Part 13

(Continued from last week)

Since my email was quite strong, I expected that our relations had been broken and I would not hear from him again. But to my surprise on the following day I received an email from AN that I consider to be the final correspondence. I will reproduce that email with this article.

As I had mentioned, I have no happy ending to give to the reader. But such is life; some endings are happy, some are sad. This is the latter. My regrets go out to the family, that all the joint attempts, by so many, all over the world, could not turn up the information we were looking for and we are no wiser now than we were before. We have followed up a great number of sources, written hundreds of emails, made numerous phone calls, even sent letters translated into Russian, but still… Dorothy knows very little about her father, and the little she does know is undocumented.

If any reader has any connection in or to the Republic of Belarus, be it political or business or personal, I certainly would like to hear from you. Yes, my wife says to me, “You never give up!” Winston Churchill is my inspiration. In 1940, in his address to the House of Commons, he stated “We shall never surrender.” I did not stop working on this project as long as there was still one thread to follow or one more stone to turn.

Years of work, four thick folders of letters and my hands are empty. Anyhow we have tried… nobody in the future can say we have not tried. We have left no stone or pebble unturned. But for me, just trying is not enough. Results are what count. And for this… results have come to nothing. There will be no closure for the family.

Do I regret the hours, days, weeks, months… yes, years, that I spent on this project? No, absolutely not. When in generations to come the family reads what I have written, they will know that everything was done to find the information on their ancestor. Yes, they will wonder why seemingly there is no information anywhere in the world. Could it be that Dorothy’s mother, in her fear of the Russian police apparatus, and in order to protect her daughter, took to her grave whatever information she did have? Was it that the Russian government, after Stalin, destroyed all prisoner records, ashamed of what they had done? Do records still exist in the Russian archives locked away permanently in Siberia? We will never know.

Unfortunately, Dorothy’s mother built such a high wall of terrified fear and secrecy that we have found no way to look on the other side. We have to accept the fact that whatever information, if any, will forever remain locked away from us.

It was in March 1946 that Winston Churchill spoke at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri and coined the phrase “An Iron Curtain has descended across the continent.” This was just six months before Dorothy was born and less than a year before Alexander was executed. It was an Iron Curtain that Dorothy’s mother erected to protect her baby daughter from the threat of the Russian Secret Police. It was that fear that stopped her from ever using her married name, even after she had crossed over the Iron Curtain.

To Alexander Karpov, z”l, wherever he might be buried, may Hashem give him peace in Olam Haboh. He is a true Jewish hero, who died “Al Kiddush Hashem,” for the sanctification of God.

To Dorothy, my dearest DD, I have tried, but the world could not provide, what Hashem, in His wisdom, has hidden forever.

By Norbert Strauss