January 14

Trying to come to America; A mystery solved!!!!


By January 1946, Helene had been in Istanbul for 9 months. She had only recently been receiving letters from her family and had been having a rough time of it alone in a new place, essentially still a prisoner. I believe Yomtov Kohen was a relative of Vitali’s, perhaps a cousin? I have a packet of his correspondence working to help my grandmother join her children in America.

LT.0548.1946.JPG

 Dear Sir,

Referring to your letter of the 10th, I inform you that on the 9th I sent a telegram to the daughter of Mrs Helene Cohen which said: 

“EVA GOLDSMITH, 2379 29th Avenue, San Francisco

 PLEASE PAY IN MY PASSAGE TO HIAS 425 LAFAYETTE ST NEW YORK WHO SHOULD INFORM REPRESENTATIVE ISTANBUL

            HELENE COHEN” 

I hope that Mrs Eva Goldsmith will be able to arrange with the Jewish-American emigration office “HIAS” who will send us the necessary instructions to pay for Mrs Cohen’s passage. As soon as these instructions arrive, we will look for a place on a boat for America.

Please accept, sir, my best regards.

 According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Simon Brod (1893-1962) was “a Jewish businessman from Istanbul, who during World War II helped to rescue an untold number of Jewish refugees who reached Turkey. Brod ran a successful textile importing firm in Istanbul together with his brother Max. During World War II he was employed by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency for Palestine to assist in the rescue of European Jewish refugees who, in one way or another, had been able to reach Turkey.”

HIAS is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

Despite all the hardships and cruelty my grandmother experienced, it is heartening to find how many distant relatives and complete strangers worked hard to help my grandmother reach her children.

As I was preparing this post, I decided to look in the JDC archives again for letters from Simon Brod related to my grandmother’s situation. I know I’d seen his name in earlier searches. Although I didn’t find anything today, I stumbled on a section of the archive related to the passengers on the SS Drottingholm who arrived in Istanbul in April 1945. Over the past year or so I have spent dozens of hours poring through this archive because things aren’t easily searchable. It definitely has the feeling at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie – the treasure exists and is safe, but good luck to you to ever find it! 

One of the reasons I felt I was going down a useless rabbit hole today is that the 148 documents in this particular file were all dated 2/24/1945, well before Helene set foot on the ship or arrived in Istanbul. And yet, there it was! The 5th document entitled “Untitled Typewritten Document” on the 11th page of 15 pages. I do not have permission from JDC to publish the contents of the document but here is a screenshot of my “discovery”.

Screenshot of location in the JDC Archives

Screenshot of location in the JDC Archives

The declaration has answers to 18 questions, some of them Yes-No. Unfortunately I don’t have a copy of the original questionnaire (yet? more searching to be done!). For the past six months, I have been trying to figure out when Helene’s parents had died. I had a few clues and made some assumptions, but had nothing definite. As I mentioned in the January 6 post, finding an earlier date for the end of publication for the Biela-Zeitung implied that Adolf died in or before 1904. Today’s document, despite misspellings and typos of names (Helene Koehn for example), tells us that her father died in 1903 and her mother in 1922. I had looked through Jewish burial records and come up empty-handed for Adolf. I found several possible dates for people with Helene’s mother’s name, but not enough other information to identify the plot as the correct one. Here in an obscure document that probably hasn’t been seen by anyone in decades, I have my answer. From my grandmother’s stories, I had the sense that her father had died soon after 1902, but I had no documentation. I didn’t know about her mother either. I have letters from Paul Z to his grandmother in 1918 so I knew she was still alive at that time, but my mother had no memory of her and thought she had died sometime between 1920-1922. She was right!

As you can see, even across the decades it is possible to discover clues and answers to questions. After my mother and Harry died, I regretted all the family knowledge and lore that had been lost. Yet, through official documentation and my grandmother’s words, every day I have a richer sense of their lives, joys, and struggles.

January 3

My grandmother was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp in November 1943. In late March 1945 she was part of a prisoner trade based on the fact that she was considered a Turkish citizen because of her marriage. She arrived by ship to Istanbul in April 1945 and was given housing by a Jewish relief organization called the American Jewish Joint Distribution committee (the Joint for short), now known as JDC, while she attempted to reach her relatives and get money to join her children in the United States.

This was another time of limbo for my grandmother. After years of separation from her children in Vienna, and then two years separated from her husband who was sent to a different camp, here she was in Istanbul where she knew no one and was not allowed to leave the hotel she was housed in. Her husband’s relatives were able to visit her, but she had no freedom. She was moved from place to place as the Joint tried to save money on housing, so sometimes the relatives didn’t know where she was. In Vienna she was considered Turkish, but Turkey didn’t recognize her as such. So now, with only the clothes on her back, she was alone in a place where she didn’t speak the language, with no means or freedom to leave. A prisoner once again. Stateless, with no passport to be able to travel anywhere. It took her awhile to figure out how to communicate with her children – the only address she remembered for Eva was that of the nursing school she had been attending in 1942. Eva had graduated, gotten married, and moved several times by the time my grandmother wrote to her school address in 1945. Unfortunately too, my mother’s handwriting was not very legible so even when Helene had an address for Eva, she couldn’t read it!

One thing I’ve come to understand from my grandmother’s papers is that she was a very sensitive and emotional person – wonderful traits, but very difficult when faced with the circumstances of her life. She became anxious and nervous, sometimes fixating on thoughts. One of the hardest things for my grandmother was being separated from her husband and having no idea of his whereabouts – in some ways she regretted leaving Ravensbrück because at least there had been some communication between them.

January 3, 1946 – from a translated letter to her nephew Robert who lived in London

“ I am so happy that you have not completely forgotten me and so sad that my letters to Eva were returned as undeliverable. …

I think day and night of Vitali and thank you … for your investigation, God give me my Vitali again! I am here with nobody to share my burden! …
What is up with Harry, I know he was in the Pacific? Can you think of my disposition? Vitali missing, knowing nothing about Harry…. For months I knew that Everl was married, but did not know her husband’s name.

Robert, I have suffered more here mentally than in the camp. There I heard every 4 weeks form Vitali and I thought all of you were safe.

As soon as I know on which ship I will leave, I will give you the news, and urge you to tell all the children and relatives for my sake.
I thank you for your love…. Sometimes I have such stupid thoughts.
Help me to find Vitali”

 

Helene in Istanbul - 1945 or 1946

Helene in Istanbul - 1945 or 1946

January 2

In 1939, my grandmother and grandfather sent their children to live in safety with cousins in San Francisco. They had planned to follow their children as soon as possible, but were thwarted at every turn. For about 1-1/2 years, my grandmother wrote letters to her children every few days. She wrote more than 130 letters – I have over 100 of them. By the second half of 1941, there were far fewer letters; after Pearl Harbor, there were none.

My grandmother numbered each letter to keep track of whether all of her letters arrived. She encouraged her children to do the same so she would know whether they she was not receiving mail or if they were not such prolific correspondents.

During these days of Covid-19, it is easy to imagine the difficulty of finding something to write about when each day is much the same as the last. Helene didn’t want to worry her children about her fears and the true state of the world, so she often resorted to relating old stories and word games, making puns and literary and musical references, and generally doing word play. She didn’t receive letters very often (or at least as often as she would have liked) and many times the letters arrived months after they’d been written so she didn’t feel like she knew what was happening in her children’s lives. On top of everything else, she had to worry about censors who read every letter and might not send one if it contained something they disliked. I imagine they disliked most things.

Here is a translated excerpt from her letter of January 2, 1940:

“This letter … should bring you my greetings for the new year. My wishes for you are the ones I always have. The old year just wouldn’t go away. It was a bad year and did bad things to us.”

Clearly, Helene felt much the same about 1939 as we do about 2020! And with good reason.

She continues:

“Today I was very sure we would get some mail and I looked in my change purse for money to give the mailman but nothing came – no letter, no package, nothing. So I’m writing you whatever sense or nonsense comes to mind. I’m happy I have nothing to report.….

There’s no sense in asking questions. I must be patient until normal postal traffic can be reinstated. I don’t know how much more patience I have to offer. I am still with you in my thoughts – that has not changed. In my fantasies and dreams at least you are present to me. I go with you everywhere and am happy to know you are there. I know there will come a day that this separation will have been made up to us….”

During the rise of Hitler, Jews and others who were persecuted couldn’t imagine that things would keep getting worse. They had lived sometimes for generations in their country or city and felt like proud citizens. With each freedom lost, they learned to adapt to each new restriction and constriction. Helene writes as if some level of normalcy and “normal postal traffic” can resume. But of course nothing would ever be normal again.

Finally:

“P.S. Wishing Harry everything good possible for his birthday. And on the 14th of January I’ll wish Eva the same so that she’ll get it in time.”

One amazing thing throughout my grandmother’s ordeal – she never lost her wry sense of humor. The P.S. in this letter is a good example. Harry’s birthday was January 13 so she is saying she’ll be sure to get her card to Eva out right away, even though her birthday isn’t until May. Harry and Eva shared their mother’s sense of humor – always finding something amusing to say even during the darkest times. A good way to survive and maintain sanity when life continuously throws obstacles in one’s way.

 

 

 

A different kind of shelter in place

As the world is sheltering in place to avoid Covid-19, my grandmother’s letters take on a new meaning. I better understand her boredom, listlessness, paralysis, and general apathy.

By the time Helene’s children left for San Francisco, life had become very difficult for Helene and Vitali. They had very little money and apparently were not allowed to work much. In the early months, they went to the movies from time to time, mostly to watch the Newsreels in the hopes of seeing California and imagining where their children were living. Their stationery shop was open for limited hours, and a handful of customers came in to buy postcards and pencil sharpeners, but certainly not enough to pay the bills. They lived on credit, while hoping to get passports and travel documents to travel to the U.S. They sold what furniture they could and burned the rest of it to keep warm during the bitter cold winter of 1939-1940. They often wore all of their clothing in layers to keep warm, even in the house. Helene spent most of her time at home, writing letters and waiting by the window watching for the to postman arrive. They ate sparingly but joked about the bounty of their feasting.

Here are excerpts from a handful of letters:

On missing her children:

5 December 1939
There was a shoot ‘em up film being shown and since it was about the construction of the pacific railway, we went in. Harry would be very surprised because we don’t like things about shooting anymore. But at the end, when the train in its current form hurried across the movie screen, my heart stopped for just a few seconds and I thought that my children were just recently sitting in such a monster of steel and iron.

The truth is that I feel old as the hills and I feel like a hen would feel if she were hatching duck eggs and I am clucking. When the young ones go to the water and happily swim away from her for the first time she probably can’t believe her eyes in that situation. But I’m an intelligent hen, and even if I do cluck sometimes, I am happy to know that you are with people who are good and noble.

——-

December 29, 1939

What do you say about the terrible earthquake in Anatolia? I am quite worried about the consequences of this catastrophe. Because Casablanca and Los Angeles are in the same meridian, I would be happy if this catastrophic year were over. Thank God it’s getting there.

—-

March 12, 1940 to Harry

We just got your Christmas letters and it took 100 days to get here but were still so happy to get them.
….
I can imagine what you are doing and sometimes I don’t factually know if you’ve really written this or if I just imagined something. Then I take the folder with your letters into my hand and I read your letters over and over again. Sometimes by taking a letter for example from January 18th and then the next week I get one from October 21, I entertain myself and it’s like playing with a mosaic or puzzle. Every card is a new piece and the picture becomes ever more complete. I wish I had more pieces and maybe the mail will bring me greetings from more recent times in the next few days.

——-

April 4, 1940
Sometimes it is to me just as if the children had stayed just a little longer at school. The few weeks which children went to a sort of summer camp during school vacation seemed longer to me than the current separation. But back then, one had the wish or at least the possibility to amuse oneself. But this is not always true. Then there are days, usually when there is no mail, when everything seems twice as hard and difficult and one thinks about 3 times as many. A heavy sleep is like a narcotic. Then, after such a nirvana, when the mailman rings the bell and actually does bring a letter from you, then I take a deep breath and my limbs firm themselves up. It becomes a delight to do the dishes, and my fantasy has received new wings during cleaning.
——-

July 19, 1940
Meals are the best time for celebrating reminiscences and thinking about you. We were in fact just at table for a meal in the greatest of moods. When I’m spreading butter on my bread, Vitali says “your son would have been able to use that much butter on 14 pieces of bread” (14! think of it). And if I put sugar in my tea he says “you eat too much, you’re getting too fat. Why don’t you use your daughter as an example?” And with such sentimental jokes, we pass the time and breakfast.

On the bitter cold winter:

December 29, 1939
…. it is not childish to be happy that you won’t have to walk around with red ears and a blue nose.

——-

January 2, 1940
….The old year just wouldn’t go away. It was a bad year and did bad things to us. Its parting gift was Siberian cold. Imagine the temperature in our kitchen. I decided to make a party goulash. The onions I kept in the kitchen were so frozen that they looked like balls of onyx. I was angry that I had to destroy their beauty with my knife. When I cut them up they acted like broken glass breaking into atoms. My fingers were fascinated by this and decided to show off a dark coral red which changed to ruby red. My fingernails were shining like violet amethyst. It was a piece of degenerate art.

——-

February 17, 1940
I don’t know why it’s not considered proper form to write about the weather and it shows you have an intellectual poverty if you do something so mundane as to write about the weather. I don’t find that there’s anything that changes more than the weather. After we had a few days of normal winter temperatures, it was -5 even in the sun. Fingers while playing musical accompaniment were even able to do a few knee bends. Then the weather went downhill again. My limbs felt that new cold and became stiff again. All the clothes I wear in the kitchen, I look like something out of a fairy tale - sort of a combination of Red Riding Hood and a witch, but really more on the side of the witch. With Papa I have finished a certain signal. If I leave after we eat soup and don’t come back until the second course we might have, then he should come looking for me, although I haven’t turned into a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife but I probably have turned into an icicle.
….What a Viennese person cannot understand. Papa is wearing a coat and not hanging it over his arm. When he is going shopping, the Vienna women let him go first because they worry about a man who does not have a winter coat….

——-

February 22, 1940
On the 18th, I wanted to send my letter from the day before and decided before that to make a nice atmosphere. So I got an arm chair, a leg of an armchair, an old sofa pillow and a couple of coat racks and a few shoe stretchers for both men and women. It didn’t exactly get warm. The coal deliverer had left us hanging. But Papa decided that I would be a pyromaniac. While I was trying to have a little talk with our oven, I was trying to explain that a reasonable oven would realize there was no coal there, but it could eat something else. Our oven did not listen to reason. It made noise. The house manager said that the pipes had burst because of the SIberian cold so we had no water in the kitchen. That wasn’t so bad, we at least could use the phone and bathroom. …

_____

8 March 1940 from Vienna to Harry

…. At least its still a little warmer. I took off my third pair of stockings and am only wearing two pair now, one from rubber and one from a wool-like substance….

——-

April 13, 1940
In actuality, the thermometer was -1 degree today and our oven is fed with all sorts of goodies. He is currently eating the ruins of an armchair which I found when I was cleaning out our basement. The latter I had to clean out because it’s going to be commissioned as a bunker…..

On whiling away the hours:

January 29, 1940
There is not really much to say about us. I leave the house twice a week to go shopping; and the daily needs such as bread and skimmed milk, Vitali takes care of that, because he has to do something new with his original business hours.
….
Vitali has been forbidden to undertake any kind of activity.

_____

March 19, 1940 from Vienna to Paul

If I were to give you a description of our days you could be forbidden to fish because you are yawning so much. So I see that I will just assure you that it’s not an easy task to go from being quite busy to being forced to do nothing. Well, doing nothing is not quite the right expression because my time is really taken up with cooking, washing the dishes and the laundry, straightening up, and other kinds of housework. But, however I have enough leisure during these activities to think about a lot of things. This thinking is what reminds me in a painful way that in our matter we must take consciousness of our situation. Then however there’s the matter of the mail dragging along and that just makes me have dark thoughts. But I don’t want to foist off my melancholy mood on you. It goes away as soon as I get one of those letters that’s on the way.
——-

August 2, 1940
To be condemned to such passivity is a very unpleasant thing and harder to learn than any other subject you might study. So I’m doing some remedial work on what I didn’t had time to do over the past few years and I am reading a great deal. My intellectual pursuits are with Leonardo, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and their contemporaries. As you see I am living in the deepest Middle Ages. Papa is doing the same thing, but the difference for him is that he has done this for years and I’m more like someone just starting school. I really had to figure out how to hold a book. It’s a lot harder to read when you hold the book upside down in your hand. The weather of the last week was so unfriendly that I preferred to stay home and can vegetables for the winter. Vitali was very industrious in helping me because you can’t just read all the time. So with these two completely different activities - one for the mind and one not - I am perhaps more inclined toward the last. At least you have a way to leave your thoughts free and the thoughts come right to you. The day before yesterday I promised my mother in a dream that I would not leave her behind and that I would stay here. In the morning I regretted my premature promise.

On having little money or food:

December 8, 1939
Its winter in Vienna, cold and snow. We don't have much to spend on food and such but we are lucky that we do have a card that allows us to buy clothing, wool. We can also buy vegetables close by. I’m not used to going out, as you can maybe tell. I take the garbage out and shop at same time so that I only have to go out once. I forgot my grocery card and got angry at myself. Wanted to buy something without coupons but realized I didn't have my shopping bag, but the garbage bag.

When we go out, Papa now says “Helene, did you remember the garbage bag?” Here I am just writing about garbage bags, reflecting my mood. ….

———

December 14, 1939
Our stomachs are used to not getting such goodies anymore.

Papa has a sour grapes philosophy – we ate too much anyway. Maybe he’s right, but it sure would be nice to have something/it was nice to have it.

——-

January 29, 1940

The sale of unnecessary objects is how we are paying for our expenses.

—-

March 12, 1940

Papa. He came with such an expression of a poor sinner that I had to laugh. I’d already forgotten about the soup but Papa thought he should make it up to me and brought a splendid Baltic Sea herring with him. We felt like we had a meal of the gods.

——-

March 19, 1940

Yesterday I wanted to go to procure for E&H Lowell [Eva and Harry] some shaving cream for papa for March 21 [his birthday] but our account was overdrawn. We have an advance until July and so can’t really buy anything.

On imagining leaving Vienna and creating a life in the U.S.:

March 1, 1940
….
About 2 years ago in a beekeeper newspaper there was a notice that California needed beekeepers. Please let us know if this is true and if the lack of beekeepers is still of current concern.

——-

8 March 1940

Tonight the king of Iraq gave us passports so we could visit you. Unfortunately, that was just a dream and he’s dead anyway and his resurrection is fairly unlikely.

——-

March 26, 1940 to Harry

There was a man from the air command here looking at our apartment because we have received notice that we will have to leave the apartment soon. Papa acknowledged that we received that notice but that we are not at the present time thinking of giving up our apartment. How much I would like to since so many people have shown interest in seeing us elsewhere and maybe will help us to figure that out.

_____

March 26, 1940 to Paul
Soon you will have regained your independence and achieved a sphere of influence appropriate to your enthusiasm and knowledge. In a country where you are still in the process of learning the language for practical use, it may take a bit longer. I am reminded of what an acquaintance, who now lives in London, once told me: “What good is it that I can read Wilde or Galsworthy in the original, but I don’t know how to say ‘rain gutter’?” We looked it up right after that, but I don’t think this knowledge would really help me make progress in the USA. I only wish I knew if it would serve any purpose for me to learn Turkish, Chinese, Spanish or English. But what does a goose dream about? Just about corn. (something is wrong about that word, but I don’t know what). So I dream about reuniting with my children. While I work with a broom and duster, I wander through California’s blessed fields with you.

——-

April 13, 1940

On my birthday and Christmas I got from Papa some stockings as well. He used the points he had available and I think a friend of mine may have helped him out with additional points. I am not wearing them however, I am saving them for my daughter. …


Communicating in the most difficult of times

Today we are so used to being able to communicate with friends and family instantaneously, regardless of how far away we are from each other. It’s easy to forget that this is a relatively recent experience.

Before, during, and after World War II, the only (somewhat) affordable way to keep in contact with people was by mail. Even that was expensive so letter writers often wrote on the lightest weight paper possible, filling up every inch of space front and back. This can make some letters difficult to decipher!

When the Nazis took over Austria, even letter writing was a challenge. Helene and Vitali had very little money to spend on the luxury of correspondence, the price of postage continued to rise, letters were censored, and mail often didn’t arrive at its destination. Helene began numbering her correspondence, asking her children to do the same, in order to know which letters were getting through. Helene experimented with different ways to send mail, most often relying on Clipper, a service that used “flying boats”.

In those days, people often kept copies of the letters they wrote in order to remember what they wrote about, since often a response took weeks or months. In addition, family members would share the letters they received with each other. For example, my grandmother’s nephew Robert Zerzawy would apparently sometimes send letters he received from Helene (originals? copies?) to his brother Paul in San Francisco to share with everyone there.

Amazingly, prisoners were able to write letters to each other between the camps - we have one written by Vitali in Buchenwald to Helene in Ravensbrück.

See translation of camp rules below

See translation of camp rules below

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

Prisoners were allowed to receive letters and care packages from friends and family via the Red Cross, although there were very specific rules about what a package could contain. Helene reported that sometimes the food in the care packages was the only thing standing between prisoners and starvation. Writing to her friend and fellow Ravensbrück prisoner Lucienne Simier after the war, Helene says: “I thank Heaven for saving your family and share with you the joy as we have so often shared our bread and the contents of our valuable parcels.”

 

Three letters on one page. Note censorship numbers and Clipper letter # at top of page

Official postcard from the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition San Francisco. Courtesy of Morton Beebe

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.

Sky of Ravensbruck.jpg

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?

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.

FiorellosSister.jpg