Vienna 10 January 1941
Clipper 67 My dear children! If you get this letter please don’t complain so about the short length and the fact that it really doesn’t have any content. We have not had any news for so long that we must assume that you also haven’t received any mail from us for a long time. I have made a plan to not send such long epistles until I am a little more sure that my letters are actually arriving at your home.
A letter came from Lizette yesterday. She said that she had just gotten a letter from Eva written on August 30, but not a single one from me. Maybe she’ll still get some since your letter took 4 months to get to its destination.
Somebody came to us today and said that it’s possible to send telegraphs to the United States now. Papa was immediately skeptical, but he did me a favor and went and asked at the main post office. Of course, it is impossible. Who knows how long we will have to struggle? You don’t need to worry about us. We are doing pretty well and we are healthy. We are not worried about you except that we do miss your letters very, very much. That is clear but of course there is nothing that we can do about that. My idea in letter # 66 of sending it by way of South America seems to have not been a good idea, but I was willing to try anything. I am curious if and when this world traveler letter will ever arrive and what it will tell you about its odyssey. Maybe I will be a mother-in-law by that time.
I have no particular wishes this time as far as your communication. Everything is fine and I am happy with anything you have to tell me. Letter #11 from November 13 is the last piece of mail I got. #9 seems to be vanished, gone. That’s too bad.
With greetings and kisses for everyone
Yours
Helen
As with some of the letters we’ve already looked at, this one spends a lot of precious real estate expressing the desire for mail – a great deal of almost every letter continues this theme. With mail as the only form of contact, they were hungry for any crumb. Under the Nazis, this was one of the first things denied them. Yet, apparently Helene was receiving mail from and sending to a lot of people. Lizette is a relative of Vitali’s in Istanbul.
A few things of note about this letter. It’s very dense with very few paragraph breaks. Postage was expensive so they crammed as many words as possible onto a page, or even onto a half-page. Sometimes Helene would write for a few days until the page was filled, not wanting to waste an inch.
At the top of the letter there are two numbers in pencil. These were censorship numbers. They look like they were written by two different people, meaning the letter went through at least two sets of hands before being allowed on its way. You can see that even the letters that did arrive at their destination often took months to get there. As always, Helene’s wry sense of humor peeps out – she talks of being a mother-in-law by the time her children receive her letter – at this point Eva was 19 and Harry was almost 17.
Also at the top is the location and the date. After spending a few years immersed in this correspondence, I have come to appreciate this practice. When I look at the few pieces of snail mail I still receive, often it is not dated and definitely no location is included. Having this context is so helpful years later - like putting the names of people on the back of a photograph – not necessary in the moment but absolutely essential in the future. Perhaps I’ll start including my location when I write cards and letters. It probably will be disconcerting for the recipients!
Finally, the letter includes a “Clipper” number. When we first began translating Helene’s correspondence, I had no idea what that meant. Clipper letters were a form of air mail. As you can see, they tried a variety of methods to send mail, hoping to find the most reliable, cheapest, and quickest method. Some of the letters indicate which country they were being sent from. Sometimes too, they sent letters in the care of friends or relatives who were traveling so they would not have to worry about mail service.