JERZY KOSINSKI & EUROPEAN GENERATION THAT SURVIVED WWII

JERZY KOSINSKI & EUROPEAN GENERATION THAT SURVIVED WWII

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© June 26, 2008

“No man can answer for his courage who has never been in danger.”

Francois Rochefoucauld (1620 – 1680), French moralist

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Reference: This is a letter to a German executive colleague of mine with whom I served Honeywell Europe, Ltd. during the late 1980s. At the time, he was Director of Human Resources for Germany, and I was Director of Human Resources Planning & Development for Honeywell Europe’s Corporate Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. He went on to become Executive Vice President of Human Resources for Honeywell International, Inc.

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Manfred,

I don't know if you ever read Jerzy Kosinski, who was a soaring star for his European novels of his youth during WWII ("The Painted Bird" and "Steps").

He claimed the material to be biographical, but many of his critics have felt otherwise. Be that as it may, the sense of the horrors of war and place ring true in these novels, and most devastatingly so.

I mention it because it was a terrible period for young people such as he, and, yes, young people such as yourself and Gerda.

I thought reading these books of Kosinski that your children should be especially proud of their parents. They cannot appreciate or have a true sense of what it was like for young people to endure and survive that terrible period of war.

It is quite remarkable, upon reflection, that you kept a hold of your sanity and sensibility, and managed because of that courage, to make significant contributions to society thereafter.

Kosinski came to the US talented but penniless in the late 1950s at the age of 24, constantly reinvented himself, wrote best selling books and an Academy Award screen play ("Being There"), won a series of other celebrity awards, became rich in his own right, while living a flamboyant lifestyle with the rich of famous. In the end, Kosinski's body broken by excess, his spirit essentially dead, he succumbed ultimately to self-imploded debauchery, taking his own life at age 57.

You managed to complete your education under the most difficult circumstances, acclimate yourself to a new society and world after years at war, work your way up the ladder, and culminate your executive career by becoming vice president of human resources for Honeywell International, Inc., a Fortune 100 company.

That is a remarkable achievement in and of itself, but beyond that, it represents the courage of a man who was a boy during the darkest days of the Second World War, and came out of it whole, married and reared a family of achievers, who continue to contribute to society in meaningful ways to this day.

I had the good fortune of meeting your daughter, Jessica, as a young lady, when she came to visit us in Brussels. I have followed her achievements including earning a Ph.D. in pharmacology, and now being a new mother.

I remember your one son being especially solicitous to my daughter, Jennifer, when there was a mix up when she came to Germany to visit Jessica, and was stranded at the air port. Your son calmed her down over the phone, gave her directions, and everything worked out well, and your son was only a boy himself.

I've not met him nor his brother, but know that they have both done well and continue to make significant contributions to society.

Your children are a powerful legacy of two people who were only children themselves during a time when Europe was ravaged with war and displacement with no one knowing for certain if they would survive.

I have reached a period in my life when I am well aware of how fragile and vulnerable we are as human beings.

I know how easily we can be moved to destroy as well as create, mount difficult tasks with great courage or look for ways to steal, cheat or kill others if it means an advantage to us.

I've known both kinds, and Kosinki's books reminded me of how lucky I have been to know you.

When I was in the US Navy on the USS Salem (CA-139), Flagship of the Sixth Fleet, operating in the Mediterranean at the end of the 1950s, my best friend was Wolfgang Erdmann. We were Hospital Corpsman on the ship.

We were part of the US Navy's experiment to hire college graduates as an option to the Selective Service Draft.

Wolfgang was drafted into the US Navy while not yet a US citizen when he escaped from East Germany and found his way to the States. He was an optometrist by education, but a white hat (enlisted man) in the navy as I was a chemist by education, and also a white hat.

Wolfgang was in the German Army on the Eastern Front at the end of WWII, and only eleven-years-old. He told me tales I thought were exaggerated at the time. The older German soldiers, he claimed, knowing the war was lost, protected him, and then designed a way for him to escape back into Germany.

Wolfgang was from East Berlin, and was educated behind the Berlin Wall. In 1955, a wild escape was mounted right out of a John LeCarre novel with him eventually acquiring a US Visa in London. It helped that an uncle in New Jersey owned an electronics factory, where he could be employed. The uncle, however, could not protect him from being drafted into the US Navy.

We would stand on the fantail of the Salem and talk of an evening as the sun went down over the horizon in the middle of the Mediterranean, and dream of our futures. I've lost track of Wolfgang but never my memory of him, or what he went through. I've always been going to write a book about that period, but what else is new?

Wolfgang got me to read Goethe, and I got him to read American authors. We were both big readers, and culture vultures, going on every tour we could muster. We also had a common interest in opera among other things. He also introduced me to German cuisine.

Kosinski's books remind me that I, like most Americans, who were protected from experiencing WWII directly, can hardly appreciate what a struggle it must have been for young people of our generation in Europe to grow up straight and tall and sane and sanguine when exposed to the cruelty of war first hand. It was something Kosinski failed to manage, but you did.

Be always well,

Jim

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Dr. Fisher has written nine books in the genre of organizaional development (OD) and is now writing a novel of South Africa to be titled GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA.