These notes are not meant to be erudite or enlightening about Ela-Chaim Cunzer's work. The dissertation speaks for itself. Instead they tell about the rediscovery of the thesis and the unusual circumstances and good people who made it possible. Ela-Chaim Cunzer's world, where he came from, who taught him, the family that loved him, the people who remember him are sketched with a ``light pencil'' and love on the pages that follow.
The biography of Antoni Zygmund (1900-1992) in the McGraw-Hill Modern Men of Science, Volume II, page 627, notes that ``His interest was classical analysis, especially harmonic analysis, real and complex variables, and applications of the calculus of probability to analysis.'' In later years, during which he was the Gustavus F. and Anne M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, Zygmund was deeply involved in the creation of the Chicago School of Mathematical Analysis and in training many outstanding students. In 1986 Antoni Zygmund was awarded the National Medal of Science, for his ``outstanding contributions to Fourier analysis and its applications to partial differential equations.'' President Regan's citation noted that Dr. Zygmund ``created the strongest school of analytical research in the contemporary mathematical world.'' Among other reference sources containing information on Professor Zygmund are the 18th edition of American Men and Women of Science (1992), The International Who's Who (1991) and the American Who's Who (1990). A moving tribute to Antoni Zygmund's memory was written in the University of Chicago Record (1/21/1993) by Dr. Izaak Wirszup, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mathematics of the University of Chicago, and Cunzer's friend and classmate at the University of Wilno. Included in his tribute were personal glimpses of Dr. Zygmund which only a former student, friend, and long-time colleague could provide.
``... Zygmund's nine-year tenure at the University of Wilno marked a period that was immensely creative. Those years were also the happiest of his and his family's life... Over the course of his long academic career, Zygmund became known for the close attention he devoted to his students and for his keen eye for discovering highly talented mathematicians. ... He was a steadfast colleague, understanding and compassionate, helpful and encouraging, and proud to see their independent achievements. Years later, his former students recall advice or remarks which have guided them through hard times. He left a permanent stamp on all of them as mathematicians, and also as human beings.''
Dr. Wirszup's tribute makes me grateful that Cunzer was the beneficiary of Antoni Zygmund's brilliant teaching and humanity a few years before the Holocaust. At the same time, the loss of his life, during which Cunzer might have accomplished so much more in his chosen field, causes ineffable and lasting sadness.
I am Ela-Chaim Cunzer's niece, daughter of his older sister, Raya Cunzer Rudomin. Despite my late mother's fierce objections to visiting the city where all our relatives perished, I did go back to Vilna/Wilno/Vilnius in July 1993. That year marked the Gathering of Survivors for the 50th anniversary of the final destruction of the Vilna Ghetto by the Nazis and their cohorts. I felt that I simply had to be there in person to pay respects to the spirits of those who perished during the Holocaust, and to do so where they lived, studied, worked, hoped and dreamed. And where I thought I could feel their presence -- and where, in fact, I did.
In 1993, as I retraced my steps from childhood in prewar Vilna, a city I idealized and dreamed about for more than half a century, I spent much time on the impressive campus of the university where my uncle, my aunt Margola Cunzer, my mother, cousins, aunts, uncles and other family members studied. I was as much in awe of the ancient buildings and their beautiful setting in 1993 as I was when I was very young.
During one of my visits on campus I met Rokas Oginskis, a young student, with whom I struck up a conversation. We discussed many subjects, compared family stories, who came from where, what they did, where they settled, etc. He asked whether I knew of Jewish genealogical resources in the United States. He wished to write to such organizations about an exchange of information in the field. I told him that I did have such material; he asked whether I would send him a list of names. Instead of doing so I offered to make multiple copies of the letter he planned to send to them, and to address, stamp and mail about 110 envelopes upon my return from Vilnius to New York.
