May 1

Today’s document was found in the JDC Archives item ID 867174.

Soon after I contacted historian Corry Guttstadt, she sent me a copy of the document we see today. It is painful and heartbreaking, but so important. If you click on the JDC link above, you’ll see that at the bottom of the page it says “more.” Unfortunately, whatever more there was is not in the digital file. I’ve spent many hours over the past year combing through the JDC Archives, and could not find a second page. When I asked JDC about it, they said we’d have to wait until after Covid as the originals files would need to be checked and were not open at this time.

Helene gave the following “story” to an unknown interviewer.

ISTANBUL (MODA-PALAS) May 1, 1945

Story of Mrs. Helena Cohen of Vienna, who says she is a Turkish citizen:

“My husband and I were taken from Vienna in October 1943. The Germans separated us. They told us we would be together but it wasn’t true. That was the first lie. They brought me to the capital of Moravia and I stayed there a fortnight. I told them I was a Turkish citizen but that made no difference. They said “You are living in Vienna and a Jew is a Jew.” There was an epidemic in the camp at Brno. The group of women there included nine Slovene partisans, young girls from 18 to 25. In November I came to Ravensbruck. 

Ravensbruck is a little town surrounded by a high wall - with electric wires. We arrived in a bus and all our clothes were taken off. We were given a very thin jacket and trousers, stockings, and boots of wood. That was all. Then we came into a block-dwelling. You must think of a hut in the mountains for 250 people. But living there were 1200 to 1600. Every block had four rooms, two for sleeping and two so-called dining rooms. Beds were in layers of three. Two or three persons in a bed.

We were first called at 3 in the morning by a siren and had to stand from 5:30 to 7 for counting, outside the block. In the afternoon we had to stand again but not so long, only for work assignment…a half hour maybe. This third call was after 5pm to 8m, 9, or 10 o’clock for counting. This third call was for the first year. The second year in Ravensbruck we stood only twice.  

There were about 30,000 women in Ravensbruck (between Berlin and Stottin). All things were built by women. When we came the women over 50 were knitting. Making stockings. Very hard work. Young people were in the factories making parts for ammunition. Also trade goods for Berlin. And a factory for furs. Prisoners had furs when they came. They were taken and were prepared for the military. Not all the furs though. Some were for trade. The SS women were overseers. They were terrible —- beasts. Sadists. Took pleasure in torturing the prisoners. For a trifle a person was sent t the strafe block for a beating, entirely separated from the others. No one could go in there. Bad food - dreadful treatment - blows - all underfed. I lost in three months 25 kilos, about 50 pounds. I weighted 75 kilos when I came there.

You were considered ill only if you have over 40 degrees (104). There was one physician in the hospital (SS man) and a great many women physicians who were also prisoners. A “Schwester” in charge decided whether a patient would have a remedy or not, not a physician. There were only three remedies - aspirin, urotropine and carbon for dysentary. Operations were performed without narcotics, sometimes a local anesthetic. Trials were made on sound people. We named them “rabbits”. There was typhoid all the time in the camp. Scarlet fever, too. But mostly typhoid.

Nourishment consisted of in the morning a cup of so-called coffee - brown water without sugar. Excuse me, I don’t say it couramment [French for “fluently”]. I am a little nervous. Lunch was a vegetable boiled in water. Sometimes a little fat in it but mostly not. Some potatoes. Supper we received soup with barley that was not too bad. The first year we had one third of a loaf of bread a day. Later only one quarter and in the last three months twice a week only a slice. We were allowed to write letters once every month. In Buchenwald it was only every two months. People who were in the camp a long time and received parcels regularly by Red Cross or relations could stand it. People without parcels were doomed to starvation. The last months I received parcels from Vienna friends but the first six months I hadn’t. There were many children born in the camp. There was one whole block for pregnant women. The children weren’t too badly off. They had milk and the diet for sick people.

more

One thing that struck me when poring through the archives is that I did not come across similar testimonies from other passengers from the Drottningholm. It seems incredible to me that Helene’s was the only one. In my January 14 post, you can see the challenge of looking for documents- there I included a screenshot of the “titles “of documents – the majority do not have identifying features other than date - if you click on the link above, you’ll see that the the title is “Untitled Typewritten Document”. Thankfully, I knew the date of this document, but my search still involved hours of looking. On the other hand, it was much easier for me though than it had been Corry, who did her research before it was online and had to look through boxes of letters and documents at the JDC, I think in Jerusalem.

April 23

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

The following letter refers to the Zerzawy family tree which we saw on February 13.

Although sharing a last name, the author of the letter, Dr. Herrmann Zerzawy, appears not to have been Jewish and not to have been related to the Zerzawys in my family. He mentions that Paul’s and Robert’s family tree was created by their father (Helene’s brother-in-law) Julius Zerzawy and his cousin Berthold. After spending the last few years in the land of genealogy, I am in awe of all that these people accomplished without access to the internet or computers.

