A Family Heirloom

June 5, 2023 Helen Goldsmith

As I mentioned in my last post, in 1979, my mother flew to France to join me at the end of my junior year abroad in Montpellier, France. She had not been to Europe since she and her brother had been forced to flee Vienna 40 years earlier.

While in Paris walking around Montmartre, my mother paid a sketch artist to make a charcoal portrait of me. I never felt that the portrait looked much like me, but my mother was happy with the likeness. Perhaps I just didn’t like the way I looked! She was inspired to have the drawing made thanks to a pastel portrait she had of her own mother which had been done in the 1930s in Vienna. My mother and her brother brought the portrait them when they came to the U.S. in 1939.

Upon arriving back home in San Francisco, my mother framed the sketch and hung it on her bedroom wall, accompanying the one of her mother which already hung there. Although I didn’t like my own portrait, I thought the artist captured my grandmother’s likeness well.

I don’t recall seeing my grandmother’s portrait before 1979, but perhaps it was hanging in our home throughout my childhood.

When my mother moved to the condo I live in now, her mother’s portrait hung prominently in the dining room. I loved seeing her each time I visited, looking out on her family. After my mother’s death, I stored the portrait safely in a closet.

In 2017, when I began going through my family papers, I brought out the portrait again to add it to the digital archive I was making. I then hung it up in our hallway. Looking at a newly digitized photo of my mother’s 16th birthday party from May 1937, I could see clearly something I had not noticed on the small original 2-1/2x3inch photo – my grandmother’s portrait was hanging on the wall in their dining room! I loved that my grandmother was now looking at me every time I walked down the hallway, just as her image had looked on she and her family in their home in Vienna.

Recently, I wondered whether my grandmother’s nephew Robert Zerzawy had made the portrait – he had been an accomplished artist. I was going to ask Sherlock Cohn (a woman who helps identify people and places in old photos) to compare the drawing to others I know he had made. Before doing that, however, it occurred to me to take the portrait (gingerly) out of the frame and see whether it was signed. Indeed it was! As so often has happened on this journey, I discovered that the story I told myself about the object was not true. The portrait was signed and dated by Wilhelm Wachtel in 1937 – so the portrait was quite new when my mother celebrated her birthday. My grandmother’s 50th birthday was in November 1936. Perhaps the portrait was made in honor of that milestone.

There is not much information available on Wilhelm Wachtel. It appears that he was born in Poland in 1875 and died in the US in 1952. He seems to have been prolific and fairly well-known when he was alive. If you do an internet search, you can see many examples of his work.

What an amazing artifact that gets richer each time I look at it!

Vienna

May 5, 2023 Helen Goldsmith

In a recent session of Barbara Krasner’s Writing Family History group, we wrote about a geographic place that is meaningful to our family. I chose Vienna, Austria:

I am in Vienna: the one I visited in 1978-1979 with a friend over Christmas break during my junior year abroad in France and again the following summer with my mother on her first visit back to Europe since fleeing in 1939; the Vienna of my mother’s youth in the 1920s, and of her own mother’s youth at the turn of the 20th Century.

The music of Strauss fills the air. I am swaying to the strains of the “Blue Danube.” I am in line for standing room only tickets to attend a performance of Die Fledermaus on January 1, 1979, the opera played every new year at the Vienna State Opera. I wasn’t able to attend the New Year’s Eve performance, but I came close! I had one of my first “Twilight Zone” experiences that night as we waited for the streetcar to return to our pension after the performance. Out of the darkness a woman completely enveloped in a huge coat against the bitter cold appeared and said “Hello, Helen Goldsmith.” She was a friend from UC Berkeley who was studying in Edinburgh while I was in Montpellier, France. What a strange and magical experience to have someone from home suddenly appear!

Now I am in Stadtpark near the statue of Strauss. I imagine my mother and uncle playing on the grass when they were children, with my grandmother delightedly watching them. Despite the fact that everywhere I look are signs prohibiting people from walking on the grass.

I walk to the Hotel Sacher for a cup of coffee mit schlag, and a slice of the famous Sacher Torte, a two-layer chocolate cake with apricot jam between the layers, topped with dark chocolate icing. When I was a child in San Francisco, my mother would sometimes make a Sacher Torte for special occasions. My mouth waters as I imagine licking the spoon after she finishes icing the cake.

Now, I am peering in the window of Café Centrale, around 1906, seeing my 20-year old grandmother, a young shop girl whose social life includes visiting the café most days. She lives in modest quarters and the café is her living room. She reads the latest newspapers from Vienna and around the world and meets her friends for conversation, intellectual arguments, and laughter.

Now it’s 1934, and I am on the Stubenring looking at Libansky & Co, my grandparents’ stationery shop. This is the heyday of my grandfather’s “magic shop.” He stands outside basking in the sun, leaning against the building. He chats up passers-by, once in awhile inviting one of them into the shop for him to read their palms or sell them a mandrake root for their protection.

A postcard of the Stubenring. The arrow points to my grandparents’s shop, Libansky & Co.

Vitali at the shop window with customers in 1934.

