Bøger af Bery Sanford

Following Romania's surrender on August 23, 1944 and the liberation of the country by the Red Army there was a brief period during which reunification of families was the primary objective of the surviving members. Those who had fled to Russia and survived by being relocated to Siberia began arriving during 1945 and 1946. My wife's family had relatives who lived in Bessarabia, a province that was forcibly returned to Russia during 1940 and who found refuge in Siberia after the Germans and their allies invaded Russia in June of 1941. During the summer of 1946, a submarine commander in the Soviet navy and his wife Lea came to visit my wife's family at Bucharest. At that time I was seventeen years old and had just been admitted at the University of Bucharest. Regarded as one of the family, I was also present at the visit. After an emotional meeting between Lea and her hosts, the discussion turned to what happened to Lea, her sister Gerda and their parents. They were saved by the availability of cargo trains, in place soon after Russia took over in 1940. The Russian rails were traditionally wider than the Western European rails to which the Romanian rail system adhered. Lea and Gerda's family left days before it became apparent that the Germans were preparing to invade by massing troops at the border. They were underway in the Ukraine when the German attack began and trains headed for the front had priority over those with evacuated civilians. At one of the stations where their train stopped to allow military trains priority, Gerda got off to look for water for the family. She was seen reaching up to a stopped military train and being whisked aboard by reaching hands before the petrified stare of Lea and relatives. She was never seen again as that train left the station.My future mother-in-law asked Lea if they learned what happened to Gerda: "She was such a lovely young woman and she loved life. You and Gerda came to visit us at Ismail a few times and we loved the joy and laughter that you left with us every time."Lea opened her handbag and rummaged among its contents, taking out an aged photo. She glanced at it and handed it to my future mother-in-law with a small smile.The recipient looked at the photo and looked again. Disbelief was written on her face. She had a questioning look for Lea and handed the photo to my future wife. Again, there was scrutiny, but this time my wife asked: "Is this Gerda seated at the table?"Lea replied with a nod and looked at my future mother in law."Who is that at the table just beyond Gerda?!" Disbelief was loud in her voice: "Is that me and mom?"Lea nodded with a small smile."But this is taken on Calea Victoriei right here in Bucharest. You mean Gerda was here during the war with Russia, so close that we could hug each other?!""It would appear that it is so.", replied Lea."But, but, we were at war. She couldn't....""Yeah, but she did and she had the street photographer take the photo with you and your mother in the background, because she wanted to show you later on that she was so close to you and loved you both...." There was a tremor in her intonation as if she muffled a cry."You mean she was a spy?" the naïve question made the submarine commander and his wife exchange amused glances. There was no comment."My God! I could have touched her and hugged her..." It was my wife's mother and she did cry.This is the story of a teenage Jewish girl from Romania, Gerda B., a refugee from the Nazi invasion of her home town of Ismail in the Danube delta, who meets her destiny at a railroad station when she is pulled unwillingly aboard a military train headed for Stalingrad. She is called to play a historic role in the encirclement of the Nazi invaders by Nikita Khrushchev, a Political appointee by Stalin to exercise control of the over a million man Red army at Stalingrad and future Leader of the Soviet Union.

Humanity has a very special place among nature's creations as being endowed with existential intelligence, defined as an individual's ability to use collective values and intuition to understand others and the world. When one assembles together a collection of nine topics: existential intelligence, hopeless love, human bonds, causal relationships, hopes, ghosts, quantum nonlocality, dark side and inhumanity, one has to find the common denominator that ties these topics together. All bond to one word: "Humanity." Together we explore fact based events and draw conclusions. We step far beyond experience in The Quantum Tinkerer, looking at the potential of Quantum nonlocality, a current intensely explored topic of science, to take Humanity to strange, exotic new places, such as being able to exist simultaneously in two realms, the classical, Newtonian level and the Quantum level of the underlying, dimensionless chaotic realm where everything is based on chance. We also cover down to earth human characteristics in human bonds, love, causal relationships and, for good measure, we look at the scary side in "Ghost". Some of these topics are also the basis for future titles.

