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Moda. Istanbul, May 10-45
My Harry-boy! Did you ever think that your mother aimed at adventures? Never, or did you? For voyages, yes, I always had a foible but under other circumstances . Six weeks I was doing nothing else but eating, drinking, sleeping, and reading and admiring the various landscapes, all things I was missing during a year and a half as I had been in Ravensbrück, a concentration camp for women. Probably there were great gaps in my education which must be repaired found out the Nazis and I learned things which do not belong to a good all-round education. I can see by the astonishment of the reporters who came to see us and I had been interviewed and printed several times. Now I am surfeited by sea, glaciers, towns, people but not yet of tea, coffee and chocolate. I am sitting among magnolia, lemon-bushes, quite indifferent, from the balcony I see the Sofien-Marchee from one side, Prinkipo.
from the other, not having the wish to see more. All my thoughts are directed to you all and to Vitali from whom I don’t know where he is just now. He was arrested with me on the 15th of October 43 and separated immediately. After 6 months I knew that he was brought to Buchenwald, a concentration camp for men. His letters - I received one every 3 months - were gay and full of confidence. This camp, I had been told, was better than that of mine and he assured me in every letter that his condition is in apple-pie order. I hope he had withstood the last days of Buchenwald till the liberation. I can’t understand why Turkish men were released with the exception of those from B. One must have forgotten them. You can believe me I have not let untried everything. I know it will last very long till I shall get answers to my inquiries but notwithstanding I hope I shall bring him with me as soon as you have done those steps which are necessary to claim us.
Please, Harry write me very soon. I am sorry for you too.
I am happy about Eva! Marriage, although at the first day I was anyhow stricken nearly stupefied. By and by I became familiar with the thought that Ebi became pledged. I asked so many questions that Eva will not be able to answer them. You must help her, likewise Paul.
Now I am glad that I have finished my letter. There is a great fuss about a thing I don’t know what. Farewell, darling, remain healthy and write very soon.
I kiss you.
Helen
This letter was kept with the letter to Eva that we saw on May 10 (which cousin Lisette’s sent with own letter of May 11). So much is packed into this brief letter to her son – details of her separation from Vitali, and Helene’s relishing of her first days of freedom and plenty after a year and a half of cruelty and deprivation at the hands of the Nazis. Vitali in his letters to Helene from Buchenwald tried to make Helene believe that life was easier for him than for her in Ravensbrück, and it must have been much more comforting for her to believe that fantasy than imagine his reality. She has begun what will be at least a 10 year search for her husband. She is worried about her son the soldier. I don’t know if Harry saw this letter in 1945 – at this time he was stationed in New Guinea. I assume Eva would have at least written to him about the letter’s contents.