Today is another card from POW Erich Zerzawy.
12/I.18.
[Printed on card: Do not write between the lines!]
My dear ones! By way of exception, I can write to you again. There is a transport leaving for neutral countries. All of us here hope to follow soon — not to other countries, but just to go home, which nobody will regret. What do you think? You agree, don’t you? Yes, yes, if only it were happening right now already, your Erich would be so happy knowing that he would be able to hug and kiss all of you for real, the way he does now in spirit.
A few thoughts on the card itself – this one has no censorship stamp, and despite the admonition against writing between the lines, he has done so. As he mentions in the card, he has found a way to send this card through other means.
After reading a recent post about Erich, historian Robert W. Cherny, author of Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017), mentioned that “by early 1917, things were falling apart in Russia. By mid-1918, the country was in civil war. The army had been dissolved by the Bolsheviks, so who knows what may have happened to the POW camps?”
This comment led me to do a bit more research and I stumbled onto the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, where I discovered a card with information about Erich which contradicts Paul Zerzawy’s family tree. Since this card was sent to Paul Zerzawy at some point when he was in Vienna, it corroborates my assumption that the year of death on the tree was a typo rather than a lack of knowledge. Especially since the family had letters from Erich dated in 1918. This document says that he fled from Beresowka on July 15, 1918. Presumably the statement on the family tree that he was fleeing for the Chinese border when he died was anecdotal evidence from someone who knew him.
From the International Committee of the Red Cross Archives
Below is a map to show where Erich began and ended his life. It shows where he was born in Bilin, where he was apparently captured in Luck/Lutsk, and where he died in Siberia.
