Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.
Today, we have a letter from Paul Zerzawy to his brother Robert. At this point, Paul is a soldier in Serbia and Robert is finishing high school in Brüx, Bohemia. Their mother and step-mother have both died, their father is in the army, and their grandmother (Helene’s mother) is taking care of Robert and his sisters. Their brother Erich is a soldier – we saw the only non-POW letter we have in the July 14 post.
Although this is one of the earliest letters in the archive, it is one of the last I had translated. In 1916, Paul was writing in the old German script known as Sütterlin which my friend and translator was unable to decipher. Given how generic Paul’s brother Erich’s postcards as a POW were, I wondered whether it would be worth finding a translator. But when Amei Papitto started translating the letters, I gained a new perspective on the times and on the Zerzawy family’s close relationship with their aunt/my grandmother.
The return address and stamp show that Paul was working in the Statistics Office of the Economics Group in Belgrade. As with letters written more than 20 years later, much of each letter is taken up discussing with the state of the postal service – although the postal service during World War I seems to have been far more efficient than in World War II – or at least when letters were being sent on the same continent. Paul mentions how he hasn’t heard from his loved ones – echoing the same message he often will receive decades later and a world away.
Paul mentions Mila – I don’t know who she was, but clearly she was an important person in their lives - Helene mentions her in letters to Paul in 1940 (see yesterday’s post).
Belgrad, 27 July 1916
Dear Robert!
You will receive these birthday congratulations late, because the assumption that I already talked to you about in Leibnitz that I would not be able to write in time has proven correct. It takes a little time to adapt to unusual circumstances, but now I have adapted and I find it quite nice here – if you discount little annoyances which are probably because of the southeastern geography.
I have not wandered around enough yet in the interesting parts of town in order to get something like a present for you. Let’s see what happens.
I have not received mail either from Papa or from Helene but it also is not really possible because a letter takes 3-4 days. But I have received 8 pieces of mail which were sent after me from Leitmeritz, including finally a letter from Papa, 2 cards from Erich, a letter from Helena.
Packages take 3 weeks to get here. I hope to get letters more often. I have enough money until the end of the month. Should I remain here longer, I will need more money. What I am doing here you can kind of detect more or less from the address. The description of what I am doing and of Belgrad and so on will follow as soon as I have written to Papa. Just a brief description for now of the trip. Leitmeritz to Vienna was a terrible night trip. A very overcrowded passenger train, but a military car. Helene was incredibly surprised and she offered me very sweet hospitality. I also visited Mila who bought a watch for me and gave me cigarettes. Because of the “trottelosis” [idiocy] of my military transport commander, already at night we continued our trip to Budapest, once again a bad night’s travel. There we were allowed to take a rapid train because of a good idea of mine. First class which was an incredible advantage in the very fertile but hot and boring Hungarian lowlands. At 2 o’clock we arrived at our destination. About an hour before Semlin, the visible signs of war began to appear. Ditches, destroyed buildings. The most interesting between Semlin and Belgrad was the railway bridge over the Sava. It was constructed in a temporary/makeshift way. Next to the railway bridge there is a pontoon bridge. During our journey we saw only in the distance the main goal of attack of our bombardment, but we also saw the buildings on the Lahn and we also saw that parts of the city on the Danube and Save are totally demolished. To be continued.
Robert Zerzawy sketching his grandmother with his sisters in the background.