimir Fabry by his friends in New York, both inside and outside the United Nations. Vlado lived in New York from 1946 onward, whenever his duties did not take him elsewhere. He became a New Yorker not only by reason of the many bonds of friendship which he had there, both inside and outside the United Nations, and inside and outside the legal profession. He was a man who made friends easily, and who kept the friends he had made.
The first impression one had on meeting Vlado was one of human warmth, charm, and lively intelligence. He was interested in people in all their variety, and they in turn were drawn to him by his qualities of imaginative sympathy and sensitive considerateness. But as one got to know him better, one realized that here was a man who had not only great charm and great intelligence, but a remarkable strength of character.
It is evident that the wholeness and strength of his personality were largely the result of an unusally happy life with his family from his earliest childhood. From his conversation it could be realized how deep was the love that linked him to his mother, his father and his sister, and what security he derived from closeness of his family relationships. Thus any friend of Vlado’s must esteem the family he loved so well, and who by loving him so well, and so wisely, contributed so much to the formation of a distinguished man. His friends, themselves feeling the loss of a man of great value, are also in a position to realize in some measure, and to sympathize with the especially poignant sense of loss which his family must feel.
The principle qualities in Vlado which made his friends esteem and honor him were his sense of duty, his courage, and his integrity. He whole-heartedly devoted his career to the United Nations, and his sense of duty made him seek out the posts of the greatest difficulty and danger. He was not content to sit in his office in New York, dealing with matters in relative tranquility and comfort; he sought out the forward posts of the United Nations, the advanced echelons where difficult and crucial decisions have to be made sometimes in a matter of minutes, with little opportunity for the calm reflection which a lawyer often needs. He had the ability to serve in these most difficult positions, and, having the ability, he felt an obligation to undertake them.
Whether he was in the field or in New York, Vlado’s sense of duty led him to devote his energies unstintingly to the task in hand. He was never satisfied with an easy or stop-gap solution; he got to the bottom of things, and his thoroughness and breadth of view have left a legacy of solid work and an example to all who follow in his footsteps.
Vlado’s quiet and un-self-conscious courage was that of mountaineering, a sport which he sometimes practiced in his leisure. He was simply unperturbed by dangers and difficulties, and worked his way calmly and methodically from one safe point to the next. He had in this life greater changes of circumstances and greater challenges than come to almost any of us, but he met them with a graceful gallantry which in making them seem smaller made him seem a bigger man. He triumphed over adversity by turning it into opportunity, and found a broader field of usefulness when his original one was denied to him. His courage left an example which must be particularly precious to his family in their present sorrow.
Finally, I should like to mention his invincible integrity, which no stress of circumstance or pressure of the passions of others could subdue. He judged events for himself, according to his own rigorous standards, and acted on his conclusions, without fear or favor. He showed in a pre-eminent degree the integrity, with its concomitants of independence and impartiality, which is the first requirement for his chosen career.
Vlado’s life is now a part of history, and his spirit is with God. For us remains the duty – and the privilege – of carrying on our lives in a world which is the better for his having lived, and where his example can strengthen us who knew him to bear the burdens laid on us.
Respect for the word is the first commandment in the discipline by which a man can be educated to maturity — intellectual, emotional, and moral.
Respect for the word — to employ it with scrupulous care and in incorruptible heartfelt love of truth — is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race.
To misuse the word is to show contempt for man. It undermines the bridges and poisons the wells. It causes Man to regress down the long path of his evolution.
“But I say unto you, that every idle word that men speak…”
~ Dag Hammarskjold “Markings”
This Christmas, I bought myself a copy of Conor Cruise O’Brien’s TO KATANGA AND BACK, and the first thing I did was look for Vladimir Fabry in the index. This is what I found on pages 70-71:
Another important figure on the 6th floor at this time was Vladimir Fabry, an American citizen of Croat origin and ONUC’s legal adviser (‘Special Councelor’). Fabry was a thin-faced young man with a frequent but unamused smile and a stoop brought on by unremitting work. Even in an organization where all the key people worked excessively hard (surrounded, for no apparent reason, by large numbers of non-key officials who seemed to do no work at all) Fabry’s industry stood out. He slept little, he read nothing for pleasure, he had no vices or other hobbies, he simply worked – fourteen to eighteen hours a day. Dealing with paper he was accurate, penetrating and happy; with people he seemed on edge, as if he found them distressingly large and imprecise; and this was especially true of his relations with M Poujoulat. At this time, on first meeting Fabry, I was taken aback, mistaking his uneasy, abstracted air for personal hostility. Later, I came to respect his clarity of mind and to appreciate, and even admire, his lonely integrity. ‘I am an anti-social person’, he told me once, with melancholy pride. It was not true, but what was social in him – his fierce drive to bring some tidiness and predictability into the activities of man – took the impersonal form of a shy, jealous, exclusive loyalty to the abstract and developing idea of the United Nations. It is not unfitting that he should have met his death as he did, on the flight towards Ndola, working for Hammarskjold.
While I agree with a few things he said about Vlado, so much of this is just O’Brien’s opinion, and he doesn’t bother to fact check. Vlado is not “of Croat origin”, he was born in Liptovský Svätý Mikuláš, in the former Czechoslovakia. There is no doubt Vlado was working hard and sleeping little when O’Brien met him – considering the pressure of the situation in the Congo, Vlado was compelled to sacrifice his social life for a greater cause – but O’Brien really didn’t know Vlado as well as he thought he did.
Here are two photos of Vlado at work:
Here he is in Egypt, taking in the sights:
Here are two letters of condolence from September 1961, from friends who knew and loved Vlado:
52 Champs Elysees
Paris
My Dear Friends,
Although it may seem selfish, I think the best way I can express my condolence and my sympathy to you is to tell you what Vlado meant to me.
I won’t tell you how much admiration or respect or affection I felt for him. I will tell you only that I think I can honestly say I considered him my best friend – and I was proud of knowing him: and I can say that all the more validly because I knew his faults as well as his virtues. I am very well acquainted with loneliness – but the thought of losing Vlado makes me feel even lonelier.
Please believe that just as I share your grief and sorrow at losing him, so also, since you can be very proud of him, I feel privileged to be able to share, even a little bit, your pride.
With very deep sorrow,
Peter Kenton
United Nations
New York, NY
Dear Olga,
I want to offer you my help in any way I can give it.
He was loved by so many people; he was kind and honest and strong, very strong.
He told me that memories are good to have. He lived with high standards and he died for them. He worked tirelessly in Gaza and the Congo. No tribute will be adequate to his merits.
I write this from his office here, where he spent many evenings alone. He said he liked thick walls and solitude, music and ideas. Of course he was also, at times, very gay, full of the joy of living.
Please accept my silent condolence to you and your mother.
Cynthia Knuth
And from the UNEF weekly, THE SAND DUNE, September 22, 1961, here is a tribute to Vlado from friends who understood his devotion to the UN:
With the sudden death in Congo of Vladimir Fabry UN has lost a distinguished and devoted son. Until his recently acquired US citizenship he had no country but UN to which he gave that same fierce loyalty with which he had served his own land. He was a sagacious lawyer, a skillful negotiator and a indefatigable worker for whom time did not exist. There were many Fabrys. The scholar and man of affairs who in his twenties had managed a huge industrial combine. The fighter whose activities sent him to exile. The mountaineer, skier, gourmet and music lover who was fluent in nine or ten languages and had knowledge of as many countries. He was an epitome of European culture.
We in the UNEF will remember Vlad not only for the work he did here but for his personal quirks. His hatred of the sea which did not prevent daily voyages on an air mattress. His pull ups on door lintels to tone the Mountaineer’s arm muscles and controlled skidding on sand to remind him of skiing. His undisguised joy in good food, good wine and good conversation, all of which he delighted to provide. No matter how busy, he could always find time to advise and aid anybody, no matter how humble, who had any problem. He was unassuming, courteous, exquisitely polite and we will never forget him.
Just recently, I purchased the book WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJOLD?: THE UN, THE COLD WAR AND WHITE SUPREMACY IN AFRICA, written by Susan Williams, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, and reading it has left me disturbed. It was a shock to open the book to the back page and see, for the very first time, the drawing of the wreckage plan of the Albertina. There was Vlado’s body, indicated by a circled “B 7”, not far from Dag Hammarskjold (“B 8”) and Sgt. Harold Julien (“B 16” – the only survivor of the crash, who died six days later). This book is an incredible help for my research, and I want to thank Williams for writing it. I hope the U.N. does not ignore the evidence she has presented in her book – Dag Hammarskjold’s death was not an accident, and there should be a new inquiry. Like so many good men that dared to live out their philosophy on this planet, he had to pay for it with his life.
From the family photo archive, here is Vlado’s body being delivered to Geneva on the Pan Am DC8 that carried the body of Hammarskjold and the other 14 victims, the first stop of many around the world. The UN flag that drapes his coffin was later given to Madame Fabry-Palka and her daughter Olga, and is now in our home. (click images to enlarge)
In this photo, Madame Fabry-Palka is consoled by a UN staff member as Olga Fabry (Vlado’s only sibling) stands nearby. I wish I knew who the other people in the photograph were – especially the man with the reflective glasses and the baton at the foot of the stairs.
Vlado is buried in the Cimetière du Petit-Saconnex in Geneva, next to his father – they died within 9 months of each other. Madame Olga Fabry-Palka died in 1974, and is buried there with them, also. Whenever I am in Geneva, I pay my respects to this good family, and thank them for their example of courage.
(Pavel Fabry is front and center – click on photo to enlarge)
To understand the character of Vlado Fabry, it’s important to know the character of his father – Dr. Pavel Fabry, who was imprisoned and tortured by Nazis and Communists for his opposition. When Pavel escaped from the Czechoslovak prison hospital, with the help of his friends, they dressed him as a nun and hid him inside a beer barrel on a train headed to Switzerland. In Geneva, Simone Baridon (a close friend of my mother-in-law) was with Olga Fabry the day Pavel arrived, and she remembers her bravery that day, when Olga said “Daddy is crossing the border now.”
This is the C.V. of Dr. Pavel Fabry that was written in English, and the following document was written in German – this was my first attempt at translating German, so it’s a little awkward, but the story of Pavel is still very compelling.
Pavel Svetozar FABRY, LLD, was born on January 14th, 1891 of an old family of industrialists and businessmen. After graduating in business administration, he studied law, attaining the degree of Doctor of Law; passed the bar examinations; and successfully completed the examinations required to qualify for judgeship.
During World-War-I, Mr. Fabry served as officer in an artillery division as well as in the service of the Army’s Judge Advocate-General. He became the first Secretary of the Provisional National Council established to prepare the liberation of Slovakia and the orderly transfer of its administration to the Czechoslovak Government. After the foundation of the Czechoslovak Republic, he was appointed Prefect (chief Government official) for the Eastern part of Slovakia.