Again recalling my visit over Christmas break in 1978-79, I am back at the pension near St. Stephen’s Cathedral. An old widow runs it. She has a small, wheezy, unfriendly dog who roams the halls at night. At breakfast, one of the guests – an employee of the Mexican embassy – says in stilted yet lovely English, “Madam, your dog does not look at me with good eyes.” I couldn’t have said it better.

St. Stephen’s Cathedral and ticket to *Die Fledermaus* from 1979.

The pension is above a nightclub (perhaps a strip club) called “Casablanca.” When my mother and I stay there the following summer, I ask her to go into the club and get me a poster as a gift for the friend I had visited Vienna with several months earlier. She is too embarrassed to do so, but teaches me the German to go in and ask myself. I am successful and secure two posters, one for my friend and one for me. A few years ago, my husband and I had dinner with friends and reminisced about student travel. It turned out that they had stayed at the very same pension and were thrilled when I gave them the poster.

Final image: it is the summer of 1979. My mother has decided she needs a copy of her birth certificate in case all the other documentation she has about her existence will not be sufficient for her to apply for Social Security benefits in a few years. We go to the Jewish organization that has all of the old books of Jewish records. It is the 4th of July, which seems auspicious! Births were recorded by hand in huge tomes. The less-than-friendly employee unenthusiastically hands my mother the book for 1921, the year of her birth. She is nowhere to be found and my mother is crestfallen. My mother decides that since we are there, she might as well see whether her brother appears in the 1924 book so the visit might be worthwhile. We find him immediately. My mother listlessly continues to turn the pages without much hope and suddenly finds her own birth recorded a few years after she was born. For some reason, her father hadn’t wanted to deal with the bureaucracy to record the information (or considered it an invasion of privacy?) until after his second child, a son, was born.

Copy of Harry’s birth certificate from 1979.

I smell the coffee and pastry, hear the strains of Strauss waltzes, see the Vienna of my mother’s childhood, and the Vienna my grandmother loved before it became an unfriendly hellscape. What is the real Vienna – the idyllic playground or the antisemitic nightmare? Probably both. I look forward to visiting again to see whether there is a Vienna that is mine.

December 8

December 8, 2021 Helen Goldsmith

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Today’s letter from Helene was written a year later than the ones we’ve seen in the most recent posts – as Helene and Vitali experience their second year apart from their children. Today she writes to Eva, tomorrow she will write to Harry.

Vienna, 8 December 1940
My golden Eva-child!
At this time of the year, it’s a hard decision for Papa to crawl out from under the feathers, especially on a Sunday. My attempt to make this happen: “breakfast is on the table!” But that doesn’t always work either. Only the call of the Valkyries “Hojotoho, the mail is here” - has the desired effect with him. Since I recently in a most vile manner, took advantage of his gullibility as far as it goes, yesterday even though he heard the mail delivery woman’s doorbell ring, he wouldn’t get up out of bed. But he believed that a less interesting piece of mail had arrived, because I replied to his: “bring the mail in” with “no” but only because of the rhyme [herein/in; nein/no], in order to compete with Harry. When I started laughing at letter #10, he realized there must be mail from you and he jumped right out of bed. A second jump was to breakfast, which we then had together with Homeric laughter. I don’t know, Everl, if you have done the right thing in having Harry not read your letters anymore. If I still remember my little son well, he will only with great difficulty be able to give up on the little tidbits that are in there. I thank you especially for the wishes for my birthday and one has to be glad that not all wishes are fulfilled: “you shall get fat, you shall get fat, three times as fat” [a takeoff on the traditional birthday song]. It’s horrible what you wished me there. I certainly agree with the third line of the song: “you should come here, you should come here, very very soon” [another takeoff]. This I wished myself for my birthday this year, and since this wish appears to be more necessary than to increase my girth three times – which the Lord himself would certainly see – I hope that this wish would especially be fulfilled by Him. It is noble the way I am now. I wanted to give some of the birthday kisses to Papa, but he didn’t take them. He wants to pick them up himself, and he says he wants to do that as soon as possible. I have nothing against that.
In order to shorten my wait for the mail, I had decided this week to scrub the floor and wash it. Papa saw a storm cloud on my forehead and he left the house early. I prepared the floor as if it were the only reason for the mail being late, and moaning and groaning it put up with my abuse. In this way, I let it out my displeasure and it was easier to do the work rhythmically. I remembered a refrain from the Lipinskaya repertoire: “I didn’t know I was so strong” When I was about at the last third of the work, my anger and my strength were about done, I made do with the battle cry: “strong muscles, fabulous”. Upon finishing at about 5 in the afternoon (I started at 8 in the morning), in my childish disposition, I hoped to be rewarded for it with the afternoon mail which of course didn’t show up. What should I do? Should I scrub the floor again? That would be stupid. Papa said he wouldn’t be surprised if I acted like a witch: if in the morning, noon and night, he arrived and found me riding my broomstick, which I could not really deny; my uniform was quite sporty, like something you’d wear in Blocksberg. [currently known as Brocken]
Yesterday we visited the girls, although we had actually intended to stay home. But they were so insistent about it that we didn’t stick with our original plan. They met two married couples this week. One couple, whom they know by sight, live in Laimgrubengasse. They could have probably handled that. But with the other one, maybe not. The dear Hansi Niese, who must be clairvoyant, sang:
Yes on the Lahmgruab'n and on the Wieden,
Dulidulijöhö, dulidulijöhö
yes, the taste is very different,
Dulidulijöhö, dulidulijöhö
I did my best to give them a lesson in a sense of community, but some people just don’t get the point of that.
Now I come back to your letter. You wrote that Harry had made the point several times that you were looking very nice these days. Why don’t you see at the post office if you might be able to send a picture? Paul could probably take one of you.
Many kisses,
Helen

Having finally received mail from her beloved children, Helene is in a lighthearted mood. She makes puns and (mis)quotes songs. When relating a story about visiting friends, she includes a verse from a bawdy song.