When Roslyn translated this document, I thought it would be of interest to people interested in the history of genealogy. I have yet to find the correct person or organization. I put the question to a listserve on JewishGen and received replies about the origin of the last name. Here is one response: “Zerzawy is clearly a Germanized version of the Czech adjective ‘zrzavy’, which means ‘red-haired’ or ‘red-headed’ (‘zrzava’ for women -- normally with diacritics in both cases). A Czech acquaintance told me that the root of the word is ‘rez,’ which means ‘rust’ in English.” When I attended a Jewish genealogy conference last summer, I learned that Jewish surnames (last names) were not officially used in some communities in Europe until the 18th and 19th century. When surnames became required, in some places wealthy Jews could pay for a “good” name and poorer Jews were “given” a name, often one which was less than flattering. I don’t know into which category “red-headed” would have fallen.

In this letter, Hermann Zerzawy consults with Dr. Samuel Steinherz, a prominent history professor in Prague who, after being driven from his post by anti-semitic students, focused his research on the history of the Jews in Bohemia.

Vienna, April 23, 1937

Dr. Herrmann Zerzawy, Governmental Advisor, Vienna

Honorable University Professor Dr. Samuel Steinherz, Prague

Dear Professor,

During my recent visit to family members in Brünn, my friend and longtime colleague Bruno Trapp gave me a gift, the Book about the Jews and the Jewish Community of Moravia by Hugo Gold, which greatly interested me. My next question was: Is there something similar for Bohemia? My friend Trapp then gave me your address, Professor, since you are the President of the Society for the History of the Jews in the Czechoslovak Republic and an author of forthcoming publications. Thus, encouraged by my friend Trapp, I am politely requesting your help re my personal situation.

To introduce myself perhaps it is all right if I mention that I have been involved with genealogy and local history, have often spent vacations on personal research in archives in Moravia and Bohemia, have been a member of the war archive for 18 years, and I have put together, through tenacious work, a family archive of all instances I have found of the names Zerzawy, Zrzavy´, Sersawy, ze Rzawy, Vitus, Veit, Witha ze Rzawy, Lapaczek ze Rzawy (von Zerzawy, etc., etc.) with numerous documents, impressions of (family) seals, family trees, all with strict historical evidence, not considering filial proofs not currently possible (to determine) for some of the older, as well as younger, bearers of the name.

1)    Original noble bearers of the name. There is extensive literature about this: [many citations]

2) Middle class (civil) Zerzawy (Zerzawey, Zrzavy´, Sersawy); in Bohemia, Moravia, Vienna, etc.)
-    Attested 1671 in Teplejšowice and Wranow, east of Beneschau (Šimak confession list/index)
-    1674 in Slawikow near Časlau (entry list/registry of the vicar or priest)
-    From 1665 on in Kreuzberg (Krucembnik) near Deutschbrod. This is the ancestral home of about 1000 Zerzawy with their descendants, and mine. My birthplace is Auspitz in Southern Moravia. Proof in the Kreuzberg registry, Prague property and tax rolls, Polna ruling class documents, etc.
-    1680 in Ronow. Časlau district
-    1616 a Hans Zerzawy, actual name Richter, locksmith in Třeboň (Wittingau) (this is still to be verified in the Prague property rolls!)
-    1717-1745, head guard Wendel Anton Zerzawy in Erlau

3) Zerzawys of Jewish origins, in Bohemia, Moravia, Vienna
Their ancestor, as far as I can document this, is Veit Zerzawy, a Jewish businessman from Upper Cerekwe. [citing information on Paul Zerzawy’s family tree below]

Great-grandchildren are:
Merits Zerzawy, Rabbi in Sobieslou (born December 15 1864 in Upper Cerekwe) and
Julius Zerzawy, mountain (mining) engineer in Brüx. His sons:
Dr. Jur. Paul Zerzawy, Vienna, Creditors Association and
Robert Zerzawy, an official (civil servant) in the textile industry in Prague.

Thanks to the collaboration of Julius Zerzawy and a Berthold Zerzawy (deceased, Vienna) I have an exact family tree, at least as much as was possible up to now.

