March 7

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Today letter is from Helene to her nephew Robert in England. It was mostly written in English. The translated German passages are in Italic.

Istanbul, 7 March 46

Dear Robert, My Heaven sent boy! Without you I should be always waiting for letters still, and for some dear loving words. In the meantime, I received plenty of letters from Eva and her husband (he seems to be a nice fellow) and Harry enclosed four always-short letters which proved me that they innermost have not changed. Outside, of course, Harry appears nearly unrecognizable, but not to me. From the flapper Eva became a young woman, her face has not altered.

You wrote me in your last letter: “There is no going back to the past for all of us.” Yes, Robert, I am sorry because there is no road back. Then you continued: “But your children are real. They may have changed - it would be unthinkable that they hadn’t. But that doesn’t offset your relationship. They would have changed in normal times too because they are grown up, and now live their independent life. Is that not right and good so?” Yes, Robert! It is right and good so. Thousand times yes!  

Robert, I can’t remember what I have written to you, but from your letters I can see that I must have been crazy. There is a Russian proverb: Look before you leap, and then don’t leap! I will make a variation of it. Think before you write, and then, don’t write! Had I had an idea of it, that you will send my letters which seem to me now to have shown the symptoms of madness I had not sent them away. Dear Robert, don’t mistake me. It is not in the least a reproach, and I didn’t consider it as an indiscretion. I only wouldn’t worry them. Mothers in their love are sometimes egotistical. I rewarded your gentleness, your sympathy, and your affection badly by pouring out all my trouble and cares on you. This letter you can show them; they ought to have knowledge what a beastly mother they have.  

There is one excuse for my hoggish behavior. In Vienna Paul was my - I use an expression by Galsworthy - business-nurse. To play the role of a father confessor, he had seldom time for me. There were too many “brothers and sisters.” Since your last stay in Vienna I found out that we have similar related souls and I mean related not in the sense of family or relationship but more of the “elective affinities” [Die Wahlverwandtschaften – a novel by Goethe].

A little scene. You took me out with your car. You, Paul and I had coffee and cakes in a little inn. Before we reached this “Jause Station” [a cafe], you stopped your car when you have seen in a meadow primroses, the first of the year; you gathered them while Paul and I remained in the auto. I watched you and said to Paul: “Look now, Robert has just the same expression on his face as he had as a little boy with (always, please tell it to Hilda) short hair and a straw hat which was like a halo on his head! You gave me this nice looking nosegay and I was very pleased with it, more as by the thought than one from a flower shop. The innkeeper, an old, fine lady, told us how she came to this little coffeehouse, etc, etc, and when we said adieu, she said: “the lean gentleman is your husband, is he not? One can see it immediately because he is so careful.” There were no time and no reason to correct her mistake. I left this little coffeehouse (in English, I know it; but for that term there is no synonym) amused, and flattered of course.

The next day you made another trip in the Vienna Woods in another company. When you came to have dinner with us, you brought me, wrapped in a doe skin, the first violets. That was so nice Robert, so very, very nice of you. The doe skin I stored away, hoping to give it back to you. It is gone with all our things, but not the recollection of how I happened to keep your doe skin. It is unbelievable what little events are stored away in our brains and how dear those little intermezzi can be.

Before I fell in the melancholy way, I lived more in the present and in the future, and here I seek refuge in the past. On the delay of my departure I am not quite without guilt. Had I written to you about the money affair, things would have been altered. But I didn’t know in which pecuniary condition Eva and her husband are living, I know Harry a soldier. Before the Joint Association asked for the money, every delay seemed to me a new punishment, but I comforted myself saying: The only good thing in this bad job is that the children have not to pay for my passage. My wits began to turn once I knew they have to pay for it, and I stayed here so long I can say Lugsi [?] voluntarily.

Robert, you mentioned in your last letter that I told you that I am reading Shakespeare, but I hope you will not have expected letters in Shakespearean style. I am glad to receive letters in the English language. It enlarges my knowledge of it and compels me to think in this language. Reading letters is so much easier and more agreeable. I am astonished that you write German correctly still, while my children obviously have forgotten a great deal.

Enclosed is a letter to Paul. You will be astonished about that. But I will explain it to you. Today is Thursday, and generally two ladies from the Jewish society come to pay us a visit, distributing cakes and asking for letters which they mail for us. Therefore perhaps you have received some letters with an unknown sender. Apart from this I don’t know Paul’s address. By all means it would be more plain to attach this letter to one to Eva or Harry, but I sent both of the two a letter this week and I must not spoil them.

Robert, you made excuses in your last letter for your acting like a school master. No reason! After reading Harry’s letters I know I deserve much more to be told off than you. You are right if you blame me. Robert, if I am in San Francisco and I am so happy that you will come there too, I will make a thick line under the chapter Kassel - Istanbul insomuch it is concerning my person, of course not for Vitali, the only grief since I know Harry is out of danger. I am so happy about that and that Eva has found a nice husband is a great satisfaction to me.

In your last letter, you told me I will make friends in USA. I don’t believe so. I will find kindliness, compassion, that is what I fear. Did I mention it because you wrote: “I want you to understand it would be wrong to refuse kindness wherever it is given.” Robert, will you be my tutor and advise me to deal with people? I am not afraid with the children. We taught them to enjoy merriments. I am so sorry about Nathan with respect to Hilda. She is such a darling. There is a great comfort she knows how and when he died. Most of the European widows don’t know it. Perhaps you will have trouble to understand my English, the next letter I will write in German again. Please Robert now, where air mail is possible, write me very often and soon. It is so fine to receive letters in a really and mentally seclusion. One fact I must state, I endeavored to try to be balanced. I don’t know if I have been successful. However sometimes, long, long ago, I succeeded in by using a kind of gallows humor by getting myself in a better mood, but long distance, it is somewhat difficult.

I make myself reproaches, that my letters to you had a bad influence on your humor and I committed a crime to impose upon you. Please Robert, take care of you, we will cause each other as few griefs as possible.

Your Helen
Farewell and don’t be angry with me.

...loving
Yours Helen 

The sentence was not crossed out by any censorship agency, but rather I did that myself because I myself absolutely couldn’t understand what I wanted to say when I read over the letter to try to correct a few mistakes.

There is so many room to fill up with nice things to tell you and I have so much in store for you. Especially for you because you were also so many years so very alone [the mother of all German words for ‘loneliness’] Now I am thinking not on England, I thought on Brüx after the death of Kätelein. I am and I was always more thinking about you than you perhaps imagine. To be true to my principles is not to bestow anything/something to the post office, especially the Turkish. I send you so many kisses as there is room and more still

Your Helen

Airmail postage is very expensive and it is very uneconomical to leave white space. Instead of tell you off when I see you I will give you a long, big kiss on your snout. Hilda would be upset about such an unladylike expression. To her must I say: Have you expected to receive a lady? The Kazet [concentration camp] is not a girls high school. The way the female guards have spoken to us would have caused soldiers to blush.

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One thing that has become clear is how proud and independent she was. In many respects, that is a great thing. However, her letters show us she was uncomfortable asking for financial assistance from family members, which may have prevented her and Vitali’s safe passage from Vienna before it was too late. In this letter too, she is sorry she hadn’t asked for monetary assistance earlier, assuming that the bureaucracy of the Joint would provide the assistance she needed.

You can see that Helene made a point of filling every inch of space on the paper, commenting on the cost of postage and the desire not to waste a penny. She made sure to include many loving signatures and endearments, not wanting to let go of this connection to her past, present, and hopefully future.

I continue to be amazed at how much was shared across the oceans. Letters traveled from Istanbul to London to San Francisco so that everyone knew what was happening with their loved ones abroad. This turned out to be a happy practice for me, since I would not have this letter otherwise.

Despite all that Helene has been through, she still has great empathy for others. She feels that she and Robert are kindred spirits. She lovingly recalls things that Robert did as a child and young adult. She grieves with his many losses and current solitude: his half-sister Käthe died in 1918 at the age of 14 and Robert lost his own mother before he was three and his step-mother/aunt when he was 10.

March 6

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Nr 79                           Vienna, 6 March 1941

My dear, dear children! It’s a rainy day without mail. I’m done with my work for the day and I don’t know any better way to end the day than to have a conversation with you. It’s not easy because between yesterday and today nothing important has happened here and I’m not really in the mood for a chat.

Oh well, the sheet of paper must be filled no matter how much certain ill-treated types resist this. I also have to do a lot of things which I don’t like, or rather I can’t even do what I would like to do. I have often cursed the fact that I never really found time to read a book and if one was recommended to me, I was too tired to enjoy reading. Today everything is the reverse. If I take a book in my hand which was written before the war, I mean the war that we have now, I think “why how unworldly this is”. It is such a restructuring of values that has happened that you almost have to step out in order to keep pace with it. Young people of course don’t get as tired as older people, and training is paramount.

My favorite things to read are your letters. I never really read the kind of novel that appears in installments in a newspaper. I imagined my workload in advance. Now I am punished by this arrogance, because now I am waiting week by week for a continuation like the ladies who were subscribing to the Biela-Zeitung back in those days just couldn’t wait for Saturday in order to read the conclusion in the “sheet” (affectionate word for newspaper) [really, an insult]. They wanted to see if Knight Iwan and Ida sat holding hands. What are lion ballads [play on the name Löwy?] compared to this 75-stanza long murder tale which our girl would always start when there was at least six weeks worth of ironing to do? I could sit for hours in the warm kitchen with my doll in my arm and listen to them. To the credit of the Biela-Zeitung, I must say that those kinds of novels never appeared in it and just like yesterday old Ida the gossip [Helene’s older sister] who would walk with me ran after to ask to be told if the two in the story would get along or not. Did people have problems then? Was there really a time when a fruit seller really had nothing better to do than to imagine if she was going to get into a fight with her boyfriend or not?  Actually, not much has changed, just that nowadays you have to sit instead of making war [making a put with different meanings of krieg/kriegen] . When will the war end and when will the produce sales lady take an interest again in whether they are going to fight or not? Let’s hope for the best.

