MY REMEMBRANCES AFTER THE DEATH OF A DEAR FRIEND

It is with great sorrow that I learned about the death of my dear friend Rosette on June 16. I had
heard her frail voice on the phone on June 10th and knew that she was quite ill, but I was not
ready for the finality of her passing away.

I am one of the oldest friends of Rosette. We have been friends for sixty years. Although she
lived in Paris and I lived in New York, our friendship never stopped. We were lucky to meet
many times all through these years and start as if we had never left each other.

In the fall of 1939 I entered the university in Ankara to study psychology, sociology, and
philosophy. Rosette was one of the students in the same department that had just opened. It
happened that we lived on the same street in Ankara and our fathers worked for the same
company. A close friend and I immediately became friends with Rosette. She had lived in
Belgium and France for many years and received her bachot at a lycée in Roubaix. She lost her
mother when she was young. After that her father moved to Belgium with her and her brother
Izi, several years her junior, to start a business there. Rosette did not like the life in Belgium, but
liked her French lycée and her friends there. In 1936 they moved back to Istanbul and Rosette
worked for a company there for three years before she moved to Ankara to work for the
Anatolian News Agency. She was about twenty-three years old then. Her determination to
receive a university degree while working was typical of her daring spirit, because she had a
demanding job and sometimes she had to work on the night shift.

In Turkey we were lucky to stay out of World War II. During the four years we spent at the
university we were also very lucky to be instructed by brilliant young academics who had
studied in the United States during the New Deal years and were progressive people.

We had a French teacher, M. Olivier Lacombe, who taught history of philosophy; he was Free
French. Our university employed many German scholars who had escaped from Nazi Germany.

Of course not everything was so perfect. There were definite ideological camps at the university
among the teachers and the students. In our department there was a teacher who was anti-Semitic
(he was not the only one) and the irony of it he taught logic. He tried to give a difficult time to
Rosette but she was not discouraged easily and passed the exams of this unpleasant creature.

Those years we spent at the university in Ankara were very exciting. We acquired knowledge, a
broad scientific and humanitarian outlook, political awareness, feelings of solidarity, and lasting
friendships that were to affect us for the rest of our lives. At the same time we were fully aware
of the death and destruction the war was causing all over the world. All the countries around us
were invaded by Nazi Germany. We anxiously followed the course of the war and fervently
hoped for the eventual victory of the allies and democracies.
I came to the US at the end of 1945 to continue my studies. Rosette arrived in the beginning of
1947. We both had the same adventure of crossing the Atlantic by Liberty ships. That was the
only transportation available then. Rosette had already found a job for herself as a secretary-
companion to the mother of famous photographer Robert Capa for whom she had worked briefly
in Turkey. She was always independent and supported herself.

This time we were together at Columbia University taking psychology courses. We made friends
from many countries of the world and the families of our New York friends welcomed us to their
homes. We were living a full life studying and participating in many activities -- going to
political meetings, plays, concerts, art movies, museums, the parks and the beaches of New
York. At that time many of these activities were more affordable.

One unforgettable event Rosette and I shared in 1949 was attending an outdoor Paul Robeson
concert in the town of Peekskill. Unfortunately the riotous behavior of the local residents and
their racist supporters prevented the concert from taking place. When we boarded on the buses to
get back to New York City we could see these hooligans all lined up on the road throwing rocks
at the buses that carried hundreds of people including many children. Today Paul Robeson is a
greatly honoured American hero and the hooligans are in the trash bins of history.

In 1949 there was a world-wide movement to free the famous Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet from
jail. His poems were not well known yet outside Turkey. Rosette and I translated dozens of
Nazim Hikmet's poems into English. They were published with a pseudonym, for obvious
reasons, both in the US and in India, creating a great interest and enthusiasm. I must say Rosette
was the senior partner of this endeavor.

After getting her M.A. at Columbia University, Rosette went to New York University and
received a doctorate in social psychology. She wrote a thesis about the origin of stereotypes.
About that time she met Scho and they became close friends. Rosette moved to Paris in 1952.
Scho joined her there and they got married. They were starting a brave new life, earning a living
at odd jobs until they settled down to more steady and professional work of translation and
journalism.

I was married in 1950 and by 1952 we had two daughters. My husband worked for the United
Nations and we were entitled to home leave all the way to India every other year. In the fifties
and the sixties we used to cross the Atlantic by transatlantic liners and visit Paris for a few days.
Rosette and Scho always met us at the train station. They arranged inexpensive hotels for us.
They even baby sat in the small hotel rooms so that my husband and I could go out at night. She
was always so good to my children. She even played ball with them in one those hotel rooms,
bringing down the ancient brass chandelier that was hanging by a rusty nail. Their apartments,
both in rue Rollin and Boulevard Ornano, were a delight to visit. Once she even taught me how
to make crepes.

In 1970 Rosette and I shared some good times again in Aix—en-Provence when my daughter
Mina was studying there. We walked under the ancient plane trees in Cours Mirabeau, took
excursions in the Cézanne country admiring the landscape and visited Cézanne’s studio. We
went to nearby towns. It was pure joy, including the delicious boullabaisse we had in the quays
of Marseilles.

Since Rosette was so attached to her brother Izi and his family and to her country of birth she
and Scho used to spend their vacations in Turkey. Several times I met them in Istanbul. In
August 1998 Rosette was like a young girl hopping gaily in the streets of Istanbul, Scho and I
trailing behind. We went to the Nazim Hikmet Foundation where we presented our old book.
The people who worked there gave us a certificate of appreciation for our translation work. In
her last letter (January 20, 2000) Rosette wrote she hoped to meet us again in Istanbul in the
summer.

On March 15, she called to congratulate us on our 50th wedding anniversary. I was amazed and
very pleased - and asked her how she could remember it. She said of course she did, she was our
witness at the City Hall ceremony.

These personal remembrances are only glimpses of Rosette’s well—lived life, full of integrity,
courage, generosity and goodness which she shared with Scho, her true soulmate in a marriage of
almost forty-eight years.

I will end my words here with a message we received from our daughter, Leyla, on June 19,
from Nepal where she works now.

"I am sorry to hear about Rosette. I’ll never forget all the fun we had together in Paris on
many Bastille Days and on many other occasions. I hope she did not suffer too much."

June 2000
New York