The following questions remain:
1)    Where are the Jewish Zerzawys from?
2)    What was their name prior to the Josephine (re)naming?
3)    How did they get the name Zerzawy?
4)    Where are the Jewish, or other relevant, registry items from Cerekwe and the earlier places of origin? a) Samuel Houbitschek apparently is responsible for the registry in Upper Cerekwe. b) Earlier Jewish registry entries may be in the Catholic priest’s office in Upper Cerekwe. c) Earlier documents supposedly in the Bishop’s office in Budweis [modern name: Česke Budejovice]. These are extremely important questions!!
5)    The district rabbinate in Tabor is apparently not an archive. (?)
6)    What is in the books Prague Property and Property Taxes, as well as the ruler’s books about these questions with the ascendancy sought? (Need to research this in the books in the relevant locations - towns, cities, districts, etc.) National Archives (former cemetery archive, Prague)

Dear Professor, by chance, while this letter was half completed, Mr. Robert Zerzawy from Prague visited me, along with his brother Paul. The former will take the letter with him to Prague and take the liberty of contacting you. - Please be so kind as to advise him, so that he may, following your kind advice/direction, complete the relevant research, either alone or with the assistance of a friend. He is very interested in the family’s history. He will then be so kind as to report to me what you, Honored Professor, have said about the individual questions listed above, what reference material you may be able to name, and where your extensive knowledge might best be put to use in order to gain academic clarification. This is certainly in the best interests of the (works about) the Jews in Bohemia. In this way, you will, through my initiative, and collaboration a perhaps not uninteresting family tree of the ancestor, hopefully with a successful answer to the question of the name’s origin.

With friendly thanks and the expression of my most excellent esteem

March 17

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Today’s letter to Helene’s nephew Paul Zerzawy was written on the same date and has the same Clipper and censorship numbers as the letter posted yesterday, which makes me believe both letters were sent together. I organized and archived the papers based on recipient as well as where and when they were found. At that time, I didn’t understand that all of these letters belonged together and told parts of the same story. Therefore, I prioritized translation of Helene’s letters to her children over the documents I found in Paul’s box, never imagining how integral they would be. So these two letters were translated months apart and the “conversation” wasn’t obvious until I began looking at the letters by date.

 #82                             Vienna, 17 March 1941

My dear Paul! Your telegram on the affidavit, etc was certainly the answer to my letter of February 12th. I am blaming myself again, not that I overestimated the necessity and direness of our situation, but because I am causing you so much expense. I know from Hilda that you are working like crazy and when I imagine your weary, exhausted face and think about how many hours you must still torture yourself to earn money even to send a telegram, then I could just cry. I would have answered you with a prepaid answer telegram if it were possible in order to tell you about my health. So please don’t send a cable unless it’s really necessary. I do not want to make so much trouble for you. I have certainly not exaggerated, nor did I want to cause you unnecessary fear; but I believed that Robert or someone else had written about us, but since I had heard nothing from you I knew that you were either not informed about us or incorrectly informed. There is no place for reproach here. I certainly hesitated when it came to telling you about unpleasant things, but until November the postal service was fairly secure and it took 12-14 days for a letter to arrive. But after this time the Clipper letters were taking so long and sending a telegraph would have also been possible. I know that I wrote to you last year that I didn’t need any material assistance and that I would like to save the willingness of the relatives to help until the time for our departure. Now it has come and I must add to my request for ship tickets, namely tickets from Vienna so that we can get to the ship. We are not allowed to pay this with our own funds. I promised you on my honor at the time that I would tell you the naked truth. The point has come when I must swallow my pride and ask our relatives to stand by me. What it costs me, the effort to do this, you can well imagine. Not that I have any doubt about the generosity, but precisely because of it I find it so agonizing. As far as the second part of your telegram goes, you didn’t tell me anything new. We knew all this already, but it’s not true of all districts in the USA. But it’s tout égal to us, in other words we don’t care how we earn our living. It’s premature to rack our brains about that now and it’s kind of like the story of the two people from here who had a fight with each other. They had grown up together as friends and decided to buy a car together. They fought about it and they treated each other rudely because each of them thought he should be in the driver’s seat and neither wanted to sit inside the car. They fought until the stronger one said “you’re going to get off that coach box!” and then he k.o.’ed the other. But we don’t want to land over there with such an intent. I have figured out (!!) that you have received all of my letters and you will know what’s going on. If the post were running normally, you would not get such hurried news from us all at once. In closing Paul, I thank you for your willingness to help, your trouble, and last but not least I am sorry that I caused you such dark hours. And now it seems between our departure there are not hundreds of days but maybe thousands, measured by what’s going on. So please I ask you to forgive me for my inappropriate expressions of reproach and my unjust accusations. My disenchantment with Europe is the reason for everything and the excuse for it. Please greet all the loved ones from us and be kissed by

Helen

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Helene says that the telegram she received must be in response to a letter from February 12. Despite the dozens of letters I have from Helene at that time, I don’t have a letter from that date. But we have seen letters addressing their situation and requesting that Paul reply by telegram, as well as the text of the telegrams that Paul sent.