He was delighted with my offer but exacted a promise that I would tell him what he could do for me in Vilnius. ``Get permission to look in the university archives for documents which would show that my uncle Ela-Chaim Cunzer studied there.'' (I also told Rokas that my uncle was generally known as Liusik Cunzer, his Polish nickname of unknown origin. I still refer to him by that name.) I hoped against hope that a document in the archives would include my uncle's photograph. I've longed for his picture ever since I last saw him in June 1941, just before my parents and I were deported to Siberia ``as capitalists and enemies of the people.''
After a seemingly interminable waiting period, Rokas telephoned to say that he found not only my uncle's application form with a photograph, but an entire large dossier on Ela-Chaim Cunzer, including his Magisterium Dissertation in mathematics. I sent funds to copy the entire dossier as soon as permission was granted for this procedure. After several more months of anticipation, I received a call from Genya Markon, a curator at The Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. who had recently returned from a visit to Vilnius with her brother and their mother, a native of Vilna. She also met Rokas in Vilnius and he gave her a large envelope to mail to me. She sent it by overnight mail; it arrived on the first day of Hanukkah in 1993. A miracle happened - hoping for a photograph, I received so much more.
For nearly a year I read, over and over again, my uncle's clearly handwritten Polish text, without comprehension. Despite his valiant and endlessly patient efforts to help me when I was a child, I was and have remained a total failure in all aspects of science and mathematics. One of my most vivid memories of his ``tutorials'' took place when I was six or seven. We worked on multiplication tables and he asked, ``How much is three times four?'' I answered, ``Thirteen!'' He put his head in his hands and looked stricken. ``Liusik, Liusik, let it be eleven, just don't be angry with me!'' I knew that he was not angry, but I also felt that I let him down by not being able to do even simple arithmetic.
In a sense I felt that not understanding a word of his thesis was a way to letting him down all over again. In desperation I thought that some meaning of convex and subharmonic functions would penetrate my brain if I could only read the dissertation in English. With that in mind I sent it in April 1994 to the late Dr. Andrzej Sycz, a retired professor of physics and mathematics at the Polytechnic Institute in Katowice, Poland, who at that time lived in Natanya, Israel. (His mother, his siblings, and he saved Irena Schwarz, one of my friends, during the Holocaust -- they were named Righteous Gentiles by the State of Israel and accorded all honors due to this heroic deed.) Dr. Sycz's clear and pithy English explanation did bring me a glimmer of understanding for the subject of my uncle's work, but I was most deeply touched by his appreciation of ``the beautiful mathematical language...'' in which the thesis was written. After considering the matter, Dr. Sycz felt that his facility in English was not good enough to undertake the translation of the entire dissertation.
However, once I'd embarked on a quest for proof of my uncle's very existence, and serendipitously discovered his accomplishments in the field he loved so dearly, I could not give up hope of having his thesis translated into English. At that time I had no clue as to what purpose that might serve, how I would find a translator, or who might want to read it.
It must have been synchronicity which connected me to Dr. Janek Krzystek, a young Polish medical researcher at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in November, 1994, in New York. We met at the home of Dr. Sylvia Wassertheil- Smoller, Head of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Einstein. Undaunted by his entirely different field of scientific expertise, I asked Dr. Krzystek anyway whether he knew of a Polish mathematician who might undertake the translation of my uncle's work. He said that he did not, and our pleasant conversation turned in other directions.
A mere month later I went to Israel. During a long conversation in Jerusalem with Itzhak Jacoby, the retired chief of the Holy City's department of restorations, I learned by chance that one of his sons, a mathematician at the Technion in Haifa, was involved in research in the field of electronics. And not only that; his particular interest was in subharmonic functions, the subject of my uncle's thesis, written nearly sixty years earlier in Vilna. ``Would your son be interested in reading my uncle's thesis?'' I asked. ``Of course he would, what a question? Yes he would!'' answered Mr. Jacoby. ``Get it translated into English!'' Mr. Jacoby also offered to place the thesis in both its Polish and in an English translation in the library or archives of the Technion.
As either luck, prayers, or other forces would have it, I found a message from Dr. Krzystek on my answering machine when I returned from Israel. He had not only one but five people interested in taking on the translation of my uncle's thesis - through a call for help he placed via E-mail. The realization that electronics, so closely tied my uncle's research in 1937, was the means by which his work might become known beyond his world in pre-World War II Vilna was truly overwhelming.
