acknowledgements

 I met Erne Friedlander shortly after moving to New York City.  She was old, frail and home-bound.  My lover, Seth, was a pianist.  His mentor, Seymour Bernstein, introduced us to one of Erne's neighbors.  She was a singer and was leaving on tour with the Metropolitan Opera Chorus. She persuaded Seth and I to look after Erne while she was gone. 

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After a rocky start, Erne and I fell in love with one another.  She was a painter.  She was a German Jew who fled the Nazis, first to Paris and then to Italy.  From there she, and her husband Martin, urgently booked passage Brindisi to Shanghai. On the way to Shanghai, the ship visited Hong Kong.  The captain invited Erne to see Hong Kong with him.  She confessed she could not disembark the ship because she had no papers.  During the voyage, she had painted the captain's portrait.  In gratitude for that, he arranged an on-board exhibition of her paintings.  The exhibit was so successful, the Lieutenant Governor of Hong Kong invited Erne to live there as an artist-in-residence.  She flourished there.  The same morning as the attack on Pearl Harbor, the empire of Japan brutally attacked Hong Kong.  There were many atrocities committed during the Japanese occupation. Erne regularly smuggled food into prison camps where British soldiers were held.  Once she was caught doing this and she was severely beaten. Her husband was killed during the liberation of Hong Kong. After the war, she was awarded a commendation as a war hero.  Erne was deported first to England and two years later to Israel. Finally, she arrived in New York and in time became a U.S. citizen.

By the time I knew Erne, she was no longer able to paint  One of her joys was to send me off to a museum to see a certain painting and then report back to her.  Invariably, she would say, "You silly ass, you saw nothing, go back!"  We carried on like this until her death in 1979.  During my years at Purchase, I came back to Manhattan on weekends and holidays not only to teach, but to visit with Erne.  Erne had been intent upon suicide (as were so many who'd struggled so hard to survive).  I was able to talk her out of it, by asking her to write the story of her life. Later, with a group of extraordinary artists, we produced a sequence of dream-like vignettes at La Mama, in New York City.  They were called, "The Memoirs of Erne Friedlander".

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​Erne taught me to see, to be able to see into a work of art, behind it. Being with a work of art with all of your senses - what does it taste like, can you smell it and hear it. How does your skin feel as you see deeply.