Helene is much clearer with Paul about the direness of their situation in Vienna than she was in the letter to her children which I posted yesterday. She remains ever resilient and optimistic, certain she and Vitali will find a way to support themselves in America. As I read through the letters from this time, I am filled with “if onlys” – if only Helene had asked for help sooner, if only Paul had more resources at his disposal, if only…

March 3

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Although I have been working with these papers for over three years, I am only now understanding what a rich and full story they tell. My mother Eva had a handful of letters which I had seen over the years – mostly the ones Helene had sent from Istanbul in 1946. Harry had kept the majority of the papers in a variety of places and boxes in his house (and in every house he’d lived in since at least 1948!). Little of it was organized. Harry had a separate box of Paul Zerzawy’s papers, which included his letters from and to Helene and other relatives. Harry also had the envelope of Helene’s letters from Vienna from the time Harry and Eva left Vienna until late 1941 when the U.S. entered WWII and all letters stopped. The story of discovering these letters is told in more detail earlier in the blog.

I was still discovering new items amongst Harry’s things when Kelsey began archiving everything. We realized that putting documents in order by date would delay the process. Since she was creating a digital archive, it would be easy to search by date later on.

When I began working with Roslyn to translate the letters, we didn’t begin in date order either. We began with the letters that were most legible, which was the letters that were typed. As we got into a groove, Roslyn translated the Vienna letters stuffed in the envelope first. I still hadn’t understood how key to the story Paul Zerzawy was, so I wasn’t in a hurry to translate his letters. What I discovered when Roslyn began translating Helene’s letters to Paul was that often those letters referred to things she’d mentioned in her letters to Harry and Eva, but sometimes more directly and with more information about how desperate things were in Vienna. It was also obvious by the censorship numbers or the contents of the letters themselves that some of the letters to Paul were sent in the same envelope as ones to Harry and Eva.

One document in the box of Paul’s things was this small page with the language he used to send the long-awaited, much requested telegrams to Helene and Vitali which Helene refers to in the two letters written on March 3, 1941. The first telegram — which appears to have been sent on February 28 and received on March 1 — contains good news. Unfortunately, in the telegram he sent two weeks later on March 14, Paul does not offer Vitali hope that he will be able to continue his work in metaphysics in the U.S.

Telegram II   2/28/41
Negotiations about the affidavit and the ship tickets have been set in motion.  We hope for success.  These things take time.
Eva, Harry, Hilda, Paul

—————

Telegram III 3/14
NLT Haim Seneor Cohen Seidlgasse 14, Vienna to Germany
Prospects for the affidavit have improved.  We are expecting a further report in about a week.  Vitali cannot work in his profession here.
Paul

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The following letter was written to Hilda Firestone in English. I have edited it a bit for clarity. Harry lived with Hilda and Nathan Firestone until he finished high school in spring 1941. Here we discover the answer to the mystery of on February 21: Who is Mouffle?

Vienna, March 3. 1941

Dear Hilda! Just now I received your letter from the 20th of January. It was your description of the Christmas and New Years party on the Firestone-Hill. The number of your guests was wrong. Two you have forgotten to count: Vitali and Helene, who were in your company, not invited indeed and only in our imagination.  

The German language is not so difficult – as you will find after reading my silly letters – only written with the intention of giving you advice to spend your time on the study of another thing. Foolish sentences there are in every language. In the first lesson - given by a young teacher - we learn to say: “I love you” in any language. The intellect never denies anybody. After this knowledge - comprehended easily by everybody - the teacher is trying to show himself in his splendor and gives you an example of his volubility. The pupil is enthusiastic and thinking in this very moment: “Never shall I comprehend this difficult study.” I am anxious – Paul is right to forbid you the correspondence with a fool like me – but sometimes, if it is absolutely necessary, I can write seriously too. The next time I will begin with: Today let us be silly, it is easier.  

Last week I read a book which caused some furor fifteen years ago, by Anita Loos. “Gentlemen Prefer Blonds.” I know it is not a book for people who want to learn the elegance of a foreign language, but I found it very amusing and I have learned a lot of slang which seems to be very necessary to understand Harry. I am sure the Oxford-pronunciation is gone and my son speaks the “erdbergerisch” of San Francisco for what knowledge he will be envied by the inhabitants of all suburbs. He likes speaking on the periphery. Maybe in your society he has no occasion, but his excursions with Mouffle are for study I am sure. Mouffle is discreet and tells nothing about this object. Surely Harry allowed him to do things that are not allowed him if he walks with a lady.

Eva must be very engrossed in her work. I am glad that she has chosen this profession herself. She doesn’t find it so hard. When she was a child of 6 years, she wanted to be a physician. I hope she will reach her purpose.

Hilda, my Dear, I thank you for signing the cable too. I was so happy when I read all your names. I hope to see you very soon as equivalent for all the gloomy hours we had.

