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When translating my grandmother’s letters, we began with the typed letters to Helene’s children, which seemed most important and were most legible. My archivist sorted the letters by date, recipient, and the location they were found. Because of this, the handwritten letters to Paul were some of the last to be translated. As we have seen, these help us piece together the story of my family’s journey.
At the time of this letter, Eva and Harry are living in Istanbul to obtain passports to join Paul in America. In Vienna, Helene and Vitali are doing everything they can to organize their children’s passage. Paul is in New York, having arrived in the U.S. a few months earlier. He was sponsored by his mother’s cousin’s son Arthur Schiller (son of Bertha and George, with whom Eva would live when she arrived in San Francisco), a law professor at Columbia. Paul’s brother Robert has been in England for a few months.
Vienna, 25 July 1939
Paul, why do you not write to me? I don’t know what I should think. Existential questions, different climate, tiredness, just no desire to write. Yeah, I know. I can imagine your situation, but just a postcard Paul, a postcard with just a few lines would be enough. It would free me of this pressure that I feel from your lack of writing. My fantasy does not come up with such beautiful flowers through my reading of trashy novels, but I live in Vienna and do you still remember a Wallace who needed to sit down to put out 300,000 editions for the army? Are you ever going to answer? We expect the children to be back soon when they have traveled in the shortest time, by ship. Arthur Schiller is at his parents’ house so I will probably have to ask you to take care of meeting the children and taking them in. Weren’t you in touch with the Schillers? Hasn’t he granted you any dispositions about the children? Bertha wrote to me that she hopes that the children will not arrive right when Arthur is not there, July-August. I don’t want to leave the children in Vienna any longer than I have to however. Papa Zentner told me good things about you about Dr. Heinz and French bread. Are you in touch with him? As soon as I know more details about the children’s departure, I will write to those two in case you may not be in New York, so they will be able to take care of them when they arrive.
Mela W wrote to me last week to ask how you are doing. Paula J also asked for your address, and Marie and Mila who have been in San Remo for 14 days to recover. This case, which in my opinion, is hopeless, in our circle of acquaintances has gone up in smoke. A letter from Robert, in whose health I believe very firmly, did bring me some joy. Few, in fact very few, familiar faces are here. The vacuum becomes greater every day. Please Paul, write, write, write.
Many kisses
Helen
We get a real feel for the urgency Helene feels and how quickly things are changing in Vienna. Helene is trying to work out the logistics from afar – who will be in New York to meet her children when they arrive in the U.S.? Their ultimate destination is San Francisco, so she wants to make sure an adult familiar with how things work will be there to meet them and facilitate their journey.
I did a quick search for “Wallace 300,000 army WWI” and found an article about Colonel William Wallace, who commanded an American unit in Italy in 1918. According to the article, although theirs was the only unit stationed there, the Austrians believed that they would be facing 300,000 men. Wallace decided to play on their fears and made it appear like he had many more men. The main definition of the word Auflagen is “edition”. Other definitions relate to printing terms like copies and impressions. Given Helene’s experience in newspapers and stationery perhaps she was alluding to how Wallace made it seem like there were many more “copies” of men.