Crossing the Bridges
From Lvov Across the Steppes of Asia to London’s Doodlebugs
Longtime Summit resident Eva Cristina Hoffman Jedruch has lectured extensively about her mother’s extraordinary journey during the first half of the 20th century. Now Jedruch’s book, Crossing the Bridges: From Lvov Across the Steppes of Asia to London’s Doodlebugs, is in print, published June 30 by the prestigious British firm of Austin Macauley.
Zofia Neuhoff was born in 1905 into an upper middle-class family in the Polish lands which had been annexed by Austria in the 18th century. When WWI upended their world, the family moved to Innsbruck for five years, returning only in 1918 to the newly-independent Poland. In the ensuing years, Zofia married happily, becoming Zofia Hoffman, and, unusually for a woman, earned a law degree.
Then, in 1939, Poland was invaded by both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Zofia’s husband was killed by the Russians in a massacre of Polish officers in1940. She herself was arrested by the Soviets, forced to leave behind Eva, her 18-month-old child, and sent to work in a stone quarry in Kazakhstan. Later, she managed to join a Polish military unit under British command, which initiated her journey, in fits and starts, across Persia, Iraq, Palestine and Egypt; she arrived in London just in time to work at General Headquarters during the worst of the German blitz.
Even when the war ended in 1945, Zofia’s “war” was not over: it remained for her to return to communist Poland, then under Soviet control, and try to smuggle her daughter out of the country. Three quarters of a century later, her story is still heart-stopping.
Jedruch has already published a book about her mother’s odyssey in Polish. She notes that Crossing the Bridges is “not a translation but a substantially new book, with more extensive explanation of the political and geographical backdrop.”
Eva Cristina Hoffman Jedruch was born in Lvov, Poland, months before the outbreak of WWII. She has lived in England, Argentina, and the USA. A chemical engineer by profession, Jedruch worked with her husband, a nuclear physicist and parliamentary historian. After his death, she returned to university to earn a doctorate in medieval studies at Drew University. She speaks five languages and is a vice president of the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions (ICHRPI). Her book is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and independent bookstores.