Vitali sends his best greetings to you and Nathan, and so do I. Giving you a long kiss, I remain your fondly

Helene

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From the same day, a letter to Helene’s children Eva and Harry and her nephew Paul Zerzawy: 

Vienna, 3 March 1941

My dear children and Paul!

Saturday on the 1st at about 1 in the afternoon I got your telegram. Papa wanted to send you back a telegram to confirm receipt, but that apparently is not possible right now. You can imagine how happy we were that we sent things off in good time. Our battery is recharged and with at least ten HP it will go on for awhile.

Papa says that since receiving your dispatch I am behaving in a more civilized way, at least at night and I am using it to sleep as it should be. I actually had a strange feeling when I laid down. It was the condition of not being awake but not having fallen asleep either. I lay quietly and pleasantly in bed, like an object cautiously packaged in cotton. Now, your spirit is leaving its shabby dwelling. I would like to know where it’s going, I thought. Oh, that’s nonsense. If he had left your body, you would not be able to think. I began to count and I was taking care to concentrate on my thoughts as I do before I fall asleep but it just wasn't working. That made me so mad that although I was tired and sleepy when I laid down, I did not fall asleep for a long time. I wanted to think about you but my thoughts took a different direction all the time. It was clear to me that I had left. I identified myself with the spirit which had left my body, but where are all these thoughts coming from which seem so strange to me? Is my body an asylum for homeless ghosts? It sort of disgusts me that my body seemed to me like a wormy apple. No matter what I did to send my thoughts into a specific direction, it was no use, and I began to count again in order to fall asleep. I couldn’t count anymore and I kept having to start over again. I longingly waited for my mind to return. I want to call it my sense of reason and ask it to please not leave me behind, because with the other spirits torturing me, I do not want to have to waste my time on them. Towards the morning I did in fact fall asleep, and when I woke up I had a pleasant feeling like after you take a bath. I must have groomed myself inside, or when my sense of reason came back, did it perhaps notice what a mess I was and clean up? I apparently am just a kind of packing material or box for my own ego [Ich]. My lower case self [ich] has become rather frumpy and I must prepare you for that so that you won’t be horrified when you receive us. The packing material that your father has around him seems to be in better shape or perhaps seems to have been preserved better or it was of better quality. You will recognize him easily.

Today I received a letter from Hilda from the 20th of January. If I can I will answer it so that it will go out with tomorrow’s mail. Yesterday I was reading through letters from you and I must say that the patient who asked her if she had any Spanish blood in her veins was not really so far off. Do not forget that a part of your ancestors until the time of the congenial Isabella lived in Spain. What an enchantress she must have been as Hans Heinz Ewers described in one of his cultural descriptions and explained why such an indefinable color, when you don’t know whether it’s pink or maybe sort of dirty gray is called “Isabella color”. It is worth your while to read this check. Everl’s hospital stories are in comparison to it, the tales of a young girl. Do you remember Everl how one of Papa’s clients, the one I recall either he is a rabbi and his name was Malheurowitsch, or was a Maler [painter] and named Rabinowitsch, said the same thing and wanted to paint you in a Spanish outfit? 

Harry’s last verses were sort of limping along. I know it was the corns on your feet [or referring to chicken eyes of last letter?]. He said he should not be mad about my disparaging criticism of him because a fair critic is what genius really needs. Think about how often Beethoven edited one of his works or Goethe among his understanding and well-meaning friends would read parts of his works aloud and afterwards he would work on them as if he were filing off mistakes.

Gablonz produced heads of great German men for a charity fundraiser. Papa, following my wishes, bought almost all of them. Some of them are not available anymore and he wants to see when he goes out and mails letters how and in what way I can send these to you.

Kisses for you and all of yours from your Helen full of hope.

            Helen

[Handwritten] It’s too bad that I don’t have any well-meaning friends around. They would certainly suggest that I write this letter in a different way because I am out of control. No matter for that for I am happy.

I searched for the name “Gablonz”, thinking I’d find an artist. Instead, I found a company that made bohemian beaded Christmas decorations. Gablonz (Jablonec in Czech) was known for its glass and jewelry production. In a letter written the following day, Vitali has discovered that you need permission of an army officer and that postage would be prohibitive, so the items were never sent.

February 13

Family Trees

As I’ve mentioned before, my mother Eva and her brother Harry didn’t make it easy for their children to ask questions about the past. I knew the names Hilda, Tillie, Bertha, Paul and Robert and that they were somehow related to us. I’d seen a few photos and heard a few stories, but all of these people seemed very distant from me.

In the mid-1990s, my mother got a phone call from a man who was married to a woman who was related to my grandmother’s side of the family. He was putting together a family tree and was very meticulous. Now that I’ve spent time poring over the tree, I am in awe of the work he did, particularly in the early days of the internet when very little would have been available online. He asked my mother and Harry a lot of questions about what they knew about the Löwy side of the family. To my surprise, both Eva and Harry were very forthcoming with this stranger who lived hundreds of miles away. I guess it was a lot easier to talk to him about facts than to talk to my cousins and me about their memories.