To thank Eva for her Boccaccio-esque hospital tales, I will tell some of my own. This is from my collection: “se non e vero, e trovato ben.” [if it’s not true, at least it’s a good story]. These are  quotes from people looking for apartments:

·      “I have been married for five months and my wife is in a blessed condition. I ask the housing office: does that have to be?”
·      “I and my wife are 12 people….”
·      “I can’t get rid of either the shed or my wife.”
·      “A man himself lives in 2 rooms along with his wife and can let her or them go.”

We will not be able to get news from Lizette about how things are until after the war ends. Do you have any mail from her? And when will Robert be with you?

These letters won’t go out until tomorrow. Maybe I can think of something else to tell you, so I’m saving a little room.

Many, many kisses
Helen

[Handwritten]
My dear cutie pies. So I didn’t save room for nothing. I can tell you that letter #5 has arrived (5 February 1941). I am glad that Everl is not in a relationship of affection with herself and she doesn’t regret when she has to work until 10:30. That’s a brave fellow, Everl! I’m glad you have the new racket. Harry-boy, is there no Dischendorfer in Frisko? If not, then I’m not coming. A pedicure is the last rudiment of a plutocratic way of life. Is that a bandage or a small ... the cause of the decoration on your toe? It may be something to take away your corns. The most unfortunate thing is your poor old Pegasus. He seems to be like an old horse-shoer (farrier). Out of love for him, you must keep a lookout for someone to replace Dischendorfer.

Kiss, that’s all
Helen

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I love how Helene can make even the lack of mail interesting. In this letter, she takes us back to her childhood in Bilin in Bohemia. She acknowledges her snobbish attitude toward popular serialized literature, telling her children that she’s now having her comeuppance as she waits with bated breath for each new missive from them. She assures us however that her father’s newspaper, the Biela-Zeitung, didn’t publish that kind of lowbrow literature.

I don’t know whether Helene refers to a specific story when she mentions Knight Iwan. If so, my guess would be that she chose that tale because his beloved had the same name as Helene’s sister – Ida. In many of her stories, Helene describes Ida as a bit of a tyrant, taking life very seriously and never letting her baby sister do what she wanted. Helene describes her revenge in a companion letter she wrote to her nephew Paul which was sent in the same envelope as today’s post. That letter is excerpted in an earlier blog post where she relates the story of how she tricked her sister into believing that she’d taught young Paul how to read.

I was unable to determine who or what Dischendorfer was. Perhaps a pharmacist or chemist? Also, I wonder whether the quotes from apartment hunters were true or quoted from a humorous article.

Despite the light tone, we learn one very disturbing piece of news — that Helene and Vitali are no longer able to communicate with Lizette and his other relatives in Istanbul.

February 24

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                                                                                                24/II.18.

[Printed on top of card: Do Not Write Between the Lines!]

My dear ones!

Yesterday the mail finally brought me a delayed card from you again from October 10, 1917. Although it was only a day off from the previous card, it took months before I had it in my possession and it leaves me just as much in the dark as I was before since I am really yearning for news from you, Robert. How did the medical/physical exam go? Paul’s location was censored, but given the current conditions, I am not surprised - I can imagine that it would be. Our home is probably totally empty now, since grandmother has surely gone to Vienna. What?! Sincere kisses to all of you from

Your Erich

Note: The return address says that he is located “east of Baikal.” Lake Baikal is in the southern part of eastern Siberia.

Today we have another postcard from 1918 from Paul and Robert Zerzawy’s brother Erich who was a prisoner of war in Siberia. Compared to letters we’ve seen from Paul to his family, mail to POWs was a lot less reliable than the mail sent between soldiers at the front and those at home.

One thing this letter tells us is that their grandmother, Helene’s mother, is moving to Vienna. Until these WWI letters were translated, I always assumed Helene had moved to Vienna with her mother in the early 1900s. However, after the Zerzawy children’s mother died in 1902, Rosa took care of them. I don’t know whether she joined Helene in Vienna for any part of the time before 1918. She would have been needed again in 1910 when Julius’s second wife Mathilda died while the children were still young. Poor Rosa had to bury two daughters and take care of their children for many years.

February 23

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First page of letter from Hilda Firestone

San Francisco, Calif.
Feb.23, ‘46

Helene dearest,

I’ve always considered a typewriter a most impersonal machine, wholly inadequate for an expression of any emotion deeper than a plea for payment of a laundry bill. But in this case it’s my deep affection for you that prompts me to use it, as I feel that it’s hard enough for you to struggle with the English language without having to decipher my hieroglyphics, which, which my best friends tell me would strike terror to the heart of the most eminent archaeologist alive. Of course I regret not being able to write in your own language, But Paul long ago stopped my lessons in despair, and I consoled myself with the thought that I can at least understand a tiny bit of German, till one night not so long ago I convulsed a room full of people by thinking that “ich grolle nicht” meant I don’t growl [actual meaning: I bear no grudge]. So much for my linguistic ability.

But neither in German nor in English could I begin to make you understand what it means to me to be able to talk to you in this way. It seemed so hopeless for so long a time. You know, Helene dear, that you go back to some of my earliest childhood memories, and so in some very sweet and undefinable way you belong to me, along with other lovely scenes of so terribly long ago. With grandfather, for instance, and with a picture that used to hang on his bedroom wall, and which later on turned out to be Paul and Robert. You will see it when you come - you probably remember it, a group of adorable, wistful, blond children with a fat comfortable-looking grandmother and a somewhat stern father sitting in their midst. The grandmother looks as if her sole purpose on earth is to stuff them with lebkuchen, but the father, I suspect, was unduly interested in their report cards. (I’m afraid my typing is as confusing as my own hand). You are identified particularly with a most beautiful book of German folk songs, which you sent me, and from which I derived my idea — now long shattered, I’m afraid — of God as a very benign person. The book contained a picture of him, sitting on a cloud surrounded by baby angels. The song it illustrated was “Weiss du wie viel Sternlein stehen” which was always my favorite. There was another book, too, but that, I believe, was from your mother, so I mustn’t hold you responsible for all the sleepless nights it caused me. That was about a little girl and a little boy who seem to have been everything they shouldn’t have been, and the punishments inflicted upon them were almost worthy of Hitler. There was a picture, I remember, of the girl with her dress in flames, the fire mounting to her hair, and another one showing her being put through a wringer, and being ironed out with a hot iron, and her brother or playmate — whoever he was — had hay growing out of his nose and ears, and rats and mice romping around in it. I’ll show you that, too, when you come. We can have a good laugh over it. Shall it be with afternoon tea, or do you think you could be sufficiently American for a cocktail, or better still, a whisky and soda? That seems to be Robert’s favorite drink as well as mine. I like the relaxation it brings to taut nerves at the end of the day. Robert is another bond in common, Helene. I began to write to him six years ago, merely to tell him all about Paul and now I find that I’m doing it only for my own radiant joy in the friendship. For I find in Robert a capacity for affection and tenderness that I yearn for. It is strange, is it not, that the most profound spiritual happiness I have now is from a man I’ve never seen? The children seem to have forgotten to tell you that I’m now alone. Nathan died in September, ‘43. I had known for years that he had a heart condition, but I kept lulling myself to sleep with that oft-repeated nonsense about people with heart trouble outliving everyone else. At the end he was gone in less than an hour. When I say I’d lulled myself to sleep I’m not being entirely accurate. For six years I’d been worried every moment of the day. When he was working at nights, from the moment I expected him home until he was in the house I’d stand at the bedroom window watching headlights coming over the hill. When he was resting during the day, I’d tiptoe into the room to listen to his breathing. At symphony concerts if he came on the stage a minute later than I expected him to, I was ready to go backstage and see if he was well. He was my husband and child all in one. But ironically, the last day, I paid little attention to him. It was fearfully hot, and everyone was more or less miserable. When he complained of not feeling well, I made very light of it, and merely suggested that he see the doctor for a check-up, as he had a quartet concert a few days ahead. I went to the doctor with him, and at three o’clock the doctor pronounced him perfect. Fifteen minutes later I had a little errand and left him in the car. I was gone less than five minutes, and when I returned he was unconscious. That was all. The thing that couldn’t possibly happen to me had happened, and I felt as if nothing would ever again be important. But gradually all the old zest for sheer living is returning, the old desires, the old curiosity, the old sense of joy in just a spring day. So here I am. You are the one person ono earth to whom I should never speak of anything but happy things, but I have a strange feeling that when you are in San Francisco you will be the one woman to whom I will be able to speak unrestrainedly. I’ve never been very close to women. Nathan used to say that one has only a certain amount of love to give and that my entire supply went to the few men who were important to me. My friends all know me. Only a few days ago one of them called me up and coaxed me to come out to lunch, and when I tried to beg off (because I hate to eat lunch) she said maliciously, “Really, I should think you’d come out once in awhile when my husband is not at home.” It’s not that I don’t like my women friends, just that I don’t trust them, with a few notable exceptions, and it’s perfectly true that I prefer them at night when their husbands are with them.

Paul has been a perfect comrade all this time and I shall always be grateful for his loyalty. Perhaps Robert has told you he hasn’t been too well. He, too, it seems, has a heart. I don’t believe it is an alarming case. it just requires care and rest, and above all freedom from excitement. The last is hard on Paul as you know he works himself into a lather over a piece of burnt toast. Yesterday we passed a store in which he saw a pocket adding machine that simply captivated him. I must admit I can’t get excited over such a thing, and when he asked me to share his enthusiasm I merely said that I personally prefer those pretty little colored balls on wires that the Chinese use to add up their bills. And you should see with what speed they do it in the Chinatown markets. Well, you should have heard the storm. He said he doesn’t see why I don’t burn candles, and look for a horse and carriage instead of a taxi, and why don’t I write my letters on rocks (they couldn’t be more illegible anyhow). Und so weiter. [And so on.] But on the whole we have fun together, and way down beneath the surface there’s a deep bond of feeling between us. When you and Robert are here I hope to see an enormous improvement in his health. You will be of his own world, an integral part of his immediate background. You will share his memories and traditions. It will make many things easier for him. As for Robert, I hope he will be happy in America. And I hope he will like me.

