November 5

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The real nightmare begins

Life in Vienna became virtually intolerable for Jews by the late 1930s. Helene and Vitali remained there until late 1943 when Germany arrested Turkish citizens and those of other countries who had been allowed up until that time to remain. If their native countries did not repatriate their citizens, these people were deported to the death camps just as German citizens and those of annexed countries had been.

Despite the humor and affection, Helene’s letters to her children from 1939-1941 give us a vivid picture of the difficult times they lived in – food and heat were in scarce supply. They were not allowed to earn money at the same time as costs skyrocketed. Every attempt to escape Vienna was thwarted by bureaucracy and rule changes. Helene wrote about the times leading up to and including their arrest in the October 15 post. On November 5, 1943, she and Vitali arrived at their respective hells: Ravensbrück and Buchenwald. As we learned in the August 24 post, Vitali did not survive the war.

Germany kept meticulous records and today we see paperwork from Helene and Vitali’s registration into each camp.

September 10

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I first saw today’s letter in 2007 after my mother had a stroke and I was organizing her papers. She had a packet of papers: a few Red Cross letters, Helene’s letters from Istanbul in 1946, correspondence and official documents related to Paul Zerzawy, and this letter sent from Vitali to Helene between Buchenwald and Ravensbrück. If I didn’t have it in my possession, I wouldn’t have known prisoners were able to write to each other between the camps or to receive care packages and letters from family and friends.

Somehow Helene managed to keep this letter safe (although not in one piece) during the next 6 months in Ravensbrück, took it with her to Istanbul and then to San Francisco. A heartbreaking letter of love and hope.

10 September 1944
[The day of Release cannot yet be given. Visits to the Camp are prohibited. Inquiries are useless.] 

[Excerpt from the Camp Rules:
Each Prisoner may in one month receive and send 2 letters or postcards. Submitted letters cannot be more than 4 pages of 15 lines per page and they must be neat and easily read. Money may be sent by Postal order only, giving first name, surname, birthday, prisoner’s number, but without any messages. Including money, photos and sketches in letters is forbidden. Letters and postcards, which do not follow these rules, will not be accepted. Letters that are not neat and are difficult to read will be destroyed. In the Camp one can buy anything. National Socialist newspapers are available, but have to be ordered by the prisoner himself in the Concentration Camp. Food packages may be received at any time and in any quantity.
The Camp Commander]            

Most dear one///I am always with you and your mind. It is all as in a dream. In August, I sent greetings through your friend Rosa. I received a letter from Elsa stating that further packages will be sent to you. I receive on average 6 packages per month. I hope that you receive as many. Elsa sent the letters from Eva to you through the Red Cross. I am certain that you got much joy from them. //We will soon see each other again and I delight endlessly in the thought that we can, as before, live together “en famille.” I predict that we will see the prompt realization of all our wishes.

Vitali

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Reading this letter now that I know Vitali’s fate (see August 24 post) is all the bittersweet. This was Helene’s only written evidence of Vitali’s love and existence as she waited and hoped over the next 35 years for him to arrive and for them to be reunited en famille. 

August 24

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Warning: today’s post may be difficult to read.

In yesterday’s post, I described the most recent part of my journey to learn more about my family, particularly about my grandfather Vitali. Perhaps some of the information has not wanted to be found until quite recently. Or perhaps I wasn’t ready to find it.

Only by searching in the right source at the right time have I been able to get answers to questions, some of which I thought might never be answered. Perhaps a particular document has only recently been digitized or uploaded, or perhaps it’s the luck of the search. My search has certainly been easier than it was for my grandmother and the thousands of people looking for traces of their loved ones at the end of World War II.

This summer I decided to look for information about Vitali at the Arolsen Archives in Germany. I had searched there in the past and found nothing. As I mentioned in the July 5 post, I found several items related to Vitali’s time at Buchenwald, including what may have been the original document that said that Vitali had been seen at the time of liberation – the statement that encouraged Helene and her children to believe that Vitali had survived (helped also by her friend Paula’s letters assuring her that she’d seen and heard from him).  