When the Communist armies of the Hungarian Government of Bela Kun attacked Slovakia in 1919, Mr. Fabry was named High Commissioner Plenipotentiary for the defense of Eastern Slovakia. In this function he was entrusted with the co-ordination of the civil administration with the military actions of the Czechoslovak Army and of the Allied Military Command of General Mittelhauser. His determined and successful effort to prevent Eastern Slovakia to fall under the domination of Communist Armies – the victorious results of which contributed to the fall of the Communist regime in Hungary – drew on Mr. Fabry the wrath of the Communist leaders; they declared him the “mortal enemy of the people”, led violent press campaigns against him and attacked him overtly and covertly continually and at every opportunity.
After the consolidation of the administrative and political situation of Slovakia, Mr. Fabry left the Government service and returned to his private practice as barrister. He specialized in corporation law and his assistance was instrumental in the founding and expansion of a number of industrial enterprises. He became Chairman or one of the Directors of Trade Associations of several industrial sectors, particularly those concerned with the production of sugar, alcohol, malt and beer. He was elected Chairman of the Economic Committee of the Federation of Industries, and played the leading role in several other organizations. He also was accredited as Counsel to the International Arbitration Tribunal in Paris.
Among civic functions, Mr. Fabry devoted his services particularly to Church, acting as Inspector (lay-head) of his local parish and as member of the Executive Committee of the Lutheran Church of Czechoslovakia. His appointment as delegate to the World Council of Churches’ meeting in Amsterdam in 1948 prompted his arrest by the Communist Government.
Although Mr. Fabry never stood for political office nor for any political party function, he was well known for his democratic and liberal convictions, and for the defense of these principles whenever his activities gave him the opportunity to do so. He earned himself a reputation in this respect which brought him the enmity of the adversaries of democracy from both the right and the left. He became one of the first Slovaks to be sent to a concentration camp following the establishment of a Pro-German fascist regime in 1939. His release could later be arranged and he was able to take active part in the underground resistance movement against the occupant; for this activity the German secret police (Gestapo) ordered his pursuit and execution in 1945, but he was able to escape the death sentence. In spite of his resistance record (or perhaps because of it), Mr. Fabry was among those arrested by the Russian ARmy, on the instigation of the Communist Party which could not forget his anti-Communist activities dating back all the way to 1919. Due to pressure of public opinion Mr. Fabry’s imprisonment at that time was very short; but when Communist seized power in Czechoslovakia in 1948, they did not miss the opportunity to settle accounts with him. He was removed from all his offices, his property was confiscated, he was imprisoned and subjected to a third degree cross-examination taking six months. No confessions of an admission which could have served as a basis for the formulation of an accusation could, however, be elicited from Mr. Fabry, and he managed to escape from the prison hospital where he was recovering from injuries inflicted during the examination. He succeeded to reach Switzerland in January 1949, where he has continued in his economic activities as member of the Board of Directors, and later President, of an enterprise for the development of new technologies in the field of bottling and food conservation. He was also active in assisting refugees and was appointed as member of the Czechoslovak National Council-in-exile.
The following C.V. is addressed to the “Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Geneva”:
Curriculum Vitae (Lebenslauf)
Before the Persecution
I come from an old industrial family. My ancestors in 1603 – Matheus Fabry – from the Geneva area, Satigny Place Moulin Fabry, after the then Upper Hungary present Slovakia immigrated and in the free royal town of Nemecka Lupca – German Luptschau – in the county Liptov, Circle Liptovsky Svaty Mikulas established a tannery. This industrial tradition has remained in the family, according to the chronicles of General Hradsky.
My father Josef was a prosperous merchant and industrialist. Also Vice-President of the Chamber of Commerce and president of several trade and finance companies. Board member of some industry and financial companies. Maternally I am also descended of Industrial and Estate-owning family.
We were 10 siblings – seven are behind the Iron Curtain still alive, some of them in prison, some of them forcefully resettled.
The parents sought to give us a good education with University studies, but all children had to complete some studies in trade.
I attended Hungarian schools, because we did not have a middle school in their mother tongue.
My parents tradition and my studies gave me the future direction of my C.V.
I have allowed for easier overview and orientation in the supplements a special list of 1. Personal Data, 2. Vocational activities, 3. the International profession – Law practice, 4. The national economy – Professional activity, 5. Of the public, political, religious, social and charitable activities, as well as a line up of assets and income up to the time of the persecution, submitted, which discuss my work and resume enough.
[I don’t include the list in this post.-T]
During the time of Persecution
In order to make aspects of the persecution more understandable, it is necessary to strip some events even before this time:
As evident from the personal data, I had at the end of WWI, as a military lawyer for the military commander in Budapest, opportunity to observe the infiltration of communism and drew all my future consequences therefrom.
As can also be seen from the personnel records, I was appointed as High Commissioner Plenipotentiary for the military command of eastern Slovakia. At that time, the Kremlin gave directives to the members of the Comintern, to create all the conditions you can imagine out of the Ruhr against an eastern power, as potential factor for war. Therefore, the then Hungarian Communist leader Bela Kun was commissioned to warlike attack of Slovakia, since at the same time Poland was to be attacked by Moscow military, the objective was, from Poland as an Industry and Agricultural country, and from Slovakia and Hungary as Agricultural states, to form a political unity under Communist leadership. This should then be as the basis for conquest of East and Central Germany, and then the Ruhr territories served.
These efforts have been, in spite of fierce fighting in Poland and Slovakia, thwarted under great bloodshed. Unfortunately at Yalta was Communism facilitated, by Stalin’s perfidy, clumsy (plumpen) breach of contract, and betrayal to conquer these areas.
In negotiating the boundaries demarcating the then Bratislava, I had a sharp conflict with Bela Kun. The then Secretary of the way, was none other than the present ruler of Hungary, Mathius (Matyas) Rakosi, who could not forget me and my actions against the Communist terror gangs. Since that time, I was attacked during the entire years until WWII, at every opportunity, both in newspapers and at public rallies of the Communist Party. The communist leader Vietor asserts in his “Faklya in 1952” [Not included here.-T] that the failure of the plans of the Communist International was partly due to my vigorous defense activities. The statement that my work was supported by the Communists after the seizure of power in 1948, settled bitterly with my arrest, as will be further mentioned. The second point I would list is represented by the German-friendly setting:
As can be seen from the personnel data, the Slovak Intelligentsia before WWII was eager to visit the great German culture as close neighbors, and study them in the country of origin. Therefore, each family was trying to get their children educated in the German Universities, as well as other German institutions. So I spent the semester of 1910/11 at the University of Berlin. Of course, religion played a significant role with cultural trends, since a third of Slovaks were Augsberg Confession Protestant and wanted nothing more than to visit the land of Luther and his faith.
The great and unique education of that time has influenced my whole future life, and has quite clearly had an impact in my subsequent work in business and public. So I led as President of Industry Associations that all protocols and negotiations were bilingual, though barely 20% of all industrialists in Slovakia were of German language and nationality. The leading representatives of German diplomacy and economy were in my home, and were frequent preferred guests on my extensive hunting grounds.
It is therefore understandable, that the persecution under the Nazi Regime of Germany has hit me doubly hard. I will mention only in passing that I spent many years on my annual holiday in Germany, specifically in Reichenhall, in the Kurhaus Hotel Axelmannstein of the Seethaler family. However, I also observed at that time the undemocratic developement of the Nazis in Munich at Reichenhall, and practiced my objective critique so that I was advised to disappear from Reichenhall. I then had to follow with the establishment of the Slovak state by Hitler, immediately carried out by the exponents of the Nazi Organization.
After these explanatory notes I will venture to list my persecution during the Nazi Regime chronologically:
Even though I with the then Prime Minister Dr. Tiso and his staff maintained very friendly relations in the then state of Slovak autonomy, I was, after the creation (on Hitler’s orders) of the so-called Independent Slovak State, on command (einschreitung ?) of Nazi Franz Karmasin‘s leadership, arrested and taken by the Hlinka Guard (Slovak SS) — locked military barracks (Kasernen eingesperrt). There I was subjected to torture and abuse of the second degree. When this became public knowledge, it upset the leadership of the Slovak State, and after several days I was released.
But a week later, in late March, I was re-arrested again on the orders of Nazi Leadership (Karmasin), and transferred to the prison fortress Illava, to be held prisoner there under menschenwurdigsten (?) circumstances. I was put in the basement of this prison fortress, where the primitive central heating had long been out of operation. Days and nights, we had to spend in indescribable cold, with nothing to protect us but a few ragged horse blankets. In preparation for these inhumanities, specially chosen prisoners, I also among them, were tortured in the infamous “Koks-oder Schreckenskeller” (Coke – Kokshaufen – or Horror Cellar). They threw us in the Kokshaufen (?), covered us with a rug, so you do not see the wounds, and I, along with the Editor-in-Chief of the Newspaper Union Korman, were beaten throughout the night in the most barbarous ways. During this ordeal, my stomach and liver were so much affected that there later became ulcers on the lining of my stomach. On my way to Illava prison the transport had to be stopped, because I was vomiting blood. In spite of terrible pain, the provisional prison doctor denied me his help, with the remark that he would not because of my fall out with authorities. During the visits, however, my fellow prisoners reported of my fate, and it was an energetic intervention. There was an inspection and a physician, Dr. Pikova, took me into the prison hospital. My condition deteriorated, however, living in a dangerous manner, and I had alarmingly high blood pressure and a low temperature of 31-32 degrees celcius.
At last, I was transferred to the surgical ward of the hospital in Bratislava by Professors Carsky and Razus, and taken into treatment. In surgery they did not consider my weakened condition. For weeks I hovered between life and death. Of course, it did not look favorable that during the whole time I was heavily guarded by police inside the hospital, and had not the slightest possibility of speaking with anyone other than the doctors. After many long weeks I was finally allowed to transfer to my Villa again, of course, only under intense surveillance, day and night, in the hall of the Villa, and apart from my wife and my children no one was allowed to come in contact with me.
I had scarcely gained some new strength, when the newly appointed German Ambassador [Manfried Freiherr von] Killinger demanded the immediate surrender of my Villa and the entire facility. Killinger was already notorious when he came to Slovakia, and his crimes were well known. I refused him the provision, never concealing my general convictions, even then, though I was a sick man.
The following day an order was issued by the Nazi leadership to have me expelled from Bratislava in the night, and confiscate the Villa with everything. My one daughter was not even allowed to take her school books. I was expelled to a village in Wagtal with security guards, and I menschenunwudigsten (?) this treatment, I was almost always delivered by drunken guardsmen. After a few months, I was taken to another location, which was repeated several times, because many people had taken note of my unimaginably cruel treatment, and protested every time.
I had lodged an appeal against the expulsion, whereupon Killinger promptly dismissed the appeal and made my deportation into a life sentence. The carrying out was taken on by Presidialchef des Prasidiums (?) Dr. Koso, whereupon I was removed from the bar association and could not practice my profession. At the same time they also pointed out my son from Bratislava, stripping him of the right to University studies (weiterzustudieren). My law firm was confiscated. Together with the decision number 171/1940 a fine of 2 Million Crowns was imposed on me, and my cars and private plane were confiscated to deprive me of any possible movement or escape.