Harry is here at the house as you know. It’s a great joy to have him, as he’s gay, and young, and there’s always something to laugh about. He’s had and lost his first girlfriend and is none the worst for the experience — just a bit surprised that he’s alive. When I told him he wouldn’t die of the thing he didn’t believe me. Eva is extremely happy. Her husband is a nice, quiet, gentlemanly person. He’s not exactly scintillating. I’ve never heard him say anything except “please pass the salt” but I presume that in the privacy of their own apartment his conversational ability is somewhat heightened. The main thing is that Eva loves him and I think he must be good to her.

It’s quarter of one in the morning and I must get up early as Paul and I are leaving early in the morning for a few days in the country with good friends of ours, Adolph Baller and his wife. Do you happen to know them, too? They happen to be from Vienna. Adolph is Yehudi Menuhin’s accompanist. During the summer months they are at Yehudi’s place at Los Gatos, and tomorrow Adolph is giving a solo concert down there. I wish you were going with us. We shall think of you and speak of you, and keep hoping it won’t be long now before we’ll all be together, you and Robert, and Paul and I. Life could be very beautiful.

I assume that the original of this letter was sent to Helene while she was in Istanbul waiting for the money and papers to be able to come to San Francisco. When I found it somewhere in Harry’s closet, I felt like I’d been given a gift. It is beautifully written and tells us about the family over almost 50 years. We learn about Hilda’s childhood in the early 1900s in San Francisco and her feeling of connection to her cousin in Vienna – Helene was Hilda’s mother’s first cousin. It’s interesting to see how close Hilda felt to family members who she had never met. It appears that Helene and her mother kept in close contact with their relatives in America, sending gifts to their children in addition to maintaining a rich correspondence. It is wonderful that Hilda could connect one of her favorite children’s books with Helene. Apparently Hilda’s favorite song is still sung.

Hilda recalls a photo of Paul and Robert’s family hanging on the wall when she was a child. I don’t know if I have the photo she refers to, but this photo from Paul’s album shows the Zerzawy children, with their father Julius and their grandmother Rosa on the right. In addition, we see Helene the second on the left and to her right Mathilda, Helene’s sister and Julius’s second wife. I’m guessing Hilda recalls a different photo, because this one doesn’t make me think their grandmother was eager to bake cookies!

Zerzawy famly, taken probably between 1907-1910

We get a real feeling for Paul’s personality and that he has a bad heart. I was happy to see that he had such a good friend in Hilda and hope that this gave him comfort while he was separated from his brother and aunt. Apparently as in 1941, they are still waiting for Robert to emigrate to San Francisco. It is lovely that Hilda and Robert also became friends during the war and were able to share thoughts and emotions. We learn about Eva’s husband – for the first time, I got a window into my parents’ early life together.

We learn about Hilda’s emotional and everyday life. Her description of her grief at being widow is beautiful and real, expressing exactly what it is like to mourn the loss of a loved one over time. Her husband Nathan Firestone had been a member of the SF Symphony since its inception in 1911 and was principal viola at the time of his death in 1943. Although the page on their website about Nathan says he left the orchestra in 1941, if you scroll down to the name Firestone on the List of SF Symphony musicians, you’ll see he played until 1943.

Hilda is conscious of doing the one thing she has been told not to do – discussing unhappy subjects with Helene. Long after my grandmother’s death, my mother regretted not having encouraged her mother to talk about her experiences. In the 1940s, talking about the past was not considered the best way to deal with trauma. My grandmother was very conscious that no one wanted to hear about her experiences, although she was eager and willing to do so. Given Hilda’s and Eva’s comments, I don’t know whether people didn’t want to hear or whether they were trying to protect her from unnecessary pain. Perhaps a bit of both.

Hilda’s letter brings me to tears for all that might have been - her last sentence is touching and bittersweet: Life could be very beautiful.

February 18

No 74                                                              Vienna, 18 February 1941

My dear children and dear Paul! Papa is on his way to send a telegram to you via Hapag. We telegrammed: We urge you most urgently to deal with the affidavit and ship tickets so that we will arrive in time. For Vitali is certain that the time has now come. My last letters always contained a comment about urgency even if it wasn’t all that direct. However, I believe I sent you enough information so that I did not need to be even more emphatic. Well, it has been advised to us that we should send a telegram. We have no choice to do anything else. I would have preferred to send you my obituary than to ask with such urgency for this affidavit. And ship tickets too. But there’s no other way. I ask all three of you to make it clear to the relatives that we are sending these telegrams through our survival instinct and we wish this to be understood that this is the urge to keep oneself alive. This is survival. In these parts, when people use that term, they understand rather an egotism which is of the highest order. I have no fear of starting over again.  

When I was 15, there was nothing for me. No one helped me to get ahead. One can counter that those were other times and that I was still young. But I was looking for work and bread without having learned anything useful. As an apprentice, I could not put myself into service because that kind of work was unpaid and I didn’t have anybody who would guarantee my shelter for that long. I wouldn’t have accepted that from anyone. Every job that I thought I could do was already filled. Even when I thought I was on time – I had to walk very long distances by foot because I didn’t have any money for any kind of transport – then there were 40 or 50 girls waiting in line before me.

It would be ridiculous to draw a parallel between that and today and if I mention my struggle in those days, I’m just doing it to say that the lack of youth is maybe compensated by the practical knowledge I have acquired. Vitali is also not thinking that I could pay for all of our living expenses through my work. Rather, he really has a burning desire to be able to work again and to be allowed to work. We know that it is not possible everywhere in the USA, but in many states we think it would be. When we land there, we will be thankful for every hand which reaches out to help us but only to get on our feet. We have no fear of what comes after. Our needs have become more than modest. A roof over our head, our stomachs will be taken care of.  

At the same time, we also sent a telegram to Onkel Isaac. Maybe he can understand our situation a little bit better. Many acquaintances have turned to Onkel Fulda for an affidavit and have gotten it, but I do not want to get it from him. At the very least, I don’t want to ask him about it. You’ll understand my point of view on that. Am I right? It is so that one feels the need to help Fate along a little bit. One thinks one is pushing and one is pushed. I have to be prepared for Paul’s criticism that I didn’t insist on this earlier. But I thought it would be okay for awhile. Unfortunately, we had to rush into this – things have become more urgent. It is just a matter of getting those who will write our affidavit to convince that there’s no reason to fear that we will exploit them. Letter #1 is still outstanding; Letter #2 will be answered on Friday. With the rush to get to the telegram office one can imagine that a telegram and a repurchase [RP = COD?] agreement would take quite awhile before it gets to you. With our most sincere greetings to Zentners, Schillers, Firestones and to you, I am as always

Helen

Today’s letter is terrifying and heartbreaking. For the first time, we feel Helene’s urgency and fear. Until now, Helene has had confidence that all will work out okay and has felt that hinting at her concerns for their safety was sufficient. Today she shows regret at not having asked for help sooner from distant relatives. I have an earlier letter where she is adamant she does not want to apply to Onkel Erwin for assistance.

As we learn from today’s letter, Helene has been a strong, independent woman all of her life. She felt she had no one to rely on but herself. I am still trying to discover the details. What I do know is that by the time she was 15, she realized she was on her own. Her father was ailing and his business was foundering, her mother was taking care of the Zerzawy grandchildren, her sister in Vienna was not well. By late 1902, at the age of 16, she arrives in Vienna. On her own? With one or both of her parents? To live with her sister Irma? These are answers I still hope to discover.

Helene and Vitali are eager to come to the U.S. and to find a way to support themselves. Vitali was hoping to continue to do his work in metaphysics, but they are not sure whether he would be allowed to do so. Their independent streak was inherited by their children. As teenagers when they first arrived in the U.S., Harry and Eva stayed with relatives while finishing high school. As soon as possible, each of them immediately found ways to support themselves: Eva went to nursing school and Harry joined the army. Their parents instilled in them the need to not rely on anyone but themselves, which may have made it more difficult to get the assistance they needed from relatives to enable their parents to get out of Vienna.

As I was reading today’s letter, I was surprised to see that Helene repeated the concept of being a fatalist and pushing/being pushed, which she described in the story posted on February 15. Clearly, this is an important part of her identity. It occurred to me to look further to see whether this was a quote. In her story on being fatalistic she said she “glaubte zu schieben und bin geschoben worden” - she believed she was pushing and was being pushed. It turns out that, as with so much of what she writes, she was quoting Goethe! The original goes: “Du glaubst zu schieben und du wirst geschoben” - from Part I of Faust. Translation: You think you are pushing and you are being pushed. Free will or fate?

I do not know who Onkel Isaac was – perhaps a relative of Vitali’s in Istanbul. Onkel Erwin Fulda was in San Francisco. If I understand the 1997 family tree correctly, the Fuldas were first cousins of Adolf’s grandparents (Helene’s great-grandparents) – no wonder she didn’t want to ask for help – she probably felt they were barely related and didn’t want to be yet one more person asking for help. I have a photo of Erwin Fulda (according to the family tree he sold meat in San Francisco) with my grandmother (probably in Vienna). I am not sure when it was taken, perhaps the late 1920s or early 1930s?

February 16

Today we have another story by Helene. We learn about her parents and grandparents and about life for Jews in Bohemia in the early to middle part of the 19th century. As with many of her stories, Helene uses the pseudonym “Lenow” for her father’s name of “Löwy.” She does not change the names of any of the other people mentioned in the story. Helene must have written this based on memories of stories her mother had told her.

From the realms of the shadows

In a comfortable armchair there sat a small, slender woman, who was about forty years old and was staring off into space as if lost in thought.  Her hands, which had made fine lace, were in her lap for the moment, and her narrow feet, wearing black velvet slippers that she had made herself, were resting on a footstool that had also been made by her nimble, clever hands.  A pair of dark, expressive eyes livened up her pale face, which was surrounded by shiny jet-black hair which she, following the fashion of the time, adorned with a fresh violet or a small black lace cap.  It wasn’t really a matter of vanity or an obsession with dressing up, but her elegant head was, in a sense, her display, since as a well-known milliner she could expect visits hourly from the ladies who were her customers.  She had few male clients in the little town of Weseritz near the well-known spa towns of Karlsbad [in Czech, Karlovy Vary] and Marienbad [Mariánské Lázně], whose summer spa guests were the mainstay of her client base.  The products made by her busy hands were nothing less than her trademark, and she always had enough orders to support herself and her four children.  Her husband was a short, grumpy man who was very obstinate.  Because of the laws concerning Jews in Austria, it was difficult for him to pursue any other profession besides that of a Jewish businessman.  Jews had to wander from one place to another to trade their wares for other items.  Even if these difficult living conditions had not been their lot, David Kraus would not have liked to pursue any other profession.  He was much too lazy, and he loved to travel and be independent.  Probably this explains why he got married.  He earned just enough to get by; he probably lived well enough and let his wife take care of the house and raising the children.  She took care of all that, and he only came home for Jewish holidays or at times of the year which were unfavorable for traveling salesmen.  He didn’t show any particular affection for his wife or children; he loved only himself.  He did fear God.

