During the interrogation, they pulled out her fingernails, an absolutely excruciating torture intended to force her to reveal whatever they thought she knew about something or other, which she maintained was nothing. But one night, she told me, the Gestapo took her into custody because her failure to fly the Nazi flag outside their home raised suspicions. In Switzerland, she presumably would have been safe. She had married a Czech and was trapped with him in Prague after Hitler’s armies invaded Czechoslovakia. We talked on a few nights as I got used to my new setting, and I learned she was Swiss but had emigrated from Czechoslovakia after World War II. Jean house-sat for a carpenter friend in Omaha who vacationed in the winter until she too moved to Chicago in late January of 1986.ĭuring those initial weeks, I stayed in a home owned by a widow in the Hyde Park neighborhood near the University of Chicago. I needed to settle in with my new job and find an apartment, after which we would move our belongings from Omaha. She was teaching across the river in the Council Bluffs, Iowa, public schools. My wife, who grew up in Nebraska, chose to stay there until the fall semester was over. When I first moved to Chicago, in November 1985, I came alone from Omaha.

Home of the brave park