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Dr. Deichmann was also an emigree from Europe after WW II, like Tilly, which probably explains in part why they were friends. I know less about ‘Liska’ as she was known by her friends than I knew about Tilly so don’t know whether or not she was Jewish thought I have wondered. Given her Nordic features I doubt it.. Liska was at least as tall as Dad and was always reserved. She rarely smiled when I saw her, a woman over 6 feet tall. The first time I met her, she was descending a huge stair case inside the MCZ in the winter. She wore a long overcoat, her beret, and a solemn face. I felt like I was watching a noble woman, queen. She projected the sense of calmness and class.
I think she intimidated the heck out of dad. Why do I say that? I really can’t explain but I collected that impression from hearing him refer to her. He never spoke of her with the same affection he did when talking about Tilly. Liska specialized in sea life, sea urchins and the like. Here are several of the articles she published that give you a flavor of her work:
--”The holothurians of Clipperton Island in the Eastern Tropical Pacific”. 1963
--“Shallow water holothurians know from the Caribbean waters,”
I don’t believe I ever talked to her. I was introduced and was intimidated. She really was taller than dad, and had silvery blonde hair that was wound up into a bun or French Twist. She stared at me silently with piercing, pale blue eyes when I met her. I felt like an insect impaled under a microscope. I just observed her thereafter and never had a talk again. Her size and seriousness made me uncomfortable. But she was a nice person, I was sure, but was just one of those people that intimidated me.
I wondered if her solemnity -like that of Tilly- was simply her nature or whether it arose from a painful history. I have wondered, without any evidence, that she had been involved in a concentration camp during WW II since Denmark was on the wrong side, at least some of the time.
Remember, again, please, (Ed. I’m talking to my own children here) that we are talking here about a time -the 1950's- that still reverberated with the aftermath of WW II. It was not a historical curiosity, it was not forgotten, it was present and was part of the social and political and news background I lived in. The notion that a person had been in one of the camps was a stirring one. Remember also that one of my uncles -James Greenleaf who married dad’s sister Doris- had died 6 years earlier. He had been interned in WW II in a death camp in the Philippines and spent several years until the camp was liberated but his health was broken and he never recovered. That was my own uncle so the notion of war camps was a personal one.
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