The then representative of the NSDAP (Nazi Party), Harold Steinacker, directed a criminal complaint against me for alleged criticism of Nazi leadership, and attempted to bring an action in the District Court of Trencin.
The President of the District Court, however, Dr. Sebak, was my devoted friend, because I had helped him during the war and supported him, so that he achieved the presidency of the District Court. With great skill, he was therefore able to thwart the arrest on the grounds of my parlous state of health, and to sabotage the sentencing, until my re-arrest and committal to a military prison.
At the outbreak of the uprising in Slovakia, I was together with Councillor Orsag and Colonel Black and was arrested by the Gestapo, brought to a military prison and charged again with accusations. The sustained maltreatment and prison stays, however, had deteriorated my health so that, in spite of the refusal of the prison commander Minari, the doctor summoned me in hospital medical care, also for the reason that the prison was repeatedly bombed.
When the prisoners demanded that they grant us protection in a bomb-proof cellar during the attacks, the commander said the prison had no bomb shelter; but he was willing to build one, when the prisoners would give him money. Since I was the only wealthy one among them, he demanded that sum from me, which my family had to hand over to him. The plans for the shelter had made another political prisoner, who was an architect. The construction, however, was never carried out, and some of the prisoners had to pay with their lives in the next bombing. The commander has simply embezzled the money.
From the hospital, I managed to regain freedom with the help of doctors, and put myself in the care of a private sanatorium in Smokovec in the Tatras, and after that to Mikulas.
At that time, the front was already in Dukla and the evacuation of businesses was ordered in Slovakia. The Slovak government met with the German army leaders on agreement what categories and what quantities of industrial equipment and supplies, as well as food stuffs, must be evacuated, and what proportion of the population must be left for livelihood opportunities.
There were sharp measures arranged against anyone that would violate these proposals (proporzen). Unfortunately, agreed commanders behaved “intrinsically Faust” and took everything that was available. Even the most minimal stocks of sugar, which were reserved for the population, should be “saved” for Switzerland, generally considered, however, to be a “rescue fund” created for known and unknown Nazi-Grossen (Nazi-Greats).
The sugar industry was outraged, and the chief of central supply, Dr. Vondruska, was himself powerless against these groups. With the sugar industry representatives, he intervened even with me, as a long-time lawyer of the sugar industry. There was no other way out, other than by rapid distribution to the consumers, to save this situation. The workers – the railway workers – all day and night helped with zeal, and also to cover that the allotment price of 106 Million measures had been taken.
Also with other inventories, which were reserved for the security of the population, there were similar practices.
I emphasize that only a portion of the distribution determined inventory was saved, the majority was evacuated by unconstitutional agreement – where it happened, no one knows but the participants.
Finally, in the middle of February, they wanted to evacuate the whole population of Liptov Mikulas district, including older people and those who were suspect, i.e. once we were already arrested and released we were to be deported immediately.
I was asked to intervene as delegate for the highest of ecclesiastical dignitaries, because 20 degree (gradige) cold prevailed, and there were large snow drifts, and also the district and the city had been shut down for 3 months from any traffic, without light, because the Front had been here in the country for weeks.
The commander Schuhmacher was inclined to postpone the evacuation, but demanded that in order for the soldiers to buy different things, necessary funds should be provided. But that very night. I had obtained the postponement with considerable financial sacrifice – and for my person, also. After the Front had changed in the following days, the population was rescued. However, I had all the proscribed people brought to safety at once.
For this, defending the Convention and actively deporting the shifted district humanely, I was arrested by the Gestapo in Ruzomberok and sentences to death, and also my son in absentia.
After that night, the Front had to retreat, and I was freed by the underground movement just hours before the execution, and hidden in an abandoned bunker. After reconquest the next day, the whole town was searched for me by several departments. Finally, they emptied out my apartment [His law office, I am sure, since there are other documents giving details of that seizure.-T] of all the things which, up till then, I was able to save in Bratislava, they loaded up seven trucks with it and drove away, not without first breaking open my safe, where I kept money for the guidance of industries and large estates in the amount of 2 1/2 Million Crowns. A directory contains all the stolen values, according to the insert more than 5 Million – officially confirmed. Insert submitted. [Not included here.-T]
At the end of hostilities, in the awareness that these persecutions and abuse to me was not the German people, but a power-hungry clique had done this, I have done everything to love my fellow Germans in Slovakia, to mitigate those innocent who were often subjected to reprisals. The Slovak people would never have handed over his fellow Germans to be expelled, but the higher command out of Potsdam and the pressure of the so-called Russian Liberators could not be avoided. Nevertheless, I managed that the major part of the reported families from Slovakia, from the Paprad camp, not be sent into the Soviet zone, as was already prepared, but were transferred to the Western zones and also to Austria.
In this manner, I managed to at least partially reimburse you for those times in Germany and Berlin University, in which I received the scientific foundations I have always considered to be invaluable.
After the Persecution Today
As the so-called Russian Liberation Army in Slovakia – consuming (raubend) more than liberating – invaded our city, I was immediately arrested and led into the basement of the NKVD, where I found quite a few others arrested. The public, especially the workers in awareness that I freed from deportation a few days before, chose to stand up and with the deputation of workers demanded the immediate release from liability. But the commander of the NKVD also had the deputation arrested and had me lead them into the cellar. The workers union had accumulated in front of the Villa and vigorously demanded the release from liability, whereupon the commander turned to the High command in Kosice, whereupon we were released – seven and a few, but the rest were to be deported to Siberia. The NKVD commander later said I was arrested on the basis of the request of the Hungarian Communists, because I, as High Commissioner in 1919, acted so harshly (so schroff) against the troops of Bela Kun. And he said that if I was released now, I would not be spared Siberia.
The public had reacted sharply. I immediately became an honorary citizen of the circle and an honorary member of the National Committee, elected unanimously, and I was given the two highest honors.
The spontaneous demonstrations of the public gave me the strength to forcefully intervene against many attacks, and also to help my fellow Germans and give confirmation that they behaved decently during the Hitler era, and to stifle all individual personal attacks of vengeance in the bud. As I have already mentioned, I was able to help the internees that they not go to the Soviet zone, as was planned, but were sent to West Germany and Austria. I was a daily visitor to collection centers and in prisons, to help where help was justified.
My parlous state of health has not allowed me to carry my work further. The law firm I have has only a limited representation of associates, and these are only my best performing workers.
After the Communist coup performed by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister [Valerian] Zorin for the Communists, the time is broken up with invoices to settle for my work against Communism as High Commissioner in 1919. And on the instructions of the insulted Rakosi I was first of all relieved of all my functions and representatives, and subjected to all possible harassment, interrogations, etc. When I went to the delegation, as elected President of the Financial and Economic Committee of the General Assembly of the World Council of Churches, in Amsterdam, and was asked for my passport, I was arrested on the pretext of excessive imaginary charges. My whole fortune was taken, all accounts were confiscated and my Villa locked with furnishings, clothes, supplies, and everything, since it was the Consul-General of Russia; and on the same evening I was arrested as a “National Gift”, the nation was taken over, and in the night the Russians transferred the land register.
And so, my health still shattered by the persecution these Nazi monsters caused, they transferred me to the locked section of the hospital to make interrogations there. After seven months detention [In another document it says only 6 months, which I will include here, after this testimony.-T] the workers and employees of some companies succeeded to liberate me in the night on January 21-22, 1949, and led me to a kamion near the border. I had foreseen that the police would know about my escape during the night, and that’s why I escaped (uberschreitete ?) to the Hungarian border with Austria, and again by the Austrian border, since I was immediately searched with many dogs.
I managed with the help of my friends to leave the Soviet zone disguised, and made it to Switzerland where I anticipated my wife and daughter. [I have an audio recording of Olga Fabry, Pavel’s daughter, where she says that her father escaped from the prison hospital dressed as a nun, and made it across the Swiss border by train, hiding inside a beer barrel.-T]
The Swiss authorities immediately received me as a political refugee and assured me of asylum, and issued all the necessary travel documents.
To this day I am constantly witness to the most amiable concessions by the Swiss authorities.
In my description of illness, my activity in Switzerland is already cited.
Accustomed to the work of life, and since my health no longer permits regular employment, I have adopted the assistance of refugees. Since Geneva was the center of the most important refugee organizations, I was flooded with requests by the refugees of Western Europe.
I took part on the board of the Refugee Committee in Zurich and Austria, after most refugees came from Slovakia to Austria, and I had to check very carefully if there were any refugees that had been disguised. I was then elected as President of the Refugee Committee, but on the advice of the doctors treating me I had to adjust this activity, because through this work my health did not improve. Nevertheless, I succeeded in helping assist 1200 refugees in the decisive path of new existence.
Otherwise, I remain active in the Church organizations. All this human activity I naturally consider to be honorary work, and for this and for travel I never asked for a centime.
Since I am more than 62 years old, all my attempts to find international employment failed, because regulations prohibit taking on an employee at my age. It was the same case with domestic institutions.
My profession as a lawyer I can exercise nowhere, since at my age nostrification of law diplomas was not permitted. To start a business or involvement I lacked the necessary capital – since I have lost everything after my arrests by the Communists, what had remained from the persecution.
And so I expect at least the compensation for my damages in accordance with the provisions applicable to political refugees.
In previous posts (here and here), I learned that Lucy T. Briggs gave the gift of “Bambi” to Vlado, and that she followed in the footsteps of her father, Career Ambassador Ellis O. Briggs, as a Foreign Service Officer. I wasn’t quite sure how they met, until I found this condolence letter recently, written to Mrs. Fabry, dated September 23, 1961:
Dear Mrs Fabry,
I was deeply shocked and saddened to learn of Vlado’s tragic loss. There are no words to express if fully, but I want you to understand that I am truly sorry, and pray that God is helping you to bear this heaviest of burdens.
I did not know Vlado very well, but I think we were friends. We met, of course, through Olga in Geneva, where I studied in 1950-51. Vlado took me skiing in Vermont the following year, one weekend, and I remember how patient he was with my slowness as a somewhat permanent beginner! Then, he and Olga came to Washington, about two or three years ago, and came to see me in Virginia where I was then living. At that time, Vlado was already moving up rapidly at the United Nations. You must indeed be very proud of him for having achieved so much in a short time, and in spite of difficulties which would have discouraged most men. The account of his accomplishments portrays a life of dedication to high principles and of tireless efforts to put them into practice. The United States is the richer for having claimed him as a citizen, and the poorer for having lost him in the battle which we are all fighting. But his spirit and his example will be with us always.
Forgive me if I have imposed on your sorrow with this long letter, but I wanted you to know my feelings.
With every good wish to you and Olga,
Very Sincerely,
Lucy T. Briggs
P.S. Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.
