A Christmas Greeting for Jacques Sandulescu and Annie Gottlieb

Jacques Sandulescu and Annie Gottlieb

(Image from Jacques' Homepage: Donbas.com)

Some readers may recall that I've posted several times on the remarkable man Jacques Sandulescu, who was grabbed as a 16-year-old boy from a Romanian street as he headed for school on a winter's day in January 1945 and was taken to the Donbas region of the Ukraine to work as a slave laborer in a coal mine but managed to escape from that Stalinist labor camp despite terrible injuries to his legs from a coal-mine cave-in.

Eventually, he found himself in America, where he succeeded as a boxer, a martial arts expert, a restauranteur, a published author, and -- among other things -- even as an actor. He appears in a memorable scene in the film Moscow on the Hudson as a Russian truck driver eating in a deli who confronts the exiled and self-pitying Russian musician played by Robin Williams.

The image above comes from Sandulescu's visit to a high school in Eugene, Oregon to talk with high school kids who had read his book and had invited him to come and talk with them about his experiences. In the photos from that visit, he is already an old man but still strong and vibrant.

Everyone declines with age, however, and Sandulescu is no exception, even if he still looks remarkable at nearly 80 despite difficulty walking:

His wife, Annie Gottlieb, takes care of him in his old-age infirmities, but she sometimes could use a word of encouragement and is occasionally disappointed with old friends who no longer contact her husband, friends "who professed their devotion to J over the decades and now can't be bothered even to keep in touch with him -- whose 'friendship' has basically been reduced to the office of waiting for the news of his death, so they can wax sentimental over what an unforgettable character he was -- when he is still very much alive, isolated, disoriented, bored, and lonely, and can be brought to life for hours by a phone call that reconnects him to the mainland of his life."

I read those words by Annie Gottlieb and felt moved to write:

I only learned about Jacques and his story because of your blog, which motivated me to order the book.

Such a man deserves better friends than those who never even call . . . but in you, he has a woman wonderful enough to have made even his time in Donbas worth the ordeal since his escape led him, eventually, to you.

I'm paraphrasing his own words from a blog entry that you posted some months back after watching a television program about Hitler and WW2, so perhaps you'll recall.

Anyway, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or whatever . . . Happy Holidays, at any rate.

She replied, "I'll take 'all of the above,' Gypsy Scholar! And Merry Christmas to you." I felt good to have provided words of encouragement, but I also felt that I ought to offer more than an easily posted comment, so I asked my wife if I could call them for Christmas. Sun-Ae agreed, and I wrote Annie asking for her number:

Since you don't get enough phone calls, I'll give you a call for Christmas. Just let me know your phone number (area code and all), and I'll give you a ring.

Not like the ring that I gave Sun-Ae, but this'll still ring in the season.

Annie provided her number, and I called them on their Christmas morning around 9:15. Although I had warned her that "I'm a terrible conversationalist, especially on the phone (which explains why I've never called you before)," Annie was so easy to talk to that I didn't find myself tongue-tied at all. She has a rich, warm and friendly voice and sounds as if she could be 35. I also got to talk to Jacques, whom I at first called "Mr. Sandulescu" until he said to call him "Jacques." His voice was hoarse but also warm, and even surprisingly gentle for such a tough man.

The three of us talked for only about thirty minutes, perhaps fewer, for the hour was past 11 in the evening of Christmas day, Seoul time, but we still spoke about a number of things -- for instance, Annie's current writing projects and Jacques' past acting career -- but especially his book on how he escaped from the labor camp. Apparently, the conversation had a good effect on Jacques, as Annie relates on her blog:

[H]e came all the way out of a groggy half-sleep to be lucid and grand, the old J, with someone who expressed appreciation for his story. I virtually smacked myself in the forehead ("I coulda had a V8!") -- I have a complete manuscript of his, the story of his immigration to the New World and his brief boxing career, on the computer, ready for editing, lovingly typed onto a disc almost three years ago by a Feldenkrais friend's son during a spell between employments. How is it that I haven't edited and published it?? Seeing how J comes to life when recognized as a storyteller and writer, I feel almost criminal for fatalistically sitting on that. Somehow, among all the things I have to do, I have to bring that one to the front. Kick me if I don't, will you?