The Authors. Robert and Bery Sanford made their home in Marblehead since he joined the GE / NASA's moon program. Previously he was a researcher with an atomic energy project at Columbia University. For the past eighteen years he was an adjunct professor in Management, also in Chemistry and Physics at Salem State University and Suffolk University. Robert and Bery began their authorship collaboration over a year ago and published first an anthology in December 2018 on Amazon that included a collection of stories under the title: "Humanity and: Existential Intelligence, Its Bonds, Its Faith, Causal Relationships, Dark Side, Inhumanity, Ghosts, Hopeless Love, etc."Then in January 2019 they published two titles: "To Life: A Journey", Bery's memoir and: "The Quantum Tinkerer", science fiction, the first of a Trilogy. This was followed by two more science fiction sequels to the Quantum Tinkerer during February, 2019: first "The Multiplet Game" the locale for which is Marblehead, followed by "The Quantum Mystery of the Missing Islands in the South China Sea" a topic of considerable interest in current world affairs. For a change of pace, in March they nearly missed their record by publishing on the last day of the month: "Your Room Key is at the End of the Hall and other World Travel Tales", a spicy tongue in cheek collection of true international travel stories. Their most recent book is: "Gerda, The Girl who became a Spy." All of the above are on Amazon.com published in sixty countries on Kindle and paperback. Robert and Bery are childhood sweethearts originally from Romania who met at the end of the war. Both have survived the Holocaust, however Bery's story has much tragedy and suffering; the loss of both grandparents in a concentration camp and of her uncle who was made to dig his own grave and died expressing his love for the country of his killers. She was only three years old when her parents divorced and her mother moved to Bucharest where she remarried. Bery learned to live with a terrible burden when, at the age of ten she ended up without documents at Bucharest and she spent the rest of the war in hiding. She survived the pogrom of 1941 in which Jews were rounded up and packed in death trains by the Nazi sympathizers, or killed and hung in the abattoir with a stamp "kosher meat" on their dismembered bodies. Life can imitate the movies for Bery and Robert. Her stepfather became a member of the Romanian government in exile in the USA. Bery and Robert came to the USA as visitors. One day, Robert received an invitation to report to the Draft Board. After serving in Korea during the war, he and Bery were granted citizenship. The GI Bill enabled Robert to complete his degrees in Chemistry and embark on a scientific career. He was employed in the semiconductor equipment and materials industry for twenty years and held executive management positions. Mr. Sanford is particularly active in international markets. He participated in the establishment of several joint ventures in Japan, China, Israel and East Europe. In addition, he served as Chairman of the China Electronics Forum, Beijing and Shenzhen, China, and he was a regular contributor to the Semiconductor International publication of the SEMI Institute.

One often hears about someone surviving a catastrophic event in life, whether by fate, or miracle, but how likely is it for the same survivor to encounter six such events in one lifetime and survive them all? I like to write true events, inasmuch as they all happened to me. As I look back, it was like moving through a labyrinth expecting to find an escape, only to find another. So far, so good. I made it through six catastrophic events with intervention by divine help, people, fate, luck, etc. All true. Enjoy.

