St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 53

SECTION Dec. 19, 1983 LeisurePage 5 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 11 McClellan ry 1 CAM Cv Fit JUL5 i. rf Mix. Ulrich Wagner's Swiss village, recreated in miniature in a model train display.

Thing' To Being A Railroad Man It's The Spirit That Counts I WOKE UP Thursday morning and saw fresh snow on the ground. I was really delighted because I live in a corner house and sometimes the little children cut across the corner of my lawn on their way to school. I usually call the police two or three times a week and demand that they arrest the kids "Put them in a juvenile home if they can't keep off my lawn!" but the cops must be on the take, because they always refuse to arrest the children. The cops say I have no proof the kids are trespassing. So this time, I got myself some proof.

As soon as the children passed my house, I rushed out with a camera and snapped a couple of shots of footprints in the snow footprints, I might add, that clearly show two of the children strayed off of the sidewalk. I should have called the police immediately, I suppose, but circumstances were against me. I couldn't afford to be late to work because I was scheduled to meet with my bosses for my semi-annual performance evaulation. Traffic figured to be slower than usual, what with the snow, so I gave myself an extra 10 minutes to get to work. Turns out I was wrong.

Traffic moved briskly I only had to honk at slow-pokes six or seven times and it was really one of the most pleasant drives I can remember. I counted three cars stalled in the snow. "Get a horse!" I hollered to each of the stranded motorists. I got to the office with plenty of time to spare. There was a message on my desk to call Brenda Schlegel.

The message said she works for the St. Louis Board of Education. I called her and said I was surprised she was at work so early. "Most of you public-sector people like to sleep till noon," I said. "Don't tell me you're giving us taxpayers a full day's work today for a change." She ignored my clever remarks and said she was upset about a column I had written a week or so earlier.

The column was about the police department's efforts to solve the Little Jane Doe case. In the column, I mentioned a problem the police had had with attendance records from some school districts. That was true with some districts, but not with all of them. But I hadn't made that point in the column, and Ms. Schlegel was upset about it.

"We cooperated fully with the police," she said. "We keep our records up to date." "The cops have told me that," I said. Ms. Schlegel said the column implied that the city's school system had bad records. That reflected poorly on the administrators, she said.

I had not meant to imply anything about school records in the city. But I had to chuckle. I had inadvertently hurt somebody. I didn't give Ms. Schlegel much satisfaction.

"Hey, you've been talking for almost 10 minutes," I said. "Being a public employee, you're about due for a coffee break, aren't you? Besides, I've got work to do." I hung up and called the police. I wanted to see if there was any chance I could get the trespassers arrested during morning recess. But as I said, the cops must be on the take. The desk officer hung up on me.

Then I got called in to see the bosses about my evaluation. As I walked to the big boss' office, I "accidentally" knocked against the desk of one of my colleagues. His cup of coffee spilled all over his notes. I had to suppress a giggle. My performance review was very formal.

"Some of your work is pretty good," said the big boss. "Some of it isn't." "The copy editors ruin a lot of it," I said. "They change things. I've kept a list of all their mistakes. Let me show it to you." I pulled out my list.

It included a record of all the mistakes the copy editors had made in the last six months. The boss told me to put my list way. "I'm not Interested in that," he said. "There's really only one thing I'm concerned with. Sometimes in your columns, you seem mean-spirited.

That's what you've got to watch." I could hardly believe it. Mean-spirited? Me? under his train board. own interest was kindled then. The Wagners lived at that time in a castle near the city of Basel, Switzerland, and eventually one of the large rooms was devoted to their trains. "Our original set-up was on the 0 scale, which is 145 scale," Wagner said.

"I still prefer that size, but HO scale 187 has now become more popular because of space considerations. My present train display is HO scale, and even as it is I could use more room." Wagner began work on his display about 17 years ago and progress has continued with only one Interruption. About 10 years ago the Wagners moved to their present home, which caused a major setback. "We had to cut the display apart to transport it," he said. "This type of display is just not designed to be moved.

It took me about a year to get back to the point I was before the move." His wife, Veronica, is convinced they won't be moving again. "It was bad enough 10 years ago," she said. "Even then, the first place he looked was the basement. I think that even had the rest of the house been perfect, if the basement hadn't been suitable we wouldn't have taken it." Today, Wagner has about 70 engines and 200 cars, many of which he has furnished. The furnished ones are lit and are filled with passengers in various poses.

Wagner hand-painted all of these figures. Almost all of the trains, buildings and people are European. When Wagner returns from a business trip to Switzerland, he never falls to bring new items back for his display. Often these include kits for Swiss-style houses and chalets, which are hard to find in this country. Wagner wanted one village to have the feel of Basel, for example, and he prizes models he bought in Europe of two of the actual buildings there.

Recreating the Swiss countryside is an extra-challenge, Wagner explained. Mountains are painstakingly molded using the eggshell method. Paper is wadded up Into the desired shape and then covered with thin strips of paper that have been dipped in plaster. When the plaster dries, the wadded-up paper is removed. The mountains are then colored appropriately.

A special feature of Wagner's display is that the towns are situated on very hilly terrain. "In most displays, towns and villages are flat," he said. "That's not realistic In the United States and It's certainly not realistic In Switzerland. So I make my streets very See TRAINS, Page 2 'Next Best Story by Irene Hannon Photos by Larry Williams Of the Post-Dispatch Staff WHEN ULRICH WAGNER came to the United States from Switzerland in 1962, he didn't really leave his homeland behind. During the day, he oversees the operation of Andre's, his authentic Swiss tea room and pastry shop, where alpine horns and cowbells adorn the walls and where traditional Swiss specialities such as fondue and raclette are served.

Trained as a konditor pastry and candy maker in Switzerland, he still makes all of the candy for his shop, using only the finest Swiss chocolate. And when he closes his shop and goes home, he heads for his basement. There, recreated in miniature, is an elaborate model train display that replicates Swiss villages and countryside. Rugged mountains form an authentic backdrop for towns with narrow, steeply sloping cobblestone streets, medieval buildings, town squares, clock towers and city gates. Swiss chalets cling to the sides of the mountains above the towns.

The detail on the display which takes up two-thirds of Wagner's basement is endless. In one village people sit under gaily striped umbrellas at a sidewalk cafe. Further down the street a farmer's market is in progress, complete with vegetable stands and flower vendors. People are sunbathing down by the river and above them, in another town, an outdoor beer hall is open for business. Some patrons sit at long wooden tables with their steins of beer while other dance to music made by a brass band seated under a pavilion.

Touches of humor are also included. A sausage venc'or walks down the cobblestone street in one village, unaware that a few links are trailing behind him. Close on his heels is a hungry dog Who is keeping a close eye on the situation. True-to-life realism is stressed throughout. A "fender bender" at a busy intersection is being dealt with by two local policemen.

Construction workers are hard at work on a half-finished house In yet another village. A woman hangs laundry on the roof of her house. And a man in the mountains chops wood. When Wagner turns the lights out, the display is equally magical. Lights softly glow from the windows of buildings, streetlights illuminate the town and lights inside the trains allow glimpses of passengers reading or sleeping.

Wagner's display, though, is far from Deliverance the model village. trying to improve and refine what you have. Things I did 10 years ago don't satisfy me anymore. New technology creates new opportunities. That's part of the fun of the hobby.

If you're goal is just to get finished, you should never start." Wagner's Interest in trains dates back to age 5, when he received a simple wind-up train as a gift. A few years later he got a more advanced model from his stepfather, whose Wagner works amid the complex wiring .0 A I Tiny figures at work and play complete complete, A new, uniandscaped section of track has been added to the back and there Wagner hopes to simulate the rugged Gotthard Pass area of Switzerland. He also wants to add more foliage to the landscape. He'd like to add more streetlights. And he'd like to spotlight the town hall in one of the villages.