The letter below is a copy of one she wrote to clarify some points on the tree. Jon did an incredible job, including footnotes with stories and memories of all the people he interviewed. I now know things I’d never heard that he learned from my mother!

 A few things about this letter – like her mother, Eva used a typewriter (a good thing, since her handwriting was virtually illegible) and made this carbon copy for her files. She tells of the serendipity of finding Helene’s memoirs – she moved a bookcase and voilà! I have been amazed at how often serendipity or fate has seemed to play a role in my journey. I’m glad to see I am following in my mother’s footsteps.

One more thing about this letter. You’ll notice that she remembers clearly that Helene’s mother Rosa was born in 1848 – she says she recalls that because it was an important date in Austrian history. This week I spoke with a genealogist in Prague to ask him to help clarify some of the family dates that have eluded me, whether because I couldn’t find them online, I couldn’t do the research since the sites weren’t in English, or the information is only available in physical form. The first thing he did was find information on Rosa’s grave and the year of her birth – 1844, not 1848! As he told me, he likes to rely on facts rather than people’s memories. My mother was absolutely certain the year was 1848.

I was overwhelmed by the family tree Jon created – it is 21 pages long - just a few of the pages are related to my immediate family. Now that I’ve spent time poring over the document, I am incredibly grateful for the trove of information he had compiled and shared. Unfortunately, when I tried to contact him to thank him for all his hard work and tell him how valuable it was, I discovered he had died the year before.

Excerpt from 1997 family tree

The other family tree I have was in Paul Zerzawy’s papers. This was also a challenge to follow, especially since out of 6 pages, only 2 really pertained to me and the entire document was in German. From the page listing Julius Zerzawy’s dates and marriages, I learned the identity of Elise Zerzawy (red mark next to her name) and her son Fritz Orlik. I also learned the birth and death dates for two of my grandmother’s sisters. You can see that the tree was created before 1939, as Paul wrote in the date of his father’s death.

Excerpt from Zerzawy family tree

Using both documents, I’m still finding it challenging to create a family tree of my own, even using software specifically made for that purpose! I am in awe of whoever put together the Zerzawy family tree in the 1930s. No computers or search engines, just hours and days of legwork and library research. Not to mention the painstaking hours of typing up the final document with multiple carbon copies.

You can see a preliminary family tree made last year incorporating info from the Löwy and Zerzawy trees on the Family Tree and Bios page. It’s time to update as I learn more about the family!

January 19

Throughout my journey to make sense of my family history, I have found myself creating stories to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. I have been fortunate to solve many of the mysteries, often discovering that the story I told myself was completely off base. That was the case with this newspaper article:

Helene’s husband Vitali was an unusual man with an unusual profession. See the section on Metaphysics & Mysticism to learn more.

When I first saw this article, I assumed it was from the early to mid-1940s. According to IMDB, there was no film with the title mentioned in the article but there was a short film made in 1941 called Hands of Destiny in which he discussed the handprints of Mussolini, Hitler, Churchill and Roosevelt. He also wrote the screenplay for and appeared in a documentary of the same name in 1954.

The reason I decided it must have been an article from the 1940s is that I found 2 copies of the article in my documents — one in my grandmother’s papers and another in the box of Paul Zerzawy’s papers. Paul died in 1948. I knew that Helene had sent Paul documents related to Vitali’s profession in Vienna in order to show that he had a way to make a living if he and Helene were given visas to come to the U.S. before 1941.

In June 2020, I realized that in addition to online genealogy resources available through the public library, it’s possible to look at many old newspapers. I spent several hours one day trying to find the dates for a number of newspaper clippings I have in my archive. It turns out that this article appeared the San Francisco Chronicle on January 19, 1955. Not in the 1940s, not while Paul Zerzawy was still alive.

San Francisco Chronicle (online), 19 Jan 1955 19

One question I may never be able to answer is whether Vitali and Helene knew Ranald. He had spent time in Vienna. Perhaps he even gave the lecture on metaphysics that Vitali attended which inspired him in his future pursuits? I have found that my grandmother kept articles and papers for more than mere interest or a reminder of times she remembered. When I first saw this article, I thought it had been kept to show Vitali if and when he arrived in the U.S. that it might be possible for him to make a living reading palms. The fact that two people in the family kept the same article makes me think that it was saved not just because of his profession, but because they knew him.  

Ranald had quite a life and was an excellent storyteller. When I read How to Know People by Their Hands (published in 1938), in which he discusses and the hands of famous people including those listed above, I wondered how much of his autobiography was true and how much was made up to form a mythology as a showcase for his work. Decide for yourself by reading the introduction of his book, available on the Internet Archive.

January 7

January 7, 1948

In April 2017, I attended a genealogy workshop at my local public library. By the end of the session, I had learned to maneuver through the library edition of Ancestry.com and found many documents, including the one below.

I was astounded by how quickly and easily I could learn a great deal about my family. As mentioned yesterday, it is worth looking often and in different ways to see if anything new has turned up. There are some documents I found that day in April that I have never stumbled upon again and I continue to find new ones.

Declaration of Intention to become a US citizen

Helene’s “Declaration of Intention” includes a wealth of information:

-Her address in San Francisco
-Her birthplace
-Her vital statistics
-Her husband’s name, birthdate, and date and place of their marriage
-Her children
-Her last place of residence
-The name of the ship and where it left from – in this case, the SS Vulcania from Alexandria Egypt
-Date of arrival in the US

It’s wonderful to get all of this information in a single document. It has helped me in other searches. It also is consistent with information my grandmother wrote in other letters and paperwork. One of the things that genealogists emphasize is the need to corroborate family stories and lore with official documentation. There are times when I’ve wondered whether my grandmother’s memories might have been faulty, as our memories often are. However, I continue to find articles and paperwork that prove that Helene’s memory was excellent and that she was reporting the truth as she remembered it. This gives me confidence at the times when I don’t have something official, that what she has written is likely true.

This journey has made me feel even closer to my grandmother, not simply because we share the same name. The timing of my research has been especially poignant. A few years ago as we began translating my grandmother’s letters during the war years, I realized that I was her age when she was writing them and then sent to Ravensbrück. Currently I am the same age that Helene was when she filled out this document. Thanks to her efforts to provide a better life for her children, what she went through is completely foreign to my own experience.

Aside: if you are curious about your own family history and have always wanted to try Ancestry.com and similar services, now is the perfect time to do so. It used to be that you could only access these services by paying or by researching in person in your public library. Since libraries have been closed, these companies and the libraries themselves have made many services available from the comfort of your own home. All you need is a library card!

New answers bring new questions

Lately, I’ve had two questions that I couldn’t answer: 1) when and where Helene’s father Adolf Löwy was born and died, and 2) when and where Helene’s brother Max died. My mother thought Adolf had died when Helene was 12 or 13. However, I have a story by Helene where she talks about when she was 15 and her father was still alive. My mother thought my grandmother and her mother had gone to Vienna before WWI because Max was living there and practicing medicine. My mother didn’t remember meeting him and thought he might have died in 1920 or 1922 and that he may have had a son named Karl who might have come to the US.

In August I attended a virtual conference on Jewish genealogy. Many sessions were taped for later viewing and I have watched a number of workshops since then. Being fairly new to this subject, each session gives me new skills to do family history research. I am in awe of the number of amateur genealogists out there who volunteer thousands of hours of their time documenting and cataloging towns, families, birth and death records, etc. to save unrelated familes from being lost to history forever.

As with any research activity, after I stumble on some new tidbit of information, I often find that I cannot recreate the steps that got me there. Like Hansel and Gretel, I’m lost in the woods. Here I try to recreate one pathway while it’s still fresh in my memory.

There is an organization called JewishGen that is an incredible resource for research into Jewish genealogy. For example, they have a Jewish burial database that has information on burial records all over the world. I’m pretty sure I found information about the death of two of Helene’s sisters. But I couldn’t find an Adolf Löwy who fit the place and age that my great-grandfather would have been. I found 2 different burial records in Vienna for a Max Löwy who could have fit age and possible death date, and was pretty sure one of them was my Max. JewishGen also has records of doctors in Vienna but I couldn’t find a listing for Max Löwy.

This week I watched a session on “Czech Torah Scrolls Journey and its relevancy to family history research”. I didn’t have a lot of hope that I would learn much, but since my grandmother came from that area and the handout included Bilin, I decided to listen. The main presenter was Julius Müller (http://www.toledot.org/), a Czech genealogist who was mentioned in a number of other sessions - clearly he is someone I need to contact!

Something he said led me to https://www.geni.com/, which other conference speakers had mentioned several times. One speaker said that this was a site that is trying to create a “family tree of the world”. It is pretty public so people have to be comfortable sharing freely their information.

On Geni, I typed in either Adolf’s or Max’s name and actually came up with a mini family tree that had been created in 2018. It included Adolf and Rosa, Max and his wife and children (!) including Karl and Karl’s wife, and two of my grandmother’s sisters who had died in Bilin. Nothing about my grandmother though. Unfortunately, the tree did not have the answers to my questions. But I thought I must have discovered a relative who had created the tree and contacted him. No, it was created by a man in Israel who I guess along with many others (volunteer or paid, I don’t know) is gathering information from vital records to create these trees.

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Family tree found on Geni.com. Note that most of the family members I know and care about aren’t listed! Click on image to enlarge

Interestingly, Max’s oldest child is listed as Otto and included a birthdate in 1902. but there was no further info. Karl was listed as being born in 1904 as Karl Otto. I thought it was odd that both children would have Otto in their names. I went back to the Jewish burial database and found that an Otto Löwy had died in Vienna in 1903 at the age of 10 months. I assume Karl’s middle name was in his honor. And that Karl was named after Max’s mother’s beloved brother Karl Kraus who had died in 1889 and had been very kind to the family (something I recently learned when transcribing a story by my grandmother about the 1889 flu epidemic).

Having more names in Max’s family, I went to Ancestry.com (which during these days of Covid can be accessed from home through your local public library) and found a NY draft card for Karl where he lists Max as next of kin and shows Max’s home address and the address of his medical practice! Then I found Max’s intent to apply for citizenship as well as a ship manifest that show that he and his wife arrived in NY in March 1940 on a ship coming from Caracas, Venezuela! Nothing about when Karl arrived - before, after, who knows? I’m sure I could find more info out and perhaps some day I’ll look.

Learning all this has made me rethink the story of my grandmother’s life that I’ve created from all the documents I had and it has raised so many more questions. My grandmother wrote lovingly of her brother Max in her stories about her childhood. My mother thought he had died when she was a baby or before, so clearly they did not spend time together in Vienna. Did Max leave Vienna as early as 1922? Had there been a falling out? Did he go somewhere else in Europe? When did he go to Venezuela? Why did he not stay in contact with my grandmother? It’s surprising to me that my grandmother had to rely on more distant cousins for assistance to get to America. They were Max’s cousins too! Of course, I don’t know the story of Max’s journey and whether he would have had resources to help. But couldn’t he have written?!

The Story Unfolds

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

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

Giving Helene the tools to tell her story

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

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

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

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

She produced at least a dozen binders worth of writing:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sky of Ravensbrück

Historian Corry Guttstadt (author of Turkey, the Jews, and the Holocaust) asked me: “How did your grandmother learn to write so well in English?” Her letters from Istanbul at the end of the war were beautifully written, almost poetic. I understood from my mother that Helene was extremely well read in several languages. The entire family loved words and wordplay. Her children both quickly became fluent in English, able to write cleverly in their adopted tongue. Harry easily learned other languages as well.

Recently I realized that some of the letters my grandmother sent from Vienna to relatives in San Francisco prior to 1942 were written in English. The letters were fairly well written, but nowhere near as fluent as the letters written in 1945-1946. I wondered whether it was a function of how stressed and sad my grandmother was while stuck in limbo in Vienna, having had to send her children away, hoping to come to San Francisco, but trapped by confusing laws about citizenship, heartless bureaucracy, and a lack of funds to be able to join her children. Her many letters over that period indicate how distraught she was.

After coming to the US in 1946, in addition to letters, my grandmother kept miscellaneous items. Harry had kept two of her binders, which included newspaper articles; poems, essays, and songs that she typed up in English, sometimes including the original German; and notes and memories of her own. Sometimes I had heard of the authors, sometimes not.

In one binder I found a poem she had typed up entitled “The Sky of Ravensbrück” by Gemma Glueck-La Guardia [sic], with a small newspaper clipping noting Gemma Gluck’s death in 1962.

This caused me to research who Gemma Gluck was. I discovered that she was a prominent person, although not because of her poetry. She was the sister of New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. The siblings were born in Italy. Fiorello came to the US for his education and remained. Gemma stayed in Europe, married a Hungarian Jew, and ended up at Ravensbrück during the war. Gemma had written a memoir which was republished in 2007 under the title “Fiorello’s Sister: Gemma LaGuardia Gluck’s Story”, Rochelle G. Saidel, ed.

Although I had seen the poem in my grandmother’s papers, I didn't read it until I discovered that I could not find poetry by Gemma Gluck. It then occurred to me that my grandmother might have known her. The last stanza in the poem bears this theory out, beginning: “This is for my Helen dear...”

Awhile later, I found a small page ripped from a notebook with the poem written in pencil, but not in my grandmother’s hand. I imagine that this is the original poem, given to my grandmother by Gemma before she left Ravensbrück.

The original, written by Gemma in Ravensbrück?

I bought Gluck’s memoir, wondering whether I would read about my grandmother in its pages. I did not, but I may have found the answer to Corry’s question - why my grandmother wrote so well in English. Chapter 5 is entitled “Underground English Classes” - apparently Gemma taught English to fellow prisoners who hoped to end up in English speaking countries after the war. I imagine that my grandmother was one of her students.