The United Nations Suez Canal Clearance Operation (UNSCO) was one of many missions that Vlado was involved with. Interesting items have been saved from this time, including a chart of the UN clearance operation schedule from January-April 1957; which shows the names of the tugs, salvage vessels and diver’s ships, with names like “Hermes and Wotan” and “Atlas”. It’s a very large chart, but I will post it here soon.
This is a photo of Vlado taking a camel to work:
Here are three letters written by Vlado from Ismaïlia, Egypt, during the clearance operation – the first letter was sent to his friend and flatmate in New York, William W. Crandall, March 27, 1957:
Dear Bill,
I am afraid I shall be late with my rent this month but I left early last week for what was supposed to be a two days inspection trip into forward positions and what eventually turned out to be nine days out in the dessert (my spelling shows to you what is uppermost on my mind after a week of field rations). (And no USArmy rations, either Yugoslav or Indian, and neither of them go for fancy stuff). Anyhow, I eventually caught up with the pouch again, and the cheque is enclosed. Next time I better start thinking of the rent by midmonth.
Most of my work here is on the problem of opening up the Suez Canal and I am thoroughly enjoying the technical side of it – I am getting to be quite an expert by now on sweeping wires, parbuckling, blowing up camels (although when I heard the term the first time I could not visualize anything else then the results of a faulty digestion of the local beasts of burden), patching and pumping, as well as on the even more complex problems of dredging maintenance, rehabilitation of workshops and floating equipment, signalling systems and traffic direction that must be solved before the Canal can be opened. Less pleasurable is the realization that notwithstanding all the efforts here and the good progress of the technical operations and negotiations on the local level, nothing will come out of it until the political issues are solved by the big boys. I also got caught up by some of the problems of the Emergency Forces, although that’s not really my job, and that was quite interesting too.
I hope all is well with you – I think a bit wistfully of New England snow, this being my second skiing season that I am missing, but basking in a reliably constant sun is not too bad either, at least now while it is not too hot. But there is not much one can do for exercise – specially so as the office hours are 8am to 10pm, Monday through Sunday – and I see myself coming back as fat and flabby as King Farouk (or even worse so unless I find some suitable partner willing to engage with me in the one kind of exercise that he was practicing quite assiduously).
With Best Wishes – Vlado Fabry
This next letter is to Mary Sheila Dean Marshall, dated March 2, 1957:
My dear Sheila,
If you should catch me off my guard and jump on me with the question “how long since you left New York”, I should quite sincerely answer that it was last week or so. I keep surprising myself each time i look at the calendar and realize how time has flown. One reason why all time conceptions become blurred may be our working hours arrangement – 8am (sic!) to 10pm, Monday through Sunday, not counting overtime -; with no weekends or even solitary Sundays to mark the full stop after another elapsed week one simply never knows that another week has begun.
This having been said I am a bit at a loss what else I can write without getting at loggerheads with the UN staff rules concerning unauthorized release of confidential information. I can’t write about my private life – not only is there none but even if I had any I’m sure it would be classified as “restricted”,- everything else seems to be, including memos telling us what to do about fleas and bedbugs and summaries of news clipped from local papers. There are flocks of correspondents swarming around and of course all of them know perfectly well what we are doing and what’s going on, but still both at UNEF HQ and at the Canal Clearance Group I have to pretend as if I was an invisible man whom they could not possibly have seen emerging from a plane or car. Maybe the story about the secrecy class of documents marked as “to be destroyed before reading” was not an invention at all.
In spite of everything, I am thoroughly enjoying life and the feeling of being in the middle of it, and I feel smug and happy whenever I get a chance to stop and realize how I feel or that I feel anything at all. I don’t know whether others feel the same when they wake up to it, but judging by the grumbling about tiredness, food, vermin, roads, dust, sleeplessness, cold, heat, dirt and everything else that one constantly hears around, I may be a blissful idiot completely unaware of the black doom around me. Of course one does get a bit discouraged from time to time when after beating for hours against a stone wall one finds the efforts rewarded by a small crack, only to come back the next day and find that the wall is as solid again as it ever was, but that’s all part of the job and is more than compensated by the absolute bliss when things do move ahead. And there is always the net profit on top of it – the new experience, in particular what I was able to pick up about the salvage and navigational aids business when working on the Canal clearance problems.
With best wishes to Desa [Pavlu] and to all other friends – Love, Vlado
This last letter, dated April 7, 1957, is to Mary Liz (still don’t know her last name, but she worked for the UN), who had a sweet romance with Vlado:
My Dear One,
Sorry for the long pause in my writing. You were just about due for a letter when things started crackling in Gaza, and what with the SG’s [Secretary General Hammarskjold] visit and the rush to finish clearing not only the physical but also political obstacles standing in the way of normal traffic through the Canal, this is the first time I have a free evening since nearly a month. But I don’t regret having been caught up in the madhouse of hectic rush and strain, far from it, I feel grateful for the chance to have been right at the focal point of world history for a while – although I would be a hypocrite not to admit the sigh of relief when Stavropolous OK-ed my actions and took over the responsibility. I always boast to be able to sleep a log in any circumstances, but there was a night when I tossed around tense with worry despite the fact that I had worked 39 hours without a break and should have been tired enough. I was the only lawyer on the spot, events moved so quickly that there was no time to set opinions into code and send them to headquarters for approval, actions were taken on papers dictated right in the typewriter without a chance to reread and revise them, and for a while I was left with the nightmare of figuring out ex-pot all that could go wrong instead of having a chance to think it over in advance. But we muddled through somehow. I admit that there were days when I did not think of you at all, or at most with a quick flash of recollection swamped away before the image could get proper hold, but I am making up for it now – I literally woke up with you on my thoughts the last three mornings and you stayed with me whenever my mind lazied away from work through the day and evening.
Not much I can write about myself otherwise. I took an apartment (top floor, of course, to have an unobstructed view) with a big terrace and a contraption for beating out carpets on it that I planned to use for some chinning up exercises, but hardly made any use of it. Nor did I find time during the last month to go for my lunch-time swim and sunbath. I stayed in Cairo during the SG’s visit, but all the time could not find an hour for myself to look into a mosque or museum. And of course no time to read – although during the first month here I managed to pense books on Islam, on the pharaonic art and history, on 17th century philosophers, on Abelard, Graves’ Sargeant Lamb, Greens’ Heart of the Matter, Weller’s mediocre but for me interesting novel on “liberation” by the Russians, Dylan Thomas’ autobiography, Faulkner’s Unvanquished, a collection of Truman Capote and a few more.
Hope to get a letter from you soon – never thought I would ask anybody to write me just for writing’s sake, but your letters are very precious to me and it feels so good to read and reread them (I got three so far). Let me know how your leg feels – will you be ready for some hikes when I come back? By the way, I shall leave here around the 20th or 25th April for Europe, reach NY probably beginning June.
All my love – Vlado
And just one more extra – the footage of Hammarskjold’s visit to the Suez Canal in 1957, thanks to HammarskjoldProject on Youtube:
In my first post, I uploaded a video from Youtube by HammarskjoldProject, showing the final images of Dag Hammarskjöld and the UN members boarding the plane that would crash near Ndola, September 18, 1961. I’ve spent a good deal of time looking at images of Vlado and his most distinctive features are his ears, his broad smile and his high cheekbones, which is how I recognized him in the video, climbing the stairs for the last time.
Here is one of the last known photos of Vlado and Hammarskjöld, taken by the Daily Express, which was sent with a condolence letter by Mary Sheila Dean Marshall from Ibadan, Nigeria. The photo is of the back of his head, but the ears are unmistakably Vlado’s. The letter, and the obituary of Marshall that galvanized me to begin my research about Vlado, is posted here.
**Update: This photo was cropped. The expanded photo and more is included in later posts, found here and here.
Elspeth Young had the pleasure of teaching English to Vlado Fabry in Bratislava, and here she offers her finest memories of him in tribute:
“A Tribute from an English Friend”
When I first knew Vlado, he was nine years old. At that time I was living in Bratislava and his mother was glad to keep up her English with me and so Vlado too began English. I soon found he was very gifted and quick to learn; he took a keen interest and it was a pleasure to help him.
His parents were able to give him every advantage, but taught him how to use money wisely and to be independent and self-reliant. I believe this early training in independence more than once saved his life. About the age of ten, I remember him telling me, that he had his own allowance for clothing and kept his own accounts, but he was generous and thoughtful for others. This I believe was greatly due to his mother’s influence. Sometimes during his school holidays he would go from village to village in his own country collecting Folk Songs and at the age of fifteen had written a ballad himself of more than fifty verses.
He was devoted to his parents and sister (who is equally gifted) and had a happy life. He began flying with his father at an early age and had already travelled a good deal. After the tragedy of the War, when they lost every-thing and came though many dangers, his parents finally arrived in Geneva. Then Vlado was their mainstay. On account of his knowledge of languages and his great gifts, he held responsible posts and travelled widely for the United Nations. He took a great interest in any foreign country he visited and with his gift of languages and courtesy, he made friends everywhere. Whenever he came through London, if he had the time, he would phone me to meet him somewhere and tell me the family news. He never forgot his friends.
His passing is felt by all his friends, especially those who have known him for so many years and followed his career with such interest.
(Signed) Elspeth Young
Here is one of the many letters from Elspeth to the family, sent from London on December 16, 1956:
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Many of the postcards in the Fabry collection are of typical images from Switzerland, but there are a few that stand out in contrast.
(click images to enlarge)
“Freedom and Independence for Slovakia” was sent from Munich on April 12, 1960, and signed by someone named “Tiso”, but not Jozef Tiso.
The second card, drawn by Dr. Pavel Fabry and written in Slovak, was sent from Aigle, in the Swiss canton of Vaud (a place I am very fond of) on May 1, 1949. I tried to translate this, but was not successful – something about being kicked out of place (a woman appears to be kicking the backside of a man in the drawing, too).
I recognized this image immediately – Lenin’s Tomb and the Kremlin:
The postcard is written in German and dated January 1, 1949, with stamps and cancels from both Denmark and Czechoslovakia – what makes this one even more interesting is that the card is from the Soviet Union, written in Cyrillic.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I found this – a postcard of the Graf Zeppelin sent from the Graf Zeppelin.
In an entirely different box of papers I found the original ticket for the Zeppelin ride, dated August 17, 1931, with the name “Wladimir Fabry”.
Lucky for him it wasn’t a ticket on the Hindenburg.