I don’t think I have a photo of Eva taken at this time. Below is Eva’s yearbook photo which probably would have been taken in the spring of 1940. She looks far more serious and her hair and dress are far more conservative than most of her classmates — perhaps she has begun looking more “American” by the time of this letter.

July 7

July 7, 2021 Helen Goldsmith

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

I often think about the events and changes in the world that my grandmother experienced – no one would have imagined the life she led, beginning in a small town in Bohemia and ending up in San Francisco, with a full life and several years of nightmarish hardship along the way.

I suppose one might say the same when looking back at almost anyone who lived a long life. I’m sure that as a child my mother Eva never imagined the life she would live and the places she would go.

After a childhood in Vienna, several months in Istanbul to obtain a passport, and completing high school in San Francisco, Eva received a nursing degree in 1943 and went to work. As we have seen in letters from her brother Harry in the army, she had dreams of doing her part for the war effort, or at least of traveling the world. After she married, she continued her education and received an MA in Education from San Francisco State College (now University) in the late 1950s. [More than 20 years later I studied in the Counseling program at SF State and had a course with one of the same professors!]

The MA degree made her eligible to work as a public health nurse for the city of San Francisco, which she did for 20 years through the 1960s, 1970s, and into the early 1980s. As with her mother, Eva had a front row seat to the cultural changes, since she was working with city residents who needed health care and assistance. She made home visits, worked in the public health center clinic, was a school nurse, gave health education presentations. In the 1960s, she made home visits in the Haight Ashbury (I don’t know whether there was a disconnect between a nurse with a European accent who had a strict code of conduct and high expectations working with hippies during the summer of love, etc.). She saw huge changes in the social safety net: many of the single room occupancy buildings that provided cheap housing for many of her clients were razed to make way for new high-rises and offices downtown and changes in mental health care. As both a city resident and an employee, she was shocked by the events of November 1978 – the mass murders at Jonestown and the murders of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone (and Dianne Feinstein becoming mayor). By the time she retired in July of 1984, the AIDS epidemic had a name and was in full force.

May 9

May 9, 2021 Helen Goldsmith

Mother’s Day

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

As I tell my family story, I realize how much of it is about mothers and daughters – strong women protecting their children from adversity as much as possible, trying to give them a better life, as mothers everywhere have been doing since time immemorial. Several of these women married men who, although charming and intelligent, did not have a practical bone in their bodies, leaving day-to-day affairs to their wives.

Rosa and Helene (and perhaps Helene’s father Adolph?) planned to move from Bohemia to Vienna in the early 1900s. Unfortunately, Rosa’s eldest daughter Ida died in 1902, leaving 4 children under the age of 7. I believe Adolph died at this time as well. Helene moved to Vienna on her own. In 1903, Rosa’s daughter Mathilde married her sister’s widower Julius Zerzawy. She died in 1910 and Rosa again took care of her motherless grandchildren until the end of World War I. It must have been heartbreaking for Rosa to be called upon to bury her daughters and care for her grandchildren, and then to lose three of those five grandchildren to war and illness before 1920. Yet, she soldiered on trying to hold the family together.

We learned a bit about Helene’s grandmother Babette and mother Rosa in the post from February 16.

I think often of my own mother’s strength. At a time when most American teenagers were going to high school dances, Eva and her brother had left their parents behind in Vienna, imagining that they would see each other again in a few months. She finished high school and began earning money to send to her parents, hoping that what little she could provide would ease their lives and perhaps help them make the journey to America. After the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, Eva and Harry stopped receiving letters from their parents and had no idea what was happening to them. Eva completed nursing school and began working. Her brother joined the army as soon as he was able. By 1943, Eva was in San Francisco with neither her parents nor her brother. She must have been terrified that she might never hear from her parents again and that Harry would be killed in the war, particularly given how often he talked in his letters about longing to see combat. In 1945, Eva must have been thrilled to know that her mother was safe, but she also had to find the resources to help her mother come to the U.S. and help support her when she arrived. My mother was always an ultra-responsible person, but I can’t imagine how difficult it was to shoulder the responsibility of supporting her parents (and probably trying to act maternally to her younger brother who wouldn’t have been interested), all before she was 25 years old.

I am touched that one of the few cards my grandmother kept was a Mother’s Day card I gave her at some point in the 1960s.

I am so grateful to all of my foremothers. Happy Mother’s Day!

