.

(Editorial note: the following small notice appeared in issue 25 of the Thoreau Society Bulletin in October of 1948:

ANALYSIS BOOK SHOP (150 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK) IS ANNOUNCING JACK SCHWARTZMAN'S REBELS OF INDIVIDUALISM TO BE PUBLISHED SOON AT $2.50. IT WILL CONTAIN AN ESSAY ON THOREAU.

The book was soon released, and in March of the following year a reporter from the Long Island Press came to the author's home and interviewed him about the book and how it came to be written. The March 13, 1949, issue of the newspaper carried the resulting article. Reprinted here for the first time in over half a century is the text of that article, with minor corrections; page 27 explains how to see the photo that accompanied this article.)

***
Not so long ago there appeared, unheralded on the bookstalls of the nation, a slim, modest volume called Rebels of Individualism... a collection of essays on 15 of the world's great thinkers. The author is a tall, enthusiastic, 37-year-old Franklin Square scholar named Jack Schwartzman and his book tells of the ages-long fight against oppressive government.

Schwartzman's publishers, with a proper little bow, have said of him: "Lawyer, teacher, writer, speaker and officer in the American Army during World War II, he has deserved the acclaim that his writings have received in the past 10 years. 'Rebels of Individualism' is a volume we are proud to introduce."

All this is true but it gives no inkling of the story behind the book... a story that began one cold, blustery night in the little Ukrainian village of Vinnitza some 27 years ago when Communist secret police broke down the door of the Schwartzman home to start the family on a journey that wound half way across the world to end at last in the promise of America.

***
THE ECHOES of the Russian Revolution sounded dimly in the quiet study of the quiet home down the quiet street in Franklin Square. But for Jack Schwartzman they were as real as the yellow lamp light that shone on the backs of his books or the shadows that huddled in the corners.

"I was about 11 or so the night they came. We had been expecting them for a long time. Many of our neighbors had disappeared in the weeks before, but man clings desperately to the things he loves and when our time came we were unprepared."

Schwartzman's father was an accountant in the little mill that nestled in the hills above the town and as such was "a servant of the old order and an enemy of the people." It was a somewhat weary, bewildered enemy of the people who stood in the grey light of the police station that next morning and cupped his ear to hear himself described by an arrogant captain of police as "dangerous to the security of the new state."

"And in the 'trial' that followed Dad was condemned to be shot and my mother and I and even my 2-year-old brother were ordered to jail.

"But fortunately for us, the guards were as corrupt as their justice. Friends managed to smuggle money, sugar and soap to us in the little jail... a guard was cautiously approached and a bargain struck."

***
EVEN WHILE the firing squad was being readied for their now familiar chore the little family hurried past the guard (he now had enough sugar to last him till summer) and into the darkness. A professional smuggler met them at an appointed place in the hills and it was a frightened family that hurried wordless through the darkness, each hugging a few fragile things salvaged at the last moment from a world that no longer existed.

After what seemed like centuries they came to the bank of the Dniester River that separated the Ukraine from Rumania. The anonymous smuggler knew his trade well and in a matter of minutes had found the tiny canoe that had been hidden in the weeds that hung from the bank and overlapped the water.

The first grey streaks were just beginning in the east when the canoe scraped against the sand of the Rumanian shore.

"We were immediately arrested by the Rumanian police. There was a four-hour trial and we walked out free ... free to take up again the broken strands and start to build a new life."

***
BUT LONG ROADS lay ahead. The little family wandered gypsy-like to Bukovina, to Turkey, Portugal and back to Rumania before the wonderful news came that they were cleared for passage to America.

Schwartzman was 13 when he saw for the first time the shores of the New World break through the mist of Boston Harbor.

They came that night to New York and the years that followed were hurried, crowded ones.

The scholar remembers going to the first grade at the age of 13 … remembers sitting in the desks that were far too small for him … remembers the taunts of the older youngsters at the big fellow who was so dopey that he couldn't even speak English.

He can still remember the pain of recess and the shrieks of laughter that came when he finally managed to hit a baseball and then, in confused elation, ran straight to third base.

But he remembers, too, a teacher ... a kind, generous, gentle woman who never laughed at his mistakes. And he'll always be grateful for the long sessions after school when she told him about the new land, coached him in the language and all unknowing made up for the pain and embarrassment and shame that only a 13-year-old can know.

"Her name was Miss MacDonald. I suppose she's long since forgotten me but I'd like to find her some day to tell her of the debt I owe her ... a debt I'll never be able to repay."

***
IN THE YEARS that followed Schwartzman graduated from the little school ... went on to City College and Brooklyn Law School. And the book that was recently published is a mingling of many things ... of an interest in history and what men have thought across the centuries, of peace and revolution and memories of the night in the little city of Vinnitza when the world came to an end.

"The philosophers and economists that I have treated in the book span five thousand years and eight thousand miles, but they all have one thing in common ... all have thrown their defiance at the forces that across the centuries have sought to threaten man's freedom."

He bas marked the strange ironies that have dogged the lives of the world's thinkers. He speaks of Epicurus, the Greek thinker who taught simplicity and restraint but whose name is now synonymous with excess: Paine, the tortured atheist who fought for religious freedom in three countries and was denied a home in all of them, and Tolstoy, the "father of Communism" who hated all socialistic government.

Schwartzman's little book, born of long hours in the study in Franklin Square, had its origins in that long-gone night when there was a midnight knocking at the door. And the questions that were spat out at the frightened family that stood before the policeman's desk have their answer now. The answer is in the words of the world's great thinkers... words as old as men's dream of freedom and as new as the oppressors of tomorrow.