It is about the love story between a national hero and a foreigner, about how they met, their relationship and how they were in touch through letters when they were separated by distance.
Netaji’s niece-in-law and former MP Krishna Bose has penned Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s relationship with his wife Emilie Schenkl in her new book, ‘A True Love Story - Emilie and Subhas.’
Though we (Krishna and Emilie) had an age difference of 20 years, in between us we shared a great rapport...we shared the same birthday...In this book (I) have put down my understandings of the love between and Emilie and Netaji.
Netaji with his wife Emilie.
(Photo: Twitter)
Krishna writes in her book:
They met in Vienna in June-1934, secretly married in December 1937 in Badgastein, a spa resort in Austria’s Salzburg province, and saw each other for the last time in Berlin in February 1943, two months after the birth of their daughter Anita. From 1934 onwards, Subhas and Emilie corresponded continuously through letters whenever they were physically separated.
Netaji’s wife Emilie with their daughter Anita Bose Pfaff.
(Photo: Twitter)
Born in 1910 in a middle-class Austrian family of Vienna, Emilie Schenkl nurtured her husband’s (Netaji) memory and cultivated a deep attachment from afar to India all her life, until her death in 1996, she says in the book.
The book, illustrated with 48 photographs from archives and family albums, is a unique record of Emilie’s life of fortitude and her love for Netaji.
She (Emilie) brought up their daughter on her own, working to support herself and Anita. Fiercely self-reliant and very private, Emilie live a life of great dignity and quiet courage.
Emilie was especially close to Netaji’s nephew Sisir Kumar Bose, whom she met in Vienna in the late 1940s, and after his marriage (to Krishna Bose) in December 1955, they formed a close friendship.
The book will be released tomorrow by Netaji biographer and historian Leonardo A Gordon at the Netaji Bhawan here.
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