It rankled him that his wife was smarter than he was; it was a blow to his vanity.  He tried, unsuccessfully, to show her who was the boss, but she gave him no opportunity to do so.  During his short visits home (the house and all that was in it were the property of his wife Babette), everything went just the way he wanted, and if he was harsh and unfair to the children, she just put up with it, suffering and uncomplaining, because any criticism would just have exacerbated his morose ways.  She even managed to have the children show him respect as their father – which they really had no reason to do – by setting a good example. 

He criticized everything she did.  To him, her preference for making her home cozy was “foolishness”.  To impress her, he exaggerated his piousness by observing religious commandments in a way so orthodox that it was even more papal than a Jewish pope could have been.  This, too, she accepted, in order to avoid any arguments. 

What had led this woman, who was fairly well off, to this man, who was not a bad man, yet unpleasant and disagreeable?  Even her brother – her only relative – was puzzled by this.  His well-justified and unbiased criticism of his future brother-in-law, whom he advised her not to marry before he could even know that his sister’s fiancé would leave all the child rearing to her, led to the estrangement of brother and sister.  Babette had probably found out that David Kraus, the son of a neighbor, would not be an ideal husband, but did not listen to her brother.  She had said yes to the neighbor’s son, and that was that.  Her brother got a job as a secondary school teacher in Brünn [Brno] and married soon after.  In 1833, the distance from Weseritz to Brünn was much greater than when the train came through, an event which the rural population watched with amazement, while they crossed themselves.

A knock on the door roused Mrs. Babette Kraus from her thoughts.  She called out, “Come in”, and in came a tall young man.  In the daytime, the gate leading from the street to the lobby was left open for the comfort of her customers. The young man was well dressed.  His high forehead, with an unruly lock of black hair, and his smiling eyes, his fine nose and his sensitive mouth lent an irresistible quality to his appearance.  He bowed down and greeted her: 

“Good morning, Mrs. Kraus.  Am I bothering you?”

“No, never, Teacher.”

“I do have an excuse for my intrusion so early on a Sunday morning.  Late last night, I received a letter from your oldest son, Karl, in Prague, which I would like to take to the train station before the evening train departs.  He wrote that he would soon be taking his first business trip representing his coffee import business.  He does not want to let the opportunity to make a short visit here slip by, because he wants to see you and also run an idea by you.  With your permission, he would like to take his sister Rosa back to Prague to show her the city and have her spend a few weeks there. In the same building where the business is located, and where his boss also lives, he has been offered the use of a large separate room.  Surely Rosie would feel most comfortable staying with him there.  Since the trip would last several weeks, they would have plenty of time to get his young sister dressed up beautifully.

I know, Mrs. Kraus, that you will really miss your young daughter’s company and help around the house, yet I hope that you will honor my young friend’s wishes and give this plan your blessing.  I don’t think I am wrong in assuming that your motherly love will let you make this sacrifice so that the young lady can become acquainted with the capital city which is so deserving of its name, Zlata Praha [Golden Prague].”

“I also got a letter from him.  He did not, however, make any mention of the intentions he confessed to you.  He reported that he has a higher position, well paid, with the company where he began as an apprentice six years ago.  Here is the letter; you can read it for yourself.”

The young man read that his friend Karl was asking his mother not to work so much anymore; her millinery work could just be her hobby, since he was earning enough to cover the costs of her small household without causing him any personal limitations.  His room was provided as part of his salary, and since he lived in the same house as his employer, he ate almost all of his meals with him. The employer has no children, and the boss’s wife was very pleased that his young sister would be visiting for a few weeks.  As she put it: “Of course she will have a little room in our house, and she will spend the day with me. What else would she do all day? Neither you nor my husband knows how long you will have to work.”

Karl said: “Don’t worry about my brothers Albert and Simon.  They are lazy rascals, but they are actually good boys.  I’ll let you know what I have in mind for them when I see you.  Stay healthy, Mother.”

During this conversation, Babette and the young teacher were alone. The boys strolled around, and her daughter Rosa was doing errands.

Nobody heard her return. It wasn’t until she, delighted, said: “Good morning, Teacher” that the young man stood up and shook hands with the little person.  After she had kissed her mother on the forehead, she left the room and went into the kitchen next door. A few minutes later, the smell of fresh coffee came into the room. Young Rosa, wearing an apron, came in to remove three coffee cups, saucers, a sugar bowl and a milk pitcher, which she put on a tray.  She pushed a small table over to the armchair where her mother sat; the guest helped her by spreading out the tablecloth and placing the coffee service on it while she took the coffeepot back into the kitchen.

W.A. Lenow [Adolf Löwy] opened his nostrils wide to take in the fragrance of the delicious drink.

“Miss Rosa, which god provided you with this nectar?”

“It was only a demi-god, our Karl. The package which arrived yesterday contained not only this splendid coffee blend, but also one of those Karlsbad style kettles, and instructions for making the coffee. Mother and I couldn’t get enough of it. I just realized that I made a big mistake by not pouring the coffee into the pot we use “only for special occasions.”

“I am delighted that you don’t consider me a “special occasion”, and so I am generously forgiving the faux pas of not receiving this drink of the gods in the prescribed manner from the preheated pot.  Mrs. Kraus, I fear you will not let your daughter take that vacation, although I could certainly understand.”

Rosa then found out what the “vacation” was about.  At first, she was very happy, but then she said that there was no way she could leave her mother.  Both sons were busy with their jobs, and her mother would be alone almost all day.  It wasn’t until the young teacher promised to keep her mother company every day after the daughter’s departure, and even to prepare and serve the coffee according to her instructions, to correct homework assignments there and to keep an eye on her two brothers and exhort them to ease their mother’s burden as much as possible, that the matter was decided. When Rosa’s brother picked her up a few weeks later, Wilhelm Adolf Lenow assumed his promised duties of  friendly advisor, visitor and chess partner.  The young girl’s enthusiastic letters and detailed descriptions were a source of great delight for Mrs. Kraus and her devoted young friend and helper. 

A few weeks later he confessed to Mrs. Kraus that he was planning to ask for her daughter’s hand in marriage.  His friend looked at him affectionately and said:

“Mr. Lenow, I am deeply moved by your offer, and if I had ever entertained the thought of a husband for my child (and Rosa still is a child), no other type than yours would have been considered.  Rosa turned fifteen only half a year ago, and I think you must be about ten years older.  That age difference would be fine if my daughter were older. I would not give my permission for marriage until she is eighteen years old.  I married too young.”

When Adolf Lenow admitted that she was right and asked only to be accepted as her daughter’s fiancé, the clever woman only shook her head to say no.  “I’m convinced my child would be very delighted and happy to know about this, but I want to avoid this.  You are a young man in the prime of your life.  If you truly love my daughter, and I don’t doubt that you do, it is possible that the time you would have to wait would seem too long to you, and you could berate yourself for acting too fast and tying yourself down too soon.  I am too fond of you to think about you being in such a moral conflict.  If you, in the meantime, were to see that I, a woman with more experience in these matters, am right about this, that would change nothing about our friendly relationship.  Of course, my daughter must not find out about this discussion. You may discuss it with Karl.”

Adolf Lenow kissed his chess partner’s hand.  “I respect and bow to your decision. In the meantime, I will look for a more lucrative position so that I will, after the period of time you have specified, be able to provide a more pleasant life for my wife.”

Exactly four years later, Adolf Lenow brought his bride to his home in Trblice [Teplice], where he had found a position as head teacher.

Incredibly, I have Rosa’s wedding ring. The night before my wedding in 1999, I stayed overnight with my mother. As we were talking about what my “something old” might be, she pulled out a little plastic box with a slim gold wedding band, engraved with Rosa and Adolf’s initials and the wedding date of 23 May 1867. I had never seen this ring and if my mother hadn’t shown it to me that day, it would have been a mystery when I finally came across it. An aside: when we were trying to decide on a style of wedding band, my husband and I looked at a number of unusual styles, finally settling on a simple gold band with our initials and wedding date engraved inside - just like Rosa’s ring. When I saw her ring, I realized we had made exactly the right choice!

Coffee played an important role in my grandmother’s life. Her uncle the coffee merchant introduced his sister’s family to its charms. When my grandmother went to Vienna, she fell in love with café society.

February 15

On Being Fatalistic

With no letter dated today or tomorrow, we turn to Helene’s memoirs (slightly edited for clarity). In honor of Valentine’s Day yesterday, the stories concern Helene’s and her mother’s romantic lives.

 On Being Fatalistic.

Before my fate was linked with that of Vitali, I was fatalistic. Uncountable times I observed that I glaubte zu schieben und bin geschoben worden [I believed I was pushing and I was pushed]. By whom? Call it superstition, but I have reliance on my fate, which sometimes prevented me from doing something I thought very reasonable. Afterwards I found out that it would have been a failure, but more often I was forced to do something; I struggled but this gewisse etwas [certain something] prevailed. Reluctantly I gave in, and I never regretted it, although I acted against my “better judgment” as I put it to myself, only to learn after that it was all right. Several times it happened to me that I came to a decision. I thought over and over again, and when it came to the point to act, I just did the contrary – something interfered, prompted me to do or say something – it was surprising.

My encounter with Vitali is a proof to me that there is no such thing like a blind game of chance. Vitali came from Constantinople for one week or so and remained for good. Veni vidi vici? No. I saw that he was in a higher strata than I, I liked his bearing, his self-assuredness without being arrogant, I liked him, found him good-looking, amiable, interesting and God-knows-what-else, but when he asked me to marry him, I refused, knowing that one day I would give in. Vitali was not obtrusive, but he chased away all my boyfriends I liked so much. They felt his superiority, and retired, which made me no more friendly towards Vitali, but he pretended not to see it.

