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Vienna 5 September 1940
Honey-Harry-Bubi! I am sad since I haven’t heard anything from you since June 10th and my weak brain does not want to think that letters haven’t arrived, especially letters from you. To comfort me, Papa is reading me something from Il Messaggero. “On the second of this month there was a shipment of letters that was seized on the Island of Bermuda. “Letters from your son, you can wait.” Yeah, I can wait, I’ve learned how to wait. The zeitgeist of the times has taught us all to wait. For a few days now, I have not had those bad dreams anymore and I’ve at least been able to get some rest at night from the bad spirits which were making an inferno out of my head. I hope that despite the post being confiscated that we will soon get a letter from you. I hope God is merciful. Everl wrote in her last letter that she knew you had written, but I am not that easy to convince. I didn’t want to send alarming letters to Tillie, Bertha, and Hilda because I feel that I have tested their patience enough. Harry, darling, do you know what it means that I haven’t known since June 10 where you’ve been, what you’ve been up to, how you felt? I know I’ve never been an angel, but it’s very hard to imagine that I have so many sins to atone for. In the Bible it says if God loves someone, He punishes them particularly harshly. I almost would prefer it that God loved me less. Just like a cat always lands on its feet, I can write about whatever God knows, but all I can think of is the 10th of June and that I haven’t heard from you since then.
I asked Everl to write to me and let me know if she has gotten all the letters without any missing, but she still owes me an answer to that question and I would really like to know what number was on the last letter you received. When I have a letter from you, I’ll write to everyone, but until then it’s not really possible for me. My head is smoking and my thoughts are working and soon I will be running around on fire like the “hot soldier” of Meyring.
Our new renters have moved in with boxes full of books and music. This is like an El Dorado for you and Paul to whom I’m going to write today despite the fact that my head is on fire.
Would you do me a favor, little Harry son of mine? Please repeat what you may have written me and which the bad postal service has been keeping from me. You should be going to school again, but in the first school days there’s not much going on, just like the first school days here - they talk about the plans, the syllabus, and all that sort of thing. So there’s still time for you to tell me about your odyssey. Oh, how much I am looking forward to that. I have always sent letters to Everl’s address because I didn’t want to bother Hilda with having to send them on to you. I also didn’t know if you in this divorce paradise have a permanent address. Divorce paradise! Maybe these germs and bacteria are swimming around there and you want to divorce me? Isn’t that ridiculous? See! We, getting a divorce? Only a sick brain thinks of such things. If I write any longer, I will make you crazy too. You know, one fool makes ten.
I’m going to end, but if I don’t get news from you pretty soon, then the farmer Helene will not send Jochen away but she will be calling in the gendarmes. Harry will want to write letters, the post office will want to deliver them, the censors will be in a hurry, and those on the Bermuda Islands will not want to hijack any more letters, etc., etc.
Haven’t you had enough Harry my boy?
Keep loving me and prove it to me by making up for all these letters and all that has been taken from me.
I kiss you,
HelenGreetings to all.
Helene sent the letters we see today and tomorrow as a pair, one to Harry and one to Eva. Although the letters were shared among the relatives, she often made sure to focus a letter on an individual child even if she was writing to each of them on the same day. Being an only child, I don’t really appreciate the importance of doing this, but I remember my mother making absolutely certain that she always gave gifts of exactly the same value to each of Harry’s sons, never wanting either to feel he was considered more special than the other. I imagine as a child she kept track of every gift Harry received, never wanting to miss out or be cheated.
As always, there is the continuing theme of the lack of letters from Harry – you can hear Helene’s constant mantra over the last 3 months: “June 10, June 10, June 10” – she cannot stop counting the days since she last heard directly from her son. I believe that Harry worked for Julius Zentner’s produce company in Sacramento during the summer between his junior and senior year of high school – perhaps he really didn’t write any letters during this time.
Helene tries to be as humorous as possible by imagining that Harry’s letters had been lost in the Bermuda. This passage confirms for us Vitali’s language fluency. He read about the incident when reading an Italian newspaper. This reminded me again of Harry’s delight in reading newspapers from all over the world. I’m sure Vitali would have been as thrilled as Harry was to find the world’s papers at his fingertips available on the internet.
Helene uses the term “divorce.” She speaks separately of her sense of Harry divorcing her by not writing. Was she describing the separation of parents and children or the children being separated from each other as soon as they arrived in San Francisco? Harry was sent to live with Hilda and Nathan Firestone and Eva to Bertha and George Schiller. This meant that they lived in different neighborhoods did not attend the same high school. They only saw each other on weekends. By the summer of 1940, Eva had graduated from high school and was about to begin her nursing training.
With money tight, Helene and Vitali are forced to sublet part of their apartment to strangers.
I had not heard of Gustav Meyrink until very recently, when Michael Simonson, the Director of Public Outreach at the Leo Baeck Institute, suggested that I attend the August meeting of their virtual book club when they would be discussing Meyrink’s book “The Golem.” A few months ago I consulted with Michael and told him about my family. He thought I would be interested in Meyrink’s fascination with the supernatural, given my grandfather’s profession. Clearly, my family was familiar with his work.
The phrase Ein Narr macht zehn Narren was a common aphorism. I found several variations when (unsuccessfully) looking for the original source. One version goes: Ein Narr macht zehn Narren, aber tausend Kluge noch keinen Klugen: One fool makes ten fools, but a thousand clever ones do not make a clever one.