May 5

May 5, 2021 Helen Goldsmith

100 years ago today…

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

My mother Eva was born 100 years ago today. I have found as I tell my family’s story that she often gets the least amount of attention. Some of it is due to documentation – I have so many of her mother’s and brother’s words, but few of her own. In life, too, she often was relegated to the sidelines. She did not like to call attention to herself and usually listened more than she spoke. Her brother Harry had a huge personality and charmed and filled the room.

Eva was smart and independent, much like her mother. She had hoped to be a physician, something unusual for a woman in the early 20th century. She was so self-conscious about her accent and other-ness as a new arrival in the U.S. that she never pursued that dream, deciding instead to become a nurse. She longed for a life of adventure and travel. She loved opera and music, even trying to enjoy the music I listened to. She was an avid tennis and bridge player. She loved to drive, and whenever we went on vacation when I was young, we would get in the car and drive as far as we could during her time off, usually two weeks a year. In retirement, she traveled all over the world and loved every minute. She had a wonderful sense of humor and loved playing with language, writing clever poems (in English!) for people on special occasions. She always wanted to help, had high expectations of everyone but especially of herself, knitted beautiful hats and sweaters, and showed her love by showing up whenever and wherever she was needed. She did not believe she deserved nice things and was reluctant to spend money on herself. Although she was generous with others, she would not rely on others for anything. Above everything, she loved her family.

Eva lived a long life: she escaped the horrors of the Nazis and was able to survive and thrive in San Francisco. After some early support from relatives here as she completed high school, she made her way in the world – she completed nursing school, married, became the primary breadwinner, bought a house, earned a masters degree, became a public health nurse, raised a child, cared for her mother, retired, and explored as much of the world as she could. She had a debilitating stroke when she was 85. There were two silver linings: first, the stroke destroyed the part of her brain that was constantly judging herself so she was much mellower; and second, her brother Harry visited weekly and brought her great joy – after not seeing each other that often during their adult lives, their final days together were sweet and meaningful to them both. They would play backgammon (like the tric-trac of their childhood) and listen to music they both loved (thanks to their mother). She died 10 years ago, just a few months before her 90th birthday.

Eva in Vienna - 1921-1939:

Eva in the U.S. - 1939-2011:

From Helene to her daughter Eva on her 50th birthday:

S.F. May 5, 1971
Everly,
May the coming birthdays be happy & gay as I wish you, to see when I will blink from above. From there it will not happen that I forget this day, happy that the Herrgott gave me my sweet Everl.
Your forgetful
mother
Helen

Eva on some of her many travels:

March 9

March 9, 2021 Helen Goldsmith

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Today’s letter is from soldier Harry Lowell to his sister Eva who was a nurse in San Francisco.

New Guinea
March 7, 1944
Dear “Angel in White”,
Thank you for your letters, old girl; letters here are as welcome to us as a piece of a boot is to a starved Arctic explorer – even more so.
The news about your quitting your good job had me sort of worried, in view of Tillie’s probable anger. (I like to have “all quiet on the home front.”) Furthermore, your intentions to accept that Standard Oil offer led me to believe that you are becoming more and more like your brother – looney is the word. I appreciate your adventurous spirit because I know I’d do the same thing if I were you. Due to my valuable experiences in the desert and tropics, I am in a position to give you sound brotherly advice; my “cons” outnumber your “pros” by a longshot. I can about imagine what your “pros” are, so lend an ear to the “cons” of your affectionate brother who is always looking out for the welfare of his foolish little sister. (How dramatic, eh? I would be pretty good at writing soap operas don’t you think?) Well, to begin with, life there will be different from what you expect it to be. I know what it is like to be far away from family, friends, and things which in civilization are taken for granted but which, far away, gain a thousand percent in value. It’s a sort of loneliness that overcomes one. To add to your tasks as a nurse, that feeling of loneliness and quasi seclusion from the outside world and its comforts, would be foolish. (As you are not very religiously inclined you are apt to go batty before you know it). That part of the world has nothing to offer in scenic beauty or nice weather; desert may be the only scenery surrounding you and intense heat is the climate there. (I suppose you’ve read about the hardships of the Foreign Legionnaires. That Standard Oil plant may be just as secluded as a legion’s fort.) A further “con” is that a pretty face on a nurse in that corner of the world is a disadvantage rather than an advantage. If the men over there feel the way we lonely soldiers here do – o lá lá – some maternity ward would have plenty to do. (By cracky, I sound like an old grandmother!) Believe me, Eva, one does the most irrational things away from civilization. (The nurses here have the reputation of the WACs of whom I wrote you from Fort Warren.) There are more “cons” yet, but they would fill pages. Tell me in your next letter whether my lecture surpasses that of Paul’s.
Things are about the same as before; New Guinea is a good place to stay away from. If it weren’t for the postal regulations I would like to send a nice foot-long constrictor to Ursula’s mother [Ursula was a friend of Eva’s from nursing school]. I’ve seen quite a few big snakes and rats that were about two feet long. There are many peculiar insects to make life more interesting and itching.
The food isn’t bad at all.
How are things going in San Francisco? I would give a lot to be there right now. Daydreaming is becoming a habit with me.
Have you seen Hilda lately? I hope Paul is coming along fine.
So you are teaching French to Ursula; what is she going to do with that knowledge? I think English will be used instead of French as the international and diplomatic language.
I certainly envy you for the opportunity of going skiing every weekend! Well, I’ll be back soon; it won’t be long now.
Well, that’s about all there is to write at present.
As to my advice, I hope I have described the situation as dark as possible. It should give you something to think about; anyway, think twice before you rush into such an adventure. (Ugh.)
Love,
Harry
(Chaplain)
P.S. Give my regards to everyone.
P.P.S. Please, send me some copies of the Sunday editions of the Examiner and Chronicle.
P.P.S.S. If it’s possible send me also some Readers’ Digests.
Thank you.