Our spiritual compatibility was astonishing, the more, as we in daily life affairs were often of contrary opinion, and struggled. Vitali liked to belittle me sometimes out of pure opposition, but when I sometimes said: I have to do this or that, he gave me an understanding look and asked me: what is the matter, what did you dream of?

Vitali was in business-affairs more often a hindrance than help, but he never would allow anybody to think so, therefore he minimized my success in business, and was jealous. Jealousy was his main-strain and that I could not stand. I had been independent for 20 years, and that is deep water. When after a serious sickness everything in our business went topsy-turvy, I experienced that my Deus ex machina, as Vitali expressed it, had not forgotten me, only that he came always at the very last moment, just when my desperation reached its climax.  Anytime I was nonplussed, Vitali was not – he took it for granted.

Once, shortly after we had to separate from our children, we went to a show. I forgot the name. It was the story of a couple, separated by force in different ages. The features of this couple had changed only little: changed only was the apparel, the circumstances, but not their fate, always they were separated, to find themselves together after centuries, and on different continents. When we left, we didn’t talk. All of a sudden V. took my hand and squeezed it. I tried to be cheerful when I said: “Vitali, did this actor imitate you or have you seen this picture before and you imitate him?” (Vitali’s carriage was characteristic for him, I observed the same bearing among some men in Florence, every inch a Renaissance-Prince) Vitali didn't answer this question, only said seriously: “It wasn’t the first time chérie we met each other, and it will not be the last.”

When traveling on the Drottningholm [the ship that took Helene to Istanbul in 1945 after being part of a prisoner trade and being released from Ravensbrück] I took a book at random, there were not too many. It was: I Met a Gypsy, by Norah Lofts. This book excited me immensely. This book harps on the same subject. When I came here, I asked several people if they can remember that a picture was made from this book, nobody could.

I am a believer in the immortality of souls.

This story was included in one of the binders filled with Helene’s childhood memoirs. All of the other stories in this binder are about her youth, are double-spaced and go on for many pages – very different from this single-spaced stand-alone sheet. It is much more personal and romantic. When I came across this story, it was the first window I had into Helene’s and Vitali’s relationship. We see that Helene felt that they were soulmates, despite differences in style and a tendency for Vitali to criticize or belittle her. A few of her other stories give examples of this less-than-charming side of her extremely charming husband. She put up with his behavior because there was so much more she saw in him.

After reading this, I tracked down a copy of I Met a Gypsy by Norah Lofts. It was a fun read and I was happy to read something I knew my grandmother had read, but it seemed a stretch to connect it to Helene’s experience. The book is a series of short stories about the descendants of a gypsy, and takes place over centuries, continents, and generations. Although one or two of the stories were made into films, the earliest was made in 1947, long after any film Helene and Vitali would have seen in Vienna in 1939 or 1940.

For someone who was not religious, being a fatalist must have made a lot of sense. How else to understand the course of one’s life? Why do some people survive and others not? Helene’s mother had had 13 or 14 pregnancies, 7 children survived into childhood. By 1910 at the age of 24, Helene’s only surviving sibling was her brother Max. By 1918, three of her sisters’ five children with Julius Zerzawy had died, leaving only her nephews Paul and Robert surviving past age 20. Helene was not harmed by the 1889 flu pandemic (see blog posts from January 16 and 17) and TB, while many others around her did not.

My mother and Harry both called themselves “fatalists”. I thought it was something unique to them, based on the circumstances of their childhood and separation from and loss of their parents. Here we discover that they learned to think of themselves as fatalists from their parents. As so often has happened on this journey, I am reminded how attitudes and opinions are handed down over generations – often unspoken or unconsciously. There is nothing new under the sun.

I would like to think that Helene and Vitali will meet again.

February 12

We saw a few letters from Paul’s brother/Helene’s nephew Erich Zerzawy on January 8 and 12. In 1917, he was a prisoner of war in Berezowka, Eastern Siberia.  In today’s letter, he writes to his siblings in Brüx, Bohemia, Austria. 

12 February 1917

My dear ones! 

I still don’t have any news about how long it is going to be!  Don’t worry about me.  I hope I don’t have to worry about you.  Please say hello to all of the relatives.  They should get busy and write; I am not allowed to.  Please send me, in field post packages, tobacco, paper, cigarettes, cigars, and a pair of suspenders. 

A thousand kisses from your devoted Erich

The earliest letter I have from Erich was in July of 1916 when he was a soldier. All of the other 29 cards were sent from Siberia when he was a POW.

As with the rest of the family, Erich writes in a bright tone, probably to get past the censors and to allay the fears of his family. But he makes clear how much the letters and care packages are necessary to his comfort.

I don’t have a photo of Erich from that time, but found an article on Russian POWs as well as a photo of prisoners in Berezowka from the Bain Collection located in the Library of Congress:

From the Library of Congress Bain Collection

February 6

I love today’s 1941 letter from Helene to her son Harry in San Francisco, which was written a few days before the letters we saw yesterday. The beginning and ending are wonderful – a lavish, long, loving, lighthearted salutation and signing off with endless kisses. Her children could not have doubted her love, despite the miles between them.

I was struck by how visually appealing the letter is – although she used a typewriter, it’s laid out in an interesting way. Very different from the densely-packed letters we’ve seen with no white space or paragraph breaks. Here she puts to good use the lessons she learned as the daughter of a newspaper publisher.

Helene mentions how often she rereads the letters from her children, she no doubt knew most of them by heart. They are her greatest treasure. With little news of her own, she recalls events and conversations from when they were together in Vienna and throws in literary references. Although many references are classical and “serious,” she also enjoyed silly puns and verse.  

Finally, the silly verse she quotes is something from her own childhood in Bohemia. Eichler’s factory was located in Duchov/Dux which was just 6 miles from Bilin where my grandmother’s family lived.

Vienna, 3 February 1940 [actually 1941]

My praiseworthy dear Son in the flesh!

Lacking many new letters, I kept myself happy by reading your old letters again and again and then I observed that there were some questions I had not answered. Because today as hard as I try, I have nothing to really tell you, I want to use time, paper and postage to atone for my old sins of omission. Since a certain Harry once asked me if he had spelled the word “guitar” correctly, and I didn’t know why he wanted to know it for this word in particular, I left this question unanswered back then. In your last letter, you both make excuses for your poor spelling. For me it really was not meant as a rebuke or reprimand. I really meant it seriously when I wrote “I hope that your English knowledge is gaining as much as your German is being lost.” When I have on occasion met Germans in the past who had spent a lot of time in other countries and during our conversation they were looking for German expressions, I thought it was some sort of affectation. I couldn’t believe that adults could forget their native language after some years. But it does seem to be the case.

The same Harry asked us if we had heard of an old English poet named Chaucer or read anything of his. Not in the least. The old English people also had much to say about heroes and bravery [Rather than quoting Chaucer, she includes a quote from Nibelungenlied, “The Song of the Nibelungs,” written around 1200 which was the source for Wagner’s “Ring”]. Since we now seem to have arrived at the topic of classical literature, I ask you not to be mad at me if I express my opinion that I prefer your prose to your verse. First, well perhaps I do not have sufficient “convolution of the brain” to understand, I prefer to read prose rather than poetry. Especially I am rather spoiled.

When I was a kid, I knew a “poet” who wrote the following:

“Oh how it sparkles and flashes,
When a rider is sitting on his horse.” 

You will have to admit that you could not keep up with this genius. A second poem of his was original and wouldn’t have been overtaken by any of its brothers.

I know of a letter, his name is “F”...
I know a beer, its name is “FF”
After Edward comes Josef*

The last line is incomprehensible without commentary. (You can hardly read difficult works without commentary.) My classic author was named Edward Eichler. He was not only a divinely gifted poet, which certainly these small excerpts will convince you of, but a very successful producer of pottery** [or poetry: ton = sound and clay]. His company was named Edward and Josef Eichler, Dux [Royal Dux pottery]. With these poems he wanted to make his brothers eternal I believe and he almost succeeded. Father had the pleasure and honor of publishing poems in his shining chamber pot. And other poetry as well. They sold like hot cakes. Now you will understand why your elegiac complaint - yes, the greatest geniuses only get the laurel wreath after their death - why this really doesn’t have the desired effect when I read it. Maybe it’s just that in our times instead of putting a spruce wreath on the temples of our poets and singers, I’d rather put an extra sausage.

This would be your reward if you had written those poems when you were still living here in Seidlgasse. 

That’s enough for today!

Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisses…

Helene

*This poem is not just intelligent but it also has two meanings because Edward does come after Josef in the dictionary.

**Professor Freud is right about this. I thought about Tom the rhymer when I wrote the word “tom” instead of “ton”.

I looked through early editions of the Biela-Zeitung, but did not find any of Eichler’s poetry or ads for his pottery. I found an advertisement in the March 17, 1877 issue for a hotel and restaurant operated by the Eichler family. Edward Eichler’s name is mentioned in a news item in other issues. Presumably, the poetry and perhaps pottery showed up in later editions not available online. Here is the ad for Eichler’s inn, offering excellent beer, good cold cuisine, and prompt service: 

17 March 1877 issue, p.7 of Biela-Zeitung

January 30

Today we have another letter from soldier Paul Zerzawy addressed to his brother Robert Zerzawy in Brüx, Bohemia. As you can see, this letter is very different in tone from previous letters. Paul’s letters usually have a bright and positive tone. Here he is serious and chides his younger brother for not informing him of their sister’s illness.

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Feldpost 211, 30 January 1918

Dear Robert!

A letter which just arrived has me very surprised. Since the 13th, Käthl has been seriously ill. In all this time I have received 5 cards and 2 letters from you. Only in one do you mention Käthl, with the following words: “a little bit nervous.. it will pass…etc” In your words, to be honest, I had not suspected the situation described by Papa. I am certainly very grateful that you especially in recent times have always reported diligently about your meetings and you have described your life. But you will admit that this matter would have been more important. I am asking you to do the following in the same quarter hour that you read this letter. Please write in detail about Käthl, without taking into consideration that I might come on vacation before. Please do this if you want me to have real trust in your reporting.

Can you imagine especially now how I am eagerly awaiting my next vacation?

