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cious tales of love between parent and
child, husband and wife, and friends.
In the period before his death, Paul
cares for his daughter while Mimi
works. During this time he nurtures a
tender father-daughter relationship
through their walks, games of chess
and conversations that firmly
anchored him in his daughter's mem-
ory.
When a flirtatious family friend
leaves a strong trail of perfume in
their apartment, Paul tutors Anca:
"'That woman knows nothing
about the subtleties of wearing
cologne... Now your mother,' he'd say,
and stop, making me ache for the
exquisite scent of her hair and face,
which in order to smell we had to be
in her arms. For wasn't much of my
father's companionship with me built
on our longing for her?"
Anca brings Proustian delight to
her remembrances of times past, even
though that earlier period is filled
with struggles and tragedy. Besides
her parents, Anca's memoir brings to
life her parents' friends. They include
intellectuals and actresses, who engage
and nurture the youngster.
In addition, sensuous, mouth-
watering descriptions of food fill these
pages: from a grandmother's rose-
petal jams to magical meals Mimi cre-
ates on an illegal gas-burner after she
and Anca arrive penniless in Paris.

Life Lessons

Anca's book attempts solutions for
some tough historical questions.
How do parents educate a child
living under fascism about what she
can't say in public, because of the risk
of arrest, yet encourage her natural
curiosity?
What aspect of Judaism can a sur-
vivor hold onto?
How does a mother nurture her
daughter toward the future, yet tell
her about the atrocities of the past?
Carefully, stories about the concen-
tration camps unfold, starting when
Anca, a precocious 4-year-old, is
called a name and asks her father,
"What does a kike mean?"
While Mimi's concentration-camp
experience is harrowing, an anecdote
about the women in her camp who
protect a pregnant woman is equally
powerful.
Ironically, when the author suffers
injustices because she is a Jew and a
refugee, she chooses to hide them
from her mother. Why should she tell
her mother, Anca reasons, when her

mother can do nothing about it but
despair.
Anca sums up that period of time
in Paris by saying, "Despite depriva-
tions, I led a privileged life."
Settling in Detroit, Mimi is consid-
ered a "greenhorn" by her American
relatives. They are especially uncom-
fortable with her Holocaust experi-
ences and urge her to put them
behind her and start a fresh life.
When Mimi is unwilling to overlook
their prejudices toward women, blacks
and homosexuals, the relatives drift
away.
Anca's wit is not lost on the contra-
dictions of her new home:
"I came to a country that took up
almost a continent, where, despite
that vastness, people could not give
each other elbow room to live; a
country that prided itself on its indi-
vidualistic ideals yet scrutinizes more
intensely than the Communists what
people do with their bodies in search
of pleasure or freedom."
A few years later, the Jewish com-
munity begins to gather Holocaust
stories. An interviewer visits Mimi in
her apartment to record her experi-
ences. On her second visit, however,
the woman flees, never to return,
when Mimi brings up the subject of
Jewish collaborators during the war.
Had the interviewer stayed she
would have learned that no matter
how inhumanely people are treated,
people can and must know the truth
in order to heal.
The end of No Return Address
repeats the theme of pain and
redemption. After her mother's death,
Anca is unable to garden for three
years. She finally returns to the soil
and the unusual growth of a rose bush
leads to a most moving tribute to her
mother.
These roses, she writes, "survive
even under the unbroken shade of the
oak, where they should not be plant-
ed, where perversely, to prove com-
mon wisdom wrong, they bloom
once, twice a summer, surprising the
jaded sight with their recklessness in
chancing such beauty in the relative
dark of so brief a time." 7

Anca Viasopolos appears at the
local author fair from 1 1 a. m . -4
p.m. Sunday, Nov. 5, at the Janice
Charach Epstein Gallery in the
Jewish Community, Center in
West Bloomfield.

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