Here is letter #73 – the letter that followed the letters numbered 72 that we saw over the past week. I have added a few paragraph breaks to make it easier to read.
Vienna, 14 February 1941
My dear children, when I woke up this morning, I knew that mail from you would come. I quickly got dressed and cleaned up quickly and when I saw my neighbor across the way waving with his dusting cloth, my suspicion was confirmed - there’s an older gentleman living in the house across the way (an acquaintance of our neighbors). He came home with lighthearted steps. Aha. I think his son has written to him so I figure that I can also plan on getting letters.
I wanted to give you a lecture on the topic of “unnumbered” when your letter #2 came in. #1 is still wearing his cloak of invisibility but I hope he will make himself visible soon. In old Vienna, the unnumbered one was an expression of the highest elegance. Numbered were only one-horse carriages and cabs. It was considered very noble to take such a vehicle. But the trip with an unnumbered was the really fancy [~bees knees – literal translation: highest spinach]. The most stylish luxury limousine can’t even come close to this level of elegance which we experienced when riding in an unnumbered vehicle. The car exhaust smell and the awful honking of horns are the things that you experience when you take a luxury car or just like a truck. But the silently rolling wheels of a horse-drawn carriage do leave behind a different kind of smell with their road apples and that is different from the cow pats of an ox team. Maybe people’s opinions differ on this. To each his own. What is an owl to one is a nightingale to another.
In brief, what applied to the coaches and landau carriages we had in those days does not apply to letters from overseas. The value of the letters is not increased for being unnumbered. You seem to simply ignore my questions about whether you got all the letters. That’s kind of astonishing to me. Harry does mention that he came home from school and got my birthday letter. (Which one? I wrote several. I figured that some would get there late and others wouldn’t get there at all). Between the last one that arrived and the one that Harry mentioned, there must have been at least 5 that went by the wayside or are still on their way. You will perhaps think in my old days that I have become rather pedantic. No. As I mentioned, and I don’t like to repeat myself, I could perhaps have told you in one of the other letters something that was very important for us. Since you two seem to just glance over my letters and the things that you don’t understand you just sort of go right past them. I turn a higher power today. Paul seems for such interests the most competent place to go. My chartered letters (Harry, where are your Turkish skills?) were not revealed by you. My gloomy prediction is that I want an affidavit, I need an affidavit, I must have an affidavit was ignored by you. Since I am now hollering it out to the whole world, you will hear and you will take an interest in that. Yesterday we found out that telegrams for a certain price may be sent to the USA by Hapag [a shipping company]. Papa went to the Kärntnerstrasse right away to check this out. For once, the information was correct but the people were standing in such a long line and Papa is no good for that and didn’t have time anyway. He brought me instead candies and cookies from Köberl und Pientok.
[a dream] Tonight I experienced a little bit of the USA. Papa and I were at a train station and wanted to take an express train. We noticed a well-dressed oversized man. He didn’t have any luggage, but a very noticeably small boy carried his little suitcase. Aha I thought, Americans love these contrasts. Although it was fairly warm, the man was wearing an Ulster overcoat which I noticed not so much for the fact that it was well tailored, it had a good cut, but because of the trim that it had. This contained the words of his company/firm ironed into the border: “National Taylor Typewriter Corporation” I read. “Original,” I thought. This business traveler and his boy with the little suitcase got into our compartment. The latter, the boy, only came in to carry the luggage which the giant could have picked up with his little finger. Although I knew that the boy was just for show, I did not like this man and I decided to never buy a Taylor Typewriter. I noticed that Papa had lost his overcoat. I announced this loss and when I was asked about the color, I asked the fellow to come with me. I explained to him that it was a coat quite a bit like what he was wearing, but just without any name on it. Our companion also thought so. We were in New York in a big Varieté on Broadway. Where we would normally see loges, there were berths or bunks and we could buy all sorts of things there. Every sales counter had bar stocks [?]. Drinks were served all over the place. Papa bought shoelaces and ordered a beer, but I wanted chocolate. However, I could only get that in the next room or next door. I was so fascinated by the choices that I had that when I was asked what I wanted, I couldn’t answer. I closed my eyes and asked “Which Swiss brands do you have?” Kohler” and “Tobler” answered the sales lady and she showed me some small packages. “Oh, those aren’t my favorites” I answered. “Do you have any larger packages? I’d like to buy 4kg.” The sales lady said to me: “You don’t seem to know how much that costs.” She turned the carton over and told me the price, which was $15 she said. I was feeling much better and decided to ask rather timidly for 10dkg of pralines but did not bother to ask where they came from. So that’s how little Moritz dreamed in America.
Note to Eva: Harry told me that you were writing down your hospital memoirs. I am delighted. I wanted to give you some advice when you told me about the eau de cologne episode. Why don’t you make some drawings in your diaries. Papa’s wishes about your patients I told you about in the last letter. He grinned when he heard about what you had planned. He was happy.
Note to Harry: Stalactites are dripstone formations and in fact they are the ones that come down from the top. They sort of form at the top and come downward. The ones which have formed from down to up are called stalagmites. The last letter was unusually short. Please make up for that.
Since I still want to write to Hilda, I need to close for today. I kiss you till I get a letter from you again.
Hmmmmmmm
HelenDear Hilda! I don’t know if the address from Paul is the same, he wrotes me in May, when you and Nathan were in Australia and he in your absence watches over Harry and your house. This, his last letter to me, except the few lines, he enclosed in your letters or the children ones. At all the respect you owe your teacher, you can washing his head. I don’t know the American expression for anyone to make reproaches. To give you another Musical Lesson I cannot risk, because this letter - I am sure - is censored by his Majesty, Master Paul. The mistakes, I am doing, he would excuse, not the nonsense I generally write. I am egoistical. I want something from him, therefore I must make him not angry.
With many greetings to you and Nathan, I remain lovingly your affectionate
Helen
You can see in her note to Hilda at the end that Helene’s English is nowhere near as fluent as her letters written after the war. As I mentioned in an early post, I believe that she may have studied English while in Ravensbrück.
Helene’s crankiness from a few days earlier has not gone away. She scolds Harry for not being clear which of her letters he refers to. She emphasizes the importance of numbering letters by telling a story of transportation in old world Vienna. The guilt she lays on her children regarding their seeming disinterest in her letters feels very familiar to me – I understand now where my mother learned to communicate with me!