I won't do any kicking because I might get kicked back, and Annie's a martial arts expert, but I did post a comment, referring to her as "Amba," her online persona:

Thanks, Amba. I really enjoyed the conversation even though I usually avoid the telephone. I did get a cellular phone about a year ago, though, and that has actually worked out rather well because no one ever calls me on it.

I'm still a hillbilly at heart, I reckon, a sort of natural-born, untheoretical Luddite.

With you and Jacques, however, I felt at ease despite the technology between us, so we'll have to do this again next Christmas.

Jacques mentioned some books other than Donbas, so maybe he and you are operating on the same wavelength and will together get those works published.

Let's hope that she and Jacques do manage to get more of their works into print. Meanwhile, if any good readers wish to visit Annie's blog and offer words of encouragement as a post-Christmas treat, feel free to do so.

In Search of Lost Time Lost...

À la recherche du temps perdu

Marcel Proust

(Image from Wikipedia)

I've occasionally posted entries on martial arts expert and memoirist Jacques Sandulescu, a Romanian who at 16 years old was abducted by Soviet troops and sent to a work camp in the coal fields of the Ukraine's Donbas region.

Eventually, after tremendous suffering but also encounters with kindhearted Russians and Ukrainians, he escaped despite horrific injuries from a mine collapse and made his way to the States where he ultimately met the writer Annie Gottlieb and lived happily ever after. Annie relates a recent anecdote. The two of them were watching a History Channel program about Hitler, which set Annie to thinking about the life that Jacques might have led if the politics of fascism and then communism had not erupted in all their enormity. Looking at the image of Hitler onscreen performing a "spittle-spewing oratory," Annie got angry:

I said, "See that sonofabitch? He's the one who destroyed your world. If he hadn't started the war, Stalin might have stayed put. You would have been the mayor of [your town], you would have owned [a large tract of land] . . ."

J said, "But I never would've met you!"

At that Romanian's romantic words, Annie melted: "Awwww. An armful of WWII. Beats roses."

But Jacques is getting on in years, his hardscrabble life has taken its toll, and he gets confused sometimes . . . yet remains alert even in his confusion, as Annie shows:

A: Where are you going?

J: (trying to get up from his wheelchair) To the phone.

A: Who do you want to call?

J: (looking at me like I'm supposed to know) My mother!

A: I'm sorry, baby, your mother died a long time ago.

J: (not missing a beat) Then the phone call won't cost anything.

I hope that I'm that alert when I grow great in years and dimmed in memory.

At the moment, however, I have a lot of grading to do, so I'm breaking off for now. Meanwhile, here's a touching video that also concerns memory, My Name is Lisa, a short story of about six and a half minutes that won third place in some video competition and that both saddens and uplifts.

A standing ovation...

Jacques Sandulescu
Donbas: A True Story of an Escape Across Russia
(Image from donbas.com)

Occasionally, I find the right words.

Some time back, I posted an entry about a memoir written by Jacques Sandulescu, a Romanian man who was only 16 years old in January 1945, still in high school, when Russian soldiers grabbed him from the streets of Brasov, Romania and sent him in a boxcar to the coal mines of the the Soviet Union's Donbas region to mine coal as a slave laborer under conditions that meant certain death to most prisoners.

A coal mine cave-in that could have killed him nearly crushed his legs, but he stood up after being dug out, and when infection set in and nearly cost him his legs, he stood up again and made a break for freedom by burying himself again in coal, this time in an open boxcar in midwinter on a track to the West, which he reached despite the odds against him.