1948 was a very difficult year for the Fabry family, which was the time of the Communist coup d’état in Czechoslovakia. Vlado was far away from Bratislava, working in former Dutch Batavia, now Jakarta, for the United Nations Committee of Good Offices on the Indonesian Question, but his concern for his family stayed close. Vlado was devoted to the ideals of the United Nations, and making the world more peaceful, but he was torn by a greater devotion to his family. His position with the UN made many things possible for himself and his family, who were all political refugees, stateless, and fearful of being deported at any time, so it was not so easy for Vlado to ask for a post nearer his family, without sounding like he cared more about his family than his work. From a letter dated October 21, 1948, frustrated in Indonesia, Vlado writes to a member of the UN asking to be assigned to Palestine:
“Well, that would be all very nice as a position in a showdown if I would be alone and could make it without having to worry what would happen to my family if something goes wrong. As things are, I have rather to be concerned about everything, and address myself to you for help. With the indication not to appear in Paris for some time I have to rely on you and Boka, and hope that this year you will have more luck than last. I really can not work too much longer in this atmosphere of uncertainty in which I am now, without letting down either my work or my nerves, and I have to have my family sheltered somewhere, preferably in Europe, and be reasonably near to it for some time – 3 or 4 months – to give them the initial support they need. An assignment to Palestine as your assistant – which in my opinion should be for [Ivan] Kerno extremely simple, as all he has to do is to recall Kingstone and assign me instead – would be for me wonderful – it would keep me near my folks, would give me the opportunity to get a working acquaintance with the people who would decide on my transfer to trusteeship – I just learned that there were two resignations in Wishoff’s section lately – and would give me the immense advantage to work with somebody I like and esteem, and to be near to a friend again. So I pin my hopes on it.”
Vlado would remain in Jakarta until May 1951, as Assistant Secretary and adviser to Principal Secretary of United Nations Commission for Indonesia, but he wasn’t entirely “stuck” there – he managed to get away to Europe (most likely, to see his family) around the end of October/beginning of November 1948, with plans to visit Hong Kong and South China on his way there. Here is a letter from H.J. Timperely, sent from the Hotel des Indes and dated October 29, 1948, to His Excellency Dr. T.V. Soong in China, introducing Dr. Vladimir Fabry, and giving Timperely’s insights on the situation in Indonesia:
On March 14, 1950, referencing mutual friend and colleague Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Vlado wrote to His Excellency Mr. Raghavan, Ambassador to the Republic of India in Prague, asking if he would be interested in buying a set of crystal tableware to cover his sister’s school tuition:
On Sunday, I watched the documentary of the McCarthy hearings, “Point of Order”, for the first time, and it is a chilling piece of political theater, composed of the 36 days of televised hearings on ABC.McCarthy was obsessed with an imaginary number of Communists and spies in the State Department, and everywhere else – a number that always changed. Because of his crazy methods and complete lack of evidence, he was censured by the United States Senate. After listening to the drone of McCarthy’s voice for an hour and a half, I wondered if he wasn’t drunk through those entire hearings. He died on May 2, 1957, at the age of 48, from acute hepatitis complicated by alcoholism.
In my American public schools, I learned that history was boring and irrelevant – perhaps it was because all of my history teachers were primarily athletic coaches – but history is a thrilling adventure, and a mirror to reflect our times. How can you not be interested in all the great and horrible details?
In connection to the time of the Army-McCarthy Hearings(April 22-June 17, 1954), I present here a letter from Ambassador C.D. Jackson to Dr. Pavel Fabry, dated February 11, 1954. On this date, Jackson was working as Special Assistant to the President for International Affairs under Dwight D. Eisenhower, and this letter was sent from Berlin during the Berlin Four Power Conference; the Conference was held from January 25 – February 18, 1954. Jackson was a busy man and had a long list of important jobs, including Deputy Chief at the Psychological Warfare Division from 1944-1945, Managing Director of Time-Life International from 1945-49, President of the anti-Communist Free Europe Committee in 1951-52, presidential speech writer for Eisenhower’s 1952 campaign, adviser to the President on psychological warfare from February 1953 to March 1954, U.S. Delegate to the Ninth General Assembly at the UN in 1954, and other illustrious titles.
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Dr. Pavel Fabry drew wonderful pictures that he sent in letters to his friends and family, so I can guess that is what he sent to Mr. Jackson. I offer you one of the finest examples of his work from my collection, “You go slowly but surely”, showing the Palais des Nations in Geneva, which he made for his daughter, Olga:
I have this one framed and hung in my office, to inspire me.
I’m curious if Jackson really did keep and frame what Pavel sent to him, and I wonder what it looked like – there is no copy of it here that I can find. The Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, in Abilene, Kansas, has the collection of Jackson’s letters from 1931-1967, so if anyone has the letter and drawing from Pavel, they do.
In almost all of the photos of Vlado he is clean-shaven, except for a brief period of time when he decided to grow a beard:
This isn’t my favorite look for him, it makes me think of the Boers.
Here are two newspaper articles about Vlado’s visit to New Zealand in 1950, sporting his new beard in the photos (click images to read):
There are some women who really like beards, and Anne Harris of New Zealand is one of them. She sent Vlado this letter from Middlemore Hospital, where she had been for 16 months as a patient, asking him for a little of his beard:
On the back of this letter, there is a note that Vlado replied with a Christmas card that year. If you’re still around, Anne, you’ll have to let me know if Vlado sent you some of his beard!
After I posted yesterday, I learned that Lucy T. Briggs was the daughter of Ellis O. Briggs; an Ambassador for 37 years to many countries, including Czechoslovakia; and sister to Everett Briggs. Lucy became the third member of her family to join the career Foreign Service in August 1957, and her brother, Everett, joined the year before. Vlado most likely knew Ellis Briggs, and that’s why Lucy sent him chocolates and the stuffed Bambi before she’d even met him. From the other letters I found from Lucy, the relationship doesn’t appear to be anything but friendly. I suppose when your work takes you all over the world, it’s good to have friends in many places.
Here is a letter from the UN in Indonesia, asking Vlado to meet with Miss Wiendriati Ernestina Soehadi, who was working at the Indonesian Delegation to the United Nations(click images to read):
This letter comes from a place closer to my home, from Spokane, Washington, written by owner and manager of Broberg Travel Agency Teckla M. Carlson:
And here is a letter from Vlado to Teckla, dated December 19, 1951, describing his experience of arriving at the Tibetan border the very day the Chinese Communists came to take it:
Dear Mrs. Carlson,
It was so sweet of you to remember me when you went again to Europe, and to send me a letter from your trip. I hope you had a lovely time, and brought back with you many pleasant memories. I regret only that I did not know of your trip, I would have liked to give you the address of my parents and sister in Geneva and suggest that you use my car while you were in Switzerland,- you can see so much more while travelling independently on the road. Please let me know next time!
I left the Indonesian mission in May – I was quite glad to leave the country after having spent three and a half years there. I should not be ungrateful really, it was a very valuable experience, and I had many thrilling moments and adventures, but three and a half years is a long time to spend without friends, accustomed amenities, and access to culture and professional education sources. To make it worse, the tropical climate disagreed with my constitution, I had a number of annoying local diseases, and came back 56 lb lighter than I departed. On the way back, I visited Indochina, Macao, Thailand and Burma, and spent some time in India. I made a trek to the Himalayas from Darjeeling, and luck had it that I arrived at the Tibetan frontier post on the day when the Chinese Communist officers arrived to take it over following the surrender of Tibet to the new Chinese rulers. I had planned to sneak at least for a short look-around into the Land of Monasteries, but the sight of the Red Stars rather damped my enthusiasm, and I limited myself to cross symbolically with one foot – and even that I did rather cowardly at a place screened from the sight of the frontier guards by a big rock.
In Europe, accompanied by my family, I toured by car Skandinavia beyond the Polar Circle, the Low Countries, and France and Italy. I arrived in New York late in August, and returned to my regular duties in the UN Legal Department. My home and office addresses are on top of this letter. There is not too much to be written about my life here – after the excitements of my mission assignments and of my travels it is a mere routine. I rented a house in the suburbs, recaptured my cook-housekeeper from the people to whom I had “sublet” her during my absence, renewed my relationships with former acquaintances, and in general live the well ordered life of the Suburban Commuter. When you pass through New York next time, please stop and see for yourself.
I am wishing you a Merry Christmas and all the best in the New Year, and hope to see you or at least hear of you soon.
Sincerely yours,
Vladimir Fabry
Vladimir Fabry, killed in the plane crash that claimed the life of Dag Hammarskjold yesterday in Northern Rhodesia, visited Spokane three years ago.
Fabry, U.S. legal adviser to the United Nations in the Congo is a close friend of Teckla M Carlson, N1727 Atlantic, and he and his sister, Olga, also a UN employee, were her house guests in 1958.
A travel agent, Mrs. Carlson first met Fabry in 1949 at Geneva after he had succeeded in having his father released from a concentration camp. The Spokane woman said they have exchanged letters since that time.
When I first began to sort through the family papers, I found a little stuffed “Bambi”, with a necklace around it’s neck, and a bright green four-leaf clover with a tiny red ladybug hanging from the chain. Then I found the photo of Vlado securing Bambi to the hood ornament of his Buick, which I use as my header on this blog. The Fabry family called themselves “the four-leaf clover”, because they knew they were lucky; and in the books of Olga Fabry, I found hundreds of four-leaf clovers, falling out of the pages. This totally charmed me, because I love to collect four-leaf clovers, too. I’ve been wearing the necklace ever since I found it, and I keep Bambi on my desk.
This is a photo of Dr. Pavel Fabry with Bambi:
This is a letter to Lucy T. Briggs, who gave Bambi to Vlado – I don’t know who she is yet, but she gave him the gift before she’d even met him (click image to read):
I found these other pictures of Bambi being displayed with the photo, right after I took almost the same photo.
Here is letter from two Slovak Opera singers – Dusan Djordjevic and Maria Mattei-Djordjevic – refugees living in Geneva with four young children, seeking financial assistance to learn English and French and German for work. The letter was written in August of 1952, and the concert program, from Victoria Hall in Geneva, is from April 1953. Looks like they got the help they needed!
(click image to enlarge)
Here’s a photo of Victoria Hall in Geneva, Switzerland:
Text of the telegram sent to the President of UNO.
10th January, 1946
The Slovak National Council, 8, Wilton Crescent, London, S.W.1., solemnly protests against the so-called Czechoslovak Delegation pretending to represent the Slovak nation at the United Nations General Assembly.
Czechoslovakia ceased to exist on March 14, 1939, when the elected representatives of the Slovak people declared Slovakia’s independence. The newly created structure, also called Czechoslovakia, the representatives of which will try to pretend representing the Slovak people, does neither territorially nor constitutionally, correspond with the defunct Czechoslovak Republic. Moreover, it has been set up against the will of the Slovak people. Contrarywise to all pledges given by the Allies to the nations of the world, the Slovak people are not permitted to [choose] the State and the form of government under which they desire to live. We claim freedom for our people and independence for our country. We demand a free, unfettered and internationally controlled plebiscite to ascertain whether the Slovak people are in favor of Czechoslovakia or whether they wish to retain their nationhood regained after one thousand years of subjugation in 1939. Slovakia cannot be represented at this Conference by a clique of usurpers, foisted on our people by foreign powers. Any commitments entered into by Mr. Benes’ emissaries in the name of the Slovak people are not binding. The Slovak people will never give up the struggle for their freedom and independence of which they have been deprived in the name of freedom for all nations.