Today I have sent 500k to your address. Please save it in a way that is useful – either in our common bank account or into a separate bank account with my name. We will talk about more detailed directives when I see you.

Yours

Paul

P.S. Please let me know if the blouse, shirt, coat and the black trousers of my uniform are fit to be used. Otherwise, I will have to get something on the way or in Vienna. And also if there is civilian clothing available for me for an emergency.

Greetings to Grandmother and Käthl. I don’t dare to write to Käthl personally, because I do not know if she in a condition that might make her suffer from it. I cannot understand at all and cannot make sense of your sunny carelessness and Papa’s sorrow.

Paul

It appears that not much changed in family communication over the decades. In yesterday’s letter from 1941, Helene is concerned that she is not being told the truth about Robert’s health. Today, 23 years earlier, we see that Robert did not want to alarm his brother by telling him disturbing news, worried how he might react and knowing he could do nothing at such a distance. Although it appears that mail came often during the first world war, it wasn’t possible to call or text for more information, so Paul would have been waiting on pins and needles until the next letter. How confusing too to receive different news from his brother and his father.

January 27

Today we have another letter from soldier Paul to his family to the Zerzawy family in Brüx, Bohemia. It’s interesting that he tells his family his location and some of what is happening. Perhaps that is because it was delivered personally rather than through the post. Most of Harry’s WWII letters say “somewhere in the South Pacific” or the location is blacked out.

I am sorry I don’t know more of WWI history to really understand his letters. In the “quiet” of wartime, Paul makes travel and time off seem easy and possible. His location in Romania is about 600 miles from home, Paul may not go home on all is vacations, but according to his letters, he does it fairly often. He receives mail from his family often as well as from from his brother Erich, a POW in Siberia.

Feldpost 211, 27 January 1918

My dear ones!

I just met with Mr. Max Black who offered to take this letter with him to Brüx. The proper answer to your letters from the 10th, 19th and 20th of December will follow later. Right now, I only want to tell you that as of yesterday I am a kaiserlich und königliche ensign in the unit [in the Imperial and Royal Army]. Commentary and details later. The time is short and I do not want to miss my meeting with Black.  

Currently I am with the 7th company in Hangulesti [Romania], the position of the regiment troops. On the 1st we are dissolving the First Battalion (now positioned near Calieni which is at the confluence of the Putmar and the Sereth).

Right now I’m doing well. What I’m missing now is a vacation. I am working on it with full steam, but it depends on the following: that the other officers of our group who are on vacation return soon. Because I actually am not entitled to a vacation right now.

As you know it is completely quiet on the Front, but we cannot trust that this quietness will continue, because every day other little “events” happen. This fact you know better than I from the newspapers, because I haven’t been out in the world for an eternity.

Erich’s letter is enclosed. Please write to him from me! Greetings to our acquaintances, especially Lido!

January 18

As mentioned earlier, I only recently began to get the letters translated that were written in old German handwriting. Today’s letter was translated on New Year’s Eve eve and seemed like an auspicious beginning for this year’s blog – a letter to Helene!

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When I began to research and understand my family papers, I attended a meeting of the SF Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society at the San Francisco Jewish Community Library. It was a monthly drop-in meeting entitled “Brainstorming With the Mavens.” I had no idea that such organizations and resources existed. The “mavens” are amateur and professional genealogists who volunteer their time to help people like me get started or overcome roadblocks on their genealogical research. One reason I attended was that I wanted to know whether I needed to find a Czech translator as well as a German one. The WWI letters looked so foreign that I could not believe they were written in German. I brought a copy of a letter and a maven immediately confirmed that it was in German. That in itself was interesting information since my grandmother’s family came from the Czech area of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Not uncommon for Bohemian Jews but I did not know it at the time.

Today’s letter was found in an envelope addressed to Paul’s brother Robert, so my archivist and I both assumed it was a letter written to him or to the Zerzawy family as a whole. To my astonishment, it was written to Helene, my grandmother and Paul’s aunt! I assume the letter arrived in the envelope it was found in because the envelope and paper look like the same stationery.

One reason it never occurred to us that the letter was written to Helene was that her name is completely unrecognizable (to me at least) in Sütterlin:

The name “Helene” written in Sütterlin

                                                                                    18 January 1918

Dearest Helene!

The dear k.u.k Fieldpost once again creates a lot of torturous suspense for me. But possibly it is not its fault and it is innocent and it is caused by the change of address.

Please for now learn the following facts:

I am healthy and I spent the day in the following manner which is usual manner during the truce/cease fire: partly military exercises, partly doing nothing. Very lazy. Once again I am commander of the unit in the company. The weather is very beautiful, clear and dry.

Your package with gloves and the letter with the rosette it seems has gone missing. It probably will be in Hungary or fallen into enemy hands.

I will write more when I am in a better mood, which will especially be the case when I will have heard from you and the other dear ones.

Yours with kisses

Paul

Translator Amei Papitto and I couldn’t figure out what a “rosette” was – something in the shape of a rose - based on images found on the internet, perhaps it was something out of fabric or rose-shaped cookies. I’d like to think that Helene sent him cookies for the holidays since she loved baking. The family’s wry sense of humor comes through when talking about the lost package.  

January 17

Surviving past pandemics, part 2

In the 1950s, Harry bought a typewriter for his mother and encouraged her to put her words to paper. Helene wrote a number of stories recalling her childhood in Bilin. She was a wonderful storyteller and apparently had an amazing memory – where it has been possible to corroborate details, I find she always ends up having given an accurate account of things.

My grandmother organized her stories into binders and in chapters, presumably hoping to create a book. She often used pseudonyms of her name (“Nehoc” for Cohen, “Lenow” for Löwy). Today’s story is in the chapter entitled “Child Without Childhood.”  It was found in the same binder as yesterday’s newspaper article about the 1889 flu pandemic.

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First page of “Earliest childhood: Influenza Epidemic 1889”

Story by “Helene Nehoc” (translated and somewhat edited):

Earliest childhood: Influenza Epidemic 1889 /Helene Nehoc

The harsh weather, with snowstorms that never seem to end and howling winter storms could not have impressed this child somuch  that she would never forget such a day ever again. Little Helene Lenow didn’t find out until quite a bit later what really happened on that ugly day.

In the house, in which mostly music and laughter predominated, overnight there had arisen a frightening vacuum.

Neither her mother nor her big sisters were heard or seen. Not even Marischka, who was the long time house help, paid any attention to her. The child waited fearfully in her crib. Finally the girl came, took the little one out of her cage, and dressed her and brought her into the living room. There she told her that she had to be well-behaved and stay put, because it was icy cold and windy outside; in a few minutes she would bring breakfast in to her.  

She usually had breakfast in the comfortable kitchen and in Marischka’s company, who would make funny faces for her. She was annoyed at not being able to do so and she started to cry. Soon, Marischka came back, brought coffee, a piece of coffee cake, and a little plate of preserved fruit.

She put the tray — on which everything had been prepared bite sized — on a comfortable chair, and put a footstool in front of it and left after she had tied a bib on her beloved Helenku with her eyes all red from crying and she put her finger up to lips to show that she was to stay quiet, and then she left the room. 

Enene (which was her nickname) stayed sitting on her footstool without moving and listened carefully to even the quietest noise. Everyone who passed by the hallway went on tiptoe. Only the terrible storm was howling with a strength that did not seem to dissipate. Other than that there was a depressing silence. Even the very loud printing machines whose noise otherwise would be coming up from the basement to the top floor, were standing still, with the exception of the platen press which was used for express orders in a smaller format such as business cards, envelopes, or death announcements. On that strange day, the last of these were the only things that kept the machines going. The influence of the epidemic saw that neither man nor machine got even a short break. 

From a room in a faraway part of the house which was used for packing and storing manuals and handbooks, Enene heard the plaintive melody of the Moszkowski Serenade. Her brother, a music student, had gone back there to practice. He had no idea of the devastating catastrophe that had already happened.

The child, attracted by the magic of the music, woke up from her trance. With the instinct of a sleepwalker, she dragged the footstool over to the door in order to open it. She did not make any sound and followed the sound of the music. With her doll in her arms, she sat down on a little wooden box which was intended as a footrest for whoever was working in there. She paid attention to the melody of the music which she already knew. This time it wasn’t the power of the music that calmed her down, but the fact that it interrupted the silence which had brought her to such a panic. This fear was somewhat mollified by the presence of her big brother, but it never entirely left her. Fear of the unknown, a fear which later came back sporadically when Helene Lenow was an adult.

Before Max had finished his practice, there was a piercing scream from their parents’ bedroom. He put his violin down, grabbed his little audience member under his arm, and ran with her down the long, dark corridor which led to the living rooms. In the hallway, he put the little girl down and ran into the room where the scream had come from. Mrs Rosa Lenow had had a violent heart attack. The heavy smell of Hoffmann’s Drops (spirit of ether), which she always carried with a few pieces of sugar in her apron pocket, filled up the hall.

Enene stood on the same spot the whole time, just where her brother had left her. A miniature Lot’s wife. From there, she could see through the door that the storm had opened that someone was covered with a linen blanket and was laying on the bed. This door led to the room in which Mother’s brother Karl stayed when he was a houseguest. The hall was like an icy basement, but the child did not move from that spot.

Someone came out of the parents’ bedroom and carried the little girl into the living room, put her on the sofa, and covered her up with a blanket, kissed her and said: “Sleep child, sleep.” But the great excitement was really too much for her to fall asleep. This room seemed to be the only one that had been untouched by the mysterious events in the house.

Helene held her doll even more tightly, and was amazed that none of her big sisters came in to play with or read something to her. If someone had told her that with the exception of her, Max, and her eldest sister, everyone was very ill and that her other four sisters, following the advice of the doctor, had been brought up to an otherwise unoccupied room in the attic, she would probably have wanted to go up there to them.

After awhile, Ida dressed her for going out and carried her with her lips pressed tightly together, unable to speak even a word to friends. Enene was afraid she must have done something really bad, because Ida was really mad and didn’t want to talk to her anymore. A deep guilt made the poor little thing even sadder. She began to sob and put her arms around the neck of her big sister, who without saying a word, stroked her hair.

Enene knew nothing about who these people were, in whose house she was now supposed to live, and what they were called. Just as little did she knew why she had to leave home. Had she really been that bad? 