In case these odds aren't clear too you, here a passage from his book describing his infected legs:

In the evening the pain was at its worst, eating me up, burning my insides out. I looked at my right ankle and realized that the color was a darker red than it had been before. I wondered how it had managed to grow so much. It looked larger than my waist. I stared at it, fascinated. I became cold and then hot, but I kept staring at my ankle. Just above the joint of the ankle I saw something like a blister growing, but I couldn't understand what it was. I stared at it harder than before. It was slowly growing larger. I thought that I was going crazy. Involuntarily my big toe twitched, and the blister slowly burst open. Then I twitched my big toe again, and the pus came gushing out. It was a yellow, greenish-blue color and smelled putrid. The pressure eased, but I stared at my leg unbelievingly. (page 169)

The doctor who examined him didn't like what he saw:

A day or so later, the doctor appeared again, and when he saw my legs he grumbled, looked at the sores, and then smelled them. I heard him say something to the nurses about amputation. I froze inside. He left, saying that the next time he stopped by he would bring along the necessary instruments and they would see then. (page 172)

Unwilling to risk amputation, Sandulescu saw his chance, got up from that bed, and escaped on suppurating legs.

Now, after a long and fascinating life as boxer, martial arts expert, restaurateur, and actor, among other things, he has finally grown old. For the past year or so, I've been checking his wife's blog to keep up with his condition. He has, for some time, been bedridden, but his wife Annie Gottlieb has continued caring for him and giving him physical therapy to strengthen his leg muscles. As readers have probably surmised, he's a fighter, a man who never gives up.

Here's what Annie -- who calls herself "Amba" -- posted yesterday:

Last night J was as good as he's been for many months: lucid, standing up with new strength, transferring between bed and wheelchair without any gadgetry but the walker, aware and proud of his own progress. I too dared to stand up taller, stretch, shake out my shoulders, take a deep breath.

"You're some kind of a miracle," I said to him.

"I'm an asshole," he replied, completely in character.

I had to explain to my wife, Sun-Ae, how the term 'asshole' is being used in this context. For any others unsure about the meaning, take it as something like "I'm too tough and mean to be kept down long."

Anyway, I was impressed, so I commented:

His standing again is in character.

A man who could stand up after being crushed for hours beneath rocks in a coal mine cave-in and stand up again after excruciating, bedridden weeks as doctors discussed when to cut his legs off doesn't surprise me when he stands up yet again.

Annie liked my comment and replied:

Wow, HJH. That blew me off my feet. I'm going to read it to him in the morning, at which time I expect ... he'll be almost ready to do it again.

Occasionally, I find the right words.

I think that both Annie and Jacques deserve some support, so go on over there to Annie's blog and give the man a standing ovation.

Jacques Sandulescu

Jacques Sandulescu

with Choi Yeong-Eui (최영의)

aka Masutatsu Oyama (大山倍達)

(Image from Australian Kyokushin)

Yesterday, I finished reading Jacques Sandulescu's Donbas: A True Story of an Escape Across Russia, a man and a book first made known to me by his wife, Annie Gottlieb, via her blog. Three things struck me in reading the book.

First, I was impressed by the young Sandulescu's will to stay alive under conditions that killed many others. Imprisoned as a 16-year-old worker in one of Stalin's slave-labor camps in the Donbas coal mining region of what is now eastern Ukraine, Sandulescu survived for two and one-half years through his youthful vigor and high intelligence. He learned enough Russian to speak it well and understand it perfectly, and that helped him, especially toward the end, when he was forced to escape under the worst possible conditions, as a severely injured man during the Russian winter.

Sandulescu had been buried under a cave-in that had covered him for over four hours. Somehow, he had survived, managing to breathe well-enough the entire time and even emerging without broken bones after being dug out. But the muscles of his legs had been injured, and -- though he does not specifically say this -- the blood must have been cut off long enough to leave some parts necrotic. Here is his own description of how his legs looked at their worst (and stop here if you have a weak stomach):

In the evening the pain was at its worst, eating me up, burning my insides out. I looked at my right ankle and realized that the color was a darker red than it had been before. I wondered how it had managed to grow so much. It looked larger than my waist. I stared at it, fascinated. I became cold and then hot, but I kept staring at my ankle. Just above the joint of the ankle I saw something like a blister growing, but I couldn't understand what it was. I stared at it harder than before. It was slowly growing larger. I thought that I was going crazy. Involuntarily my big toe twitched, and the blister slowly burst open. Then I twitched my big toe again, and the pus came gushing out. It was a yellow, greenish-blue color and smelled putrid. The pressure eased, but I stared at my leg unbelievingly. (page 169)