At this opportunity we also protest against the extradition for trial to Mr. Benes‘ impostor Government of the President and members of the Government of the Republic of Slovakia by the Allied military authorities in Austria. The main “crime” of these people, according to Mr. Benes, is that they stood for the freedom and independence of Slovakia. If they or any other Slovaks are guilty of real war crimes they should be tried by independent Slovak Courts or by an impartial international Tribunal, not by a mob calling itself “People’s Court”.
Unless justice is done to the Slovak nation, living in the very heart of Europe, as well as to other nations of Central Europe, there is little hope that either the UNITED NATIONS or any other international organization will succeed in solving the problems of the European Continent in a just and lasting manner and in creating real peace.
Peter Pridavok, Chairman
Karol Vycnodil, Secretary
I don’t know who Samuel Bellus is yet, but here is his statement on behalf of Mrs. Olga Fabry – Vlado’s mother:
I, Samuel Bellus, of 339 East 58th Street, New York 22, New York, hereby state and depose as follows:
That this statement is being prepared by me at the request of Mrs. Olga Viera Fabry, nee Palka, who formerly resided in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, but since 1948 has become a political refugee and at present resides at 14, Chemin Thury, Geneva, Switzerland;
That I have known personally the said Mrs. Olga Viera Fabry and other members of her family and have maintained a close association with them since the year 1938, and that I had opportunity to observe directly, or obtain first hand information on, the events hereinafter referred to, relating to the persecution which Mrs. Olga Viera Fabry and the members of her family had to suffer at the hands of exponents of the Nazi regime;
That in connection with repeated arrests of her husband, the said Mrs. Fabry has been during the years 1939 – 1944 on several occasions subject to interrogations, examinations and searches, which were carried out in a brutal and inhumane manner by members of the police and of the “Sicherheitsdienst” with the object of terrorizing and humiliating her;
That on a certain night on or about November 1940 Mrs. Fabry, together with other members of her family, was forcibly expelled and deported under police escort from her residence at 4 Haffner Street, Bratislava, where she was forced to leave behind all her personal belongings except one small suitcase with clothing;
That on or about January 1941 Mrs. Fabry was ordered to proceed to Bratislava and to wait in front of the entrance to her residence for further instructions, which latter order was repeated for several days in succession with the object of exposing Mrs. Fabry to the discomforts of standing long hours without protection from the intense cold weather and subjecting her to the shame of making a public show of her distress; and that during that time humiliating and derisive comments were made about her situation in public broadcasts;
That the constant fear, nervous tension and worry and the recurring shocks caused by the arrests and deportations to unknown destinations of her husband by exponents of the Nazi regime had seriously affected the health and well-being of Mrs. Fabry during the years 1939 – 1944, so that on several such occasions of increased strain she had to be placed under medical care to prevent a complete nervous breakdown; and
That the facts stated herein are true to the best of my knowledge and belief.
I am just beginning to learn about the first UN Secretary-General, Trygve Lie, who resigned from his office on November 10, 1952, after seven years of service.
On April 7, 1953, Trygve Lie stepped down and Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjold was elected UN Secretary-General. The transcript of the General Assembly that day is most interesting, if only to see how different the view of Soviets are from the rest of the assembly in their response to the resignation of Mr. Lie.
In 1950, the UN General Assembly voted to extend Lie’s term for another 3 years, but the Soviet Union refused to recognize Lie as Secretary-General because of his support of the UN intervention in Korea in 1950 (The Soviets didn’t get along with Hammarskjold either, and wanted to have “troika” at the UN, rather than just the one Secretary-General, because they believed Hammarskjold was a puppet of the US).
Trygve Lie also lost his support from the United States, after Senator Joseph McCarthy accused him of appointing staff “disloyal” to the US. Perhaps McCarthy didn’t like that Lie once gave Leon Trotsky permission to settle in Norway after he was exiled from the Soviet Union. In any case, Joe McCarthy was insane, and he was the one disloyal to the US – he didn’t care who he destroyed for his own political gain.
And on that note, here is a scan of Vladimir Fabry’s appointment to the UN in 1946, signed by Trygve Lie.
(click photo to enlarge)
Dr. Fedor Hodza made this statement at the service for Dr. Vladimir Fabry at the Lutheran Church, Geneva, Switzerland, on Thursday, September 28, 1961:
The Slovak family, dispersed all over the wide world, bows in painful grief over the mortal remains of one of her distinguished sons. Once again a Slovak life has been extinguished, a noble life – already successful and which still promised so much – the life of your friend and mine, Mr. Vladimir Fabry.
It is a difficult and sad task for me to bid him farewell. Difficult, because I would not like to say more than his modesty would bear without dismay. Sad, because I had a great affection for him.
Yet his modesty and our sorrow must give place to the truth. And the truth is that the tragic death of Vladko Fabry is a cruel and woeful loss, not only for his mother and sister, not only for his relations, not only for his friends. It is a loss for his larger, national family as well as for that high humanitarian ideal which he served with such devotion.
Though today we are sorrowfully thinking of his untimely end and grieved as we are, we should not forget his life which should be a consolation to his loved ones and an example to us.
As a young and inexperienced lawyer he worked his way up in a relatively short time to a position of responsibility in an institution of such importance as the United Nations. He advanced with success amid older and more experienced colleagues from all parts of the world. He won confidence for his firm character, esteem for his good work, affection for his pleasant disposition. Within a short time he was entrusted with difficult, responsible and often dangerous tasks. The evidence of his personal success are the missions which he carried out in critical times, in widely differing regions of the globe, in India, in Indonesia, in the Near East, and finally in the unfortunate Congo.
It can be said that there was hardly a situation in the international development of the last ten years where Vladko was not present as a worker, defender and soldier in the service of peace among nations. Whenever and wherever this uncertain peace which is our lot was threatened, we saw him among those who were sent to pacify, to counsel, to persuade and help to preserve it.
By his talent and education, by work and experience so grimly won, by his conviction and energy, Vladko rose above the circle of narrower interests and lower aims and engaged himself fully in the service of higher good and loftier ideal.
It is not easy to be an officer of the highest international institution if it does not live – because it cannot – according to the letter and still less according to the spirit of its charter; when the peace which it is called to preserve is not a just peace – and there is no other; when freedom and independence of nations – which is the basis of its existence and the main purpose of its mission – are denied to those who already know the art of government and given to those who have still to learn.
But Vladko Fabry was not just an officer of an institution created to help humanity to live in peace and harmony. Personally, in his conscience, he considered himself to be a servant of probably the highest and most precious accomplishment of Western civilization, which prescribes that laws have to respect the good of all and that they have to be administered without regard to personal, class and even national interests.
The convinced patriot that he was, Vladko joined the ranks of the pioneers of constructive internationalism. He was aware that by helping to secure and protect the precarious independence of the new nations he was working at the same time for his own homeland, hoping that freedom and justice would return again to his beloved Slovakia.
He also participated directly in the great experiment of international life, and experiment which was designed to complement by deed the traditional debates and resolutions of the United Nations which too often remain unheeded. One such deed was the intervention of international armed forces in the Congo. It seems that the world is not yet ripe for actions of this kind. Vladko was among those who gave their lives on the altar of a new era in the life of humanity, and era full of promise but hardly yet born.
Let it please our Lord that his sacrifice was not in vain. Dead martyrs often achieve more for the ideals they believed in than living prophets.
So this is how we see Vladko Fabry, as man, worker, fighter. Such was his short but fruitful life.
How could we forget his love of nature and especially of mountains which seemed to attract him irresistibly? Was not his love an expression of that idealism which inspired all his endeavors? Were not the mountains to him a kind of challenge to accomplish a difficult and dangerous task, in solitude, in silence, without spectators and their acclaim? For him the mountains were not just a place of repose or sport. They were a kind of spiritual necessity. Up there he felt at home, there he was happy. Perhaps they reminded him of his native land Liptov, and Turiec and of our High Tatras.
As he was demanding in his work so he was modest in his private life. He disliked luxury and ostentation. His searching mind was forever disclosing new vistas, enlarging his horizons, acquiring new knowledge and experience. He learned because he wanted to know, he thought because he was aiming for excellence.
His gentle manners and good heart won him many friends in all parts of the world and today, on this last journey, he is accompanied by the affection and gratitude of so many.
In this last moment of farewell we remember also his late, eminent father who by the force of his personality marked the national life of Slovakia and contributed to her political and economic growth. We bow with profound respect before the grief so courageously borne by his loving mother and sister. If words are unable to soothe their pain perhaps the knowledge that Vladko lived a beautiful, rich and useful life will give them a measure of consolation until merciful time heals the deep wound.
Dear Vladko, it is time to say good bye. We remember you such as you were and hold you in our thoughts: A loving son, an affectionate brother, a devoted friend, a faithful child of your country, who dedicated his life to the service of humanity.
On June 30, 1960, Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, gave this speech. I feel everyone should know it.
Translation from the Friends of the Congo website:
Men and women of the Congo,
Victorious fighters for independence, today victorious, I greet you in the name of the Congolese Government. All of you, my friends, who have fought tirelessly at our sides, I ask you to make this June 30, 1960, an illustrious date that you will keep indelibly engraved in your hearts, a date of significance of which you will teach your children, so that they will make known to their sons and to their grandchildren the glorious history of our fight for liberty.
For this independence of the Congo, even as it is celebrated today with Belgium, a friendly country with whom we deal as equal to equal, no Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that it was by fighting that it has been won [applause], a day-to-day fight, an ardent and idealistic fight, a fight in which we were spared neither privation nor suffering, and for which we gave our strength and our blood.
We are proud of this struggle, of tears, of fire, and of blood, to the depths of our being, for it was a noble and just struggle, and indispensable to put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed upon us by force.
This was our fate for eighty years of a colonial regime; our wounds are too fresh and too painful still for us to drive them from our memory. We have known harassing work, exacted in exchange for salaries which did not permit us to eat enough to drive away hunger, or to clothe ourselves, or to house ourselves decently, or to raise our children as creatures dear to us.
We have known ironies, insults, blows that we endured morning, noon, and evening, because we are Negroes. Who will forget that to a black one said “tu”, certainly not as to a friend, but because the more honorable “vous” was reserved for whites alone?
We have seen our lands seized in the name of allegedly legal laws which in fact recognized only that might is right.
We have seen that the law was not the same for a white and for a black, accomodating for the first, cruel and inhumane to the other.
We have witnessed atrocious sufferings of those condemned for their political opinions or religious beliefs; exiled in their own country, their fate truly worse than death itself.
We have seen that in the towns their were magnificent houses for the whites and crumbling shanties for the blacks, that a black was not admitted in the motion picture houses, in the restaurants, in the stores of the Europeans; that a black traveled in the holds, at the feet of the whites in their luxury cabins.
Who will ever forget the massacres where so many of our brothers persihed, the cells into which those who refused to submit to a regime of oppression and exploitation were thrown [applause]?
All that, my brothers, we have endured.
But we, whom the vote of your elected representatives have given the right to direct our dear country, we who have suffered in our body and in our heart from colonial oppression, we tell you very loud, all that is henceforth ended.
The republic of the Congo has been proclaimed, and our country is now in the hands of its own children.