I spoke to several of the people who responded to Dr. Krzystek. They had the requisite qualifications and were not only eager to take on the project, but also touched by its history. However, my immediate ``first choice'' was Krzysztof Wlodarski, a young PhD candidate at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences/New York University, a graduate of New Jersey Institute of Technology and a former student at the University of Lodz, Poland. His gentle voice, quiet demeanor, his thoughtful eyes, modesty, and devotion to his work, reminded me of my uncle Liusik. The spirit of Ela-Chaim Cunzer found a kindred soul in Krzysztof Wlodarski. I shall always be grateful to him for taking on the project and carrying it out with so much empathy and respect, such immense skill and intelligence.
Among Ela-Chaim's many ancestors in the Cunzer clan (also spelled Zunser in its American version) was the famous bard and dramatist, Eliakum Cunzer (1836-1913), who improvised music and wrote words to countless songs at Jewish festivities. Another forebear was Avrom Cunzer, the Learned Jew in the court of one of the Romanov czars in the 19th century. Reise Meisl Cunzer, Ela-Chaim's paternal grandmother, came from a long line of rabbis and scholars who lived for many generations in or near Vilna.
Ela-Chaim was born to Samuel and his wife, Sonia, on January 6, 1914, in the home of Reise Meisl Cunzer, in Lubcz, a small town near Vilna. His grandfather, Hillel Cunzer, a well known merchant in that part of the world, died at a young age; his widow, Reise, continued to conduct business and raised six children by herself. Ela-Chaim was Samuel's fourth child, and Sonia's first, for she was Samuel's second wife. My mother Raya (Chaya Rivka in Hebrew) and two brothers, Moshe, who died in childhood, and Benjamin, were Samuel's children by his first wife, Esther Hannah Buzansky, who died in childbirth. Margola was Samuel and Sonia Cunzer's second and last child.
Stepmother was a forbidden word in our family; my mother's love and admiration for her second mother was boundless. ``Mama loved Liusik and Margola, Benjamin and me equally and deeply,'' she told me. Samuel Cunzer died at forty nine years of age. Soon thereafter Benjamin emigrated to the United States, to live with his father's brother, and my mother's plans to study art in Paris were canceled. Instead she enrolled in the philology department of the University of Wilno while Ela-Chaim and Margola continued their pre-college education. Margola was also an extremely bright student. Upon graduation from gymnasium, she enrolled in the department of chemistry at the university in 1937 or 1938. (Inquiries for her records at the University of Vilnius in 1993 were unsuccessful) She perished with her mother in Majdanek.
As a child, Ela-Chaim was considered a prodigy, exceptionally talented in mathematics, and an excellent and diligent violin student. My mother said he was very quiet, overly serious little boy, whose only ``transgression'' was a short lived bout of jealousy after Margola was born. He was an excellent student throughout his primary school years and at the gymnasium.
He was only sixteen when I was born, so he was almost like an older brother. I looked up to him, quite literally, for he was very tall and thin as a young man. He had deepset, dark eyes, and a shy half-smile. He often seemed pre-occupied, as if his attention was centered on faraway, important matters. My mother said with pride and love, ``My brother will be the eternal student!'' I thought that after he completed his master's thesis and received his ``Dyplom Magistra Filozofji'' my uncle enrolled in the doctoral program at the University of Wilno. His dossier, however, does not include this information.
Liusik also worked part-time in Epstein's Gymnasium which educated young Jewish students in pre-World War II Vilna, and from which he graduated. One of my mother's cousins who survived the war, Masha Chajkin Gabry, told me recently that Liusik assisted the mathematics teacher at Epstein's Gymnasium. As she was not a mathematical whiz, she once asked my uncle (who was, of course, her cousin) to ``watch out'' for one of her tests. Whatever the fine ins-and-outs of this little exchange might have been Masha said that Liusik sternly told her, ``You will get the grade you deserve only on the basis of your work!'' His firm tone induced her to study more diligently than ever and Masha remembers that she passed the exam without any ``watch-out'' from her cousin, the teacher's assistant!
