Guest Blogger: My Mom
My mother, Betty Frankel, just completed reading the galley of On the Sickle’s Edge. I want to share with you some of her reactions to the book:
Reading On the Sickle’s Edge was traumatic for me because I couldn’t divorce myself from parts of the novel that reminded me of my family’s real story. I wept again and again at scenes that Neville captured that were similar to all that my family suffered during the course of their lives. In particular, I relived the hardship and profound sadness of my father and uncle who were left behind, without parents, at ages 14 and 16 years of age in Basha Leba’s boarding house in South Africa, when their father returned to Latvia with their young siblings. Trapped in Eastern Europe in the wake of WWI, my grandfather was never able to return to South Africa. My father and uncle never saw their father again.
It was 50 years later that the Red Cross was able to connect my uncle (my father had already passed away) with his surviving sisters who were found in Moscow. My uncle traveled to the USSR to visit his sisters after so many years of separation only to find them living in meager conditions. From that day on, my uncle, and later my mother and I, sent packages of goods to my aunts and their families so that they could sell the contents on the Black Market and live easier lives. When my husband, Fred, and I visited the USSR years later, we were so struck by our relatives’ fear of being seen connected with Westerners. In fact, our driver was instructed to stop at a building more than a block away from their apartment building so that the family couldn’t be accused of associating with Westerners. I am moved beyond words at reading On the Sickle’s Edge and write this now for my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren so that they will know their family’s true history.
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