Family and gratitude

With all that is going on in the world, Thanksgiving provides the opportunity to think about the good things - all that I am grateful for. My family history project has taught me so much about my ancestors, my family, and myself.

This year Thanksgiving Day falls on my grandmother’s birthday and I feel such gratitude and love for her, her life, and all she sacrificed to make my life possible.

My mother, my grandmother, and me

I also am grateful for chosen or accidental families, and those who choose us.

A few weeks ago in Barbara Krasner’s writing workshop, the prompt was to write about when you became an honorary member of another family. Here is what I wrote:

I studied my junior year abroad at Paul Valéry University in Montpellier during the 1978-1979 academic year. I had imagined that I would be living in the dorms or perhaps with a family.

Foreign students were a dime a dozen in Montpellier. There were more than 20 of us studying there from the University of California (UC) system alone. Housing was scarce. There were more students than dorm rooms and few families were interested in taking in stray students. The UC group met in Los Angeles and took a charter plane to Paris. We got off the plane in the middle of the night, greeted by name by the coordinators of the program who had memorized our faces from the photos we had submitted for visas and identity papers.

Before beginning our studies, UC provided an intensive language training program in Grenoble for a few weeks to get us up to speed. The program was for students studying in Grenoble, Montpellier, and Marseille. If I recall there were about 50 of us total. We stayed in the dorms in Grenoble, as the academic year had not yet begun.

Upon landing in Paris, we stayed a few days to get acclimated and then took a bus to Montpellier and Marseille to arrange housing before ending up in Grenoble for our language program. There was a lottery for the few dorm rooms allotted to UC students. I was not one of the lucky ones. A few students decided to get apartments together. I didn’t want to do that because my goal was to speak French as much as possible. There was little to choose from and I ended up renting a dark cramped space in the garage of an elderly couple. They allowed me to come in some evenings to watch TV with them. Otherwise, I was left on my own in my dreary apartment with only a hot plate.

Two surreal experiences occurred during my time staying there. One night we were watching a dubbed American TV show. In the first episode of the series, the main character emerges from the ocean, looking human but for his webbed feet. I think it may have been “Man from Atlantis” which IMDB describes as “A water-breathing human, the sole survivor of an underwater civilization called Atlantis, emerges from the ocean and has to learn to deal with the air-breathers on the surface.” The man walks up to what he thinks is a person who begins talking to him. Only it's a Jack-in-the-Box clown that is asking for his order. Imagine trying to explain that artifact of American culture! [see note at bottom of post]

The next surreal experience occurred 45 years ago as I write this, in November of 1978. My landlords had been waiting for me to come home from school and quickly told me that “The mayor of California was shot!” I was trying to make sense of the idea that Governor Jerry Brown had been killed. I came into their house to look at the TV and learned of the killings of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, not even two weeks after the Jonestown massacre. I was shocked by the horrors happening in my hometown in the few months I had been away and wondered what would be left when I came home.

I hated living in that most unhomelike of abodes. I was lonely and homesick. I kept wondering how I could find somewhere else to live, wishing I could somehow be adopted by a French family.

In one of my classes, I became friendly with Martine, a woman my age who was studying English. As we got to know each other, she told me how much she’d like to have an English conversation partner. I told her how much I wanted to have someone to speak French with. Like me, Martine was an only child and had always wondered what it would be like to have siblings. She was living at home with her parents. Home was on the campus of a technical high school where her father was the principal. She decided she wanted me to live with them. She invited me to dinner so her parents could meet her nice American friend and somehow convinced them to take me in in exchange for room and board. Suddenly I was living in the situation I had dreamed of, which had seemed impossible!

In the end, it was a wonderful year. Martine and her parents were so kind to me and included me in meals and family activities. I never got as comfortable speaking French as I had hoped. Like my mother in English, I was always self-conscious of my accent. But I became a very fluent listener. Martine’s father would show me off to visitors – “She’s quiet, but she understands everything!” he would tell them.

When the year was over, I wanted to send an appropriately grateful thank you note but was stopped by my insecurity over my imperfect French. So instead, I sent nothing – something I have always regretted.

In recent years, the internet helped Martine and me to reconnect. We had long ago lost touch – she had been as self-conscious of her English as I was of my French. Now I speak or write in English and she in French and we understand each other perfectly.

