Since I don’t have a letter from January 6, I am posting about the issue of Biela-Zeitung from that day in 1877. In childhood stories, my grandmother wrote that her father began publishing the weekly Biela-Zeitung newspaper in 1874 because he was upset at the corrupt city government and mine owners and wanted to hold them accountable.
In late 2020 once Roslyn had translated all the letters that were legible to her, we spent a few hours looking through the first issues of the Biela-Zeitung in 1874. It was interesting to see the birth of a new publication. It was an 8-page paper published weekly. This was still true in 1877. However the contents and tone had evolved. The pages of those first few issues were filled with train schedules, comparative market prices, and local advertisements, many of them for Adolf Löwy’s own products and services. He also reprinted stories and news items he had found in newspapers across Europe. Sort of the Utne Reader of its day.
This first issue of 1877 has much more content and many more advertisements from towns in and around Bilin; gone are the train schedules and market prices. The first article of the year confirms my grandmother’s sense of why her father published this paper:
Invitation to Subscribers.
On the 1st of January 1877 the Biela-Zeitung began its new year, its fourth.
We can tell you without boasting that the Biela-Zeitung fulfills all the requirements which one might expect from a local paper, and it will be our most sincere goal to fulfill these fair and right requirements of the readers.
While we thus allow ourselves most politely to invite you to our new edition, we assume that in the future we will continue to follow our quest for truth and justice, promoting that which is good and beautiful and lending an ear to public opinion. However we will fight against arrogance, egotism, and unnecessary greed and we will put those items back into the cupboard.
This is what the Biela-Zeitung has always done and we will continue to hold firmly to this policy.
Let us just mention that the Biela-Zeitung, thanks to its large circulation is also suitable as an insert, and we put our trust in the strong support of the public.
Very truly yours
The Editor
In addition to fighting for what was right, Adolf reported on local news and celebrations, including in this issue a description of local new years celebrations just days earlier. He ended the article with:
“So the year ’76 was buried and the new year was happily greeted. May this year see our hopes fulfilled in a better way than in the last one”
Sentiments we all are feeling about the year 2020!
Putting pieces of the puzzle together
I have been amazed on this journey how easily some things have come together. People have been unfailingly kind – generously giving their time, advice, assistance, and support.
By March 2017, I was beginning to understand the extent of the material I had and how much of it was in German. I was at a loss as to how to proceed. What to keep? What should ultimately happen to these documents? How would I know what was worth translating? How on earth would I get anything translated? How would I keep these documents safe? That last question seemed a bit late in the game. Somehow these documents had survived decades of being thrown haphazardly in boxes, stored in humid and non-temperature controlled environments, and the vast majority were in great condition.
Around the time of Harry’s death in January 2017, I researched local volunteer opportunities. Although I wasn’t necessarily looking to work at a Jewish agency, San Francisco’s Jewish Children & Family Services (JCFS) offered a wide range of volunteer possibilities. In March, the director of the JFCS Financial Aid Center called and told me about the financial assistance programs offered by JFCS. They sounded interesting and worthwhile, so I went for an interview. While waiting to meet the director I picked up a brochure from another JFCS program I’d never heard about – the JFCS Holocaust Center.
I contacted the Yedida Kanfer, the director of community education at the Holocaust Center, and requested her assistance helping me figure out how to approach my project – in terms of translation, organization, and archiving. I met with her at the end of March and she provided a wealth of information. By this time, I had learned the name of the newspaper Helene’s father published in Bilin – the Biela-Zeitung. The coordinator found a link to the National Library of Prague which showed that the newspaper was in the archive there. I couldn’t access it, but it was great to know it existed and that I had a good reason to visit Prague!
Later that year I contacted historian Corry Guttstadt who among other treasures sent a link to several editions of the Biela-Zeitung available at the Austrian National Library in Vienna. At about the same time, Google Books made the first 3 years available to download! I’m not sure why Google Books decided to archive this publication – had I and enough other people searched for it so they decided it was important enough? Or just serendipity? Hopefully one day, editions that were published after my grandmother was born will be available. In one of my grandmother’s stories, she mentions that her father encouraged her to write articles for the paper – I’d love to know if she ever did and whether she got a byline.
Another wonderful serendipity was the location of JFCS – across the street from the old Mt. Zion Hospital, where my mother had lived and trained to be a nurse in 1940-1943! Every time I went to volunteer, I felt like I was walking in my mother’s footsteps.
The old Mount Zion Hospital on Post Street in San Francisco.
One of the fascinating things about doing family research is the wealth of information that is out there and how one can always make new discoveries. Sometimes it’s something that wasn’t available before, sometimes I’m finally ready to understand what I’m looking at. Today I made a discovery while writing this post. One thing I am still trying to discover is when Adolf Löwy died. Part of the confusion for me is that the Czech archive showed the Biela-Zeitung being published until 1938, which made me think he had lived at least that long. However, my grandmother’s papers made me believe that he died much closer to 1902. The citation in the Vienna library seems much more likely – it lists the paper as having been published from 1874-1904. I would guess that Adolf must have died in 1904 or before – at least the search is narrowing.