Since Liusik was an accomplished violinist, he played in an amateur orchestra during his university days. When I went to visit my grandmother's house before the war I often heard him playing scales and exercises - not always with enormous pleasure. When he practiced melodies I recognized and loved I thought he was a genius.
A bitter-sweet reminder of his musical talent took place during my 1993 visit in Vilnius. I was asked to participate in a multi-lingual memorial program and give a talk in English so that members of the younger generation - who came with their parents and grandparents - could understand what was being said. (Many of them did not understand Yiddish, and some did not know Hebrew. English was the common language.) After the large gathering, where I was introduced as Esther Hautzig before my speech, several people came up to ask, ``WHO ARE YOU?'' Hautzig meant nothing to them; it was not a familiar Vilna name.
When I told two men who'd come from Israel for the gathering, that my father's name was Rudomin and my mother's maiden name was Cunzer, one of them asked me with excitement, ``So were you related to Liusik Cunzer?'' After hearing my answer this elderly but vigorous man yelled to another fellow quite a distance away, ``Imagine, she is Liusik Cunzer's niece!'' Then he turned back to me and said, ``Do you know that Liusik played the fiddle with us in the ghetto orchestra? He even became the concertmaster at the end!'' Perhaps I should have felt happy that in the midst of war, in the ghetto, there was a group of people who made music, and that my uncle was among them. But all I could do was cry. In the excitement I did not even write down who they were. It pains me not to remember, and pass on, the names of men who recalled my uncle so fondly and who told me that he played the fiddle in the Vilna Ghetto not long before his life ended.
After the Nazi occupation of Vilna in June 1941 many members of my family were summarily murdered in Ponar, peaceful woods outside Vilna which became killing and burial grounds for thousands of Jews. Those who at first escaped this fate were herded into the ghetto, they starved, people were shot, they died of disease, they were deported to concentration camps; life was hell. In the midst of all that Liusik somehow managed to hold on to some of his university textbooks and pencils.
During their incarceration in the ghetto, Liusik, Margola and their mother were housed with other family members, and strangers, in unimaginably crowded and squalid quarters. During ``actions'' when Jews were rounded up for mass murder or deportation to concentration camps, some of them hid in a ``maline,'' a hiding place behind a secret door leading to an attic.
Liusik's cousin, Danka Chajkin Turow, whose memory of those evil days is as sharp as a razor blade, remembers that he always carried with him a pencil and a textbook to the ``maline'' and that he underlined words and made notes in the margins even while hiding. Not long ago, when I asked how she was able to observe what my uncle was doing in a small and packed attic she said that she often placed herself near him. ``Actions usually took place at dusk... I recall a grey light coming from tiny windows by the ceiling. I saw enough.'' With heavy steps of SS troopers booming nearby, and cries of those being dragged from their hiding places, or caught on the streets of the ghetto, Danka once asked Liusik whether studying mathematics under such horrifying conditions did not make him feel crazy. ``I would go insane if I did not do it!'' he replied.
Ela Chaim was deported from the Vilna Ghetto to a concentration camp after an ``action.'' I know he died in the winter of 1943-1944 while we were in Siberia because one night my mother cried out wildly in her sleep, ``My Liusik, my Liusik just died.''
After the war we met Dr. Izaak Wirszup, my uncle's classmate and Dr. Zygmund's student and colleague. When Mama heard that Dr. Wirszup was in the concentration camp with Liusik, and that he witnessed his death, she asked him, ``Tell me, did my brother die on this date?'' After she stated it, Dr. Wirszup turned pale and nodded. My mother had incredible ESP powers all of her life. Perhaps even now, 25 years after her death in New York, her strong spirit knows what came of my visit to Vilnius -- that Ela-Chaim Cunzer's accomplishments during his brief life have not vanished forever.
WWW for this page: http://www.math.uchicago.edu/history/background_notes.html