September 21

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Today’s letter #51a from Helene to her 16-year old son Harry is a companion to #51 from Helene to his sister Eva which we saw in yesterday’s post. Helene is so grateful to both her young children who have demonstrated their love by sending their parents what little money they’ve earned in summer jobs.

 Vienna, 20 September 1940

My dearest beloved Harry-Boy - This week I was finally released from the punishment of Tantalus. I got your letter from August 20 and the letter you wrote with others from the 31st. It is impossible to describe my happiness to you after 3-1/2 months of tortured waiting. Now I’m sorry that I wrote so many alarming letters and that they are still on the way to you and which are now only going to cause you dark hours. But you cannot imagine what kind of fear we experienced because we heard from all our acquaintances that they were getting letters quite regularly and we even got almost all of those which Everl sent me. But now the chalice has passed to us and we are hoping we will never be so long without letters from each other again.

Everl did promise in June to send me a surprise letter from my son. However -- the letter from the business concern in Berlin -- I couldn’t expect that surprise. I am nostalgic for the time when I could express my thanks in proper manner. God has not left anyone who has children like this. I believe that I have grown this week.

I am making more mistakes than I usually do today because I am nervous and my fingers just don’t go as fast as my thoughts when I’m trying to put them down on paper. I’m also writing in such chaos, which I did not get close to describing correctly in my letter to Eva and third, every moment seems like there is somebody ringing the doorbell from all those workers that are working on our house at this time. Every time I go to the door -- which requires gymnastic sport achievements from me -- after I do that, I am so exhausted that I have to catch my breath for a minute. I am also writing to you on a strange typewriter which I really still have to get used to or it has to get used to me. Well, you will excuse me I think. I am very interested in your dance lessons and the future plans that have to do with that. You want to import a wife from Europe? You should probably not say a lot about that over there. I hope I can help you choose someone and should this perhaps not be possible, then perhaps you will take my well-meaning advice. If you want to marry the daughter, then take a good look at the mother, because the apple doesn’t usually fall far from the tree. If you don’t like certain things about the mother, then forget about the daughter because even though she will be young and pretty, well the mother was probably like that at one time. Youth and beauty have vanished and everything else has remained. But isn’t it true, my dear son, that we still have some time?

Now I have quite a list of wishes. #1) you must tell me everything you did at Lake Tahoe, what you saw and experienced there, what you were doing there. Then I also want to know what you are learning in school; if you find it difficult or find it easy and what Hilda and Nathan said to you when you returned. I also ask that you tell me if all of my letters have arrived; the one on July 23 was #43.

Since I need to write to Paul today and it’s getting quite late, I end for today with many, many kisses.

Helen

P.S. Please stop growing. Is this a way of getting together with the clouds and the skyscrapers? If I ever go out with you, you will have to take a telephone because you will be so far away from me.

---

Although Helene mentions a companion letter to Paul, I do not have it in my possession.

Harry echoed his mother’s struggles with an unfamiliar typewriter in his own letter from 1943 to Eva which we saw on September 17.

Helene compares her thirst for letters from Harry to that of Zeus’s son Tantalus who was punished for his misdeeds by being forced to stand in a pool of water with fruit trees overhead, with both water and fruit being forever out of reach.  The Wikipedia entry says that “Tantalean punishments” referred to “those who have good things but are not permitted to enjoy them.”

September 20

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Letter from Helene in Vienna to her daughter Eva in San Francisco. Eva graduated from Washington High School in June 1940 and began studying nursing at Mount Zion Hospital School of Nursing in early September. At this time, Eva was 19 years old.

51st Clipper                        Friday, 20 September 1940

My dear Eva! Papa’s typewriter is in the shop so I’m using our renter’s. This one is behaving like a wild horse which wants to throw its rider off. I thank you for your letter from August 31st. Thank you for starting the number system of your letters. (Harry should also use that.) And - last not least - for sending the money. The amount has not come to me yet, but the letter itself was a deus ex machina, since we needed it as a document to deal with our finances. When I got the letter from Berlin, I couldn’t believe that the amount could be from you and I had to wait with my thanks until I found out who the anonymous benefactor was. You can imagine the feelings I had when I got the communication that the amount came from your first summer job. You can imagine that through my tears that I had to laugh at your comment that you were practically making excuses that you couldn’t promise anything. Please don’t worry, my child – the fact that you sent your first money to us - that is not just a source of strength for us, but makes us feel certain that we will be reunited. This also gives us the opportunity to express our thanks for your love by your deeds and not just by the words you send.

When you get my letter, you will be in the middle of your work and your next letter will probably include a description of what you’re learning. It did not surprise me that Aunt Tillie acted like a berserk person and was in a rage about your clothing, considering those rags that you brought with you. Your shoes too were something I never agreed with - those heels you wear. The reason that she does not answer has to do with the experiences she has had with those under her care. It’s bitter and not very flattering to be thrown into the same pot with these people. It seems like heaven intended that all these bitter experiences were ones that you were to experience in order for you to emerge lucidly from all this infernal knowledge.

If you had any idea of the conditions under which this letter is coming to be, you would really admire me. Everything we have as far as furniture goes is in your room, stored there, which is only possible given the small size of that room because we put everything on top of each other. If the doorbell rings now, I have to get over Papa’s bed and climb over two stacked armchairs, hang onto the dresser, jump on my bed, and make my way from the other table to the door, take the day bed which is in the front room, push it to the side, and dance through the doorway in the small amount of room remaining. Why? Well, the floor from the balcony has been sinking and the construction foreman who is doing the general repairs got the contractor to take out about a square meter of the parquet floor to find out how bad this – it’s moist and there are woodworms and bugs which have probably done damage to the Dippelbäume ceiling [type of beamed ceiling construction]. We determined that one of the beams will have to be completely replaced and at least five square meters were torn up and out of this pile of debris there is a Karstgebirgs landscape and the iron structures became visible. In our room it looked like a train had derailed. So, the various contractors and construction people who have been working have been trading off with their work hours from 7 in the morning for the last three days. Although everything is done, there is a thick layer of dust in the next rooms and when I wipe the dust off the tablecloths and the table and the armchairs, it is like a mockery. The Stapplers have it even worse since their apartment is completely cleaned out.

Your kiss in the color of a cyclamen flower has pleased me although I actually like your natural style better. Also, the color is not really on the paper anymore, but on my lips. Kiss, kiss, kiss to each one. Helen

---

In Helene’s previous letter to Eva seen in the September 6 post, she describes the renters who have recently moved in to help defray the cost of living. As she does so often, Helene tells a funny story that barely masks the inconvenience and upset of having to share their living space with strangers, and just how straitened their circumstances have become.

Helene mentions that 100 marks arrived from San Francisco from an unknown source. In 1940, 100RM would have been worth $250US. That would be worth almost $5,000 in today’s dollars. I don’t know what that meant in terms of buying power in 1940 Vienna, but it must have seemed a fortune, particularly considering its source. That summer, Harry worked for the Levy-Zentner produce company and I believe that Eva worked as a nanny in Mill Valley for a distant relative or acquaintance.

In reading through family papers, I have come to realize what a hero my mother was. Imagine being 19 years old, a world away from her parents, feeling responsible for her younger brother as well as for her parents’ financial and emotional well-being. Eva and Harry sent every penny they earned to help their parents; she wrote letters ceasely and sealed her most recent letter with a lipstick kiss – such a sweet image. 

September 19

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Today we see a postcard in English to Paul Zerzawy in New York from Fritz Orlik who has just arrived in Tel Aviv. At this point, much of the family was on the move, or trying their best to flee Europe: earlier in the year, Robert Zerzawy had made it to England and Paul to New York. Fritz was the son of Paul’s father Julius’s third wife. Julius had died in January 1939.

