Looking back and going forward

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Today we reach the end of 2021 and of my daily blog presenting Helene’s and her family’s letters and papers. My goal this year was to give my grandmother her voice, because throughout her life, she wanted to be heard and read, had a great deal to say, and was incredibly eloquent in saying it. Helene was many things to many people – Eva’s and Harry’s beloved mother; Vitali’s darling wife; the Zerzawy boys’ treasured aunt and their last connection to their mother who died when they were very young; a dear friend to many; and my cousins’ and my own sweet grandmother.

Over the course of this year, I found that other family members also wanted to be heard. We saw papers covering more than a century and spanning much of the globe. Just this last week, for example, we were taken on a rich journey – from a desolate World War I prisoner of war camp in Eastern Siberia, to Christmas in Bohemia, to Vienna during a freezing winter in World War II, to London, Istanbul, San Francisco, and a World War II army training camp.

I now know my family in a much deeper and richer way, and have an appreciation for relatives who always seemed distant and not really part of my immediate family’s story. I am filled with love for people who once were strangers, some of whom died decades before I was born.

If you are interested in (re)visiting the blog from the beginning, click here.

I am grateful to my subscribers who joined me on my journey and provided wonderful feedback.

I am going to miss “seeing” my family every day, but intend to find a way to tell their story in a different way, perhaps in book form.

I will end the year with some family photos:

 Vitali and Helene at a dinner party in Vienna, probably in the 1920s:

Looking at the above photo, I am reminded of a trip my husband and I took to London and where I met his cousins for the first time. We have a very similar photo taken of all of us in a restaurant with 3 other couples. I wonder if some of the people pictured above were relatives from San Francisco — perhaps including Tillie and Julius Zentner?

One of the few photos we have of the entire family in Vienna - Vitali in shadow, probably taken in around 1930:

Helene and her two children:

Helene in San Francisco, with her son Harry, Eva, and Eva’s husband, probably taken around 1946 or 1947:

My mother, my grandmother, and me:

What’s Next?

Looking to the future, I plan to do something different in 2022.

In the February 13th and November 22nd posts, I wrote about a family tree created in 1996-1997 by the husband of a distant cousin. He included anecdotes and footnotes, including one which mentioned that Hilda Firestone, the daughter of Helene’s cousin, had written a “diary/book about the family”. When I saw the note, I was eager to see the diary, but could not figure out how to find it. Then one day as I was looking for something on a bookcase, I discovered I had a copy that had been given to mother!

Hilda was born in January 1904 and her mother died just a few days later. She was raised in San Francisco by her grandparents and her aunt Tillie. Included in this blog over the past year, we saw one letter written by Hilda and several written to her from Helene and from Harry. From them, we can imagine an intelligent, empathetic, funny, caring, and loving person – another woman with a message

In 1912, Hilda was given a diary in which she wrote nearly every day. In 2022, I will share 8-year-old Hilda’s observations of her life and of San Francisco. She did not write every day, many entries are brief, and I have few related materials, so it will be different from my posts in 2021. If you are a subscriber, please feel free to continue or to unsubscribe, depending on your interest.

Happy New Year!!!