The pain eased, too, at first, but then a number of holes opened in his legs, and the doctor who showed up to look at Sandulescu's condition wasn't pleased at what he saw:

A day or so later, the doctor appeared again, and when he saw my legs he grumbled, looked at the sores, and then smelled them. I heard him say something to the nurses about amputation. I froze inside. He left, saying that the next time he stopped by he would bring along the necessary instruments and they would see then. (page 172)

Unwilling to risk having his legs cut off, Sandulescu found an opportunity 48 hours later and escaped to a coal train, where -- without food or water and severely injured -- he rode toward the west, the direction of freedom.

And this leads me to the second thing that impressed me, the kindness of ordinary Russians. Even in the mines of the Donbas, Russians had helped him, going so far as to invite him into their homes for meals though they themselves had little food of their own. Now that he was making his escape, Russian strangers helped him. Not even one threatened to turn him in. One of his first encounters after he fled from the likely amputation was in a blacksmith shop where he had taken refuge from the cold and fallen asleep:

When I awoke, two Russians were leaning over me. From the questioning looks on their faces I knew that they wanted an explanation: who was I and what was I doing there?

I sat up, wondering what I should tell them. The best chance I had was to arouse their pity. I started telling them that I was a Romanian who had been a very good worker in the Donbas. But a mine cave-in had injured my legs, and the doctors, instead of trying to save them, were going to amputate. I said that if someone my age lost his legs, it would make him a pretty useless worker, and I had decided to save them myself.

They pondered this story awhile and then asked to see my legs. I untied my mine pants and then the white pants from the hospital and started to unwrap the bandages. While I was doing this, I forgot that my legs would be in a terrible condition. The sight of the pus-soaked bandages was unbelievable, and the smell was repulsive. It didn't smell too bad to me, because I was used to it, but they were not. They looked at me, and I saw nothing but pity in their eyes. (pages 177-178)

They hid him, fed him, and advised him on which coal train to catch out of Russia.

The third thing that impressed me was simply how extraordinarily lucky Sandulescu was. Out of the blue -- or, rather, out of the darkness -- he knocked at the door of a house in the Polish city of Brest-Litovsk:

I went up to the door and knocked lightly. My knock was answered by a rough voice, which was speaking not in Russian but in Polish. I answered in Russian, saying, "Please let me in. I am a Romanian." I heard a stealthy shuffle and the door opened. It was a bald-headed man in his fifties. He beckoned for me to come in and close the door. (page 188)

The man asked for Sandulescu's story and listened as he prepared a pot of soup on the stove:

I began to tell him everything that had happened to me. While I was talking, he put a pot on the stove. As it warmed he stirred it several times so that whatever was in it wouldn't burn. When I mentioned that I hadn't thought it possible to survive in the open coal cars, he just crossed himself and said:

"If you had God's help and were strong and tough enough to emerge alive from such a train ride, it is God's will that you will escape successfully." Evidently he was strongly religious. (page 189)

The man feeds him well and advises him on the best means of escaping further. Another kindness from a stranger, and great luck -- or was the Polish man right, that God was helping Sandulescu?

If so, then God must have been looking for the right man to fight as a professional boxer in Canada, open literary cafés and jazz bars in New York City's Greenwich Village, and become an advisor to the worldwide Kyokushin Karate organization, among other things (such as acting bit parts in movies, television, and commercials), for Sandulescu went on to do all these things.

I strongly recommend the book.

"and the greatest of these is love"

Twin Towers Cross

(Image from Peace Chapel General Baptist Church)

My Uncle Leon Ferguson, who died about five years ago, fought in the Korean War. So did my scoutmaster, Mr. Holland, who still attends meetings of the "Chosin Few," unless he too has passed on. Mr. Holland spoke to me about the Americans having to remove their dead during retreat by using dynamite to blast them out of the frozen ground.