20 September 1939

Dear Paul

After a long odyssey we landed in Tel Aviv ... and will leave it tomorrow and go to Fritz Pekarek, Haifa P.O.B. 685. As we have been informed by our mother you have already a job and we are glad that you have found already an existence. Mother told us further on that you received the money from the Stopford Fund and that we shall call to you for our deal. In consequence of the extremely long journey the costs for ... too high that all our money has gone away for the Bonded. So don’t be angry when we beg you to send us as early as possible to the address: Leo Zwicker, Haifa, Joseph Rechov 15. Of course we have not yet a job and just now it is very hard to find work, but we are hopeful. Please write to us soon and also to mother that we arrived. Your Fritz and Hanne 

---

In the January 25 post, we read a letter from Fritz several months later which again mentions the Stopford Fund. In Paul’s reply in the March 21 post, he mentions that he sent a reply to the letter we see above, but it apparently never reached its destination. Paul makes it clear in his response that his life is not as successful as Fritz’s mother indicated. At this time, neither Paul nor Fritz have a permanent address and both are staying with relatives or acquaintances.

In the April 3 post, we saw a newspaper article Paul saved which described British efforts to help Czech Jews leave Europe.

September 18

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Today’s Red Cross letter between parents in Vienna and children in San Francisco has many different dates, including a postmark from September 18, 1943 which is why we see it today. It includes a note signed by Vitali (Haim), addressed to Eva at her nursing school address, and a reply from Eva dated October 7, 1943.

75 Postage taken
20 January 1943

German Red Cross
Foreign Service Headquarters
Berlin

Application to the Central Agency of Prisoners of War, Geneva — International Committee of the Red Cross — to send a message

1. Sender:        Haim Seneor Cohen
Vienna, II./27 Haasgasse 10/16

Requests to send this to
Relationship: Children

2. Recipient:
Eva Maria Lowell
2200 Poststreet – Nursingschool
San Francisco, California, USA

(Maximum 25 words to transmit the following)

My Beloved!

On Harry’s birthday we received the first answer back. We are overjoyed, also healthy. We hope that soon additional answers will come. Birthday and other kisses to all.

Signed: Haim Seneor Cohen

Date 14 January 43

3. Recipient answer on back of letter.

4. Recipient answer
(25 words maximum)

We are all well working successfully. Hope to see you after the war. We think of you constantly.

Love,
Signed: Eva Lowell

Date: Oct. 7, 1943

---

This letter traveled between the two countries over the course of a year, beginning on January 14 when their parents wrote to wish Harry a happy 19th birthday and with a final postmark of December 18, 1943. There are German postmarks from January 20, February 10, and December 16; American postmarks dated August 24 and September 18. The letter that began its journey in January appears not to have reached its original destination until 7 months later. Given that I have the letter in my possession and the last postmark is an American one, all I can figure out is that the letter was returned to Eva to show that her reply had been received by her parents.

Clearly, they were seldom allowed to correspond, and even then, they were limited to 25 words – not quite as long as a Twitter post.

We saw an earlier Red Cross letter from May 1942 in the May 12 post when their parents wrote to send Eva birthday greetings. That letter went in only one direction and took a little more than two months to arrive. In 1942 Helene and Vitali were still at the same apartment they had lived in with their children. By the time of today’s letter, they had been forced to move to an address at Haasgasse in the Jewish quarter. According to historian Corry Guttstadt, before the occupation the building had originally been a home for Jewish girls. By this time, it housed Jews who had been evicted from their own apartments, usually the last address in Vienna before being deported.

Location of Vitali and Helene’s addresses in Vienna.

No matter how dire the situation, Helene and Vitali wanted their children to know that they were in their hearts – they couldn’t let a birthday go by without acknowledging it.

September 17

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Today’s charming letter from 1943 is from Harry to his sister Eva in San Francisco and gives us a vivid description of life in the army. He is in southern California at the Desert Training Center which we read about in the August 18 post. He never actually served under desert conditions – hopefully some of what he learned proved useful in the humid South Pacific.

San Bernardino, Calif.
September 17

Dear Sister,

The trouble with the community-reading of my mail is that all news are exhausted after the writing of the second letter to the folks. Consequently there is nothing left for me to tell you. Whenever I write to either Hilda or Tillie I must do a bit of thinking before putting anything down lest I repeat myself. Caramba, she is tough! Well, I’ll do my best not to say anything you already know.

Now let me see – no, there isn’t a thing to tell you. How about talking about the weather? It’s pretty warm right now, how are you? I am fine.

Did you finally say adios to the place you so lovingly spent the last three years at? Have you found any place to stay yet? In case of emergency I could put in a requisition for an old tent which I could send to you.

I couldn’t dine with Tillie the other day because of a restriction of the whole company to the company area. I was really sorry to miss that dinner because we have been fed the most abominable slop imaginable. Fresh food in this camp is almost unheard of: the menu consists of canned meat or hash, powdered eggs, canned fruit juice, powdered tomato juice, even canned potatoes and onions, no fresh milk – nothing fresh at all. So you can imagine how I felt when I saw a good steak dinner at the California Hotel pass me up, just like that.

With the return of the horse and buggy, many other commodities of yesterday have found a new place in this new era. I am writing this letter by the quaint light of three candles. There is no electricity in this company except in the bath and shower room; but there is too much noise with crap games and the radio going on.

During the three days of restriction I wrote a letter every night as I could do nothing but that. You know, I admire those fellows who sit down every day for a few hours to write letters.

I am getting rather sleep so I’d better close this little communiqué with a cheerio.

Your favorite brother,
Harry.

P.S. Please excuse the mistakes this machine has made; it didn’t go further than the fifth grade. It can’t spell yet. 

---

We have seen in previous posts how family members shared each precious letter with each other. I am grateful for the practice since that means I have a lot more letters in my family papers than I would have. Cousin Paul Zerzawy kept all the letters in his possession; Harry kept all of Paul’s and his mother’s, as well as a handful of Harry’s own letters that were sent to Bertha and Hilda.

At this point, Eva have recently graduated from nursing training at Mt. Zion and had to move from the student quarters on Post Street in San Francisco:

Tillie was visiting San Bernardino and hoped to see Harry – a postcard from the California Hotel makes it looks like Harry missed out on a fine meal.

September 13

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Today we see two letters written in September 1939 to Helene’s nephew Paul Zerzawy in New York. He arrived in the U.S. in April and is trying to find his feet while also helping his relatives in their efforts to emigrate. It may be that they were sent in the same envelope.

13, September 1939

My dear!

I suppose you have written to me, as I have to you, and that your letter describes the clipper… of August 19.  I don’t have anything new to report.  Since the war began, I haven’t received any mail from Europe.  Please follow my suggestion and send mail about once a week, even if just a card (numbered!).  Mail from neutral countries seems to be getting through.

Warmly,

The Cohen Family

---

Vienna, 9/11/39

Dear Paul,

Please don’t worry about us.  We will certainly try to leave somehow, but we don’t have any prospects at the moment.  Maybe you can write to the Zentners to get our ship tickets transferred to another line.  Here, you see, we can only pay in dollars; since the tickets from the USA are paid for, we cannot complete this transaction.  I don’t know which ship line you could consider because there may be changes. At this time, it would be possible to take the Italian line; however, it would have to be paid for in hard currency/foreign money.  I hope this can be taken care of soon.

If you write to Robert, tell him not to worry about us.

I’ll write more next time; I’m out of room today. 

Try to send us some news the same way.

Warmly,
Eva

Dear Paul,
Once we did experience history, but it was not that exciting.  I hope a direct connection is possible soon.

Kisses,
Helene

Paulie, look, here I am again today.  Don’t worry.
A thousand kisses.
Illegible signature

---

Each of today’s letters have an element of confusion in them. Paul has been in the U.S. since April and is trying to help bring Helene’s family to join him. The typewritten letter has the #2 at the top, meaning it was the second of Helene’s numbered letters from Vienna to America. It is dated and postmarked September 13, 1939 from Istanbul, Turkey with a return address from Josef de Sévillia who I believe was married to one of Vitali’s sisters. Did Helene post-date the letter, knowing it wouldn’t be sent until several days after she wrote it?

The handwritten letter was confusing because Eva was already adopting the month/date order that we use in the U.S. (month-date-year), rather than the European convention (date-month-year), but used a Roman numeral for the day (XI) which in the letters written in German would indicate the month. So naturally, the letter was originally archived with the date of November 9, 1939. However, that would be impossible because Eva and Harry were in San Francisco by October. In the August 19 post, we learned that they had ship tickets and expected to arrive in New York on September 7. It appears that this letter was sent via Istanbul as well – perhaps in the same envelope as the typewritten letter? They would be following their own advice by sending these letters to Vitali’s Turkish relatives and asking them to forward them to cousin Paul. Mail between Germany (Austria was annexed in 1938) and the U.S. was unreliable at best. 

Three people wrote something on the handwritten letter – Eva, her mother Helene, and a third person. At first I thought the last part was a second note from Helene before posting the letter, but the signature looks nothing like hers. Perhaps it’s Paula, the friend who wrote so many letters after the war assuring Helene of Vitali’s survival?

I wonder whether Helene’s sentence about experiencing history alludes to a literary quote. I assume she is talking about the fact that she and Paul had been separated by war before, when he was a soldier in WWI.

September 12

Today we have a letter from 20-year-old Harry Lowell, an American GI serving in New Guinea, to his 23-year-old sister Eva, working as a nurse in San Francisco. They have been in the U.S. for 5 years and only heard rarely from their parents who at this point were both in concentration camps. They stayed active and positive, making the best of where life took them, at this point unable to do anything to help their parents. All they know about the situation in Europe is what they hear on the radio and read in the newspaper.

New Guinea
September 10, 1944

Dear Eva,

‘Tis a very repentant brother of yours, indeed, who is writing you a letter today. There is no excuse at all for my not writing you for over a month, I know; therefore I appeal to your good heart and sisterly love to forgive me (again) for this breach of correspondence ethics and my lack of fraternal attention (due any sister of mine). How about it, Sis? Thank you. I knew your good nature would get the best of your grudge against your lazy brother. I promise not to let my correspondence lag behind again, parole d’honneur! I am glad you haven’t been following my example; your little V letters have been coming in quite regularly. It is needless to tell you that I have enjoyed every letter I received of you, so keep them coming!

Now that I have dedicated half a page to apologizing etc., I can begin my letter with renewed zest and a cleansed conscience (I hope). Nothing has happened since I last wrote you (at which time there wasn’t anything to write about, either: I am still doing the same job at the same place, see the same people every day, talk about the same things daily, and so on --- all is quiet on the southwestern front. Were it not for the good news we hear over the radio – news upon which we build our hopes of getting home soon – we would have a tough time keeping up our morale. I bet the men who are in actual combat complain less then we service troops do, although they have a reason to do so.

Incidentally, the army’s word for complaining is “bitching”; here is a little poem by one of our boys on “Bitching”:
Bitches are witches
Bring trouble in snitches
Warrant no outward praise.

If riches were bitches
‘Twould keep us in stiches
Mean millions for our old age.

Which is right and which
Is wrong, we know not which
So go ahead, you dogface, --- bitch!

Some General is said to have remarked that, were it not for the bitching, this army wouldn’t be what it is today – the best army in the world.

Well, enough for “bitching.”

Sister, when I get back you’ll hardly recognize me anymore. Not only do I shave more than once a week, have a dozen hairs on my chest, and in other ways feel old age creeping up on me, but I also have cultivated a gusto for beer which, as you know, is obtainable here (it has been since August). I used to abhor the stuff as you can remember. There seems to be a deficiency in our diet which can only be corrected by beer. (Anyway, that’s what I keep telling myself.) My order for a gallon of fresh milk on my return still stands, so don’t think for a moment that I will prefer beer to milk, ever. I bet I won’t even touch beer when I get back home (according to my diet deficiency theory, ha). The other day I got my first taste of Australian beer, which is much stronger than the American beer we are getting: I drank it on an empty stomach and I felt the way I do when I try to play beg shot and attempt to puff on a cigar. I’ll never do that again!

A couple of fellows of this detachment are on a furlough in Australia; if I am lucky. I will be able to go there, as long as I am so close to the mainland. I would like to see Australia; all of the men have been there before and told me a lot of stories, unfavorable ones, which I don’t quite believe. Maybe I’ll have a chance to find out for myself.

So you want to know what I would like for Christmas, eh? Well, let’s see – something to read? No, I got plenty – something to eat, yes? No, I got plenty of that ---maybe some toilet articles? Hell, no, I get that at the PX-----perhaps a sweater for cool nights? No! -----how about some pictures or at least one colored portrait, 5x7, of my sister? That’s what I want; it’s the only thing I can use and I would appreciate one very much. Before you mail the package put a lot of branches off a Christmas tree in it, and that will be the nicest present from you. I’ll look at your picture and smell that forest fragrance of those branches and I will have a nice Christmas, indeed. Well, that’s settled.

How is Paul getting along? Write me about him in your next letter, will you? Be sure to give him my regards. Tell him he can contribute to the Christmas fund by taking a few snaps.

Have you seen Hilda lately? How is she? Keep me posted, old girl.

By the way, how did you come out with those two tennis champions? Who won and why didn’t you? After all, you used my racket which should have helped you achieve victory. Well, keep practicing; you’ll get there on top yet.

In case you want to know how I am, I am very fine, thank you; I am in the best of health, spirit, and what have you. I hope all is well with you also; I suppose you are still working at the doctor’s office and enjoy your work. I am glad you did not join the Nurse’s Corps; a lot of vicious tongues are spreading a lot of stories about the army nurses here. There is probably. Some truth in the stories, pertaining, however, to a small minority of the nurses only. But to the average GI all nurses are the same and he has his own nickname for them. Old Horace must have felt the same way I do sometimes; my maxim: “Odi profanum vulgus et arceo” Ain’t it the truth!

Well, Eva, it’s getting late and I have come to the point where I can’t find anything to write about anymore, therefore I will bid you goodnight. Don’t forget about that picture, please; it has to be tinted, by all means!

With love,
Your favorite brother,
Harry

P.S. Say hello to everybody.

---

There are so many echoes of their mother’s letters  – Harry is as always a poor and guilt-ridden correspondent (as is his cousin Paul Zerzawy from whom he apparently hasn’t heard), using humor and cleverness even when discussing serious matters, carrying on a “conversation” with the recipient, and throwing in foreign words and phrases. Eva continues to be the reliable and diligent one, regularly sending her brother letters, despite the lack of response. Eva carried that sense of responsibility to everything she did throughout her life – she was completely honest, arrived everywhere on time, and kept every promise, explicit or implicit.

One example of her keeping implicit promises is the photo below – I assume Eva went to the Emporium Photo Studio to get this tinted portrait to fulfill Harry’s request.

In a quick search, I couldn’t find a source for the poem Harry quotes (presumably from an anonymous GI) – I did find a similar phrase at urbandictionary.com and a hip hop song with the title “Bitches Snitches Witches and Riches.”

Their love of tennis is repeated often – see June 14 post.

Harry is happy that his sister did not after all join the Nurse’s Corps. He sees how little respect the nurses get and he is glad she won’t be subject to the sexism and harassment she would have experienced.  Harry mentions the rumors that are spread about nurses – is he quoting Horace in relation to the nurses or to the GIs who say such awful things? I imagine the latter. The phrase is from Horace’s Odes 3.1.1 « Odi profanum vulgus et arceo. » I hate the common masses and avoid them.

One final echo in Harry’s sign-off — he calls himself her “favorite brother” — since he was her only brother. At my wedding, when it came time to say who was giving me away, Eva said of her only child: “I do, my favorite daughter.”

September 10

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

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

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

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

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

Vitali

---

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

September 9

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Today’s letter from Helene in Vienna and to her children in San Francisco follows the ones we saw on September 5 and 6.

Clipper #50 (fifty)

Vienna, 9 September 1940

My dear Children!

I am acting as if I believe Papa when he says that your letters were among those that were seized in the Bermuda islands. He says this as if he is so sure of it that he would swear to it, but I am a doubting Thomasine.

The whole time the weather has been just as dark as my mood. The rooms have been as cold and unpleasant as it would normally be in November. I therefore took our winter clothing out of storage and when this happened, of course the sun peeked out as if gloating at me, to make fun of me in my annoyance. But as old as the sun is, she fooled me, but I just can’t let myself be bothered by something like that right now. The day we had yesterday was beautiful like in May. It was made for going outside in the fresh air and filling up your lungs with oxygen. Despite that, we decided to stay home. The green blanket played the role of the meadow and no government official and no hall supervisor could get me away from here. I lay still, but instead of dozing off like you tend to do, practically a requirement when you’re out there laying on the meadow, in my head, thoughts of you marched around. I am sure the next letter will get me a few lines from Harry.

I am looking at Everl’s last letter and I am still just amazed by the metamorphosis in her handwriting. Is this something she did on purpose or did this just happen? However that may be, it’s really wonderful and I’m really happy about it. I did work as a typographer and I am used to trying to figure out illegible handwriting, but Everl’s scribble was the hardest thing I ever had to deal with. It really tortured me, and not just me. The most unclear manuscript I ever dealt with at work was the weekly repertoire of the Teplitz City Theater and so I asked our Father to typeset that for me. That was the first thing I ever had to do with the theater; the ones that came to Bilin on occasion didn’t count. “On Sunday, whatever the date was, with a special higher priced Lohengrin in the title role Mr. Erik Schmedes as a guest performer” - that I could figure out only with great difficulty. I begged Father to get tickets for us early enough which he was glad to do, so from Thursday to Sunday I could hardly sleep in joyous anticipation. The production started two hours earlier than they usually did and the train would only be getting there shortly before. We didn’t really look at the theater handbills very carefully, otherwise we would have noticed that they had changed the program. If Mr. Schmedes or perhaps the swan had a sore throat, or whether the performance had to be postponed to the following Sunday, because they didn’t have a dove falling from the heavens, I can’t remember anymore. I just remember that my sister Mattl got upset because she found that instead of the overture from Lohengrin, she heard the music from “The Sweet Girl.” [Das süsse Mädel] Mattl became pale and paler, pale and paler. What are the Bilin people going to say when they see such a rude and vulgar play with such a young girl in attendance? When I looked at her, she seemed to be fighting with the idea - should she and I leave before this shocking operetta even started? Or should we say, well, that’s fate? On the train we agreed we didn’t want to call attention to ourselves by leaving the theater early. This excuse applied not just to the parents and to the others in Bilin who sat in the next train compartment and were passing judgment on us. Apparently, those were rather progressive people, because Mattl’s reputation did not suffer. It’s funny that I think of this right now, but thought associations are easy to explain because the same impatience and the same pounding heart which I experienced on that theater Sunday back then, that’s how I fell today when I wait for your letters. I hope the Bermuda intermezzo doesn’t cause them to change the program.

Our housemates are very pleasant people. Yesterday and today, it’s been quite lively around here. The chimney sweep came and did his best to cover my recently washed kitchen with a black patina which he did even better at in the bathroom and the entrance hall. The workers above our balcony sounded like they were trying to escape or something. They were cutting things down and with quite a bit of rumbling and a whole lot of dirt, they managed to get it into our room. But that’s not enough. The floor, which always did have the tendency to move down to the floor below, started to sink so much that I decided I should put up a sign saying: “watch the step.” There were carpenters and supervisors here today and they will fix that part of the floor in a few days. I’m looking forward to that. I think our back-to-nature idyll is over since the scaffolding has been removed from the inner courtyard side of the building. But then I thought about it, they’re probably going to put it up on the facade. So now you see what your old former house looks like.

Have you gotten used to your school environment? How was your vacation? All of these things are very, very interesting to me and I hope that you will tell me all about it in detail.

Well, I’m going to close for today with well-directed kisses and please tell everyone hello.

I wish you all the best and all that is good and beautiful,

I remain your
Helene

---

As Helene continues to wait for mail from her children, her mind wanders to an early memory of her childhood in Bilin, Bohemia. She did typesetting for her father’s newspaper. Her love of music was already great and she begged her father to get tickets for a production of Wagner’s Lohengrin in the largest nearby town, Teplitz.  

She was looking forward to hearing a famous tenor of the day in the starring role, but unfortunately there was a change in schedule and instead, the theater was putting on an operetta by Heinrich Reinhardt.  

The operetta was first performed in 1901, so the event Helene describes would have taken place in 1901 or 1902 when she was 15 and her sister Mattl was 23. I hope one day to be able to see issues of the Biela-Zeitung from that time and perhaps see the advertisement she describes.

Helene’s sister’s reaction was “What will people think?” As one of the few Jewish families in an antisemitic town and with a father who did not always make himself popular with those in charge, it’s not surprising that Mattl didn’t want to call attention to themselves.

It’s nice to learn that Helene’s dread of a few days earlier about the new tenants has not turn out to be true.

September 6

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Today we see Helene’s letter to Eva, the companion to the one she wrote to Harry which we saw in yesterday’s post. 

Vienna, 5 September 1940

My much beloved little Eva child!

Your letter of August 20 arrived yesterday. It worked like a sleeping pill. It calmed me down but it didn’t cure me of the idée fixe that something might not be right with Harry. My first thought was that the reason his letters aren’t getting through is because of his drawings. But Harry often sends letters that are not illustrated, and so that wasn’t really the right idea. It could really only be that he was perhaps injured – something like this sometimes happens with drivers or chauffeurs. Or maybe he is sick in some other way. In any case, I consider it highly unlikely that all his letters have been lost and I will not feel at peace until I get a handwritten letter from him and I am holding it in my hands.

Now I know about the internship you have in the hospital. How is it going? Are you just going there a few hours and continue to stay with Bertha, or are you staying overnight in the hospital? Your first jobs will be things like doing the washing and such. Maybe that will make the job easier for you. I have not tortured you when you at one point were just harum sacrum. I didn’t look the other way when some of our house help did things like that. I am very excited about your new handwriting. I could read your letter easily without having to apply poetic license. Keep doing it that way and maybe you could give calligraphy lessons and then your vacation bank account will swell to an unimaginable size. I am very impressed with your letters. I take my hat off to you with every letter. Hedy would say “very competent and she knows a thing or two!” [literally: “not stupid at all”]

Our renters moved in yesterday. A middle-aged married couple. He used to be a foreign correspondent for foreign languages for a former major bank and she is a virtuoso pianist with a great inventory of sheet music. However, she doesn’t have a piano. Isn’t that strange? When the grand piano is gone from the house, the neighbors have a vacation. In any case, we are trying to stay out of the way which is kind of a difficult feat when there are blackouts. In spite of the fact that we all have to use the kitchen and the bathroom, we have established practical house rules so that we probably will not bother each other much. You cannot imagine what kinds of things can make for friction in a living situation. It may be that when we cram together a household of people who don’t even know each other in one apartment, it can lead to arguments much more easily when there are different kinds of people and temperaments. For example, a friend of mine is renting from someone in the same building where she used to have her own apartment. She said that her landlady greeted her with the “Götz quotation.” And when she did not answer, the landlady wanted her to pay 5 Reichspfennigs because she had to send the interest to the property management company by using a form that cost 20 Reichspfennigs. Isn’t that lovely?

I received a letter today from the Berlin Trading Company: “we are communicating to you without obligation and subject to revocation on the part of our client that we have been instructed by the Bank of America N.T. & S.A. San Francisco to give you 100 marks from your registration credit due to Lowell.” Etc. etc. There is a notation on the form approving this:

3) name of the person sending the money (sponsor)
Permanent place of residence:
Exact Address:
Citizenship:

Since I do not know if Eva, Harry, or maybe the Zentners were the ones who did this, I am going to put both of your addresses. Could you imagine how happy I was about this? Since Everl didn’t write anything about this in your last letter, maybe it is a surprise to you too. I hope you can explain this to me. I have the feeling that the transfer will not go very smoothly. Questions about this should maybe not be asked. We’ll see!

Kisses, kisses, kisses and greetings to everyone.
Helen

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Although Eva continues to be a reliable correspondent, Helene still has heard nothing from her son since June 10. She would like to think that the letters have been confiscated because he included illustrations (see the only example we have of his “Illustrated News Monthly” in the June 6 post). She fantasizes that he has gotten into a car crash – my understanding is that at one point Harry drove produce trucks for the Levy-Zentner company in Sacramento.

If Harry was working in Sacramento during the summer, he may not have written often (or at all?) – he was far away from his nagging sister. In the 1960s when we lived in San Francisco and Harry and his family lived in Berkeley, my mother did not call her brother often because at the time it was a long-distance call. I would imagine that the tolls to call Sacramento in 1940 would have felt exorbitant and that Eva would not have called her brother except in an emergency. So she probably had little if any news to share with her parents about her brother.

Helene talks about Eva’s improved handwriting. Throughout her life, her writing was difficult to decipher – apparently it was her one low grade in school when she was a student in Vienna. Now and then I’ll write something indecipherable even to me and realize it looks exactly like my mother’s writing!

We get a sense of life in Vienna at this time. In order to pay the rent, they are forced to rent part of their apartment to strangers. In a different situation, these tenants might have become good friends — like Helene and Vitali, they were musical and multilingual. But in these difficult times, the only thing Helene wanted to do was keep out of their way so that they would be happy, pay the rent, and not make trouble.

Götz-Zitat, a “Götz quotation,” was a euphemism for a profane expression, also known as a “Swabian salute”, from (of course) a play by Goethe, Götz von Berlichingen.

They are no longer living in the Vienna of Helene’s youth – it had become a rude, mean place where bureaucracy and crassness ruled the day.

September 5

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Vienna 5 September 1940

Honey-Harry-Bubi! I am sad since I haven’t heard anything from you since June 10th and my weak brain does not want to think that letters haven’t arrived, especially letters from you. To comfort me, Papa is reading me something from Il Messaggero. “On the second of this month there was a shipment of letters that was seized on the Island of Bermuda. “Letters from your son, you can wait.” Yeah, I can wait, I’ve learned how to wait. The zeitgeist of the times has taught us all to wait. For a few days now, I have not had those bad dreams anymore and I’ve at least been able to get some rest at night from the bad spirits which were making an inferno out of my head. I hope that despite the post being confiscated that we will soon get a letter from you. I hope God is merciful. Everl wrote in her last letter that she knew you had written, but I am not that easy to convince. I didn’t want to send alarming letters to Tillie, Bertha, and Hilda because I feel that I have tested their patience enough. Harry, darling, do you know what it means that I haven’t known since June 10 where you’ve been, what you’ve been up to, how you felt? I know I’ve never been an angel, but it’s very hard to imagine that I have so many sins to atone for. In the Bible it says if God loves someone, He punishes them particularly harshly. I almost would prefer it that God loved me less. Just like a cat always lands on its feet, I can write about whatever God knows, but all I can think of is the 10th of June and that I haven’t heard from you since then.

I asked Everl to write to me and let me know if she has gotten all the letters without any missing, but she still owes me an answer to that question and I would really like to know what number was on the last letter you received. When I have a letter from you, I’ll write to everyone, but until then it’s not really possible for me. My head is smoking and my thoughts are working and soon I will be running around on fire like the “hot soldier” of Meyring.

Our new renters have moved in with boxes full of books and music. This is like an El Dorado for you and Paul to whom I’m going to write today despite the fact that my head is on fire.

Would you do me a favor, little Harry son of mine? Please repeat what you may have written me and which the bad postal service has been keeping from me. You should be going to school again, but in the first school days there’s not much going on, just like the first school days here - they talk about the plans, the syllabus, and all that sort of thing. So there’s still time for you to tell me about your odyssey. Oh, how much I am looking forward to that. I have always sent letters to Everl’s address because I didn’t want to bother Hilda with having to send them on to you. I also didn’t know if you in this divorce paradise have a permanent address. Divorce paradise! Maybe these germs and bacteria are swimming around there and you want to divorce me? Isn’t that ridiculous? See! We, getting a divorce? Only a sick brain thinks of such things. If I write any longer, I will make you crazy too. You know, one fool makes ten.

I’m going to end, but if I don’t get news from you pretty soon, then the farmer Helene will not send Jochen away but she will be calling in the gendarmes. Harry will want to write letters, the post office will want to deliver them, the censors will be in a hurry, and those on the Bermuda Islands will not want to hijack any more letters, etc., etc.

Haven’t you had enough Harry my boy?

Keep loving me and prove it to me by making up for all these letters and all that has been taken from me.

I kiss you,
Helen

Greetings to all. 

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Helene sent the letters we see today and tomorrow as a pair, one to Harry and one to Eva. Although the letters were shared among the relatives, she often made sure to focus a letter on an individual child even if she was writing to each of them on the same day. Being an only child, I don’t really appreciate the importance of doing this, but I remember my mother making absolutely certain that she always gave gifts of exactly the same value to each of Harry’s sons, never wanting either to feel he was considered more special than the other. I imagine as a child she kept track of every gift Harry received, never wanting to miss out or be cheated.

As always, there is the continuing theme of the lack of letters from Harry – you can hear Helene’s constant mantra over the last 3 months: “June 10, June 10, June 10” – she cannot stop counting the days since she last heard directly from her son. I believe that Harry worked for Julius Zentner’s produce company in Sacramento during the summer between his junior and senior year of high school – perhaps he really didn’t write any letters during this time.

Helene tries to be as humorous as possible by imagining that Harry’s letters had been lost in the Bermuda. This passage confirms for us Vitali’s language fluency. He read about the incident when reading an Italian newspaper. This reminded me again of Harry’s delight in reading newspapers from all over the world. I’m sure Vitali would have been as thrilled as Harry was to find the world’s papers at his fingertips available on the internet.

Helene uses the term “divorce.” She speaks separately of her sense of Harry divorcing her by not writing. Was she describing the separation of parents and children or the children being separated from each other as soon as they arrived in San Francisco? Harry was sent to live with Hilda and Nathan Firestone and Eva to Bertha and George Schiller. This meant that they lived in different neighborhoods did not attend the same high school. They only saw each other on weekends. By the summer of 1940, Eva had graduated from high school and was about to begin her nursing training.

With money tight, Helene and Vitali are forced to sublet part of their apartment to strangers.

I had not heard of Gustav Meyrink until very recently, when Michael Simonson, the Director of Public Outreach at the Leo Baeck Institute, suggested that I attend the August meeting of their virtual book club when they would be discussing Meyrink’s book “The Golem.” A few months ago I consulted with Michael and told him about my family. He thought I would be interested in Meyrink’s fascination with the supernatural, given my grandfather’s profession. Clearly, my family was familiar with his work.

The phrase Ein Narr macht zehn Narren was a common aphorism. I found several variations when (unsuccessfully) looking for the original source. One version goes: Ein Narr macht zehn Narren, aber tausend Kluge noch keinen Klugen: One fool makes ten fools, but a thousand clever ones do not make a clever one.

September 2

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Today’s letter from Helene in Vienna to her children in San Francisco is the 124th numbered letter she has sent. In the August 30 post, we saw her 48th letter from a year earlier -- she was writing a letter every 5 days plus an unknown number of other letters to friends and family.

Vienna 2 September 1941

My dear children! No mail again. I should probably have gotten used to this already, but probably that’s not possible or else I would have learned to do it after all this time. As I reflect on this, I am not really in the mood to write long letters, and I will just confine myself to assuring you that we are doing okay, and that everything is the same. There wouldn’t be anything more to say about us if my desire to write were not below the freezing point.

The weather is also not improving my mood. We’ve had a few rainy days which weren’t that intense and not such that they didn’t even let the sun through, but midsummer is coming to its end and the temperatures in the morning and evening are quite cool already. A cold, violent wind made me unpack my winter clothes today, which I will do right away when I’m done with this little scribble to you, which serves to greet and to kiss you. But for the time being, I am not quite ready. Since I had planned to free myself of everything I had until recently, you can assume from the way I am writing that I am making this kind of division between the past and future. I don’t even think any more about having some grammar professor make comments about the way I write.

Papa got his pullover out this morning. He was cold, so I will get right on it to take out the carefully packed winter clothing. I am doing it with a heavy heart because I thought that you would be with me to help me with this. Maybe it’s the other way around: “Man leads and God thinks.” Maybe that’s the way it should be, but I wonder what God is thinking about.

We have acquaintances who have gotten letters from August 16, but the last one we got is dated July 23rd. I hope as always to get news from you soon. Now I will close because I want to get to the activity that I mentioned already.

Keep us in your hearts and write a lot please? I hug you and hope that you are as I am wishing for you.

With sincere kisses and greetings to all the loved ones. Your 

Helen

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We feel Helene’s deep sadness and frustration. Their bags have been packed (and unpacked) for more than a year in the hope that all of their paperwork and tickets would be in order and they could board a ship for America. The rules and goal posts kept changing – each time they thought they were on their way, something prevented their success. What cruel torture – elation at the thought of being reunited with their children, followed by agonizing failure and the need to gather their inner resources to try again. Somehow, they never gave up hope, the one thing that kept them going. But today it feels that her ever-present hope is deserting her. She had at last believed they would succeed and board the Ciudad de Sevilla on July 15, and that her children would already have helped her unpack her bags in San Francisco.

Helene mentions that she has stopped caring about writing perfectly — most of her previous letters have been typed perfectly, whereas today she has written in several corrections.

Helene reverses the saying: Der Mensch denkt und Gott lenkt - “Man proposes and God disposes.” According to Wikipedia, it is from the Latin Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit from a 15th century book by Thomas à Kempis. I would imagine that Helene used this quote often, given her self-identification as a fatalist – see posts from February 15, February 18 and August 1.          

Although this letter was her 124th, I am missing most of the letters written since #110 on July 1 — the censors or cruel fate in the guise of undelivered mail kept her children from hearing knowing the details of their parents’ failed attempt. They must have felt further from their parents than ever.                

August 30

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Today, we have the 48th letter from Helene in Vienna to her children who have been in San Francisco for ten months. It was written on August 30, 1940.

Clipper # 48

My dear children. It is the 30th of August and no news from Harry, and Everl’s letter from this week either failed to materialize or did not arrive, nor did I hear anything from the other side, which might have been a comfort to me.  My head is just a depository of ghosts. I feel like I’m in Dante’s circle of hell. I’m not in the mood to write and please don’t be hurt by that. As soon as I get the letters from you which I wish for I will write in more detail. The letter to Everl arrived yesterday and I apologize for opening it, but I’m enclosing it without having read it. In order not to damage the stamp that we needed, Papa had to cut open the envelope which had already been damaged by the long journey. After this second operation the original envelope wasn’t in good shape anymore. Also, if I had sent it in the original, the letter would have taken another 9 months, as you can see from the postmark.  

Papa is in a hurry, he has some things to do, so I am going to end for today and I hope that next time I’ll have a reason to tell you more and nicer things.

I wrote to Paul months ago that he should ask at our Consulate what should be done about our situation. The information which I got here did not seem competent. Do you remember how the American Consulate took up your case in such a different way than the one we have here? Even when you consider that the one I just mentioned is not so busy as the one here I still think that I would get better information from over there. Since Paul didn’t answer, I’m assuming he didn’t get the letter because otherwise he would have at least sent me a message, even if his news was negative. It’s really necessary to give Fate a kick in the pants.

We’ve had a visitor, and I’ll tell you all about it in the next letter.

Kisses.
Helen

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At this point, Helene has stopped even hoping for letters from Harry, noting only that the weekly letter she could count on from Eva has not appeared. The post continues to be unreliable. Apparently, Eva received a letter in Vienna that was sent from someone the previous year. Postage is expensive and resources are tight, so Vitali and Helene conserve every stamp and piece of paper.

August 25

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Today we have the text from a telegram or other message sent by Eva to her parents in Vienna in August of 1942. They have not been in regular contact since the U.S. entered the war in 1941 and hear only seldom via messages through the Red Cross. This appears to be a reply to the letter we saw in the May 12 post.

August 24

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 20

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Today we have a letter from Helene to her children in San Francisco. Mail continues to be unreliable and is all that she lives for.

Vienna 20, August 1940

My dear children. The heavens have opened up completely and are sending huge amounts of rain on us as if it had been paid for and new rain clouds would be bought. I have only seen this much rain in my life when we went on vacation in the Salzkammergut or the Semmering area but long long ago. The postal worker looked up from her coat that she was wearing while riding a bike. She had quite a few letters hidden under there, kind of like a spinning top. My face looked like I suspected that among those many, many letters I might get quite a few from you. But there was nothing for me, not even a magazine which was a good thing because I would have gone crazy or had murder on my conscience. Papa’s consolation that other people have a right to letters too is plausible, but that’s not very comforting. I still haven’t heard from Harry since the 10th of June. Can you imagine that? I really try to keep calm but this is too much. Instead, I end up whining about not getting any mail, not that it does any good. Paul and the other ones have nothing to say and Everl’s reports are getting more infrequent and shorter. I really don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t want to be a problem to you but it’s really awful to live with such insecurity.

We are doing okay and the only thing we lack is mail from you. You don’t need to worry about us at all. We are not worried either and our deus ex machina is still working for us and of course he has no influence on your letters. That’s not really his department, unfortunately. The letters I have from you I have read through again and I have noticed that there aren’t that many. It’s not about the quantity of course, but one tends to think in absurd ways when one is so dependent on mail.

It’s so dark now that I have turned the light on even though it’s mid-day. I can’t believe where all this water is coming from. It must have rained an entire ocean already.

Vienna 21 August 1940

Oh my dear ones, my dear, dear children. Fortunately, I didn’t finish this letter yesterday, and now that I have just received Everl’s letter from August 6 it will be easier for me to continue writing. Of course, the previous letter once again did not arrive. The last one which we received was July 17 and just contained a mention that you had applied for “free station” [housing?] and some pocket money in order to wait for the wife and children to return. But Everl turned that down for moral reasons. Harry hasn’t sent anything (since the 10th of June!) and we are happy that Everl in her last letter did mention him so we have proof that he is alive and presumably that he is all right. Feuchtersleben once said that one has not figured out exactly at one point of disturbance of the soul insanity begins. In my case however, it wouldn’t have been any doubt - even a lay person would have been able to figure out that I am not even borderline anymore. Everl’s letter has strengthened my backbone and now the psychiatrists can argue about me.

The lively description of Mill Valley and the region reminds us that we saw some pictures of this area a long time ago. In fact, we saw how a primeval forest giant was cut down and the wood from this was transported in many, many different truck trips to the valley. It was mentioned that the wood from just one of these trees is enough to build a city and provide furniture for the homes. I thought in those days: well, I’ll just get a little branch, bring it home, and then I can replace our furniture in Vienna. Eva, who has artistic talent, and Harry, who’s good with his hands, will manage to turn that branch into a nice little home. Also, they showed how three cars could fit quite nicely driving through such a primeval forest, if they were crazy enough to try something like that. Now you know why we like to go to the movies so much. The fact that Everl happened to run into the chamber singer “F” shows that you wild ones are just better people.

I beg you if there is time to write to me in great detail. It’s so much easier to feel that I am with you in that case. Since you’ve been over there, I’ve only dreamed of you; but in the last few weeks, I’ve dreamed only of infirm people, most of whom are not even alive anymore. I don’t really feel that great in such company.

That’s all for now and I send kisses.
Think of me.
Mutti

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According to some scholars, Feuchtersleben was a precursor to Freud, although the latter made no mention of the former in his writing.

It is interesting to learn the vision of California and America that was available through movies and newsreels around the world.

August 19

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Today we have a letter from Eva and Harry to their cousin Paul Zerzawy in New York. Paul wrote an illegible note in pencil at the top of the page – it appears that he received the letter on September 2. Eva wrote her part of the letter in German, while 15-year old Harry wrote his in English.

 From Eva:

19. VIII. 39.

Dear Paul,

I’m glad there is someone who is even lazier about writing than the Cohen family.  It can be nice to make yourself (seem) interesting by not writing, but too much of that is unhealthy.  The reason I am breaking my long silence is:  We want to announce our arrival to you.  We will board the ship on September 1 and then arrive in New York on the 7th.  I wonder if the Statue of Liberty will be so emotional about the fact that we are finally on American soil that she will no longer be able to stand.  But maybe she has, by chance, already found out this news and can handle the great joy.

Everything is still the same here.  The parents are still waiting for their visas.  It will have to happen soon, though, since the process was started in Istanbul five weeks ago.  I think they will leave Europe almost as soon as the children do.

Greetings and kisses,
Eva

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In English from Harry:

Vienna, August 19th 1939.

Dear Paul,

I thank you very much for the letter you had in mind to write to us. Mother every day says; “What has happened to Paul, that he doesn’t drop us a line? Is he perhaps ill?” If you have been kidnapped by gangsters, please write us without delay and give us a detailed report. Yesterday I read in an English newspaper about kidnapping on light day. Thereof comes my supposition.

When I left Vienna for Turkey my weight was 75kg; on leaving Istanbul my weight was sixty.

“Ja, das macht die Luft Luft Luft“

Now I’m as slender as a racing horse. Can you imagine it? You’ll be astonished when you’ll see me.

Aren’t you thrilled by the speed we got our visa? It’s a record, indeed; it took only more than a year.

The American-Vice-Consul in Istanbul has been very kind; he even wished us a good trip and good luck. So the physician who examined us. I’ll write them a card.

Yours as ever
Your cousin clever
Harry.

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According to Wikipedia, the song Harry cites is Berliner Luft by Paul Lincke. I would like to think that the family sang this song with cousin Paul accompanying them on the piano during their musical soirees in Vienna.

In German and English, Eva and Harry express the same sentiments with similar humor – the ever-present refrain about letter writing, the promise of America, optimism for the future. Eva sounds very grown up and responsible - she’s already had to manage the trip with Harry to Istanbul and back. It is wonderful to hear my mother’s voice in this letter — her wry sense of humor and huge sense of responsibility werre the same at 18 as it was at 80. 

Harry’s English is very good, although not as good as in the letters he wrote in the army a few years later. In August 1939, Harry has not yet lived in an English-speaking country and has gleaned most of his knowledge from reading English newspapers and listening to the BBC on the radio. Throughout his life, Harry was fascinated by foreign language newspapers. Whenever my mother Eva traveled anywhere, she would bring him back a newspaper. He was thrilled when he got a computer and was able to read newspapers from around the world.

Although Eva sends the date of their anticipated arrival in September, they did not board a ship until a month later. Like their parents in 1941, there were multiple tickets and dates for departure. Fortunately for the children, one of the attempts was successful. Presumably each of these arrangements cost the family money, draining their ever dwindling resources.

We saw drawings and photos of Harry’s physical transformation in the June 6 post.

August 18

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Today we have a third letter from Harry – clearly he was catching up on correspondence. Apparently he had used up or no longer has access to the Fort Warren stationery he used for the letters posted on August 16  and 17. It is interesting to see what he writes to different members of his family about the same experience.

August 17, 1943

Beloved Sister,

Many thanks for your letter of July 23rd.

Excuse my writing in pencil, the reason for which is the fact that I am operating under actual field conditions now. That means that a lot of accommodations (with which we were overspoiled at Ft. Warren) have been cut out – the only thing for me to do here is to go to the post movie or to San Bernardino. There are no tables to write letters no, no ink – just sand. Sand is everywhere: in and around my tent, as far as the eye can see, in my meals, in coffee, and in my mouth every morning.

This post is a Desert Training Center; the name of it and of certain places here, such as Mecca, Sahara, Gobi, and Indio, will give you an idea of the heat and other things.

Before I came here I stayed in Indio for a couple of days, at a small replacement camp. Well, when we arrived there at midnight the thermometer read 125°. The following morning I woke up sweating; I started sweating just rolling my eyes – such an effort! In addition to the heat P-38 type mosquitoes bothered me all the time. You may not know it but there are two kinds of things that make me feel like running amok, namely heat & mosquitoes and flies buzzing around me. You can imagine what a combination of those things would arouse in me. The two days in Indio were miserable ones, indeed. I like it here in S.B. much better in as far as the nights are nice and cool and there are only flies and ants pestering me – no P-38’s!

We drive around in convoys getting used to heat and lukewarm drinking water. Burrrr.

Well, I am certainly glad that you and Tillie finally understand each other. Say, on your visiting tours did you ever look up the Fulda’s? If you didn’t, maybe you can do it now. I’ve been thinking about something to send them. Any suggestions? How is Paul getting along in regards to his health? Give my regards to the Travis’s, a.s.o.

I hope I get my three-day pass pretty soon so that I can see you before I go across (rumors are going around to that effect). When I’m over there you’ll be receiving V-mail; isn’t that just too, too wonderful and exciting? 

While I was in Indio, I decided to drink a Tom Collins (the heat, you know) and went to one of the two drinking spots of that town – the Hawaiian Club. They soaked my half a dollar & forgot to put the gin in. That’s what I get for drinking.

Well, that’s all.
Your loving soldier
Harry

P.S. What do sheets look like and what is a pillow?
P.P.S. I don’t think I sent you any of the popular songs yet. Here they are.

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We saw an example of and learned about V-Mail in the February 3 and March 14 posts.

Harry uses the acronym “a.s.o.” for “and so on” which I hadn’t seen before. It is reminiscent of the German “u.s.w” which means the same thing. I wonder whether he was giving a subtle wink to his sister of their shared past. Helene mentioned the Fuldas in several of her letters and we have a photo of her with the patriarch of the family in the February 18 post. They had provided financial assistance in the unsuccessful attempt to bring Helene and Vitali to the U.S. in 1941.

Harry isn’t referring to real mosquitoes in his letters, but to fighter planes. He confused the names of two different brands of planes: the American Lockheed P-38 Lightning and the British de Haviland DH.98 Mosquito. The link takes you to a video of the two planes flying together. The Smithsonian has a video about the design of the P-38.

It appears that Harry was stationed at Camp Young, which according to the BLM Desert Training Center brochure was quite close to Mecca.

August 17

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Today soldier Harry Lowell is writing to Tillie and Julius Zentner, who were instrumental in bringing Harry and his sister Eva to the U.S. in 1939. As with yesterday’s post to the Firestones, the letter is written on US Army stationery from Fort Francis E. Warren, but sent from California. 

August 15, 1943

Dear Aunt Tillie & Uncle Julius,

First of all I want to thank you for the candy you sent me.

Now I’ll proceed to tell you about the happenings of the past few weeks. After I finished my schooling I had work detail after work detail, shoveling coal, doing carpenter work, fixing automatic heaters, and also goldbricking a bit for two weeks. During that time I expected to get my furlough or to be shipped out any day; every day I hoped to get my orders the following day.

When I finally received my shipping orders and found that I was going to California my happiness knew no end. Another fellow from Michigan was to go with me. I gave him a long sermon about the beauties of California and praised it so much that the Chamber of Commerce would have given me a pin for outstanding performance would they have heard my propaganda.

We had quite a trip from Cheyenne through Colorado, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Mexico to California. The trains were over-crowded; the people were standing or sitting on the floors and in addition to the crowds, heat made the journey almost unbearable.

Fortunately, the Army issued us pullman tickets which were good in case there were any vacancies. As I was put in charge of the two of us, I went to work in order to get a berth. After long waiting and fighting, I finally got a lower berth (for two). Having a pullman was worth the dollar which helped obtain seats in the air-cooled car. I was very lucky, indeed, because right after I got the seats two officers also tried to bribe the porter. It was without luck, however.

We got off the train at Indio, a very, very hot place, and stayed there for three days until we got transportation to San Bernardino. This place is a Desert Training Center to toughen up the men. I guess you know how hot it gets down here. The fellow from Michigan is very much disappointed and I can’t make him believe that the scenery is beautiful up north. When I talked about California I didn’t figure on this desert at all. I’ll write the Chamber of Commerce to give this part of the state to Arizona or Mexico.

We got a physical examination the other day. The rumors are that those check-ups are prior to overseas duty. But I have learned to ignore all rumors and to believe only what I see.

This truck company consists of men from the East only – New York, Maine, etc. I am pretty lucky being so close to home. I hope to get a three day pass in the near future which will enable me to spend a day in S.F. 

Hilda wrote me in one of her letters that Triangle Produce Co. burned down. How did that happen? It’s too bad about all the produce that went to waste. Is it going to be rebuilt in the same place? I bet Mr. Williams was quite busy worrying.

Is Jules still in Sacramento?

I made a trip to Yuma, Arizona the other day and through the Imperial Valley; the scenery was rather monotone – desert everywhere you look. The heat was almost unbearable; while driving I kept thinking about icebergs, penguins, and cold orange juice. That helped quite a bit. A new regulation forbids us to stop on the road to get a cold drink or food; if the M.P.’s catch us doing it we get restricted to the company area for two weeks – and that’s no fun.

Well, that’s all for today. I hope everybody is fine.

Yours sincerely, Harry

P.S. Will you please tell me all about the Triangle Produce Co. disaster? Thank you.

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More information about Julius Zentner can be found in the May 26 post. According to the July 19, 1943 issue of the Sacramento Bee, there was a fire at the Triangle Produce Co. on July 17 and Harold E. Williams was the manager of the company.

August 16

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

In the posts of July 30 and August 3, Harry mentions that a friend in southern California sent him a subscription to National Geographic. I wondered how he knew people in southern CA. Today’s letter to Hilda and Nathan Firestone answers that question. Although Harry is writing on Ft. Warren stationery from Wyoming, he has finished his training and is writing from southern California. Never one to waste anything, he must have stocked up on writing paper in case there wouldn’t be any where he was headed.

August 15, 1943

Dear Hilda & Nathan,

Thank you very much for both your letters.

I am attached to a truck company now whose task it is to transport supplies and troops in combat zones as soon as we get across. The outfit I was supposed to be assigned to had moved overseas already when I arrived here. It took almost two weeks to get permission from headquarters to let me stay with this company.

This camp, 8 miles from San Bernardino, is one of the many Desert Training Centers there are in southern California.  Names of places like Sahara Desert, Gobi Desert, Mecca, Indio, etc. will give you an idea of the heat we have here. A couple of days ago I drove to Yuma, Arizona and back. The oranges I had in the truck tasted like hot orangeade and the water in my canteen could have been used to shave with. 

We get up in the morning with a mouthful of sand and cuss words. As we are on field rations now, we get powdered eggs (with sand, bread, coffee, Wheaties, and fruit. (breakfast) At lunch we get canned stuff (with more sand) and fruit. For dinner we are served some more sand (with canned food).

As you know, I have been cheated out of a furlough which I was supposed to get in Wyoming. I may be able to get a three-day pass in the near future which will enable me to stay in S.F. for a bit more than a day. Then I’ll have to do a lot of running around, maybe I can swipe a jeep and bring it with me.

The reason that I was able to send Paul the rations was that I mooched them from some pals who refused to eat them. (They went to town and had a steak dinner.)

When I get my pass, I’ll wire you immediately. I’ll be looking forward to your cooking, indeed. Please, be sure to add a pinch of sand, a pinch of dust, and half a handful of red ants (diameter 5/16”) to everything you cook to preserve my good health. The lack of the above-mentioned ingredients might cause me discomfort.

Well, I guess that’s all for today. I hope I’ll be seeing you soon.

Sincerely,
Harry

P.S. Would you like me to get some sand fleas for Mouffle?

---

We saw a photograph of Mouffle with Harry and Eva in the June 20 post.

Harry was one of the most optimistic people I have ever known. He often spoke about how lucky he had been in life. Given his and his family’s losses and life experiences, I so admired his outlook. One of the things he felt most fortunate about was that he did not ship out to Europe with his original unit, as he mentions in this letter. Because of transportation issues, he and a fellow soldier took much longer to get to their destination and the unit left without them. Harry told me that most of his original unit died soon after arriving in Europe. I had always thought it strange that the U.S. Army would have sent a native German speaker to serve in the South Pacific. Apparently it was because of missed connections.