This letter gives us a glimpse into the lives of Helene’s children after living almost 4-1/2 years in the U.S. They have been separated from their parents since 1939 and have heard virtually nothing from them since late 1941. I imagine they know their parents have been sent to the camps, but communication was far more difficult and sporadic than it had been while Helene and Vitali were stranded in Vienna. Eva and Harry are unable to do anything at this point to assist their parents.

This letter is filled with the same kind of humor and spirit as their mother’s letters. We learn a great deal about Eva’s life thanks to Harry’s references to her letters.

Eva wanted a life of travel and adventure. We learn here that she was considering a job as a nurse at Standard Oil, presumably in the Middle East since Harry mentions the desert. Her brother was able to get out of San Francisco, but there was no encouragement for her to do so. I have often wondered how different her life would have been if she had been born at a time and place where she was encouraged to follow her dreams.

I love Harry’s brotherly advice. He has adopted a lot of American slang. It is interesting that he talks to Eva about what it’s like to leave everything and everyone behind to go to some remote location. Of course, that’s exactly what they did together in coming to San Francisco! My mother’s experience of American young men was not positive, and his advice would not have made her any more trusting. It’s no wonder she ended up marrying an older immigrant from Europe.

Below Eva’s 1943 nursing school graduation photo. She is at the far right in the front row (a bit out of focus).

January 31

January 31, 2021 Helen Goldsmith

Today we have three letters written on the same day and presumably sent in the same envelope. To save money, sometimes Helene wrote on half-sheets of paper. She typed the last part of Eva’s letter on the back. Saving every penny. These letters were written just two days after the letter she wrote to Paul that was posted on January 28. It’s like being privy to a conversation, albeit a one-sided one, and we see how Helene “speaks” differently depending on to whom she is writing. The letters to her children are filled with puns and jokes and sweet pet names. The ones to her nephew Paul are more serious and often deal with practical matters.

Vienna, 31.January 1940
Harryssimo! I’m insatiable and I keep waiting for a letter every time the mail comes. Even though I know it’s not going to happen. I still believe maybe the letters I posted might be trickling in and maybe even in order.
Jo’s nephew Fritz was in a serious accident. He fell while you were still in Vienna. It was an accident from a ladder in a bunker/basement. He was unconscious for awhile. He did recover then. On the way home he met his father, but the father had some trouble with his work, so he went to school as if nothing happened. 3 weeks later he collapsed during PE and was unconscious and was brought to the hospital where he spent 6 weeks and could not go to school. Some time after that he was allowed to go back to school but had terrible headaches and had to go back. He went to a field trip and he was tall (1 meter 87) and his friend is even 76 cm taller than that. I don't know what his parents will do with their clothing coupons. I believe he would be very happy to hear from you.
Now I assume even in this blessed country the Christmas celebrations are over and you are back in school. Is it difficult? Little Eva assured me of the opposite. I wish you in any case much luck. I will see if I can find another little job. My debut as a snow removal worker was somewhat of a disaster and my feet were really cold.
Papa has his imperial sport which is wood cutting and he has quit that as well. He was looking for a new patent and he has invented the profession of splitting wood without hacking it up, just with his own iron biceps. The result: he injured the muscles on both his arms. But that’s over now and he’s not cutting up any wood. We have both had our little dalliances into other professions.
Goodbye and kisses for now.
Mutti

Vienna, 31.January 1940
My dear poor Everl!
What’s the kid doing? Now I know why I was dreaming of you. When I told Papa, he told me I was a “raven mother”. He’s not really wrong because I am now complaining. That damn snow removal!
How did we get to this? Did you have pain? It was only 4 teeth that were killed off. Why did 5 have to be pulled? Was the 5th the reason the others had to be pulled? Robert has a partner in suffering now. You however cannot compete with him. If it hasn't happened yet, I want you to send me an exact description of your tooth woes. Please tell me the truth and don’t spare my nerves. I believe they can handle it….
Did you hear anything of your friend who seems to have scattered in all directions? Since you go to school you have enough opportunity to get a new, nicer friend.
I’m done for today. I have written lots of letters. Nothing has really happened and there’s not time for much fun. If this continues, I’ll be telling you the pudding joke. By the way, an anecdote occurs to me (from about the same time) so please don’t think badly of it. Frau Rebbezen [Rabbi’s wife] doesn’t like her name and she asks her husband ask for a name change. He agrees. When he comes back from the capital several days later, angry that she’d gotten to him (she says: it costs quite a bit but you have a name for your whole life”). His wife asks “what is our name now?” “Schweissloch” [sweat hole] was the laconic answer. “Schweissloch,” she asks disappointedly, “for so much money?” The husband: “do you have any idea how much the ‘w’ alone cost?”
It’s time for me to end or else my crazy little girl will get even crazier. I’m going to end this 15th Clipper letter with kisses and hope to hear from you soon.
Mutti

