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Today we have a letter from Helene’s nephew Robert Zerzawy. Although his brother Paul Zerzawy emigrated to the U.S., Robert never made it further than England. As far as I know, he only made one visit to California, which he mentions in this letter. He is writing to his young cousin Harry.
17 November 1947.
Dear Harry,
I have exactly five minutes to write you while having my “elevenses” - a warm cup of coffee in this beastly weather is a real comfort. I think longingly back to the sunny day in Berkeley when you showed me round there though the temperature was not quite as high as in Boulder City where we had 105 or 110°. But you are not impressed by that. You had your share in the South Sea. That’s not exactly what you wanted to hear from me but give me time, Harry. Since I have been back, I never found the right mood for writing a personable letter. As far as reason goes with me, I am afraid I move ... in a circle, too much time and too much loneliness for introspective thoughts, and that’s not good for the mind - for today let me just tell you how much I enjoyed having met you after the 10 fateful years, or how long it is that we met in Vienna. I regret only we had so little time to talk to each other. Still, I hope it wasn’t the last time.
I wish you every success in your plans and good luck for your future. If you have the time and feel like, please write me about your doings and your ideas. ...always be pleasant to hear from you.
Cheers and kindest regards,
Yours
Robert[2 stickers on the letter: Please give this To Harry]
On Ancestry.com, I found the ship manifest showing Robert sailing from Manchester, England on August 22, 1947 on the Manchester Progress bound for Montreal, listing the ultimate destination of visiting his brother Paul in San Francisco. At the time, he was living in Bridport, on the southern coast of England.
In November 1947, Robert was 48 years old and Harry was half his age. Although they were related closely by blood, they had little common history. According to Robert, the last time they had seen each other was 10 years earlier, when Harry would have been 14. We saw in earlier posts that the intent had been for Robert to join his brother Paul and young cousins Eva and Harry in San Francisco, but somehow it never happened. Robert settled in England and became a citizen there.
Robert’s letters always make me feel melancholy and imagine what might have been. He was an artist with a sensitive temperament, not well-suited to the serious and dangerous times he lived in.
Robert’s mother died before he was 5 years old, his step-mother when he was 10. He was a young teenager when World War I broke out and his father and two older brothers Paul and Erich joined the army, leaving he and his two sisters Klara and Käthl at home, being cared for by their grandmother. Klara died in 1916. Robert was not drafted, although there is talk in some letters of the likelihood of him becoming a soldier. By 1918, he was 19 years old, his brother Erich never returned from the Siberian POW camp, his sister Käthl had died, the family household had been disbanded, and his brother Paul returned as a young adult who had had a front-row seat to the war. The four-year age difference probably felt like a much wider gap. It appears that Paul was well-suited to university and legal studies. Robert tried to follow in his footsteps, with a lesser degree of success.
I believe that the photo below was taken in Berkeley on the visit Robert mentions in the letter:
