Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.
Today we have a picture postcard in German and English from (and of) Helene’s nephew Robert Zerzawy with a note in pencil that it was received on June 30, 1963.
This is not Mr. Dean Rusk; rather, it is your nephew on one of his missions to Germany. Touchwood, I have a little slimmed since then.
Love, Robert
A few comments:
The photo credit is by the airline – perhaps they took photos like they do these days on cruises and Disneyland rides?
The photo at Wikipedia entry for Dean Rusk does indeed show a resemblance.
In the 1960s, Robert worked for Bayer. Presumably this photo was taken on a business trip to Germany as he was preparing for the opening of the London sales office:
When I began this project, I thought of brothers Paul and Robert Zerzawy as distant cousins who were tangentially related to my family’s story. As we have seen, Paul was a major presence in my grandmother’s and her children’s lives. Robert is also important, but I have far less evidence. In March, we saw a few letters from him from the 1960s as well as a few letters to him from Helene from 1945-1046 in Istanbul – he appears to be the first relative she was able to reach. Helene mentions his sensitive nature and how life might be particularly difficult for him. In Robert’s letters he mentions emotions, while letters from his brother Paul, who was trained as an attorney, are usually all business – as a soldier in World War I, trying to make sure that family members at home have all they need and that Robert is taking care of business in his absence; and during World War II, emigrating and trying to help Helene, Vitali and their children emigrate as well. Although Robert also intended to emigrate from England to San Francisco during or after the war, for some reason that never happened, and he was separated from his family for the rest of his life.
Robert seems to have had a sensitive artist’s temperament. Although he tried to follow in Paul’s footsteps and study law, from the WWI letters it appears his heart wasn’t in it. Below is a photo of Robert that was probably taken during WWI that shows him sketching his grandmother while his sisters watch in the background. At this point his father and older brothers Robert and Erich are away at war (Erich probably in a POW camp in Siberia at this point), so young Robert was the man of the house. He had lost both his mother and step-mother by the time he was 11.
Below is a self-portrait Robert drew dated September 16, 1921, when he would have been 22 years old — a portrait of the artist as a young man.