Once, after my scoutmaster had told me something about his experience in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, I asked my Uncle Leon if he had fought there. He looked at me for a moment, then acknowledged that he had, and he spoke briefly about how horrible the war was and that a lot of young friends of his had lost their lives because of poor decisions by their commanding officers. But he didn't specify.

Later, my grandmother told me that what Leon had said to me that day was the most that he'd ever said to anyone about the war. His wife, my maternal aunt, told us that when Leon had returned from the war, he had told her never to ask him about it because he simply didn't want to talk about it.

For years, he practiced conservation by taking his baths in merely an inch or two of water because he hated to waste a resource that had been so hard to get during battle.

My 8th-grade science teacher, Coy Ferguson, told about getting so thirsty during a campaign in the Korean War that he finally forced himself to drink water from a spot in a creek downstream from where a dead mule lay rotting in the water. No other spot safe from sniper fire was available to him.

That war left a traumatic impression upon everyone, it seems, but those who tell the stories are the ones who survived, and such stories always leave us with the belief that we could also survive.

I'm currently reading Jacques Sandulescu's Donbas: A True Story of an Escape Across Russia, which tells the story of how he survived and escaped one of Stalin's slave-labor camps even though he was no more than 18 or 19.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I'd ordered the book, so anyone interested can read more about it there and also find some links to excerpts from that book and other fascinating tales from Sandulescu's life.

He's still alive and lovingly cared for by his wife, Annie Gottlieb, who calls herself "Amba" online and maintains her own blog -- in which, Sandulescu looms large even in the late winter of his long life.

Yesterday, I read Amba's words about those who do not survive -- and that, ultimately, includes all of us. She had just watched United 93 and was still moved from the experience. She notes several things about it that she liked, such as "the modesty of the movie[, which] didn't mythologize the characters," the "casual chatter of all the passengers and crew at the beginning[, which] was anchored by the unawakened assumption that their lives would go on," the anonymity of "Let's roll," which "was made a throwaway line," but most of all, I gather, she liked this:

I liked that while the terrorists' mantra was all Allah all the time, the passengers' was "I love you." That says so much more than I even want to comment on. That was the prayer we sent to the skies on September 11, and I say it speaks well of us.

Note how subtly Amba weaves in an allusion to the Muslim Shahadah in her words "all Allah all," which recall "la ilaha illa Allah" (لا إله إلاَّ الله, "no god but Allah"). While the terrorists were praying for their own souls and the courage to kill others by killing themselves, we were offering up prayers of love for those who were going to die.

I think of the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, especially verse 13:

νυνι δε μενει πιστις ελπις αγαπη τα τρια ταυτα μειζων δε τουτων η αγαπη (Greek New Testament, Westcott-Hort edition of 1881)

But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (American Standard Version)

The terrorists may have had their faith and their hope, but on that day, we had love.

Rarely do I get to play the Korean Language Expert...

Bukhansan

(Image from Wikipedia)

But yesterday, I did.

I had finally gotten around to ordering from Amazon a book that I've been intending to read for over two years now, Jacques Sandulescu's true story of his escape from a Russian gulag.

The book is titled Donbas: A True Story of an Escape Across Russia, and you can read excerpts from it at Jacques Sandulescu's website.

An escape across Russia might not sound especially riveting to a younger generation, but to those of us who vividly recall the Cold War and grew up fearing Russia as a dangerous enemy, the story of an escape from that brutal, mysterious, communist place drew one's fascinated attention.

And I knew that I had to learn the entire story when I read an excerpt beginning with these words on how the young Jacques was grabbed off a Romanian street and shipped off to prison camp in Russia:

I was arrested in Brasov on my way to school. It was just beginning to get light, and the cold dark-gray streets were almost empty. At a corner near the schoolgrounds I saw several armed Russian soldiers and a Romanian civilian interpreter shoving somebody into a police truck. They saw me...

Jacques was only 16, but at 6 feet 2 inches (190 centimeters) and 180 pounds (82 kilograms), he wasn't small, so the Russians took him, too, probably not believing that he was just a kid.