Together, my brothers, my sisters, we are going to begin a new struggle, a sublime struggle, which will lead our country to peace, prosperity, and greatness.
Together, we are going to establish social justice and make sure everyone has just renumeration for his labor [applause].
We are going to show the world what the black man can do when he works in freedom, and we are going to make of the Congo the center of the sun’s radiance for all of Africa.
We are going to keep watch over the lands of our country so that they truly profit her children. We are going to restore ancient laws and make new ones which will be just and noble.
We are going to put an end to suppression of free thought and see to it that all our citizens enjoy to the full the fundamental liberties foreseen in the Declaration of the Rights of Man [applause].
We are going to do away with all discrimination of every variety and assure for each and all the position to which human dignity, work, and dedication entitles him.
We are going to rule not by the peace of guns and bayonets but by a peace of the heart and the will [applause].
And for all that, dear fellow countrymen, be sure that we will count not only on our enormous strength and immense riches but on the assistance of numerous foreign countries whose collaboration we will accept if it is offered freely and with no attempt to impose on us an alien culture of no matter what nature [applause].
In this domain, Belgium, at last accepting the flow of history, has not tried to oppose our independence and is ready to give us their aid and their friendship, and a treaty has just been signed between our two countries, equal and independent. On our side, while we stay vigilant, we shall respect our obligations, given freely.
Thus, in the interior and the exterior, the new Congo, our dear Republic that my government will create, will be a rich, free, and prosperous country. But so that we will reach this aim without delay, I ask all of you, legislators and citizens, to help me with all your strength.
I ask all of you to forget your tribal quarrels. They exhaust us. They risk making us despised abroad.
I ask the parliamentary minority to help my Government through a constructive opposition and to limit themselves strictly to legal and democratic channels.
I ask all of you not to shrink before any sacrifice in order to achieve the success of our huge undertaking.
In conclusion, I ask you unconditionally to respect the life and the property of your fellow citizens and of foreigners living in our country. If the conduct of these foreigners leaves something to be desired, our justice will be prompt in expelling them from the territory of the Republic; if, on the contrary, their conduct is good, they must be left in peace, for they also are working for our country’s prosperity.
The Congo’s independence marks a decisive step towards the liberation of the entire African continent [applause].
Sire, Excellencies, Mesdames, Messieurs, my dear fellow countrymen, my brothers of race, my brothers of struggle– this is what I wanted to tell you in the name of the Government on this magnificent day of our complete independence.
Our government, strong, national, popular, will be the health of our country.
I call on all Congolese citizens, men women and children, to set themselves resolutely to the task of creating a prosperous national economy which will assure our economic independence.
Glory to the fighters for national liberation!
Long live independence and African unity!
Long live the independent and sovereign Congo!
This is one of many letters from Vlado to “Guapa Mia” in Madrid (He writes to her in English, she writes back to him in French), dated 28/7/1953:
Guapa Mia,
This time it is not entirely my fault for not writing so long,- I had to wait for your new address in Madrid. June was a very bad month for me; lots of work, financial worries caused by the declining/ and sometimes plummeting/ stock market, a round of social functions and the heat added to my natural antipathy to writing, and by the time I decided that I simply MUST make myself to write, I realized that it was too late for the letter to reach you in Geneva.
I was glad to hear that you have taken so well to your new “part-time” job/ I would never admit that to work six hours a day could be considered full employment/- and I am sure that under the brilliant sun and society of Madrid you will shine even more than ever with radiant beauty. Also, I believe, the gallant and temperamental caballeros will be a more deserving background against which your charm can find the proper appreciation, than Geneva’s dullish “burghers”. Spain seems to be in a big vogue among the city’s smart set, everybody who is somebody seems to be on his or hers way there this year, I wonder whether they have already learned that you have moved there?- I get stinking mad every time I learn of some lucky bird who is on his way to fly over, and wish to be in his place. But no luck,- with the special session of the General Assembly due in August, I will have no vacation at all this summer.
I got bitten by a reading bug lately – all my free evenings this month I spent here in my office/ which is air-conditioned, cool and dry/ reading and average of one book per evening. I reread Ortega y Gassett‘s Revolt of the Masses yesterday, and found it/ apart from fascinating reading/ a wonderful apology for my way of life. It looks as if he had exactly known what my thoughts, ambitions and ways of life will be when he depicted the non-common man and I found great comfort in his philosophy. It’s a pity that more people do not agree with his ideas, I might be better off if they would. Otherwise I am in the throes of my periodically recurring struggle to find absolute moral standards of behavior by reason – a wearisome substitute for faith or the ability to conform to conventions. This time I am following the approach of analyzing the progress of life in the universe, mans position in it, the characteristics by which his development to the present position was achieved,- and trying to deduce from the past road the direction in which the road ahead should lie, and which landmarks to take as guides. It’s all much more complicated than simply being able to accept revelations, dogmas of a church or the party-line, but it also is much more satisfactory.
As far as my body is concerned, I am trying to make up the enforced lack of exercise/ I can’t go riding in this heat, and living in the city I do not have the possibility to go for a round of golf before coming to the office/ by a strict reducing diet. I have only half-a-dozen oranges, a steak, or some chops, and two or three eggs in the morning,- no pancakes, bacon or ham, and no bread, butter or marmalade,- nothing for lunch except, if I am working late, some yogurt or fruit in the afternoon and lots of coffee without sugar, and only meat or fish, raw vegetables, salad or fruit for dinner,- no potatoes, soup, cheese or dessert,- and I drink skimmed milk with my meat instead of wine or beer. I lost 27 lb in the last five weeks, and can count all my ribs now. The only thing that throws me back from time to time is if I am invited to dinner- but everybody has left town now for holidays, so it does not happen more often than once or twice a week.
Most of my weekends i spend lately within 200 miles of New York,- somehow I lost enthusiasm for moving around. Only once I went to Northern Maine, some 1000 km from here, where friends of mine have bought an island with the most beautiful forests of huge pine trees, and marvelous cliffs falling hundreds of meters into the open Atlantic Ocean. They keep there a horse-breeding farm and have excellent thoroughbreds, a small fleet of yachts and sailing boats, and a small private golf-course, so there is plenty of things to do there during the weekend. They have five daughters, which all had their boy-friends visiting them/ I am a friend of the parents and was rather peeved at the deferrent and respectful way with which they treated me, as if I was fifty and not thirty-two/; each of the girls has her own little house, the three eldest had theirs completed last year, and the other two are being built this year from prefabricated parts, all is done without the help of a single laborer or architect. I helped in putting up the roof of one house and installing bathroom plumbing in the other. So it was quite instructive, apart from being good fun and a bit of muscle stretching.
Well, that’s about all that is to be reported about the dull life of an old bachelor. I am now looking forward to hear more how you are getting on. By the way, my parents send me your most amusing letter in which you described how you were tested in the office, I received it the same day as your letter directly to me.
With best wishes of much happiness,- and be good.
Love and Kisses,
Vlado
So much of my time is spent sorting through a lot of dusty old papers, but what amazing things I find. Here is a telegram from the first African-American Nobel Peace Prize winner, Ralph Bunche – political scientist, academic and diplomat – with a message from the King of Sweden (Bunche’s work includes the creation and adoption of the UN Declaration of Human Rights):
(click photos to enlarge)
And this letter – I’m not sure who Major General Amin Hilmey II is, but perhaps someone reading this will give me a clue:
(Vlado the mountain climber – click photo to enlarge)
After the death of Vlado Fabry on September 18, 1961, there were many letters of condolence sent to Mrs. Fabry, Vlado’s mother, from around the world. One such letter I found recently, written on UNOC stationary, is from the Italian United Nations legal expert Giorgio Pagnanelli, posted from the UNOC in Leopoldville, Republic of Congo, October 10, 1961. Only a month later, on November 11 or 12, 1961, 13 Italian airmen, members of the UNOC working to maintain peace, were brutally murdered by Congolese troops; Giorgio Pagnanelli was asked to make a report on the 13 murdered men for U.N. Security Council.
Dear Mrs. Fabry,
Please do accept my apologies for the delay in answering your letter.
Vlado’s death has left such a vacuum which will be very difficult to fill. I still cannot adapt myself to the tragic reality and sometimes I refuse to accept it. Dr. [Sture] Linner told me of your brief encounter in Geneva. I trust that Vlado’s belongings and papers have already reached you.
I am enclosing herewith a few things which were very dear to Vlado – a poster, showing his beloved mountains [Tatras] – which I gave to him and he had in his office – I enclose also an edelweiss – Vlado brought it back from his short visit in Switzerland: he kept it in a little vase in front of your picture (a color photograph taken in the mountains). [The edelweiss was still in the envelope!-T]
I am also sending newspapers and other publications.
Dear Mrs. Fabry, it is very true , indeed, that nothing could console the soul of a loving mother in a lost (sic) of her son; words or expressions of sympathy are within [indecipherable word] limits but sorrow goes hither and beyond these terms – I wish to say, however, that whenever I am tired, disappointed or frustrated in a job where we are expected to accomplish [indecipherable word], I remember Vlado, his courage, his strength, his belief in right things, his devotion to the U.N., then I feel that I should try to be like him – this feeling is shared by many here in the ONUC. As the New York Times pointed out, he was “a one man brain trust”. Since his arrival he organized, analyzed, solved every political, legal, administrative problem. People here used to say: “All right, we do not know the answer, let us ask Dr. Fabry”. He found it.
Vlado spoke very often of his “Mamuska” and his sister Olga. Once I told him that his mother would not have liked to see him working 19 hours a day; he simply answered: “Yes, I know, but she would understand”. On Sundays he used to take some exercise – He ran for one or two hours around the golf [?] court then arrived at the office saying that he had taken a little walk….
Dear Mrs. Fabry, Unfortunately I do not have a picture of Vlado. Once he showed me one with his beloved parents (a color photo where he is seated on the armchair with his father) – if you have an extra picture of Vlado, I’d like very much to have it.
Please do not hesitate to write me for anything you might desire.
Affectionately,
Giorgio Pagnanelli
Leg. Officer UNOC
Le Royal
Room 650
Leopoldville, Congo
The following is an excert from the NYT article “U.N. BRACES FOR ITS CONGO TASK”, by Henry Tanner, dated September 24, 1961:
Dr. Sture C. Linner, the head of the United Nations mission … lost his private secretary and, in Dr. Vladimir Fabri[sic] he lost what he had once called his “one-man brain trust”. Dr. Fabri officially the legal councilor, had in fact been the mission’s thinker who analyzed events and suggested decision.
Dr. Sture Linner was also on the plane headed to Leopoldville, but Hammarskjold told him that he was needed in Kinshasa; so he stayed behind, and escaped the tragic fate of the others.
I would like to add one more excerpt from the September 29, 1961 edition of SECRETARIAT NEWS, from the U.N. Headquarters in New York; which includes the obituaries of William Ranallo, Heinrich A. Wieschhoff, Alice Lalande, Serge L. Barrau, Harold M. Julien, Francis Eivers, as well as Vlado, who is remembered here:
To his more difficult tasks Dr. Fabry brought the disciplined energy, courage, and careful preparation characteristic of a serious mountain climber–which, in fact, he was.