The following letter to Hilda is in English. Hilda Firestone was the daughter of a first cousin. When they arrived in San Francisco in 1939, Harry lived with Hilda and her husband Nathan. Eva lived with a different cousin. Paul lived with Hilda at times and tried to teach Hilda some German. Helene is effusive in her gratitude to all that Hilda has done for her children and nephew. You can see how much less fluent her English is here than in other letters and stories written later on. Helene and Hilda met for the first time in 1946 - at this point they were strangers, bonded over Hilda and Nathan’s generous hospitality.

The German proverb Helene quotes says: A fool asks more than 10 wise men can answer. She continues: But now I am not a fool but ten, and that I must not expect you to do that. The original proverb may actually be: Ein Narr kann mehr Fragen stellen als sieben Weise beantworten können. One fool can ask more questions than seven wise men can answer.

January 23

January 23, 2021 Helen Goldsmith

My family’s library and soundtrack

Going through my family papers, I am struck by how often my grandmother and her children refer to music and literature, and intersperse their letters with phrases and quotations in multiple languages. As we translated material, I tried to keep a log of the various composers and authors mentioned, realizing that I had the makings of a wonderful education. Goethe, Schiller, Dickens, Bach, Mozart, Mahler, Wagner, mythology, the list goes on and on. I love the idea of creating a family “soundtrack” as part of the archive.

My grandmother passed on her love of music to her children. She named my mother Eva after the heroine in her favorite opera - Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. She raised her children to enjoy music of all kinds, particularly classical. When Eva and Harry were young, during bath time they would play “name that tune” games where Helene would sing song snippets and the children would guess the opera.

My mother loved going to the opera and symphony. Harry enjoyed listening to music, but he loved making it even more. He played piano by ear. When he wasn’t playing music, he was inevitably humming a tune to himself.

My mother told me that Helene did not name her son after the Meistersinger’s hero Walther because she did not want him to be saddled with the initials “WC” which even in German stood for Water Closet. According to Harry, he was named after a character in a book entitled Helen’s Babies. It was very popular, first published in 1876 and republished many times in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The book is full of humor and mischief-making children. Many versions can be found online. It was made into a movie in 1924, starring Edward Everett Horton as Uncle Harry. A few years ago I found a copy of the book on reserve at the SF Public Library:

The Story Unfolds

July 23, 2020 Helen Goldsmith

My mother and her brother did not encourage their children to ask questions about the past. My uncle was a sunny optimist who didn’t want to discuss the past, which would bring up painful memories. I have no idea how much guilt they may both have had for having been unable to save their parents from the camps, despite the fact that they were teenagers without resources and had done the best they could.

As psychological theories evolved, my mother had a new source of guilt after her mother died when “talk therapy” came into vogue. When my grandmother first arrived in the U.S., the prevailing theory was that talking about painful events would only make the situation worse. My mother told me that she would always change the subject if my grandmother wanted to talk about all she’d been through.

Giving Helene the tools to tell her story

As I described in the “Hidden Treasures” section, I have been sifting through an enormous amount of material and am sometimes daunted by the process. One part of my grandmother’s papers has truly overwhelmed me, as it did my mother.

At some point in the 1940s or 1950s, my uncle bought Helene a typewriter and encouraged her to write down her stories to get them out of her system. My grandmother was obedient to her son’s encouragement and began writing. She wrote and wrote and wrote.

This was before computers or even electric typewriters and she was using an English keyboard which didn’t have German diacritical marks, so it must have been slow going. No cutting and pasting, no copying from previous drafts. I do not know whether she began by writing her drafts in longhand, but she kept many versions of some of her typed stories and it’s not always clear which version, if any, is the final draft.

Although she fictionalized her maiden name and a few other surnames, it appears that the stories themselves were what she recalled and were not fictionalized.

She produced at least a dozen binders worth of writing:

My mother had the best of intentions and wanted to go through the binders, translating stories from German, and organizing the writing so there weren’t multiple versions of the same story. But she never managed to do it (and as with everything, probably had a fair amount of guilt about it). I don’t blame her! Although I have had these binders for a few years, I too have avoided trying to make sense of their contents. When Kelsey created the archive, I handed the binders over to her and asked her to come up with some sort of order so I wouldn’t have to.

Only now have I been able to begin the process of reading and transcribing Helene’s stories and it is slow going. I cannot imagine how my mother would have managed with just a typewriter herself.

Helene made do with whatever she could find to keep things organized, sometimes gluing paper on the spine to show the contents:

Apparently she ran out of paper clips and didn’t have a stapler, so some stories are bound together by string:

As I begin to read her papers, I am finding that Helene’s writing continues to answer my questions. Unfortunately some of the stories listed on the binder spines didn’t end up in the binders, so at least a few that I would have loved to read are missing (for example, a story about moving to Vienna and one about her first job).

