Like most of you that are reading this piece, I was beyond saddened while watching the flames that consumed the Notre Dame Cathedral this past Monday evening. My stomach turned as the spire collapsed, falling through eight centuries of hope, inspiration, comfort and love, landing in ashes upon the floor that witnessed the beatification of a peasant girl who in 1429 led the French Army to defeat the English at Orleans. Her name, as it has echoed and rebounded off the walls of history was Joan of Arc.
The cathedral began under the reign of Louis VII in 1163 and completed in 1345.
She survived looting in the 1790’s during the French Revolution. In 1804, she hosted the coronation of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame cemented the Cathedral’s place in history and popular culture. She survived two World Wars and famously rang its tenor bell to mark the end of Nazi occupation in 1944.
At times like these, you have a feeling of loss and grief, unshackled by the boundaries of borders or spiritual affinity. You know that people are hurting. Badly. And you wish that in some way, however slight, you might ease their pain and lift them up.
Hence, the letter below.
Monsieur Emmanuel Macron
President of the French Republic
Elysee Palace
55, Rue du Faubourg
Saint-Honore
75008 Paris, France
April 19, 2019
Dear President Macron,
I bid you well from my small town on the Redwood Coast of northern California.
Like many around the world, we grieve and mourn for the Monday night conflagration that destroyed much of your beloved Notre Dame Cathedral. I watched as the flames licked, then crept, then devoured much of your holy edifice. And then, at 7:53 p.m., came the gut wrenching heartbreak, as the renowned and revered 295 foot spire, adorned with statues of the 12 apostles, collapsed and crashed to the floor in a heap of ash and cinder.
I write to you, President Macron, in an attitude of condolence and prayer for the inevitable rebuilding of Notre Dame which the resilience and nobility of the French people assure.
Additionally, please accept a much belated note of gratitude to your country for a gift bestowed upon our people back in 1886, which blessed my family personally.
The wind swept the deck of a tramp steamer in the winter of 1938. They had departed Europe and were headed for America. Anna Szamatulski shivered as her husband, Alex wrapped his arm around her. He told her that there was nothing to fear and pressed tighter as her thin body rocked with sobs. Alex then took her to the deck after being told they were approaching their destination.
They had come from the Warsaw Ghetto to escape the rise of Nazi-ism, of jack boots goose stepping and brown shirted children. The nascent fear of invasion and its concomitant horrors had driven them to leave their home in the dead of night, telling no one, carrying only some coins in their socks and the shirts on their backs. They had heard of a new land beyond the broad Atlantic, where freedom and democracy existed, where they could be free of the encroaching shackles of tyranny.
And so, here they stood, alone, shivering in the cold, when suddenly Anna threw up her arm, pointing at something coming out of the fog. They watched as the shape of a giant lady appeared.
The first thing they could make out was a giant flame-lit torch, drifting down to a robe draped shoulder. For a moment, the fog obscured their vision, then straining, then being overwhelmed, as this 305 foot colossus was suddenly upon them. They saw the resolute face of this imposing woman, adorned with a crown of seven spikes emanating therefrom. In her left arm, she clutched what appeared to be a tablet and at her ankles, the remains of broken chains.
They couldn’t know that her creators originally called her “Liberty Enlightening the World.” They did not know that the uplifted torch, at its 1886 creation, was deemed “Liberty Enlightening the World.” They didn’t know that the statue was crafted in the likeness of the Roman Goddess of Liberty. Or that the seven spikes coming from her crown symbolized the rays of the sun, the seven seas and the seven continents. They were unaware that the tablet she held in her right arm, engraved “July IV, MDCCLXXVI,” represented July 4, 1776 and America’s Declaration of Independence. Or that the broken chains which had once shackled her ankles symbolized her escape from oppression.
Speaking no English and only the Polish language their parents had taught them, they could not understand the words of the poem engraved at her base which read:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of you teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Only years later, would they come to know and understand that America’s most famous statue was unlike any other in the world, where statues shone in tribute to the flash of sabre, the blast of cannon and battles won or lost. No, the lady with the flaming torch, her tablet and the broken chains at her feet, Lady Liberty, instead was dedicated to the oppressed, the destitute and the downtrodden offering them comfort from the storm and freedom from tyranny.
What they could know, and felt, was the paralyzing weight of fear and uncertainty being lifted from their shoulders and the promise of a better life in this place called America.
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Anna and Alex re-located to the Polish blocks of south Chicago where Alex found good work at his machinist trade. Several years later, in their loft over a grocery store, Anna delivered a seven pound, eight ounce baby boy. They named him Edwin Stephen. Edwin married a farm girl from Iowa named Arlene. They moved to New Jersey where they raised a two children, a daughter Lorna and me.
Grampa Alex and Grandma Anna came to visit when my sister and I were 7 or 8. One day, my dad told us that Grampa Alex wanted to take a trip to New York City and he wanted the kids to go. And so, on a hot summer afternoon, we all loaded up and drove to the city, where we got on a ferry that took us to Ellis Island. Grampa told us that he and Grandma had come this way many years ago and it was the beginning of their, and our, lives. He told us that they had come from another country which was why his English was not so good. He then told us of the cold winter night when they first saw the huge statue of the Lady we were now looking at.
We then began climbing the 363 stairs to reach Lady Liberty’s crown. One after the other, higher and higher, my sister and I were exhausted and had to stop several times. Strangely, Grampa Alex only seemed to get stronger the higher we stepped. At one point, gasping, I tugged on Grampa’s sleeve, breathlessly asking why we had to go any further. He looked down with his warm smile and bright blue eyes, tousling my sister and my hair, then softly saying, “Ah Yashu, you are climbing to freedom.”
A hundred and forty steps later, we reached Lady Liberty’s crown where, beneath her seven rays, we looked out across the Hudson River and New York Harbor, then beyond to the great Atlantic Ocean. My grandparents became very still as they recalled their path to this Lady many years ago and at one point, I saw my Grandma Anna reach up and brush a tear from my grandfather’s cheek.
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I write all of this, President Macron, so you may know the depth of my gratitude to you and the people of France, that gifted America and Alex and Anna Szamatulski with this beautiful creation that we call Lady Liberty.
I watched with tears as much of your beloved Notre Dame fell in the ravaging flames. But the following day, you announced that she would be rebuilt in five years, which bears fine testament to the fact that no invader has ever conquered the heart of France, nor that spirit which is the inheritance of her sons and daughters.
It is that spirit of rising and rebirth that brought your gift of Lady Liberty to our shore and so comforted my grandparents when their world, their beloved Poland, was about to enter a mad, red season.
And, it is that spirit, so fitting in this Easter season, that will see the rebuilding of your beautiful Notre Dame.
From my small abode and my brothers and sisters in Del Norte County and throughout America, we bid you blessings and God speed in this season of rising and the spirit of Easter. And, from me and mine, eternal gratitude for your gift 81 years ago.
Please accept the enclosed small donation for the rebuilding of your beautiful Lady.
De ma petite demeure et de mes freres et soeurs a travers toute L’Amerique, nous vous souhaitons des benedictions et bonne chance en cette saison de l’Ascension et L’esprit de Paques.
Jon Alexander
Crescent City
Lorna (Alexander) Silver contributed to this article.