Häftlings-Personal-Karte, Haim Cohen, Buchenwald p. 2; ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives; https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/G/SIMS/01010503/0273/52439235/002.jpg

Handwritten statement: “This person appears on lists of liberated prisoners (compiled by the American Army)”

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Most of the documents were intake and other official cards, with information about him and the belongings he brought with him to Buchenwald. The document below (which is the front side of the image above) sent a shock wave through me and it took several days to recover. Having an intellectual sense of my grandfather as a prisoner was very different from seeing photos.

Häftlings-Personal-Karte, Haim Cohen, Buchenwald p.1; ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives; https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/G/SIMS/01010503/0273/52439235/001.jpg

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In early August, when I went back into the Arolsen Archives, I found additional documents, including one that answers the question of Vitali’s fate – that he died on a “death march” near Penting, Germany. When I first spoke to historian Corry Guttstadt in late 2017, this was her theory –tens of thousands of men were marched out of Buchenwald in early April 1945 when the German SS realized they were losing the war. Few prisoners on the marches survived.

Investigations regarding the sites Neunburg vorm Wald - Rötz. DE ITS 5.3.2 Tote 29; Attempted Identification of Unknown Dead, https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/H/Child%20Tracing%20Branch%20General%20Documents/General%20Documents/05050000/aa/ao/pl/001.jpg

The document states that Haim Cohen was among the unknown dead who were buried in Penting on April 21, 1945 and were reburied in Neunburg v. Wald in the fall of 1949. He was deemed to be one of the buried based on his prisoner number.

Although the above document was created in 1950, it was never found during the many times my grandmother requested information about her husband.

It appears that Vitali died on April 21, about 165 miles away from Buchenwald. The map below shows the distance between Buchenwald and Penting. Also on the map is Flossenbürg – the only reference to Penting I could find said that the prisoners who were in Penting had come from Flossenbürg concentration camp. It would make sense that they would believe that Vitali had been with the group from Flossenbürg since it was on the way from Buchenwald to Penting.

All of my life, I knew that all four of my grandparents had been interned in concentration camps. My grandmother Helene was the only grandparent I ever met. It was comforting to think that Vitali might one day fulfill his wife’s and children’s hopes that he would show up on their doorstep.

For most of my life, I avoided reading books and watching films about the Holocaust – I never felt I “needed to” learn about the specifics because I had internalized the loss and trauma and didn’t feel the need to gain more understanding or empathy. It’s taken me until now to be able to look more closely – poring over my grandmother’s letters and stories, and looking until I finally found what happened to Vitali. Over the past few weeks I have felt sad and anxious and sick. It has taken me many days to sit down and write this post. Last week, I arranged to meet with my translator to look at some of the Buchenwald documents before writing today’s post, and conveniently “forgot” to hit send so she was not able to look at them in time. But they really need little translation.

When Corry and I spoke about discovering Vitali’s fate, she hoped that I would feel a sense of closure, that I would feel better no longer wondering why he never contacted his family if he survived. At this point, I guess it’s good to know that he didn’t desert his family. Still, it’s hard to let go of the dream my family held for so long and accept that the life of this smart, resourceful man was cut short in this awful way.

I’m glad that at the same time that I was discovering evidence of Vitali’s death, I found more information about his life in Vienna through newspaper articles (see yesterday’s post). He was much more than a victim or a statistic.

After learning about Vitali’s fate, I began thinking about my grandmother’s time in Istanbul. She arrived there in April 1945, about the time Vitali would have been marched out of Buchenwald. She remained in Istanbul for an entire year, boarding the SS Vulcania on April 14, 1946 and arriving in the U.S. on April 26. The Jewish period of mourning is twelve months. Unknowingly, my grandmother spent the entire year after Vitali’s death in his birthplace. There seems something sadly poetic about that.

August 21

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In the June 21 post, we saw several attempts by Helene from 1947-1955 to find out what had happened to Vitali at the end of the war. Today we have a few more letters, this time from 1947 and 1949. She never lost hope that her husband was still alive.

In the earlier post, the form dated July 7, 1947 was addressed to Georg Weil who was writing from Frankfurt on Helene’s behalf. I do not know who he was but from the August 30, 1947 letter below, it appears that he and Helene had a personal connection.

Dear Mrs. Cohen,

We were happy to receive your letter of August 21 and to see that we really were able to help you by taking away a small amount of your troubles. Now we just have a sincere desire to find your husband.  That has not happened yet. However, every morning at 9:15 on all radio stations in Germany, we now hear reports of missing persons.  We have asked to have your husband’s name mentioned in these reports.  If he has perhaps already left Germany, possibly someone knows something about him. We hope so.