One question I’d been trying to figure out how to answer over the past few months — particularly in this time of shelter in place when going to libraries is impossible — was the population of Bilin (now Bilina), the town my grandmother lived in until at least her late teens. On the JewishGen site, I discovered that approximately 75 Jews lived in Bilin in 1900. However, I could not figure out how to find out the total population of the town. Last week, I transcribed a story Helene wrote entitled “Dandelions in May 1902”. In the story she describes a momentous year where family life was turned upside down by the death of her eldest sister. In telling the story, she mentions that at that time the town had about 6000 inhabitants (according to Wikipedia, currently approximately 17,000 people live there). Question answered!

Although there are hundreds of photos, I do not always know who is in the picture. Unfortunately when I was ready to sit down with my mother for her to help identify people in the photos, she was no longer able to do so. Although Harry often talked of our looking at the photos together, there was always some excuse not to do so. Toward the end of his life, I realized we would never know the identity of people in the photos. In general that’s true. However, my grandmother’s writing is helping identify people as well.

In addition to photos my mother and uncle brought over themselves, they also had Paul Zerzawy’s photos which they got after he died in 1948 in San Francisco. My mother had his photo album and Harry had a box of miscellaneous photos and papers.

Below is a photo from Paul Z’s photo album:

In the above photo, I recognized my grandmother (second from the right) and her mother (older woman at the back on the left). Since it was in Paul’s album, I figured it was a photo of he and his siblings but I did not know the identity of the woman sitting next to my grandmother. I was able to piece it together and understand a rich story using two items from the archive: the story “Dandelions in May 1902” from Helene and the Zerzawy Family tree from Paul which was created in the 1920s or so.

From the family tree, we learn that there were 4 Zerzawy siblings born to Julius Zerzawy’s first wife Ida (Helene’s oldest sister): Paul, Klara, Erich, and Robert. Ida died in 1902. Her sister Mattl married Julius in 1903 and gave birth to a fifth child Käthe in 1904. Thus, I assume that since there are 5 children in the photo, the woman next to Helene is her sister Mattl who died in 1910. The youngest girl looking at the camera (and us) must be Käthe. Which means that the photo was probably taken around 1908-1910.

On my mother's 99th birthday

May 5, 2020 Helen Goldsmith

If she were still alive, today my mother would have been 99 years old. I’ve been thinking a lot about her during the last few months of shelter in place due to Covid-19. For most of her working life, Eva was a public health nurse in San Francisco. Whenever she took public transportation — which she only did after she gave up driving well into her 70s — she was concerned about dirt and germs and she always would wear gloves. When I would see her after a trip on Muni or BART, she would show me how filthy the gloves had gotten on her travels.

Happily for me, my mom had a collection of lightweight leather gloves that I have been using each time I leave the house, so she continues to take care of me.

For most of her life, my mother had very little expectation of being important enough to be noticed. I only know of two times when my mother was made to feel special: her “sweet 16” birthday, although I imagine that’s not what it was called in Vienna, and “Eva Goldsmith Appreciation Day”, a surprise party I gave her when she was 70 — I wasn’t able to throw it near her actual birthday but did so 6 months later so it was a real surprise. I don’t think I ever saw her as happy as she was on that day, surrounded by family and friends.

On Eva’s 16th birthday in Vienna. She is seated on the right. Behind the girls is a pastel drawing of Helene, which Eva and Harry brought to the US and hang in my mother’s house throughout her life.

Taken at the surprise party I threw for my mother. You can see the expression of complete joy and surprise at being the center of attention for one of the few times in her life.

Happier times

January 20, 2020 Helen Goldsmith

Helene, Vitali, Eva and Harry seemed to have had a lovely time in Vienna before life became difficult and dangerous. They enjoyed music, both in public and at home - Helene’s nephew Paul Zerzawy was a talented musician (which allowed him to pay the rent when he moved to San Francisco and could no longer practice law). They often played “tric-trac”, a form of backgammon. They took walks and played in the park.

Here are a few memories Helene wrote of while separated from her children - she didn’t want to worry them with what life was like in Vienna and she didn’t have much else of current interest to share with them. So sometimes she wrote recollections of happier times with her children.

From a (translated) letter dated July 29, 1940, Helene recalls:

“Whatever path we take, I just see you - every square, every street, every house reminds me of our walks together. In Stadtpark I see you as small children; near the Prater Park, I see you as a little older youth, and in the city I have this picture of you in more recent times. This is a driving force that takes me there nearly every day. I stand there by every shoe store, not because I really want to buy a pair, but in memory of Eva and in the same picture window I see Harry’s thoughts. This kind of activity has become a very typical one for me. Sometimes I catch myself looking around for you if you’re maybe just catching up to me and at which picture window did you stop to look? With these crazy ideas, I spend my days.”