FOREWORDThis is about my birthplace, a town of about 100,000 in the northeast corner of Romania. What is interesting about this town called Botosani (pronounced Botoshani) is that by comparison with Bucharest, the country's capital with ten times as many inhabitants, Botosani had roughly half as many famous people born there. What factor(s) may be responsible for such an outstanding pedigree for this small town stuck in the northeast corner of the country? it is undoubtedly related to individual intelligence, talent and being born there, rich or poor and maybe also to some specific factor(s) related to the place, call it the "Ghenghis Khan" factor. After all, he proved to be a genius and his grandson is reputed to have started the settlement. Botoșani (pronounced Botoshani) is first mentioned in 1439, in one chronicle that makes the mention that "the Mongols came and pillaged all the way to Botușani". The town was reportedly established by Botu Khan, the grandson of Ghenghis Khan. The town is then mentioned during the conflicts between Moldavia and Poland in the fifteenth century. There is also mention of the arrival of settlers from Transylvania, probably Germans and Hungarians and others migrating along the trade roads extending from the Baltic countries, Poland and Belarus to the Danube and the Black Sea.Below are examples of famous personalities born in Botosani, many with international reputation: -Grigore Antipa (1867-1944) Biologist-Max Blecher, (1909-1938), Jewish writer-Demostene Botez (1893-1973), Poet and prose writer-Pascal Covici (1885-1964), Jewish-American book publisher and editor-Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889, born Mihail Eminovici), outstanding poet, novelist and journalist-George Enescu (1881-1955) World famous composer, violinist, pianist, conductor and teacher. He is regarded by many as Romania's most important musician. (Born in Judetz Dorohoi now Botosani).-Reuven Feuerstein (1921-2014) Israeli clinical, developmental, and cognitive psychologist-Alexandru Graur (1900-1988) Jewish, linguist-Nicolae Iorga (1871-1940), historian, politician, literary critic, memoirist, poet and playwright-Isidore Isou (1925-2007, born Isidor Goldstein) Jewish, French poet, dramaturge, novelist, economist, and visual artist-Mime Misu (1888-1953, born Mișu Rosescu) ballet dancer, pantomime artist, film actor and director-Octav Onicescu (1892-1983) mathematician and founder of the Romanian school of probability theory and statistics-Henric Sanielevici ((1875-1951), Jewish journalist and literary critic-Ion Sân-Giorgiu (1893-1950), modernist poet, dramatist and essayist, and far-right politician-Artur Stavri (1869-1928), poet-Adolf Josef Storfer (1888-1944), Jewish Austrian lawyer turned journalist and publisher(Source: Wikipedia)Botosani is on the road extending from Lithuania, Letonia and Estonia and the Jewish Pale of the Tsarist time, down along the Siret and Prut rivers that empty in the Danube and the Black Sea. In fact, it served as a sort of a caravan route for merchants trading northern goods from the Baltic for exotic wares from Constantinople. Along this route, also came the Jews after the pogroms that liquidated some, and motivated others to search for luck elsewhere. The town's main street was called Calea Nationala (National Way) for good reason. On one such caravan was an orphan child, both of whose parents had been killed in a pogrom in Lithuania. As was the custom, local rabbis and rebs (learned men) attended to those passing through with food, clothing and helping them as best they could in their suffering. The baby in question was offered for adoption to any family that wanted him. One barrel maker by the name of Bodnar picked up the baby and looked at the boy with moist eyes.

FOREWORD"It was a game of life and death, of good and evil." A nine year old girl becomes the pawn of an intricate game between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in which Romania's oil fields are the prize. While her extended family is destroyed, she survives the war as an illegal with her mother and stepfather at Bucharest, always in fear. Her stepfather, a member of an opposition party to post war Communist Romania, must flee in order to join a government in exile abroad. Now fifteen, she is to follow with her mother, a seventeen year old boyfriend and an uncle who had made arrangements for them to cross illegally into Hungary and from there to Vienna. The uncle is arrested, while they continue to Budapest without money, documents, or the knowledge how to get to Vienna. The boyfriend becomes the leader and they succeed, against all odds, to join the stepfather. From there the girl and her family are taken over by the American occupation authority, while the boyfriend has several more borders to cross before rejoining the girl. They marry at Paris and visit her parents at New York, where her stepfather is a member of the Romanian government in exile.As fate would have it, her young husband receives a draft notice to report to the local draft board, even though on a visitor's visa. He is drafted, trained in intelligence and ends up in Korea during the war. He receives an Honorable discharge, but an Immigration agent is waiting at the camp gate with a warrant of arrest and deportation as visitor without legal residence in the United States. U.S. Senator Herbert H. Lehman champions their cause and they are allowed to remain and join in a creative and fruitful life living the American Dream.