My wife and I send you warm greetings.

Georg Weil

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From August 17, 1949 via the Zionist Organization of America in San Francisco to the Jewish Agency for Palestine in Jerusalem:

Subject: Inquiry into whereabouts of Haim Cohen
Nationality: Turkish
Last Place of Residence: Seidlgasse 14 Vienna, Austria
Born: 1888
Place of Birth: Istanbul, Turkey
Migrated to Austria: 1919

Gentlemen:

I have last seen the above, my husband, in October 1943, when I was transported to Ravensbruck, while he was arrested and interned in Buchenwald. I received his last letter in February, 1945 from Buchenwald.

I have received on July 7, 1947 information from the I.R.C. Search Tracing Division in Wiesbaden that my husband was registered in Buchenwald under the number 31452, that the reason for his imprisonment was “political”.

Last information available: “Alive in camp at time of liberation.”

Inasmuch as my husband does not know of my whereabouts, I am most anxious to have him traced wherever there might be a chance to find him. Ther eis still hope that he might have entered Israel recently.

I would be extremely grateful to you if you could conduct an inquiry as to whether this is the case and have me informed. 

Should you desire any further information I would only be too pleased to furnish it. 

I wish to thank you heartily in anticipation for the trouble you are taking.

Yours very respectfully,
Helene Cohen

Without the computer and telecommunications tools we have today, somehow people found each other after the war. There were millions of pieces of papers in disparate locations around the globe. In the first letter above, we see that one method of searching was to name missing persons on the radio. Amazing that anybody found anyone. Helene’s requests went to organizations around the globe.

March 18

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Mail to prisoners of war

Today we have another letter from Erich Zerzawy to his brother Robert in Bohemia. At this point Erich had been a POW in Russia for almost a year. Although the letter is dated March 18, you can see from the postmarks that the letter didn’t arrive in Brüx until 3 months later, first going through Russia, a censor in Vienna (triangular postmark).

18./III.17.

My dear Robert!

I was very pleased to get your letter, even though it concerns me that your health is not particularly good. This seems to be one of the first letters sent to Beresowka sent on January 16. I wish you all the best. See to it that you regain your health as soon as possible so that you will be healthy like I am. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to write to you in detail as I would like to. With the colossal escalation here in Russia, they have limited our correspondence to a card a week and a letter every two weeks. I hope you get my next letter. I’ll switch off between writing to you and writing to Papa. You’ll have to console the others as long as I have to do that. For example, yesterday I got 2 cards from Franzl Reh from Neumarkt (December 12 and 15 sent to Trojaksovosk). I wrote to thank them, etc.. I didn’t know about Ernst Sedlacek’s present, but I will try to look for it. I thank Grandmother for all her kind thoughts for me and for the care package she has promised. These are doubly appreciated. By the way, it is best to send those as small Field Post packages. Larger packages can take a long time to come. The others can take 4 weeks. Austrian cigarettes, handkerchiefs, etc. Sincerely,

Erich

Written on the side: Please also Wickelgamaschen [Puttee - leg wraps], socks, suspenders

Until I delved into my family papers, I had no idea that POWs were able to at least sporadically send mail and to receive mail and packages. Even in Ravensbrück and Buchenwald, prisoners received packages – Helene mentions sharing care package contents with fellow prisoners in her letter to Lucienne Simier posted on January 22. 

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Below is a letter from Helene’s husband Haim (Vitali) Cohen to Otto Zrzavy in Prague. This is one of the very few examples I have of Vitali’s writing. Otto may have been Paul Zerzawy’s first cousin, although earlier in the war I have letters from him from Haifa. Perhaps he returned to Europe? But if so, how was he still safe and able to send packages?

4 March 1945

Dear Otto, Got your package on time on February 8, very happy to get it.  I hope Helene has received news from you too; don’t forget to say hello to her for me. I’m sure you have told Paul and Robert our new addresses.  I wish you all the best (? – covered by the “postal examiner” stamp) and remain your

Haim Cohen

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As Vitali is writing this, Helene is about to be released from Ravensbrück and put on a ship to Istanbul, as we saw on March 15. They never hear from each other again.