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A letter from Helene in Vienna to her 16-year-old son Harry in San Francisco:

Clipper 57                               Vienna, 29 October 1940

My dear Harry boy! Maybe you’re wiping the sweat from your brow and sighing “Boy, is it hot today!” Meanwhile, here we can see the first snow on the roofs. Maybe this is the reason I have been looking out the window more than I usually do. The boy across the way looks like he is fascinated by the unusual scene as well and he is doing the same thing that I am instead of doing his homework. I am taking this opportunity to notice that his similarity to you seems greater every day, at least it seems that way to me. It’s possible that I have such anxiety in my body that Helen is seeing Harry everywhere she looks. But now I want to answer your questions from the last letters you sent.

I see that you find American girls more sophisticated and ambitious. You find them more sophisticated than the Europeans, but I must go to bat for them. It’s not really their fault, it’s the people who brought them up who made them this way. The American girls are more infused with their alleged value than the European girls are. Women are put on such a pedestal over there - it’s a holdover from the time when many men – there because of gold fever – emigrated. There were so few women there - every single one of them was considered a great object of value. In the meantime, the percentages have switched in favor of men, but American women have managed to maintain their position to this day. Even today, the value of a book, a musician, or any other artist is determined by what women have to say. 10 years or so there was a book, the case of Herbert Crump. The description of a typical situation in which a talented, sensitive artist was shattered by the condemnation bestowed on him by the women’s club. The book - a roman à clef - was banned in America. The author had to leave the country and many European writers, well-known and of a certain status, went to bat for him. No book has upset me as much as this one. The next was a book that Everl brought home in 1936 which Paul had enjoyed reading so much. Do you remember? I cannot remember the title anymore, but it took place in Prague.

I think it’s good that you are changing your study to languages, because it’s the only way to find your way through this modern Babel. I am going to forget how to speak at all, because I come into contact with so few people. Do you have an idea of what you will be doing when you finish your school year? Do you also know that I want you to write to me again a description of what you did at Lake Tahoe? There are three and a half months in which I have no idea what my son did. Horrible! Isn’t it?

At my insistence and that of the property manager, Papa got the glass case made. But he wanted to wait 13 days because then it would be the anniversary of the shattering. Now he is quite proud and he goes to work a half an hour early everyday because it takes a lot of time to maintain the new display.

The description of the birthday party inspired me to make a torte and I ate it in your honor. This was much easier because that very day we had 5 dkg per person of coffee. A taste of this inspired our tenant to write a poem, but I think the cake turned out better than the hexameter. He does seem to have noticed that I like this particular kind of poem.

The machine says I’m done now and I have to respect that.

Helen

[around the margins: kisses, kisses, kisses, kisses, kisses, kisses, kisses, kisses, hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmmm, kisses, kisses]

There was an author named Geoffrey Herbert Crump who was born in 1891. The only information I found on him was that he wrote and wrote about poetry.

This letter contains the only reference I’ve come across in my grandmother’s papers to November 9, 1938 — Kristallnacht — and its effect on my family. It sounds like Vitali chose to keep the shattered shop window boarded up for the past two years as a reminder of the event.

We saw a 1934 photo of the shop window on August 23. Below is another photo with a very different display – date unknown. Every inch of the window is filled with handprints, newspaper articles, mystical sayings and symbols, and mandrake root.

Harry’s Fall 1940 Mission High School report card shows that he has been studying Spanish for a year – it is at least his fourth language. In Vienna, he studied German and Latin, and at Mission he is studying English and Spanish.

It is nice to see how well Helene and Vitali are getting along with the couple who shares their apartment. Earlier letters showed Helene’s trepidation and distaste for this unpleasant, but economically necessary, arrangement. At this point, they seem to have found a way to peacefully coexist and even to enjoy each other’s company.