Istanbul, April 17, 1946
Dear Mrs. Helene,
When you receive this letter, I hope that after a long, laborious trip you have reached your children and that all are well.
A letter from Vienna for you has reached me, and since I suspected it was important, I opened it. I am enclosing this letter for your use.
From Cairo I received a communication from the Levi Brothers & Co., indicating that they have paid your ship fare in advance. I ask that you transfer the relevant amount directly to the Levi company in Cairo, because I am not able to receive this money, nor to remit it to a further destination.
Hoping to receive good news from you, I remain
Your
Yomtov
This letter from Vitali’s relative Yomtov Cohen demonstrates what a small world it was even before the age of the internet. Helene has left Istanbul and is finally en route for America when he writes this letter from Turkey. He apparently encloses a letter from someone in Vienna as well as something from the company in Cairo that has loaned the money for Helene’s passage to America. It didn’t just take a village to help her, but several continents.
Although the Joint had provided Helene with lodging and food over the past year, they were unable to provide travel funds. Former prisoners were in a real Catch-22 situation – after years of trauma, stateless, penniless, and homeless, they were expected to somehow figure out where to go and how to get there. The representatives of the Joint tried their best to help, but they were trying to help thousands of refugees all over the world and had limited funds and had to negotiate with many official entities in many countries.
I do not know whether the owners of the Levy Brothers company in Cairo were any relation to Helene’s father’s family. Or related to Vitali? Or perhaps no relation at all. Levy is a common name. Below is a letter from a San Francisco bank in 1947 confirming that Helene paid them back for her passage to America.