An enthusiastic sportsman–expert skier and horseman as well as mountaineer–Dr. Fabry was concerned to share these interests and, far from scorning the beginners or less agile among his friends and co-workers, encouraged them. He himself frequently enjoyed a solitary climb to his office on the thirty-fourth floor, a feat discovered by a colleague who, after seeing him emerge from a staircase door, jokingly asked whether he had walked upstairs, and was answered with a quick smile and “yes”.
Since I’m not finished translating a document in German, I will give you a document written in English, from the Monday, September 25, 1961 Congressional Record: “Extension of Remarks of Hon. William W. Scranton of Pennsylvania in the House of Representatives”
Mr. SCRANTON. Mr. Speaker, in the tragic air crash in which the world lost the life of Dag Hammarskjold, we also suffered the loss of the life of Dr. Vladimir Fabry, the legal adviser to the United Nations operations in the Congo.
In the following statement by John C. Sciranka, a prominent American Slovak journalist, many of Dr. Fabry’s and his esteemed father’s attributes and good deeds are described. Dr. Fabry’s death is a great loss not only for all Slovaks, but for the whole free world.
Mr Sciranka’s statement follows:
Governor Fabry (Dr. Fabry’s father) was born in Turciansky sv. Martin, known as the cultural center of Slovakia. The Communists dropped the prefix svaty (saint) and call the city only Martin.
The late assistant to Secretary General Hammarskjold, Dr. Vladimir Fabry, inherited his legal talents from his father who studied law in the law school at Banska Stavnica, Budapest, and Berlin. The old Governor before the creation of Czechoslovakia fought for the rights of the Slovak nation during the Austro-Hungarian regime and was imprisoned on several occasions. His first experience as an agitator for Slovak independence proved costly during his student days when he was arrested for advocating freedom for his nation. Later the military officials arrested him on August 7, 1914, for advocating a higher institute of education for the Slovakian youth in Moravia. This act kept him away from the front and held him back as clerk of the Bratislava court.
He was well equipped to aid the founders of the first Republic of Czechoslovakia, which was created on American soil under the guidance and aid of the late President Woodrow Wilson. After the creation of the new republic he was made Governor (zupan) of the County of Saris, from which came the first Slovak pioneers to this city and county. Here he was confronted with the notorious Communist Bela Kun, who made desperate efforts to get control of Czechoslovakia. This successful career of elder Governor Fabry was followed by elevation as federal commissioner of the city of Kosice in eastern Slovakia.
But soon he resigned this post and opened a law office in Bratislava, with a branch office in Paris and Switzerland. The Governor’s experience at the international court gave a good start to his son Vladimir, who followed in the footsteps of his father. During World War II the elder Fabry was imprisoned by the Nazi regime and young Vladimir was an underground resistance fighter.
Dr. Vladimir Fabry, 40-year-old legal adviser to Secretary Dag Hammarskjold with the United Nations operation in Congo, who perished in the air tragedy, was born in Liptovsky Svaty Mikulas Slovakia. He received his doctor’s degree in law and political science from the Slovak University in Bratislava in 1942 and was admitted to the bar the following year. He was called to the United Nations Secretariat in 1946 by his famous countryman and statesman, Dr. Ivan Kerno, who died last winter in New York City after a successful career as international lawyer and diplomat and who served with the United Nations since its inception. Dr. Vladimir Fabry helped to organize postwar Czechoslovakia. His family left the country after the Communist putsch in February 1948. His sister Olga is also in the service of the United Nations in New York City [as a Librarian.-T]. His father, the former Governor, died during a visit to Berlin before his 70th birthday, which the family was planning to celebrate on January 14, 1961, in Geneva.
Before going to the Congo in February, Dr. Fabry had been for a year and a half the legal and political adviser with the United Nations Emergency Force in the Middle East. In 1948, he was appointed legal officer with the Security Council’s Good Offices Committee on the Indonesian question. He later helped prepare legal studies for a Jordan Valley development proposal. He also participated in the organization of the International Atomic Energy Agency. After serving with the staff that conducted the United Nations Togaland plebiscite in 1956, he was detailed to the Suez Canal clearance operation, winning a commendation for his service.
Dr. Vladimir Fabry became a U.S. citizen 2 years ago. He was proud of his Slovak heritage, considering the fact that his father served his clerkship with such famous Slovak statesmen as Paul Mudron, Andrew Halasa, Jan Vanovic, and Jan Rumann, who played important roles in modern Slovak history.
American Slovaks mourn his tragic death and they find consolation only in the fact that he worked with, and died for the preservation of world peace and democracy with such great a leader as the late Dag Hammarskjold.
When my Slovak mother-in-law passed away, she left behind a trove of family documents dating back before the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918. This blog is where I piece together the clues of her family – the Fabry family: Vlado, her only brother – member of the United Nations from 1946 until 1961, when he died in a plane crash on a peace mission with U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold; Pavel, her father – a lawyer, politician, and son of wealthy industrialists, and one of the first to be imprisoned and tortured in the concentration camp llava, in Czechoslovakia; Olga, her mother – daughter of land-owning aristocrats, who watched as her home was seized from her, and eventually turned into the Russian Consulate, in Bratislava, where it remains today still. My mother-in-law, whose name is also Olga, never gave up trying to get back her home – she even put it in the will, she was adamant that it be returned to the family.
All of them were prolific letter writers. I am in the process of making order of nearly 25 archival boxes, translating the most intriguing documents as I go. Google Translate isn’t perfect, but I am using it to help make sense of the letters in German, French, and Slovak – not much written in English, but I am hoping to learn these languages better in time.
So far in my research, I am learning about Bela Kun, Franz Karmazin, the Comintern, Lenin Boys, Count Mihaly Karolyi, the Hlinka Gaurd, and Jozef Tiso. Czechoslovakia had both Nazis and Communists invading them, just one horror after another.
“Sheila considered her time in New York to be some of the happiest days of her life. She roomed with her dearest friend, a gorgeous Czechoslovakian socialite named Desa Pavlu. The two of them must have left a trail of broken hearts throughout Manhattan. Sheila had a proposal of marriage from a young man named Arthur Gilkey . She declined, and shortly thereafter, he perished while ascending K2. Sheila was also courted by a chap named Vladimir “Vlado” Fabry. Vlado died with Dag Hammerskjold[sic] in The Congo[sic]. It seems that Vlado may have been connected with the CIA. Sheila said she could never see herself marrying Vlado because he had a “very round bottom.”
I was only a little annoyed that someone was using the words of one dead person to slag off another dead person, because it was just too funny to read about Vlado’s “very round bottom” on the internet. I would like to point out to Mr. Marshall, though, that his statement that “Vlado may have been connected with the CIA” is, as yet, an opinion; but Mr. Marshall’s father – Sheila’s husband – was a CIA operative from 1952-1967, and that’s a fact. But now that he’s got me wondering, I’ll be checking that out, too.
In a letter, sent from Vlado in New York to his father in Geneva, December 20, 1954, he says about Sheila:
“I decided I must look Sheila over a bit better. She seems to fit not only my bill but also that of maman; gaiety, naturalness, nine years younger than me, etc, — and at the same time poise, intelligence, dependability and brains; she is of mixed culture too, — part Argentinian, part English, part US. So I shall investigate. But nothing more, don’t worry!”
I’m going to try and avoid making untrue statements here. I’ll be writing things down as I make my discoveries, which means I’ll be learning as I go – and there is much to learn. And because I appreciate the discovery of Chris Marshall, and his mother, I want to share the letter of condolence I found that Sheila wrote to my mother-in-law, and to Mrs. Fabry, after Vlado’s death (Mr. Pavel Fabry, Vlado’s father, had died only a year before this tragic event, so I can only imagine the grief of the two women); dated October 26th, 1961, and sent c/o N.I.S.E.R., University College, Ibadan, Nigeria:
My Dear Olga and Mrs Fabry,
Ever since I heard the awful news I have been meaning to write to you, but what with getting Mike’s [Sheila’s husband] three children off to boarding school, packing up the house, leaving London on Oct. 1st and then straightening our stomachs out here, this is the first day that I feel like myself again. Your letter, Olga, arrived yesterday and I was very glad to have it but of course most upset at your obvious and quite natural distress.
All the time I was packing and sewing on name tapes and travelling down I had one thought at the back of my mind:–what can I say to the Fabrys? How can anything help? But there are things to be said and I’m sure that what I have to say will have been said by Vlado’s other friends but they bear repeating this once and even more times.
The first thing is that you of all people should have been spared this tragedy and Vlado was a man that the world and his friends needed. However, I have long ago found out and I’m sure you did before me, that it is useless to question Fate or God’s judgement or what you will call it. Admitting this, we are left only one consolation, that of remembering the pleasure that we derived from sharing part of Vlado’s life. He had great personality and made an impression on many lives. In his short life he managed to accomplish far more that many do in twice the time.
The second thing that immediately comes to mind is his great generosity of spirit. Surely, remembering this, and how sad it would make him to see you so desolate, you must for his sake continue, as much as you can, to show the Fabry spirit. How difficult this will be for you! For Olga it is not so much of a challenge as for Mrs. Fabry. Time helps the young and the young must help the older ones. And I am sure, knowing Olga, that she will have the courage, perhaps not quite yet, to pick up the pieces and build up again the remnants of a very fine family. We all need people like the Fabrys.
The third thing is that none of us who knew Vlado will forget him. He leaves behind him a memory of a warm hearted, generous and very good friend. His zest for life and its challenges was amazing and a source of great inspiration to us. He was a man very much driven by a sense of destiny and how well he fulfilled his role. His capacity was enormous and he never fell short of what was expected of him, although he often expressed disatisfaction at not having been able to do more.
My parents were most distressed at the bad news and have asked me to pass on their deepest sympathy to you both.
The enclosed are letters [I have not located these letters yet.-T] I received from time to time from Vlado. At the last minute I saved them from the consignment that we have sent down here. The photographs you asked for were packed before that but I shall get them out together with others I might have when our belongings arrive in about 3 weeks.
The news photograph [have not located this photo yet.-T] I was able to get by calling up the Daily Express just before I left. They were reluctant to let me have it as it is not only the last one of Vlado but also of Hammerskjold. They said it was for your own personal use. I asked if they had any other in which Vlado might have appeared but they said not.
Thank you for your good wishes – I’ll write about my affairs later.
Lots of love to you both and all prayers for your wellbeing.
From Sheila
This is the final film footage of Dag Hammarskjold, on his way to attempt cease-fire negotiations – September 17, 1961 – before the plane “crashed” near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. This is also the last footage of Vlado Fabry; legal advisor to the UN in the Congo, and my deceased mother-in-law’s only brother; who can be seen boarding the plane between the 19-23 second mark, turning his head for one last look behind him.
Vlado 