As reviewer Jesse Kornbluth notes on the literary site Head Butler, Jacques may have been young, but "his youth vanishes fast when he watches guards execute some would-be escapees."

Kornbluth reveals that Jacques is tempted to opt for their fate, reflecting that a quick death might be better than painfully freezing or slowly starving, but he makes the decision to stay alive, and for over two years, he survives in the slave-labor gulag, working hard in the mines, until...

After two and a half years, his luck runs out. Jacques is trapped in a cave-in and rescued only by a friend's heroic efforts. He fears his legs will be amputated. It's winter, but so what -- he must escape. His legs are running with pus, he is a mass of sores, but he slips onto a train, hides in an open coal car and begins the slow, freezing ride to the West.

Somehow, he makes a successful escape and ends up in the United States, where he learns to box professionally, then becomes a martial arts expert as he grows to be close friends with a man whom he called "Kancho," later "Mas Oyama," which is short for Masutatsu Oyama, but who is better known here in Korea by his birth name, Choi Yeong-eui (최영의; 崔永宜), or by the name that he took for himself, Choi Bae-dal (최배달; 崔倍達). About their friendship, Jacques says this:

There are a couple of myths I have to dispel about my friendship with Kancho, later Sosai, Oyama, even if the truth disappoints you. We've all seen so many Hollywood and Hong Kong action movies, the expectation of constant explosions, fights and chases has spoiled us for the sometimes more subtle drama of real life. One of those myths is that Kancho and I must have fought each other to a bloody standstill before we could become friends. I find it much more amazing that we somehow recognized each other at first sight. It's macho nonsense that two strong men can't be friends until they've brawled like tomcats, found out who is stronger, and earned each other's respect. I had to earn Kancho's respect, no question, but I did it through training with him, my great respect for him, and simply who I was. When it came to kumite, we certainly tested each other, and felt each other's strength, but we had no need to find out who could beat whom in a real fight. (We both knew: he would win, but not easily.) I could tell he enjoyed our kumite, because with me, unlike most sparring partners, he could open up and not be afraid to do damage.

See, the really tough guys know that they don't need to act macho.

Mas Oyama is long dead, but Jacques is still around and being cared for in his old age by his wife, the writer Annie Gottlieb, who maintains her own, interesting and well-written blog, Ambivablog, which she updates regularly and in which Jacques frequently appears.

Which leads me to my brief moment of Korean 'expertise.' Annie had blogged on Jesse Kornbluth's recent review of Donbas, and Annie's report of his review motivated me to order the book, and I told Annie (who calls herself Amba online):

I finally ordered the book from Amazon.

I've been intending to order and read it ever since I read the first chapter online and also of his friendship with the Japanese martial arts expert who was actually a Korean and who is famous here in Korea.

I also realized that I'd seen Jacques in Moscow on the Hudson, a brief but memorable performance that still sticks sharply in my mind.

Connections...

With respect,

Jeffery Hodges

Annie responded:

Thank you! It's good to hear that Mas Oyama is "famous here in Korea." Since he left for Japan at an early age that could have gone either way ... but he is worth taking pride in and he did always maintain his connection to Korea. In fact, the friend we came to Chapel Hill to be near spent a couple of years in the mid-'90s studying Mas Oyama's karate in Korea, from where he sent us a cat. He did some interesting (unpublished) writing about Korean culture, too ...

Then added:

I should probably send him over to read your blog.

I replied:

Sure, send everybody over to my blog. Some might like it ... though it's really an exercise in narcissism that probably shouldn't be encouraged.

By the way, I clicked the link on the mysterious, electric cat, and about this:

We climbed a mountain called Pukansan. Pu means north, kan refers to the Han river, and san means mountain. It's the "mountain north of the Han."

Close, but it's actually Bukhansan -- "Buk-" meaning "north," "-han-" meaning "Han River," and "-san" meaning "mountain." It does, as noted, mean "mountain north of the Han River."

I rarely get to pretend to expertise in Korean, so thank you for the opportunity to sound as if I know more than I do.

And that's how I passed myself off as "Korean Language Expert."