Historian Corry Guttstadt (author of Turkey, the Jews, and the Holocaust) asked me: “How did your grandmother learn to write so well in English?” Her letters from Istanbul at the end of the war were beautifully written, almost poetic. I understood from my mother that Helene was extremely well read in several languages. The entire family loved words and wordplay. Her children both quickly became fluent in English, able to write cleverly in their adopted tongue. Harry easily learned other languages as well.
Recently I realized that some of the letters my grandmother sent from Vienna to relatives in San Francisco prior to 1942 were written in English. The letters were fairly well written, but nowhere near as fluent as the letters written in 1945-1946. I wondered whether it was a function of how stressed and sad my grandmother was while stuck in limbo in Vienna, having had to send her children away, hoping to come to San Francisco, but trapped by confusing laws about citizenship, heartless bureaucracy, and a lack of funds to be able to join her children. Her many letters over that period indicate how distraught she was.
After coming to the US in 1946, in addition to letters, my grandmother kept miscellaneous items. Harry had kept two of her binders, which included newspaper articles; poems, essays, and songs that she typed up in English, sometimes including the original German; and notes and memories of her own. Sometimes I had heard of the authors, sometimes not.
In one binder I found a poem she had typed up entitled “The Sky of Ravensbrück” by Gemma Glueck-La Guardia [sic], with a small newspaper clipping noting Gemma Gluck’s death in 1962.
This caused me to research who Gemma Gluck was. I discovered that she was a prominent person, although not because of her poetry. She was the sister of New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. The siblings were born in Italy. Fiorello came to the US for his education and remained. Gemma stayed in Europe, married a Hungarian Jew, and ended up at Ravensbrück during the war. Gemma had written a memoir which was republished in 2007 under the title “Fiorello’s Sister: Gemma LaGuardia Gluck’s Story”, Rochelle G. Saidel, ed.
Although I had seen the poem in my grandmother’s papers, I didn't read it until I discovered that I could not find poetry by Gemma Gluck. It then occurred to me that my grandmother might have known her. The last stanza in the poem bears this theory out, beginning: “This is for my Helen dear...”
Awhile later, I found a small page ripped from a notebook with the poem written in pencil, but not in my grandmother’s hand. I imagine that this is the original poem, given to my grandmother by Gemma before she left Ravensbrück.
The original, written by Gemma in Ravensbrück?
I bought Gluck’s memoir, wondering whether I would read about my grandmother in its pages. I did not, but I may have found the answer to Corry’s question - why my grandmother wrote so well in English. Chapter 5 is entitled “Underground English Classes” - apparently Gemma taught English to fellow prisoners who hoped to end up in English speaking countries after the war. I imagine that my grandmother was one of her students.
