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Today’s letter from Helene in Vienna to her children in San Francisco is the 124th numbered letter she has sent. In the August 30 post, we saw her 48th letter from a year earlier -- she was writing a letter every 5 days plus an unknown number of other letters to friends and family.
Vienna 2 September 1941
My dear children! No mail again. I should probably have gotten used to this already, but probably that’s not possible or else I would have learned to do it after all this time. As I reflect on this, I am not really in the mood to write long letters, and I will just confine myself to assuring you that we are doing okay, and that everything is the same. There wouldn’t be anything more to say about us if my desire to write were not below the freezing point.
The weather is also not improving my mood. We’ve had a few rainy days which weren’t that intense and not such that they didn’t even let the sun through, but midsummer is coming to its end and the temperatures in the morning and evening are quite cool already. A cold, violent wind made me unpack my winter clothes today, which I will do right away when I’m done with this little scribble to you, which serves to greet and to kiss you. But for the time being, I am not quite ready. Since I had planned to free myself of everything I had until recently, you can assume from the way I am writing that I am making this kind of division between the past and future. I don’t even think any more about having some grammar professor make comments about the way I write.
Papa got his pullover out this morning. He was cold, so I will get right on it to take out the carefully packed winter clothing. I am doing it with a heavy heart because I thought that you would be with me to help me with this. Maybe it’s the other way around: “Man leads and God thinks.” Maybe that’s the way it should be, but I wonder what God is thinking about.
We have acquaintances who have gotten letters from August 16, but the last one we got is dated July 23rd. I hope as always to get news from you soon. Now I will close because I want to get to the activity that I mentioned already.
Keep us in your hearts and write a lot please? I hug you and hope that you are as I am wishing for you.
With sincere kisses and greetings to all the loved ones. Your
Helen
We feel Helene’s deep sadness and frustration. Their bags have been packed (and unpacked) for more than a year in the hope that all of their paperwork and tickets would be in order and they could board a ship for America. The rules and goal posts kept changing – each time they thought they were on their way, something prevented their success. What cruel torture – elation at the thought of being reunited with their children, followed by agonizing failure and the need to gather their inner resources to try again. Somehow, they never gave up hope, the one thing that kept them going. But today it feels that her ever-present hope is deserting her. She had at last believed they would succeed and board the Ciudad de Sevilla on July 15, and that her children would already have helped her unpack her bags in San Francisco.
Helene mentions that she has stopped caring about writing perfectly — most of her previous letters have been typed perfectly, whereas today she has written in several corrections.
Helene reverses the saying: Der Mensch denkt und Gott lenkt - “Man proposes and God disposes.” According to Wikipedia, it is from the Latin Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit from a 15th century book by Thomas à Kempis. I would imagine that Helene used this quote often, given her self-identification as a fatalist – see posts from February 15, February 18 and August 1.
Although this letter was her 124th, I am missing most of the letters written since #110 on July 1 — the censors or cruel fate in the guise of undelivered mail kept her children from hearing knowing the details of their parents’ failed attempt. They must have felt further from their parents than ever.