Snapshot: My mother, weeks before she fled Prague
We had always had many photographs of my mother, Leah, and her family, as her father, Felix Seidemann, was a keen amateur photographer. After she died in September 2011, I found many more letters and photos. This picture says, in Leah’s handwriting, “Praha, Jänner 1939” (Prague, January 1939).
Less than six weeks later, she left Czechoslovakia with her parents and brother. I do not know who the two young men were.
Leah Seidemann was born on 28 February 1921, in a spa town in Czechoslovakia, near the German border, called Teplitz Schönau (now Teplice, in the Czech Republic). Her parents married in 1919 and were active in the Jewish community. Felix, a solicitor, represented the Jewish party on Teplitz council. In September 1938, knowing the German occupation was not far off, the family left their house and went to Prague. On 13 February 1939, they left for Palestine, where my grandmother’s brother and sister had already settled, aboard the Gerusalemme.
Among the letters I found was one from a male friend, unsigned and dated 15 March 1939. Translated from German, it reads: “Dear Leah, I want to write to you, just a few lines. Prague is now occupied. The last days and nights have been exhausting. I’ll probably be taking over the Palestine migration office. If you don’t hear from me now for a long time, don’t worry.”
Both Leah’s parents died in the next five years and what became of the two young men one can only imagine. On a recent visit to Prague, I was told the picture was taken in Wenceslas Square, scene of so many dramatic events in that country’s past. What is most striking to me and most precious about this photograph is the radiance of Leah’s smile: even in such times of danger and uncertainty, a beautiful 17-year-old girl is still a smiling girl of 17.
Naomi Segal
Playlist: An unexpected gift for my father
Blue Velvet by Lana Del Rey
“She wore Blue Velvet / Bluer than velvet was the night / Softer than satin was the light/ From the stars”
This is track two on a CD I made for my father. He had picked me up from the station when London Midland trains proved incapable of delivering me home. I wanted to say thank you. I wanted to share a singer whom I guessed he would understand.
You see, my Dad has Alzheimer’s. He was diagnosed last year, but the disease had already announced itself through half a dozen indignities. When I rang him up that December evening I didn’t expect to be offered a lift. But my Dad was delighted. Here was a manly task to which he was equal to (with my mother as navigator).
So I burned a CD for my dear father as a thank you. His brilliant mind, compromised by dementia listened to it and discovered Lana Del Rey. He remarked, with words struggled for, that here was a singer who felt the song. There was a sincerity to her voice. He experienced that small joy we all get when we expand the boundaries of our knowledge.
That might be the end, save for the peculiarities of his condition. A month later we were in the car. I was driving. He heard Blue Velvet and remarked again, with the innocence of cognitive impairment, what a remarkable singer this was. Dementia is a cruel disease, but for the moment it has tossed the gift of perpetual discovery to my father.
They say we become our parents. In present circumstances that ought to scare me. But I see the quiet dignity with which my Dad has faced his condition. He is the man I would be proud to be.
Chris Perkes
We love to eat: Dan’s Kentucky biscuits
Ingredients
2 cups self-raising flour (250g)
1 cup buttermilk (236ml)
¼ cup sunflower oil/melted butter (60ml) (half and half)
1 tbsp brown sugar or maple syrup
Pinch of salt
½ tsp baking powder
Optional: broken nuts, dried cranberries, raisins, cinnamon, coconut, poppy seeds
This recipe is fast and foolproof. Perfect for breakfast, elevenses, afternoon tea or with a cuppa before bed, from mixing bowl to table it takes just 20 minutes. Mix all the ingredients. Stir only until the dry is wet in order to ensure a light biscuit. Drop dollops of the mixture into well-greased muffin tins. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 200C/gas mark 6 until golden brown. Leave to cool slightly, then slip the biscuits out of the tin on to a cooling rack.
To the English eye, the end result looks more like a muffin than a biscuit. The taste, however, is very different. The buttermilk creates a light, airy, slightly bready cake. The biscuits are best served straight from the oven, with lashings of butter and jam or honey.
My American husband, Dan, lived in rural Kentucky for nine years, where buttermilk is bought not in 300ml pots, as in UK supermarkets, but in gallon containers. In Kentucky, buttermilk biscuits are traditionally served with sausage and white gravy and – together with bluegrass music, clog dancing, whisky and horse racing – are an intrinsic part of Appalachian life.
These unmistakeable elements of the Celtic diaspora have shaped this region of the United States. Fiddle music takes practice, clog dancing requires youth or bravery, whisky drinking takes a long night, horses take your money, but buttermilk biscuits only ask for a warm stove and an empty stomach.
They are Dan’s signature gift to visitors and the visited. His recipe has been jotted down and written into the family cookery bibles of friends and relatives up and down the UK.
Una O’Connell-Sinnott
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