Note: For those unfamiliar with this odd example of Americana, Jack in the Box is the name of a fast food restaurant similar to McDonald’s, known for its mascot of a toy jack-in-the-box head with a speaker that took customers’ orders as they drove up in their cars. From the National Museum of American History: “The restaurants were drive-thru only and, to attract drivers from a distance, the company employed unusual architecture and signage featuring a giant clown head springing from a box, like the toy.”

 To learn more the history of drive-thru restaurants and see some early photos of the Jack in the Box in action, go to this lovefood blog post.

More sifting through history

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Earlier this year, my husband and I took a trip to England. A few weeks before we left, I received an email from the World Jewish Relief Archives in response to a question I had asked about my mother’s first cousins Paul and Robert Zerzawy’s attempts to leave Europe in 1939. Robert was the first in the family to get out, arriving in England in March 1939. Paul soon followed in April, stopping briefly in England before sailing to New York.

I must have made my query through their website and have no record of when or what I asked. The writer, an archives volunteer, apologized for how long the response had taken. She explained that “World Jewish Relief (formerly known as The Central British Fund) opened case files for each person who came to the United Kingdom fleeing Nazi occupied Germany and Austria before the Second World War.” She told me that she found a registration card for my mother’s first cousin Robert Zerzawy and also “registration cards for an uncle by the name of Vitali (Chaim) Cohen and his wife Helene (nee Cohen).” That of course was important information for me since those were my maternal grandparents! If I understand the cards, it looks like the ones for Vitali and Helene were created by Robert after he learned of Helene’s release from Ravensbrück and the prisoner trade that sent her to Istanbul. The Istanbul address is the business address of one of Vitali’s relatives who helped my grandmother ultimately make her way to the U.S. The only thing Robert knew about Vitali in late 1945 or early 1946 was that he had last been heard from when he was imprisoned in Buchenwald.

Robert’s card indicates that the authorities believed he may have gone to the U.S. This corroborates family letters which talk of Robert planning to join his family in San Francisco. Unfortunately, that never came to pass.

Information provided by the World Jewish Relief Archives

I wrote back and asked whether the archives had any information about the Stopford Fund which was created to help Czech refugees get out. I believe that this fund helped Robert and Paul emigrate. The volunteer had not heard of it but kindly did a bit of sleuthing and found that the National Archives at Kew in the outskirts of London had information about the fund. I went on their site and asked some questions through their “chat” feature. Although I ultimately found no information in the Stopford Fund files related to the Zerzawy brothers, the librarian on the chat found Robert’s British naturalization certificate. It hadn’t been digitized, but since I was going to be in London, I could make an appointment to view the document.

It was fun to do something non-touristy while in another country. I took the train to Kew. Unlike other tourists, I headed for the archives instead of the famous gardens. I was given an official library card and requested the file. When the file was ready, I was assigned a specific spot in the reading room where I could look at it. The naturalization certificate told me a bit more about Robert, including his occupation – an expert in hemp and cotton spinning.

While I waited for the file, a librarian helped me search further in the online catalog and we discovered that there were additional documents available related to Robert’s naturalization. I tried to request them, but for some reason these documents had been closed for 100 years until 2069! I knew I couldn’t wait that long and made a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to be allowed to see the files. The request was granted, but not in time for me to go back to see the files in person.

When I received the digitized documents I’d requested, I learned more about Robert’s first years in England – about the company he worked for and some of his early experiences. For example, in 1940, his landlady had said negative things to police authorities about his “moral conduct” with no details or corroboration from others. Later character witnesses for his naturalization said nothing but positive things. It made me wonder whether this was an example of antisemitism or xenophobia. Not long ago, we watched the first episode of “Foyle’s War”. It takes place in 1940 and showed clearly how unwelcome Jewish refugees were to much of the general population in England during the war.  

Also on this trip, I visited a few of the addresses Robert lived in in the 1960s. An apartment building in the Kensington area of London and a small house in Chiswick, a lovely town near London. I didn’t have a house address for the Chiswick, just a name – Pontana. I was sure I wouldn’t be able to find it. However, it exists, and it still has the name rather than a number!