From a (translated) letter dated March 5, 1941 (Ebi and Everl are nicknames for Eva):

“It is an unwritten law for me to hum a melody when I am in the bath. Not just any melody, but one from the era of “Mutti prüf much!”. Of course I begin with the summer night’s dream which Ebi would associate with the entrance march for the guests on the Wartburg. I as the next harmless parasite climb up to Juliet’s balcony for the nth time. Eva’s answer is ‘hey, this time you can’t trick me, mom!’ ‘Manon!’ A third time my daughter can still guess and then it’s Harry’s turn. I am exercising my brain. Eva: ‘I know what comes now.’ I sing an aria from ‘Samson and Delilah’ and Eva knows that it is ‘Tiefland.’ Probably I have sung it so badly that she couldn’t recognize it. Don’t worry about it Everl. I know lots of people here who think Johann Sebastian Bach is from somewhere in the Vienna Woods; who think Mozart is a physicist who discovered a noticeable sphere; that Hölderin is the inventor of powder made of insects; that Beethoven is the ‘spiritus rector’, a quotation from Götz; and that Götz himself is the person who invented the patent for estimating LMIA.”

From a (translated) letter dated January 24, 1941 (Ebi and Everl are nicknames for Eva):

“My dear, dear Everl!
I always when I haven’t had any letters from you for awhile notice that among the things I have lost track of is also the sense of time. When I think about you I don’t think about you in your current form, but these pictures of times long past appear to me. We write ‘January 1941’, but my memories are in May 1923 [when Eva would have been 2 years old]. Papa Vitali and Mutti Helene meet at Krieau and the motto is ‘Ebi Wagerl allein schieben’ - Ebi wants to push the stroller. Marie and her daughter are waiting and rather annoyed because they are waiting for us to show up which we were supposed to have done by 3 o’clock. Finally, exhausted, Mr. & Mrs. Cohen show up, but little Miss Eva doesn’t seem to be there. Not even a bundt cake could convince her to come the table. The shopping cart was steered through the various aisles and we could tell from Marie’s face that this getting together of our two daughters was not a great pleasure and we had hardly drunk our coffee when the threatening clouds started to show up. We asked the waitress to pay and the wind was already playing the prelude to a storm symphony with the tablecloths. The waitress nodded at us to show that she had heard us, but other guests at other tables held her back because they like we wanted to hurry up and get home before getting all wet. ‘Come Eva, get into the stroller, it’s going to rain now, come on Eva.’ ‘No, I’ll push it home myself’ was her most definite answer to this. The thunder was already coming and the storm seemed fairly far off. I didn’t see any reason to force the issue because Eva was stepping right along, pushing her stroller. We reached the main street. I was allowed to cross this one, but we were hardly over to the other side before I heard it again: ‘Ebi wants to push the stroller home all by herself’. Thank God we had already passed the .... We were getting close to the Institute for the Blind and once again I was allowed to cross the street and I thought maybe my daughter would give up on doing the driving but then I heard it again: ‘Ebi wants to push the stroller home’. Resigned, I looked up at the sky. The sky seemed to understand my problem, but recommended that I hurry. There’s a big bolt of lightning. For several seconds we stood on the Rotunda Bridge and it was like being in a big picture with the light. The thunder which followed right after proved not only that the storm had already reached us but it caused fear in everyone except for Eva. Papa’s patience was at an end and he ran as fast as he could to the deities of the storeroom [Penaten - Greek household goddesses and also a name of a diaper rash cream]. Eva was exhausted but just as determined as ever to do what she wanted to do and she pushed the stroller in front of her. I looked up at the sky again. I implored the lord of the heavens to wait just a few minutes. But the heavens had no more patience. I saw Sofien-Saal [concert hall around the corner from their apartment]. Should I wait out the storm under this roof or should I try to confront the weather for a few more steps? Eva interrupted my meditation with the phrase that I had already heard quite enough: ‘Ebi wants to push the stroller home all by herself’. It was 9 o’clock by now and we were sopping wet. The 2-year old little imp had gotten her way. I was amazed at the determination and single-mindedness that must have informed her subconscious and depressed because I feared that I had relinquished control of this little being. But fortunately it didn’t hurt anything.

Your letter came and now I am back on earth again. I picture you when you left and in years maybe my grandchildren will say ‘little girl wants to push the stroller home’ and I will see my memories in front of me. Harry, with his horribly exotic pronunciation and Eva in her little gray travel costume, the way she handed me a 50 pfennig coin through the window of the vehicle to bring me good luck. I have made sure to keep them safe.

It is time, I have to wake up now, because Papa is ready to go to the post office.”

The route Ebi pushed the stroller (almost 1-1/2 miles). Click on image to enlarge.

Young Harry in Vienna with parents, Helene’s nephew Paul, and Helene’s cousin Bertha from San Francisco

80 years ago

October 27, 2019 Helen Goldsmith

My mother and her brother arrived in San Francisco in October 1939. Here is a translation of some of her first thoughts on being here from a letter dated October 23, 1939:

Since the exposition is going to close at the end of this week, we went on the first day. I like it better than the one in New York. It is quite similar in character but it is not so big. The external impression is much sweeter and more romantic. The emphasis is on fountains, lakes, and flowers. It is similar to the impression the city makes.

What I have seen up to now, the layout of this reminds me quite a bit of Istanbul. The city is rather scary and has many streets which are so steep that you can’t really walk without slipping. Yesterday and the day before yesterday, it was hot weather like in the middle of summer, but now suddenly it is made place for fall weather. Bertha says that the climate here is usually like that.

Eva at the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island in 1939: