. . .we are each other’s

harvest:

we are each other’s

business:

we are each other’s

magnitude and bond.

from “Paul Robeson” by Gwendolyn Brooks

Godmothers are in the business of harvesting, of making others’ business theirs, of willingly becoming others’ magnitude and bond. Caroline Woolsey Ferriday was just such a godmother. And she made the business of the Ravensbruck rabbits both hers and the world’s.

There are letters in the archives at her family home in Connecticut addressed to Ma Chere Marainne or My Dear Godmother. Subjected to barbaric surgeries and sulfamide experimentation that left survivors horribly scarred and disabled,  female survivors (rabbits) from Ravensbruck looked to American heiress, Caroline Ferriday, as their dear friend, their benefactor, their godmother and savior.

Because the rabbits were Polish Catholics–and not Jews–their stories paled on the dark  stage of Jewish genocide. The post-war world was just beginning to comprehend that 6 million European Jews had been systematically killed, and the stories of 72 Catholic girls went largely unnoticed. That is, until Godmother Caroline Ferriday took up their cause.

Some may say that Ferriday was an unlikely godmother. Born into status and relative wealth, she was an only child who showed an early interest in the plight of others. To the dismay of others who generally viewed acting to be too risque for polite society , she took to the Broadway stage as an actress. Fluent in French, she left the stage to work as a volunteer in the New York French Consulate by the time Hitler had risen to power. Ferriday had a particular heart for French children who had been orphaned by the war. During the war, she worked tirelessly to raise funds and provide clothing and food for them.

After the war, she joined the ADIR, or National Association of Deportees and Internees of the Resistance,  a group founded by females who had served in the French resistance and who had survived German concentration camps. She was moved by the work and stories of ADIR members Jacqueline Péry D’Alincourt, Genevieve de Gaulle, Anise Postel-Vinay, and Germaine Tillon. All four women, political prisoners, had been imprisoned at Ravensbruck. Through her work with the ADIR and through relationships with Ravensbruck survivors, Ferriday learned that some of the special bonds created in the camp were in response to the plight of 72 prisoners referred to as the lapins or rabbits.

In 1958, Godmother Ferriday went to work. She contacted Norman Cousins, the editor of the Saturday Review, for she had learned of his work with the “Hiroshima Maidens”, a group of several scarred Japanese women brought to the United States for cosmetic surgery. She also met with Polish officials and worked to gain the trust of the Rabbits, so that she might arrange their trip to the U. S. for medical treatment. As a result of her advocacy, Cousins wrote a series of articles about the Rabbits for the Saturday Review, stories that struck deeply into American hearts and resolve for action. In one of these articles, Cousins writes of their trip to Poland:

Caroline Ferriday has an almost magical gift for inspiring confidence. Her first few days in Warsaw were not without their difficulties, but after awhile the project began to move. Then, at the end of the week, we received a cable saying that the Polish authorities were cooperative and gracious and that prospects were excellent.

An almost magical gift. That’s the stuff that many godmothers are made of, and Caroline Ferriday shouldered the mantle of justice with vigor. Unmarried and without children, she devoted herself to her charges, Polish women whose legs and souls were irreparably scarred.

By this time, only 53 Rabbits had survived, but 35 eventually traveled to the U.S. and spent an entire year–from December 1958 to December 1959–receiving medical treatment. Renamed the Ladies, the women were hosted in 12 cities across the country. Cousins wrote that the most remarkable change in the group as a whole . . . was in the emotional and psychological regeneration of the Ladies.

The best godmothers are healers of bodies and souls. Caroline Ferriday was a godmother extraordinaire. She opened her Connecticut home and her heart to the Ladies, who, in turn, opened their hearts and forged a bond that crossed social and national boundaries.

Soon after the Ladies toured the U.S. and even visited Congress, publicity and public support resulted in the German Embassy’s pledge to pay for the medical costs of 30 of the 35 who had traveled to America. In addition, they reported that the [German] Federal Government was thoroughly and urgently examining possibilities of further relief.

The world needs more godmothers. Not the plump, petticoated Disney type, but the nearly six foot tall Caroline Ferriday type. The humble type who, upon her death, would will the medals she had received, the Cross of Lorraine and the French Legion of Honor, to her Polish Ladies. Yes, the world needs more godmothers and godfathers, godsisters and godbrothers who will champion the interests of those whom the world has not seen.

Ultimately, godmothers know that the business of others, the bond we forge with them is the business and bond that Jesus speaks about in Matthew 12:46-50.

While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him.  Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”

 He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Jesus’s words here are clear enough but oh so difficult to live. Our lives are filled with enough responsibilities and duties, peopled with enough family and co-workers to look beyond immediate boundaries. To godparent others, to consider them our mother and father, our sister and brother? To harvest in new fields where the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few? To champion and care for our own rabbits?

In the historical novel, Lilac Girls, Martha Hall Kelly creates a romance between Caroline Ferriday and Paul Rodierre, a French actor she first meets in New York and later nurses back to health after his imprisonment in a concentration camp. She weaves their romance between Caroline’s unfailing devotion to her work at the French Consulate and, after the war, to her commitment to the ADIR and the Polish Ladies. For the purposes of historical fiction, I suppose she intends this romance to give depth to a character who could appear to be one-dimensionally too good to be true, a character whose sole foundation appears to be service to others. The real Caroline had no romance with a famous French actor that spanned decades and continents. For most of her life, she did, indeed, set her sites on helping others. Perhaps she was one-dimensional, but what a wonderful single dimension this was! In the end, she was as good as she appeared to be, and she made the world a better place for many.

There will be rabbits, but thankfully, there will also be godmothers. So let’s hear it for Caroline Ferriday and all the godmothers to follow. We will always need them to mend and to love the wounded.