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Today we have a letter from Fritz and Hanne Orlik in Haifa to Paul Zerzawy’s address in New York City. Fritz’s mother was Paul’s father’s third wife, whom he married in 1921, after both boys were adults and out of the house.
26 November 1939
HaifaDear Paul!
Despite the fact that we haven’t received any answer from you from our letter of September, I wanted to write to you again assuming that my card may have gotten lost.
Since we arrived here, which was on September 12, we have not heard from you nor from Mama and Robert. A few days ago, Robert sent us a letter. But that was 14 days ago. You can imagine what it’s like when you’re in a foreign country and you have lost all connections. So, we do ask you to write and give us a sign of life soon. You certainly hear from Mama. What is she doing? Whether Leisl and Leo and Mariana are with her?
Unfortunately, we don’t have much to report. We don’t have work yet. I have decided to do temporary kind of work. At the moment I am working for a manufacturer of rag dolls. But this is not really returning any profit to me. I suppose that I can find some foreign companies to work with. At the moment, however, there’s no hope for that. Are you able to send me something from America? My friend Leo Zwicker is the representative of a hollow glass factory.
Other than that, we are doing quite well with our health, but Hanna is quite scared and is having trouble getting used to being here.
Mama wrote to us in August that you are able to earn your keep, which we’re very happy about, and we want to congratulate you on. We hope that you continue to be well and that your beginnings there weren’t too marred by the vicissitudes of travel. I lost 21 kilograms but I have managed to make up 3-1/2 of those.
Dear Paul! Write soon! And many greetings from your Fritz.
[in different handwriting] Sincere greetings, let us hear from you soon. Your Hanne
In this letter, Fritz refers to an earlier letter that we saw in the September 19th post. The September letter had been written in English and today’s in German (which was indicated on the envelope). Fritz got the idea from a letter his mother that Paul is successful in New York and living the American dream. Unfortunately, that was far from the truth, and no doubt frustrating to and embarrassing for Paul. Paul had been unable to find his footing, while many others (including his aunt Helene and her children) needed his assistance. Unbeknownst to Fritz, at this time Paul had given up hope of making his way in New York and has gone west to San Francisco to join his cousins Eva and Harry, hoping to be more successful there. His host in New York, Arthur Schiller, would have forwarded the letter to his parents in San Francisco, Bertha and George Schiller, with whom Eva was staying.
According to a website that defines terms used in the glass industry, “Hollow ware” is made “generally of soda-lime glass, but also of crystal, lead crystal and special glasses, hollow ware includes a wide variety of containers and receptacles: container glass (bottles, jars, medical and packaging glass), tableware (drinking glasses, bowls, etc.), construction hollow ware (glass building blocks, etc.), medico-technical glassware (laboratory equipment, tubing, etc.) and lighting glass (lamps, bulbs, etc.).”
I don’t know when Fritz died, but according to geni.com, Hanne died in Berlin in 1964. Since they weren’t happy or successful in Haifa, I imagine they eagerly returned to Europe after the war, despite all that had happened. This appears to have been fairly common – most of the prisoners who ended up with my grandmother in Istanbul wanted to return home to their pre-war countries, despite having been sent by their homeland to the death camps. After all they experienced, how did they (re)build a life anywhere? There are several memos in the JDC archives that advise the representative of the Joint to urge the released prisoners to consider another destination.