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Today we have another Red Cross postcard from Helene’s nephew, POW Erich Zerzawy in eastern Siberia, to his siblings in Brüx, Bohemia. We had trouble deciphering one sentence so it’s incomplete.

Beresowka 19/VII 17.

 My dear ones!

Today it is possible for me, Erich, to write to you more or less in confidence. A comrade is taking this with him when he reports to work. I am fine as I already wrote you yesterday. …Kättl… and I have not written back to her yet, but I will do that.

Sincere greetings and kisses from
Erich

When Roslyn translated the first sentence of this card, I thought we would learn something more about Erich’s situation since he could write “in confidence.” However, he is no more informative than in any of his other letters. Was he out of the habit? Did he run out of room? Did he not want to worry his family? Given the censorship stamp, perhaps after that first line he realized that it would be sent the same way as all the others.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, it amazes me that Erich’s cards got to their destination - he never includes a street address. Brüx (now Most) wasn’t a big city, but it had more than 20,000 inhabitants! According to the JewishGen Communities Database, in 1910 there were about 870 Jews living there. This reminds me of one of Helene’s letters to her children from Istanbul in 1946 (see March 4 post). Having had no contact with them in more than three years, she had no current address and sent many letters to places Eva and Harry no longer lived. The letters went undelivered and were ultimately returned. It had been her experience that a letter sent to a city would ultimately find its way to the proper recipient. In another letter, Helene marveled that a letter sent to Vitali in Vienna with no street address arrived at the destination — Vienna had a population of almost 2 million at that time. Not surprisingly then, Helene was unimpressed by the American postal service.