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Today’s letter from Helene to her children was sent together with the one we saw yesterday to her nephew Paul Zerzawy. This is the 46th letter she has sent since she started numbering her letters in late 1939.
Vienna, 15, August 1940
My dear children! Today you will all have to suffer from my bad mood. “Bad mood” is not the correct expression for the feeling of apathy and stupor and emptiness which the lack of reports from and about Harry has triggered in me, and I hope every hour that our protector spirit will release me from this uncertainty. This seems like hell to me, this kind of entertainment, compared to the fears that I currently have about Harry. I absolutely do not want to transfer my dark mood onto you, but it’s impossible for me to write in any other way when I am in pain about you. I know this letter will get me quite a telling off from Eva. I wish I had that already. I’m used to everything possible and even impossible. My parched brain has not found a plausible explanation, not even Vischers’ explanation: the malice or spite of the object can be comforting to me, because your letters are something abstract, thoughts and the bogeyman I would like to meet who would dare to get between you and me. But one thing you must promise me - do not ever keep anything, not even the smallest thing, from me; it puzzles me that Eva’s last two letters don’t have a single word about Harry. When I pick up your letters and take them in my hand, I always find a light-hearted criticism of the other. I would be happy if I could have some sort of assurance that my fears are without basis and I will then be glad to ask you to forgive me if I have caused you any dark hours through my fearful lines that I am writing. My entire thought process and that for which I strive has really always been to spare you any such troubles. You will realize that one only figures these things out through one’s own experience. I would be very glad to take these tortures onto myself if I could be sure that that would help you and that you would therefore have no worries about when you one time have children yourselves and are in a similar situation. My writing is kind of confused today, so please give me a break. Everything is the same here. The weather is cool and dark, it’s kind of unreliable, it’s like April. I don’t really care about this. My lifestyle is the same whether it’s nice or whether it is raining. I am only happy when I get regular news from you. The citrus fruits that we are seeing in the market make me think that fall is coming very, very soon and that the summer which this year was really only a few days will be finished soon and will give way to a long lasting winter. Cozy hours by the fireplace are for me just like concepts out of old trashy books when I don’t have you here to share them with me. My sense of reality celebrates orgies in the cold time of the year.
I ask you and I asked Paul the same thing – to send greetings to Zentners, Schillers, and Firestones, and also to Sol Goldberg. Don’t forget to do this please. If you get this letter, maybe the vacation time is already over. I am curious what’s going on with Eva’s plan for nursing school or for the study of chemistry and whether it will come out the way she predicts. Little Harry still has the last compulsory year ahead of him.
While I’m talking to you – if I can call this conversation – I am feeling a little calmer and now I almost have a feeling that I will soon get mail from you which will make me happy and then I will soon regret having let myself go in this way with you.
Papa is the strictest censor, who know if he will even send this letter?
Keep me in your thoughts!
Your mother
HeleneThank you for the card!
Helene continues in her melancholy mood of the previous day. She can’t help but imagine the worst when she has no news from her children.
These letters give me a deeper understanding of my mother Eva, who took on the duty of writing regularly to her parents. Her brother Harry was a less reliable correspondent. No matter how often Eva wrote, it wasn’t enough (couldn’t ever be!) and didn’t include what her mother most wanted to know. Of course, what Eva couldn’t control was the fact that she and her brother were separated from their parents and nothing in the world could fix that. My mother was always worried about doing the right thing and instilled in me an immense sense of responsibility. It probably was already part of her make-up, but these experiences intensified the trait.
In 1941, Helene again will cite Vischer’s philosophy in a letter we saw on February 5.