Talk:Maria Wicher

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

Maria Wicher was my mother. I can tell you that neither she nor my father were ever "Soviet spies". They were humanists who were members of the Communist party during the 30's, but had left by 1940. My mother was a translator involved in the foundation of the United Nations. My sister, Flora Wovschin, worked in the State Department during the war on war relief. She got engaged to a Russian man, and went to the Soviet Union in 1945, when my mother was pregnant with me. My father, who had great political acumen and understood what was going on in the Soviet Union, begged her not to go. She was never heard from again. Our family thought she perished in the Stalin purges of 1948, but we never heard anything definite. My father, Enos R. Wicher, was a staunch Democrat and patriotic American who volunteered to fight in WW II. Our family had to flee political persecution for their socialist beliefs to Mexico in 1953. We lived in the American Colony in Mexico City along with the Hollywood Ten and others blacklisted at that time. My parents were no more "spies" than any of them were, just humanitarian socialist internationalists who were victims McCarthy. We returned to the United States in 1961 when my father became a physics professor at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. My mother died in Claremont in 1986, my father died in 1993.

Anthony E. Wicher Ontario, California