After a few weeks she was picked up by Ida, who wore a new black coat and a new black hat and gloves. She was very pale and looked even more serious than usual. Enene did not recognize her home.

Mother, Enene’s sisters, and Marischka all wore black clothes. Father and Max were wearing black bands on the arms of their dark suits. Everyone was unusually pale and had all gotten a lot thinner. 

Little Helene was the only one who wore a colorful dress and hardly missed Uncle Karl who had died. As a traveling salesman of an old Prague coffee and tea import company he had his own apartment in the capital city, but he took every opportunity — especially before he had a long sales trip — to spend a few days in the circle of his sister’s family, which he considered to be his own. Karl Kraus was one of the first victims of the influenza in this city. He died as a bachelor, 45 years old, and it had been his first and last illness. Helene Lenow could not know that her mother had lost the most ideal brother, her father his best friend and business advisor, her sister Ida her good genius. The rest of them would be mourning for the loss of the person they thought of as their second father.

Mrs Rosa Lenow recovered quickly from her heart attack — that is, she ignored her symptoms because she neither wanted to nor could afford the luxury of being ill. She was too important in both house and business, and she lived almost entirely on Hoffmann’s drops and strong black coffee, both with a lot of sugar.  

Adolf Lenow aged by 10 years in these weeks, and his four daughters who had been felled by the influenza won the battle of death thanks to the superhuman care and concern of the parents, of the two siblings Ida and Max, and the untiring care provided by the family doctor. But death did not give up so easily. Two of them succumbed at a later point to consequences of this evil plague.

Helene Lenow knew nothing about any of that. In her young brain, she only heard the T’ling, t’ling, of the platen printing press, which was woven together with the sad melody of the Moszkowski Serenade, which became a leitmotif — that creepy symphony of ghosts and spirits, to which the howling storm had lent its especially impressive voice.

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The memories of the influenza epidemic were replaced with later even more horrifying catastrophes — beginning with the outbreak of war in 1914 and ending with the epidemic which was then known as the Spanish flu — even by the families that were affected by it, these memories were driven away, or at least the images had became much paler over time. The narrator managed to pay her tribute to the “Spanish flu” with double pneumonia, but without it happening to her that in her feverish delirium she was scared by the Moszkowski Serenade. However, during the second world war, when she disappeared behind the concentration camp walls which were covered with barbed wire, this sentimental melody, which was mixed with the T’ling T’ling, T’long of the platen printing press which in the meantime had become long since obsolete and had been piled on an iron scrap heap and with that the horrible feeling of being completely left alone, this time in a large family of different peoples who were speaking different languages.

This music piece is for many listeners a very nice da capo, but for the author of her earliest childhood memories, it is a piece of music from Hades, which she escaped from when she had already given up all hope.

January 16

Surviving past pandemics, part 1

I don’t have any documents from January 16 or 17, so for the next two days I am dipping into undated, yet unbelievably timely, materials.

In addition to letters and official documents, my grandmother kept a few binders which contained newspaper articles, quotations, and other ephemera. As I became familiar with the contents of the archive, I realized that many of these items were kept for very personal reasons and sometimes were related to each other.

This article from an unknown German language newspaper was in one of the binders. It was likely written in the spring of 1957:

From an unknown newspaper, probably published in 1957

Is the Asian Flu Seventy Years Old?

The Asian flu is not at all so new and overwhelming/irresistible as one has thought until now. This is the claim of the Dutch Professor Mulder. In his opinion the old people who were affected by the flu epidemic in the year 1889 were immune to the virus. This hypothesis will now be tested. Not that it would do very much good to many people at this point, because there will probably not be so many veterans of the flu from that time. But the proof that the mutations of the influenza virus in cycles of 60 years repeat themselves could lead to some interesting discoveries in our fight against this disease.

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The 1957 flu pandemic killed more than 1 million people worldwide, as did the one in 1889.

For a few years, Roslyn and I had been meeting regularly to translate my family’s papers. Like everything, these in-person meetings stopped in March 2020. We restarted our translation sessions to Zoom in June after realizing it would be a long time before we’d again be able to get together. When Roslyn translated this article in August 2020, it was eerie and humbling. Here we were, trapped in our own homes, reading about previous pandemics.

Imagine my grandmother’s life. She was born in 1886, just in time for the 1889 pandemic. In the midst of wartime in 1918, yet another pandemic. And then, a world away in San Francisco in 1957, another one. Today it is easy for many of us to take good health and safety for granted. My grandmother knew that it all could disappear in an instant. We are learning that lesson ourselves.

After Roslyn translated this article, I first thought that Helene had kept it as an interesting curiosity. Here was a professor positing that people who had been exposed to the 1889 flu would probably be immune to the 1957. But there would be so few people still alive almost 70 years later, that his theory couldn’t be tested. In April 1957, my grandmother was just over 70 years old – she must have felt like a dinosaur.

It turned out that my grandmother kept this article for another reason – more on that tomorrow…

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January 15

Today we hear again from soldier Paul Zerzawy:

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January 15, 1918

My dear ones!

I have been ordered back to my old company and my address is therefore Ldst TR9/7, Feldcomp. Feldpost 211. If Käthl is not in Brüx anymore, because your last report from 2nd January does not mention it, in that case please greet her from me. I am dying to see the next post.

I am not able to write long letters when I receive yours; you will understand and forgive me, won’t you?

Paul

Since the letter doesn’t have much new to tell us, I wanted to muse a bit on the art of letter writing. First off, isn’t it amazing to see this letter that is over 100 years old? Despite a few stains, it’s in great condition. Many of the others from that time are far more pristine, while this shows some wear and tear. Over the years, this letter traveled from somewhere in Romania to Bohemia to Vienna and Prague and ultimately settled in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I am old enough to have written a lot of letters. I lived abroad at a time when making a phone call wasn’t easy or cheap and it could take weeks to receive a reply to a letter. Every day I would wait eagerly for the mail to arrive, hoping to hear from friends and family at home. I would read each letter several times, hungrily devouring each and every word in order to feel connected to those I missed, trying to hear their voices in the words on the page. Sometimes the replies to my letters seemed disconnected because they were responding to words and feelings I had expressed weeks earlier and subsequently forgot.

People of my grandmother’s generation had learned how to stay in touch and informed. They often kept copies of their own letters so they would know whether their questions had been answered. Keep in mind that keeping a copy wasn’t such an easy thing at that time. Fortunately there was carbon paper (I just checked – carbon paper was patented in 1806). I am grateful for its invention because a number of letters in my archive were copies of letters sent from Paul Zerzawy to Helene while they were trying to bring Helene and Vitali to America in 1940-41. As we’ve seen, during times of censorship, they often numbered their letters so they would know whether the mail was getting through.

In addition to keeping copies of letters, they shared these precious missives with each other, often enclosing letters from relatives with letters of their own – probably another reason my archive is so rich. We will see at a future date an example of postcards where the picture on the card was a photo of the sender – a great way of keeping in touch while giving a valuable keepsake to the recipient.

I appreciate the convenience and immediacy of email and texting and such, but miss the joy of eagerly checking the mail each day. Without all this correspondence, I would not know the story of my relatives or have such a clear sense of their personalities and the world they lived in.   

January 12

Today is another card from POW Erich Zerzawy.

12/I.18.

[Printed on card: Do not write between the lines!]

My dear ones! By way of exception, I can write to you again. There is a transport leaving for neutral countries. All of us here hope to follow soon — not to other countries, but just to go home, which nobody will regret. What do you think? You agree, don’t you? Yes, yes, if only it were happening right now already, your Erich would be so happy knowing that he would be able to hug and kiss all of you for real, the way he does now in spirit.

A few thoughts on the card itself – this one has no censorship stamp, and despite the admonition against writing between the lines, he has done so. As he mentions in the card, he has found a way to send this card through other means.

After reading a recent post about Erich, historian Robert W. Cherny, author of Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017), mentioned that “by early 1917, things were falling apart in Russia.  By mid-1918, the country was in civil war.  The army had been dissolved by the Bolsheviks, so who knows what may have happened to the POW camps?” 

This comment led me to do a bit more research and I stumbled onto the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, where I discovered a card with information about Erich which contradicts Paul Zerzawy’s family tree. Since this card was sent to Paul Zerzawy at some point when he was in Vienna, it corroborates my assumption that the year of death on the tree was a typo rather than a lack of knowledge. Especially since the family had letters from Erich dated in 1918. This document says that he fled from Beresowka on July 15, 1918. Presumably the statement on the family tree that he was fleeing for the Chinese border when he died was anecdotal evidence from someone who knew him.

From the International Committee of the Red Cross Archives

Below is a map to show where Erich began and ended his life. It shows where he was born in Bilin, where he was apparently captured in Luck/Lutsk, and where he died in Siberia.

January 9

I have no documents with today’s date, so I am posting a letter from January 10 since I have two from that date. Here is another letter from Paul to his brother written just a few days after my recent post.

January 10, 1918

Dear Robert!

I have your letter with precious comments on the new year. …

Thank God today my course is finished. The crowned fire-emitting dragon on my lapel which now also designates me outward as a machinist has been earned with much hardship. His excellency divisionnaire raced here personally by car to undertake our final exam. He smiled with satisfaction and the six-week long torture had reached its end. On the 13th or 14th I will return to the rolls of the Regiment Landsturm 9 where my further fate will be decided.

You are doing nothing and hope the same of me? Well, thank you.…

The numeration of the letters, which caused me difficulties because of my weak memory of numbers, I will therefore give up, because the letters according to our experience arrive punctually and uncensored. …

Are you quite healthy? And do you learn anything besides the leçons with Mimi? Also Institutiones Civilis Roman and similar things? Or are you doing things as your brother Paul did in his time? How is your painting going? …

I am doing well despite snow and busy north winds coming from Sarmatishen Valley/Lowland [perhaps Sarmatia? A province of the Roman Empire including Romania]. To do ice skating, I lack the skates. To do bicycling, I lack the flatlands. And to do both, I am lacking the time….

