Wendy Brandes Jewelry Blog

Never Is the Next New Thing

El-Oh-El-Ay Lola

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I was happy to see Kate Winslet win an Oscar last month for her performance in The Reader.

Winslet on her winning night

If you haven’t seen the movie, I recommend it. Based on a book by Bernhard Schlink and set in post-World War II Germany, The Reader is about a teenager who has a summertime affair with a much older woman. Years later, while attending law school, he attends a trial where the woman is revealed to be a Nazi concentration camp guard, accused of atrocities. Hilarity ensues. Okay, I’m lying about the hilarity, but you should see the movie anyway. Winslet is surprisingly moving as the Nazi seductress and David Kross, who plays the teenager, matches her in talent and outdoes her in full-frontal nudity. Rumor has it that there might have been a tear in my eye at the end of the movie, but I will neither confirm nor deny such scurrilous gossip.

Anyway, the movie reminded me that I wanted to follow up on my WWII posts from the summer. Back in August, I mentioned my grandfather’s cousin, Max, who was born in Austria-Hungary and survived internment in a German slave camp during the war. I also mentioned Max’s sex-ay gal-pal Lola, whom he first met back in the Old Country. About a month after that post, my parents, grandmother and I had the opportunity to dine with the Snapple-loving, 90-something lovahs and get more of Lola’s story, but not before we had to squeeze into a too-small car to go to the restaurant, which gave the perpetually naughty Max the opportunity to invite me to sit on his lap.

Lola was the second oldest of five children born to an Austrian mother and a Romanian father. Like Max, she was born in Czernowitz, Austria-Hungary, which later became Cernautzi, Romania, as I described here. She first met Max in Czernowitz — he was three months younger than she was and, as she recalls, “he was a womanizer” with the younger girls. Somehow I wasn’t surprised by that description.

When Lola was young, her family repeatedly moved back and forth between several towns in Romania and Czernowitz. The family first moved to Romania when Lola’s father, Joseph, was transferred there by the insurance company for which he worked. Lola’s mother, Pette, never learned to speak Romanian; at her behest, the family eventually moved back to Czernowitz, which had become part of Romania but was still German-speaking. More moves followed. Ultimately, when the Russian Army occupied Czernowitz in 1940, Lola, her younger brother Robert and older brother Isidore were in Czernowitz. Joseph, Pette and Lola’s younger sisters, Regina and Sylvia, were elsewhere in Romania.

German and Romanian forces seized Czernowitz in 1941. By that time, Lola was married. She still remembers the day she met her husband, Nathan — June 13, 1940 — at the hotel he managed, where she worked as a cashier. They married on April 26, 1941, when she was 27 and he was 33. By the end of that year, the Germans sent the Jews to a Ukraine slave-labor camp. Nathan protected Lola in the camp, she says: “Without him, I wouldn’t be alive.” But Lola’s brother Isidore died from typhus in the camp. Lola and Nathan also lost their son, Mickey, who was born in 1943 and died 15 months later. By the time Mickey died, Germany was losing the war and the camp guards had fled ahead of Russian forces. Nathan had gone too. He joined a Czech fighting brigade, because the Russians liked to send freed prisoners to the coal mines, which was tantamount to a death sentence.

Lola and Nathan had agreed to meet up in Prague after the war but missed each other there. She went on to a displaced persons camp in Munich and was settled in a small village nearby. When Nathan, who was by now in Vienna, heard about the Munich camp, he went there, found out about the village and searched from house to house till he found Lola. His friends told him that he would never find his wife but nothing could stop this guy. When Lola got to this point of the story over dinner, my father pressed her about what Nathan had done to support them after their reunion. Lola said sweetly that Nathan was “a businessman.” When my father inquired further, she conceded that Nathan’s business was selling black market goods. An entrepreneur! Love it. As Lola recalled of the quick-thinking Nathan, “He was very fast in everything, I was very slow.” She and Nathan moved to Vienna, where they lived from 1948 to 1952, and then to Sydney, Australia, where Lola still lives. They never had another child. Nathan died 22 years ago.

Except for Isidore, all of Lola’s immediate family survived the war. Both sisters were supposed to go with Lola to Sydney, but Regina died in a car accident in Vienna a few months before they left. Sylvia did go and still lives just blocks from Lola. As for Robert, he married a woman who was also named Lola. Robert’s Lola had a sister named Dora, who was married to Max, the womanizer from Czernowitz. Robert and his Lola lived in Ukraine till they separated and Robert came to Sydney, breaking the link to Max. “I never dreamed I’d ever see Max again,” Lola said. But, she added, “Do you believe in destiny? I do.” And so it came to be that 45 years after they’d last seen each other, Max and Lola were re-introduced at Max’s granddaughter’s bat mitzvah in New York in 1987. And they’ve been together ever since.

I thought Lola’s story was nicely symbolized by the gold necklace she wears: an “L” for Lola is framed by Nathan’s wedding band, hanging on a chain that Max gave her.

Here is the highlarious photo I took with Max and Lola after dinner. I may be only 5’4″, but I am a giant among 90-somethings.

Max and Lola with a giantess in September 2008

While we’re speaking of Lola, there’s Run, Lola, Run and Whatever Lola Wants, but the Lola reference I can’t get out of my head is the Kinks song. El-Oh-El-Ay!

After you’re done singing along to the Kinks, please join me in a round of Happy Birthday. Normally, I don’t blab a lady’s age to the world, but it just so happens to be Lola’s 95th birthday today and I think respect should be paid. Feel free to leave your well wishes in the comments. My father, GeorgeB, will make sure she gets your messages.

UPDATED TO ADD: Max died on July 3, 2010, after suffering a stroke.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. Thank you for sharing Lola’s and Max’s story. It’s truly amazing how life plays out.

    Happy birthday, Lola!!

    (Btw, Wendy, now I have the damn Kink’s song in my head…Thanks! haha Well I’m not dumb but I cant understand why she walked like a woman and talked like a man…)

  3. i LOVE this story. i’m touched and love that you gave it a rockin’ soundtrack. happy birthday, lola!

  6. Hi there-thanks for sharing such a lovely story with us all and I do wish Lola a very Happy Birthday too!

  7. Happy Birthday, Lola! (I’m afraid of spoilers, so I didn’t read this post, but I got the Twitter.) Will read “The Reader” _and_ your blog post soon.

  8. LOVE old people love stories!!! It gives me faith in humanity! They are so CUTE together too!

  9. Happy Birthday Lola! You don’t look a day over 65 – I can’t possibly believe that you’re 95!!! Thanks for sharing your wonderful story.

  10. I love this story. Stories of Holocaust survivors who find some happiness and success despite tragedy always choke me up. Happy Birthday Lola, and many more.

  11. That’s an extraordinary story! Sometimes life is so surprising.

    Happy Birthday, Lola! Many happy returns.

  12. Thanks for sharing this, WB! Happy bday to Lola!

    Must see The Reader asap…

    xoxox,
    CC

  13. Wonderful story and beautifully written. To read about long lost lovers and friends who are reunited after decades apart gives me hope for humanity.
    And Happy Birthday to Lola!

  16. Happy Birthday wishes to Lola. She look FABULOUS. What an amazing story she has lived to tell.

  17. Wow, such an awesome story; it’s hard to imagine that this REALLY happened!

    Happy Birthday Lola!

    I wish you good health and a happy life!

  18. what an awesome story! and happy birthday to miss lola!

    i am taking a literature and power course that focuses specifically on holocaust literature. although i know it will be an emotionally taxing class, the subject matter is fascinating and very close to my heart.

  20. Wendy: You tell a fine story! Happy Bday Lola. So happy to hear how fate brought you and Max together after many years.

    I’ve been watching this series on TVO the last few weeks called “Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution”. It’s horrendously difficult to watch, but it’s one of the most thorough, thoughtful, painful series on the topic I have seen. Last week’s episode focused on the Hungarian jews. I keep telling myself to turn it off (I get nightmares) but the story of human depravity – and human resilience – is riveting.

    Thank you for giving a human face to this subject, W.

  22. Beautiful! I loved it and may or may not have gotten teary. Nathan went looking for her everywhere- how utterly romantic.

    Here’s to you, Lola! Happy Birthday.

    lalalala- Lola.

  24. Happy birthday Lola! What incredible love stories you’ve lived and are living.

  26. I loved the film too; I thought it was so thought-provoking and beautifully acted. But the press (UK at least, I don’t know about elsewhere) made a huge deal about it apparently excusing, or attempting to justify the atrocities of the holocaust. I was wondering what you think about that? x

  27. I loved “The Reader” and this story reminded me a little of Spiegelman’s Maus, which I teach. Your comment above the photo is hilarious.

  29. Oh wow. I just realized I listened to the Kinks for years, but I’ve never watched a video of them. I get such an education reading your blog.

    Happy birthday to Lola!

  33. Happy Birthday, Lola! You’re beautiful!

    Wendy, I loved The Reader. Rumor has it that I sobbed. How ridiculous!

  35. Lola is a beautiful woman inside and out and it is only fitting she should be honored on her birthday by a fabulous post from WendyB. Happy Birthday Lola! Love, Terri Berry.

  36. What about the song, “Naughty Lola,” in the film a few years ago, “Black Book?”

  37. I’m very happy that you’ve shared this with us, WendyB. Besides singing Happy Birthday to Lola, I’m singing “Whatever Lola wants,” too. I mean, look at how her life turned out! Despite the horrors of war and the inhumane treatment she endured, she can surely say that she’s gotten much of what she wanted out of life. It’s amazingly inspirational. GeorgeB, thanks for letting Lola know that my 83-year-old Mama and I send out best birthday wishes to her!

  38. I love your stories.

    Now I’m going to go to sleep singing el oh el ay lola… Happy Birthday Lola!