Over the past few months of shelter in place, I have spent many hours reading through my grandmother’s papers. Sometimes I feel as though I am experiencing life in the past and present simultaneously.
As the number of Covid-19 deaths in the US have reached almost 160,000, I have been thinking about the number of lives cut short, the loss to their families and friends, the contributions to the world that will never be. At the same time, I have a deeper understanding of my grandmother’s family and the amount of loss she suffered over almost a century.
One thing that strikes me is that many of us in the first world have had the luxury of not having to face much loss in our lives, sometimes “only” losing family members and friends who have lived to a ripe old age. That wasn’t the case for my grandmother or indeed for most people of her generation. Death and loss were sad, but not unusual.
Helene was the youngest child born in 1886 to Adolph and Rosa Löwy. My mother told me that Rosa had 13 pregnancies, but most of the children died in childbirth or infancy. As a child, Helene knew her sisters Ida, Matilde, Clara, Irma, and Flora, and her brother Max. As far as I can tell, by 1918, Helene’s only surviving sibling was her brother Max, although I’m not even sure of that.
Ida married Julius Zerzawy in 1894 and died in 1902 following a miscarriage, leaving 4 young children behind. Ida’s death had a devastating effect on the Löwy family — Rosa and Matilda left the family home to take care of the Zerzawy children, leaving only young Helene with her father. Matilde married Julius in 1903, becoming stepmother to her nephews and niece, and had a daughter Käthe in 1904. Matilde died in 1910. By 1918, Helene’s only surviving nephews were Paul and Robert. Her nieces died in 1916 and 1918 and her nephew Erich died as a prisoner of war in Eastern Siberia in 1918. By that time, young Paul and Robert had lost 3 siblings, their mother, and their stepmother. As a soldier, Paul no doubt had experienced even more loss.
After several happy years with Vitali and her children, Helene again faced tremendous loss when she sent her children away to safety in America. Then came four years of worrying about them and watching her opportunity to follow become nothing more than a dream. Then separation from Vitali as they were sent to Ravensbrück and Buchenwald, and she was never to see her husband again. Finally she came to America, was reunited with her children.
In 1939, Helene’s nephews Paul and Robert made their way to the US and England, respectively. I cannot imagine the loss and disconnect they felt as they left the old world behind to start anew in a different country and a different language, leaving in Vienna their Aunt Helene, their only surviving blood relative. Paul worked tirelessly but unsuccessfully to bring Helene and Vitali to San Francisco. Although a lawyer by training, he eked out a living in San Francisco as a piano teacher, dying in 1948 at the age of only 53. His brother Robert died in London in 1967. Helene survived them both.
What would it be like to lose everyone and everything? I am in awe of my grandmother’s resilience facing loss, rebuilding her life, and finding ways to continue in the face of such tragedy and loss.