The list goes on and on. "To be honest, this will never be finished," he said. "That's part of the fun. You're always In Shanghai' time as "the Paris of the Orient" and "the wickedest city on earth." In 1938 and '39, about 20,000 desperate Jews fled from Germany to Shanghai, an International city that accepted anybody, and formed a community there. Jerome Agel and Eugene Boe have written a book about this little-known emigration titled "Deliverance in Shanghai." "About the only other choice the Jews had was to accept the advice of Gandhi," Boe said.

"That was for all 500,000 of them to commit suicide to dramatize the horrors of Nazism, which would cause the world to rise in righteous wrath." Boe was in St. Louis recently for the Jewish Book Festival at the Jewish Community Centers Association. His other efforts include co-authoring comedienne Joan Rivers' book "Having a Baby Can Be a Scream" and writing "The Official Cambridge Diet Book." Boe admitted that until a couple of years ago he was unaware that Jews had sought refuge in China. 1 "In New York, I met some people who Tells Of Jews' Last Refuge From Nazis surrounding areas instead. Two hundred and eighty people were killed and a thousand were wounded.

Among the fatalities were 31 of the Jewish refugees. Three weeks later, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan and, in effect, ended World War II. Peace didn't bring immediate happiness to the Jews. They were destitute and hungry, and they still were stateless. Few had any desire to return to Germany.

"It took them from 2 to 10 years to get out of Shanghai," Boe said. "It wasn't until 1980 that they felt ready to have a reunion. About a thousand of the Jewish refugess of Shanghai came from all over the world to meet in Oakland, Calif." A handful of Jews were permitted by the Communist government of China to remain in the only city that had been willing to harbor them. "In January 1982, a 75-year-old man from Poland, Max Leibowitch, died there," Boe said. "His obituary referred to him as 'the last Jew in By John J.

Archibald Of the Post-Dispatch Staff THE WORLD was not in an accommodating mood in the late 1930s. Thousands of German Jews, sensing that the Nazis were not going to be satisfied with merely harassing them, decided reluctantly that they must flee their homeland. But there was no place to go. Adolf Hitler's propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, challenged the nations that feebly protested the Nazis' persecutions: "If you care so much for the Jews, take them! You i can have all the German Jews you want." Goebbels knew he was on safe ground. Country after country, including the United States, "exhausted their quotas" and closed their doors.

Even Palestine was shut off, because the occupying British feared Arab threats more than the opinion of a few Jewish sympathizers, Finally, only Shanghai, China, remained. Shanghai, then controlled by the invading Japanese, was altejrnately described at that "Deliverance in Shanghai," while based on fact, Is by no means a documentary. The characters, as described on the cover, include: Rebecca Langer-Wolf, a beautiful, educated woman who tries to cope with her tormented, forlorn husband, the urges of her own repressed sexuality and the demands of a budding teen-age daughter David Buchbtnder, a handsome young man who matures quickly in the arms of Rosalie Balaban; Erika Zuckerman, an American social worker with an insatiable appetite for young men. The cruelty of Japanese commanders became more blatant as the tide of the war went against the occupiers of Shanghai, and the Jews who had survived disease and other hardships approached a crisis situation. "And then the Americans bombed them," (Boe said.

i U.S. planes searching for oil storage tanks miles away bombed the camp and referred to themselves as 'Shanghai Jewish Boe said. "I said, 'What the heck is that? And they told me. "It took a while for the idea to germinate, but I finally realized that this could be the basis for a fascinating book. Jerome Agel, with whom I have co-authored several other books, agreed.

"We set about finding these people and taping their recollections. Fortunately, many of them live in New York, and we found them extremely cooperative. They are elderly now and they were anxious to talk, because they feel that in all the talk about the Holocaust, their story has never been told." It Is not a pleasant story. Through the experiences of both actual and fictional characters in "Deliverance In Shanghai," the reader learns that life in Shanghai was bearable before the Pearl Harbor attack, and that even in the early years of the war against the Allies it Was tolerable. But In February 1943, the Japanese ordered that all "stateless refugees" be crammed into a small rat-infested slum a new ghetto, i i.