Your loyal brother,

Paul

As I’ve mentioned, it’s amazing all the information you can find online. As I was preparing this post, I went down the rabbit hole of trying to find a World War I Austrian military insignia showing a dragon to figure out whether a machinist was someone who dealt with machines or machine guns. I had no luck but that sent me looking for military records. I know they’re out there but don’t know if they’re available via the internet. No luck today. But it led me back to Ancestry.com where I found the same US records about Paul Z that I’d never seen before: today I did something recommended at a genealogy workshop – don’t only look at the document in the database, but look at those documents nearby. Voilà, more information I’d never seen before! Those of you who have done genealogy research know the excitement and fun such discoveries are – not to mention how quickly the day disappears.

Some thoughts on today’s letter:

Today I looked up the definition of “Landsturm”. Apparently the soldiers in these units were usually older (but not Paul) and it sounds like they essentially were reserves, generally assigned to fortresses and towns rather than going into combat.

Paul talks about no longer needing to number the letters they write to each other because they don’t seem to be censored (unlike his brother Erich’s letter which we saw yesterday). I have a wealth of censored correspondence – first from World War I and then my grandmother’s letters while she was in Vienna in World War II. Strange to think that this would have been the “normal” state of affairs for my family as they continued their copious correspondence. There are echoes across the years. They learned how to communicate and how to determine whether mail was received. In today’s letter, Paul apologizes for not being able to keep track of numbering his correspondence. More than 20 years later, Helene asks him and her children to number their letters so she will know if she is receiving all of the mail. Apparently, Paul’s “weak memory” did not improve over the decades.

I am enjoying getting to know Paul – his sense of humor, his self-described laziness, his desire to assure his family that he is fine despite whatever hardships come his way.

Finally, Paul talks about the weather. I have Paul’s photo album filled with WW I army photos, including the one below. I’m cold just looking at it.

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January 8

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Beresowka, 8 January 1917

 My dear ones!

From week to week, still no news, nothing. Now I doubt that my cards have reached you. Others are already home. I am doing the same as always here, don’t worry. Tomorrow, something is supposed to arrive from the Red Cross — probably from Countess Kinsky. Maybe we will get a loan of a few rubles which will then be paid back by you. I am really waiting anxiously for your letters since I don’t know where you are or how you are doing. A thousand kisses. Your Erich

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Like Paul, his younger brother Erich was a soldier during WWI. He was born in 1898. According to the Zerzawy family tree, Erich was captured in Luck (the German name for Lutsk in northwestern Ukraine) in 1916 and died in 1917 – this appears to be a mistake as I have 2 postcards from Erich dated 1918 (back to the importance of not relying on a single source when trying to determine the facts of one’s family). The family tree entry ends with saying that he “was allegedly fleeing to the Chinese border when he was killed”. As a POW, he was imprisoned in Beresowka in Eastern Siberia.

I have 30 postcards from Erich, 29 of them written during his time as a POW. You can see that he is writing to his family in Brüx, Bohemia (now Most, Czech Republic). The only card written before being captured was from July of 1916. The contents of the cards is pretty innocuous, presumably because he knew they were censored (see triangular stamp on card – an Austrian censorship stamp, perhaps the rectangular Russian one is also by a censor).

An interesting detail about Erich’s letters is that he writes in the more modern German script, not in the Sütterlin that Paul was using at that time. Was Paul hoping the censors couldn’t read Sütterlin? Or was it a function of his being a few years older? My grandmother switched from handwritten to typewritten (much easier on the translator!) letters in 1939 because she believed the censors might not have been allowing the letters they couldn’t read to reach their destination.

Something clear from this letter is that thanks to the Red Cross, prisoners of war were able to receive letters, packages, and money to make their lives a bit easier.

Finally, I’ve been thinking about the journey these letters took to make it into my hands (shades of “The Hare with Amber Eyes”). One thing I regret is that as I began to unearth documents I did not keep a record of exactly where I found things and what they were saved together with.

The only evidence of Erich’s brief 20 year existence on this planet is in a typewritten family tree that Paul created (or at least kept) from the 1930s and these 30 postcards. They were considered important enough that they traveled from a small town in Bohemia to Vienna to San Francisco. As I was trying to remember where I found them, I at first thought they were in a box labeled “Paul Z” which included official paperwork, letters and photos from throughout his life. As mentioned in a previous post, I realized that in fact they were in a box of my grandmother’s letters. I am guessing that Paul’s family kept all of his and Erich’s WWI letters which Paul took to the U.S. when he emigrated. I assume that after he died in 1948, my grandmother took possession of them. This was her connection to the little boy she babysat in Bilin before moving to Vienna in 1902, a happier time when all of her family was alive and together.

January 6

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Since I don’t have a letter from January 6, I am posting about the issue of Biela-Zeitung from that day in 1877. In childhood stories, my grandmother wrote that her father began publishing the weekly Biela-Zeitung newspaper in 1874 because he was upset at the corrupt city government and mine owners and wanted to hold them accountable.

In late 2020 once Roslyn had translated all the letters that were legible to her, we spent a few hours looking through the first issues of the Biela-Zeitung in 1874. It was interesting to see the birth of a new publication. It was an 8-page paper published weekly. This was still true in 1877. However the contents and tone had evolved. The pages of those first few issues were filled with train schedules, comparative market prices, and local advertisements, many of them for Adolf Löwy’s own products and services. He also reprinted stories and news items he had found in newspapers across Europe. Sort of the Utne Reader of its day.

This first issue of 1877 has much more content and many more advertisements from towns in and around Bilin; gone are the train schedules and market prices. The first article of the year confirms my grandmother’s sense of why her father published this paper:

Invitation to Subscribers.

On the 1st of January 1877 the Biela-Zeitung began its new year, its fourth.

We can tell you without boasting that the Biela-Zeitung fulfills all the requirements which one might expect from a local paper, and it will be our most sincere goal to fulfill these fair and right requirements of the readers.

While we thus allow ourselves most politely to invite you to our new edition, we assume that in the future we will continue to follow our quest for truth and justice, promoting that which is good and beautiful and lending an ear to public opinion. However we will fight against arrogance, egotism, and unnecessary greed and we will put those items back into the cupboard.

This is what the Biela-Zeitung has always done and we will continue to hold firmly to this policy.

Let us just mention that the Biela-Zeitung, thanks to its large circulation is also suitable as an insert, and we put our trust in the strong support of the public.

Very truly yours

The Editor

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In addition to fighting for what was right, Adolf reported on local news and celebrations, including in this issue a description of local new years celebrations just days earlier. He ended the article with:

“So the year ’76 was buried and the new year was happily greeted. May this year see our hopes fulfilled in a better way than in the last one”

 Sentiments we all are feeling about the year 2020!

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Putting pieces of the puzzle together

I have been amazed on this journey how easily some things have come together. People have been unfailingly kind – generously giving their time, advice, assistance, and support.

By March 2017, I was beginning to understand the extent of the material I had and how much of it was in German. I was at a loss as to how to proceed. What to keep? What should ultimately happen to these documents? How would I know what was worth translating? How on earth would I get anything translated? How would I keep these documents safe? That last question seemed a bit late in the game. Somehow these documents had survived decades of being thrown haphazardly in boxes, stored in humid and non-temperature controlled environments, and the vast majority were in great condition.

Around the time of Harry’s death in January 2017, I researched local volunteer opportunities. Although I wasn’t necessarily looking to work at a Jewish agency, San Francisco’s Jewish Children & Family Services (JCFS) offered a wide range of volunteer possibilities. In March, the director of the JFCS Financial Aid Center called and told me about the financial assistance programs offered by JFCS. They sounded interesting and worthwhile, so I went for an interview. While waiting to meet the director I picked up a brochure from another JFCS program I’d never heard about – the JFCS Holocaust Center.

I contacted the Yedida Kanfer, the director of community education at the Holocaust Center, and requested her assistance helping me figure out how to approach my project – in terms of translation, organization, and archiving. I met with her at the end of March and she provided a wealth of information. By this time, I had learned the name of the newspaper Helene’s father published in Bilin – the Biela-Zeitung. The coordinator found a link to the National Library of Prague which showed that the newspaper was in the archive there. I couldn’t access it, but it was great to know it existed and that I had a good reason to visit Prague!

Later that year I contacted historian Corry Guttstadt who among other treasures sent a link to several editions of the Biela-Zeitung available at the Austrian National Library in Vienna. At about the same time, Google Books made the first 3 years available to download! I’m not sure why Google Books decided to archive this publication – had I and enough other people searched for it so they decided it was important enough? Or just serendipity? Hopefully one day, editions that were published after my grandmother was born will be available. In one of my grandmother’s stories, she mentions that her father encouraged her to write articles for the paper – I’d love to know if she ever did and whether she got a byline.

Another wonderful serendipity was the location of JFCS – across the street from the old Mt. Zion Hospital, where my mother had lived and trained to be a nurse in 1940-1943! Every time I went to volunteer, I felt like I was walking in my mother’s footsteps.

The old Mount Zion Hospital on Post Street in San Francisco.

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One of the fascinating things about doing family research is the wealth of information that is out there and how one can always make new discoveries. Sometimes it’s something that wasn’t available before, sometimes I’m finally ready to understand what I’m looking at. Today I made a discovery while writing this post. One thing I am still trying to discover is when Adolf Löwy died. Part of the confusion for me is that the Czech archive showed the Biela-Zeitung being published until 1938, which made me think he had lived at least that long. However, my grandmother’s papers made me believe that he died much closer to 1902. The citation in the Vienna library seems much more likely – it lists the paper as having been published from 1874-1904. I would guess that Adolf must have died in 1904 or before – at least the search is narrowing.

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January 5

                                                                                    5 January 1918

My dear ones!

Since an answer to my letter is not here, in the meantime I am just sending you this card to tell you that I am well. The change of name of the military unit … has no significance for me because the course ends between the 18th and 20th. I will then return to my company. From there I will be deployed.

Write to me as soon as possible so that it will still reach me here and only to the included address.

With kind greetings and kisses,

Your Paul

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This letter was written just a day after the one posted yesterday. One striking thing about these letters is how quickly and easily mail seemed to travel between soldiers and their families – it was as if they were having an ongoing conversation. Almost like email! It was much different for my grandmother 30 years later when the mail had become completely unreliable. Paul has been training to be a machinist.

Photo of soldier Paul Zerzawy taken in January 1919