The Kafka Project waits. This part is what my friend Anthony Rudolf, one of the Kafka Project advisors in London, calls "the hard slog." Exactly what are we waiting for?

We are waiting to learn the locations of Nazi-era archives in Silesia, where Franz Kafka's missing papers were last traced. In Berlin ten years ago, I had to wait in some cases for months. I don't have that kind of time now. Byron and I leave Poland on the 24th of July, so there is pressure to move quickly. Time is running out to find these papers before they are lost forever. Locating these archives before they are opened, and providing information on what is missing is vital to discovering it. Even to people I meet on the street, who express even the slightest interest, I hand a copy of the Kafka Project ALERT, which identifies what exactly is lost and describes it in detail so that it can be recognized. The ALERT also establishes who owns these 35 love letters and 20 notebooks--the Kafka Estate of London, England. I have had the ALERT translated into Czech, Polish, Slovak and German. These are the languages spoken in the area which encompass Silesia. 

Connections have been made, phone calls placed and emails sent. Now we wait for responses and answers. The connections have been remarkable. Last week, at a Fourth of July celebration held by the US Consulate in Krakow, I met the US Ambassador to Poland, Victor Ashe, and more importantly for the Kafka Project, the US Consul General Anne Hall, who offered the resources of the US Embassy.  A graduate student at the oldest university in Eastern Europe, Jagiellonian University, Magda Kozlowska, is helping with contacts and translations. She is writing about the Kafka Project for Jagiellonian's Jewish Studies Department. A couple of responses from my queries have arrived, but are fairly disheartening, indicating that Silesia is too big and our search too vague. But we already knew that. This search is the first step to getting the word out that these papers are missing.

But while we wait, we have made excellent use of our time.

One chapter has closed and another begun. The Magical Mystery Literary Tour has ended. Our intrepid adventurers have all left Berlin. Some returned home, some continued on extended journeys to England, Spain, Poland, and within Germany. Many of them have stories to tell you, and I will be sharing them with you as the Kafka Project's research in Eastern Europe unfolds. In all, the tour was indeed magical. We had astoundingly beautiful weather, and although we were a most diverse group, we all got along very well. Good friendships were formed. It was such a good experience we may indeed do it again next year.

And now the Kafka Project has begun in earnest. The first step in the Kafka Project's Eastern European Research began with a meeting in Kleinmachnow, south of Berlin, in a bird and flower-filled garden on a quiet cobblestone street.

Byron and I are the guests in the home of the family of another of Kafka's loves, Grete Bloch. Eva Bloch Turner, and her husband Jack. The Turners keep a garden apartment in this lovely house built for Eva's grandfather in 1933. Until the reunification of Germany in 1989, this peaceful and quiet street lined with mansions and villas was in East Berlin, and only the best, highest-ranking Communists lived here.