Apartment in Kensington

“Pontana” in Chiswick

It was wonderful to learn more about Robert. I still have questions about why he never joined the family in San Francisco. Hopefully one day I will find the answer. 

A Family Heirloom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Top photo: at their home in Vienna on my mother’s 16th birthday in 1937 with the portrait on the wall behind them and a red line pointing to Eva; bottom left photo: at my mother’s home in San Francisco with her brother Harry and her caregiver with the portrait on the wall behind them; bottom right photo: the portrait itself.

Vienna

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

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

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

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

Strauss statue in 1979.

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

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

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

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

Vitali at the shop window with customers in 1934.

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

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

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

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

Copy of Harry’s birth certificate from 1979.

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

What's in a name?

What does it mean to change your name?

In my early 20s, I read Robertson Davies’ 1970 novel Fifth Business. I remember liking it a lot, but the only thing that stuck with me was that at least two main characters changed their names and took on new identities. It was as if each of them couldn’t become the people they were meant to be without choosing his own name. Many people change their name by choice; some people are given no option. Even in the early 1980s, the story resonated with me because of my mother’s experience when she came to the U.S.  

A few months ago one of the prompts in Barbara Krasner’s Writing Family History group was to write about name variations and changes and I recalled Davies’ book. Here is what I wrote in response to the prompt:

My mother was born Eva Marie Cohen (with a “C”). In 1939, her parents sent her and her brother from Vienna to their father’s relatives in Istanbul in order for them to get Turkish passports to allow them to leave Europe for the safety of their mother’s relatives in San Francisco. Although Eva and her brother Harry were born in Vienna, because their father was Turkish they were never considered Austrian citizens. In my mother’s Turkish passport, her last name is spelled Kohen with a “K”.

Upon arrival in the US, their relatives told Eva and Harry that they should adopt a different last name because Cohen sounded “too Jewish.” They chose a very English-sounding name, Lowell, probably because it was similar to their mother’s maiden name of Löwy. The American relatives all went by Levy. 

As soon as she set foot in San Francisco, my 18-year-old mother enrolled as a senior at Washington High School under the name Eva Lowell. Thanks to her new name, she no doubt stood out even more than she might otherwise have. Although her English was excellent, she never lost her Viennese accent. Eva does not look like the other girls in her yearbook photo: her dress looks dowdy and her hair unfashionable. In addition, her expression is serious, nothing like a carefree American teenager. She was separated from her parents, not knowing if and when she would see them again. She was living in a new country and speaking a new language. She had been separated from her brother who lived with different relatives and attended a different high school. As in Vienna, she was a foreigner, only here she couldn’t hide it.

Eva’s high school photo

At 23, my mother eagerly married a German Jewish man, more than 13 years her senior. He was quiet and serious, very different from the careless American boys she’d met. He too had an accent. In changing her name to Goldsmith when she married, there was less surprise when people met her and heard her accent. If my father had kept the original Goldschmidt, the accent probably would have been anticipated.

It is only in the past few years that I understood that my mother would have felt herself to be an outsider throughout her life. Not just Jewish in Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s, but a foreign Jew – she didn’t belong in the larger Austrian community, nor in the Jewish one. On top of that, her father was a psychic and a palm reader, which did nothing to help her fit in. 

Then, as a teenager, she was separated from her parents. She lost her home, lost her name to try to fit into a new culture and language, was far away from all she knew and loved. Finally, with marriage, she got an identify that fit her accent, but not a perfect one either – Jews weren’t as welcome in the US as she had hoped and her accent sounded like that of the enemy.

No wonder she spent so much of her life trying not to be noticed!

Childhood Memories

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been taking workshops with Barbara Krasner. Yesterday, one of the writing prompts was to write about one’s mother’s or grandmother’s kitchen. It was a lot of fun and brought back memories I hadn’t thought of for years. Other writers’ responses brought back additional memories. For example, Barbara wrote of the pull-down lamp in their kitchen which reminded me that we had one too. It never worked very well, pulling down easily, but it usually wouldn’t retract.

What do you recall about the kitchen(s) you spent time in as a child?

My Mother’s Kitchen

My mother’s kitchen at the sleepy western edge of San Francisco was efficient and cozy. It was almost a square room. One door led from the hallway. Walking in on the left was a gas stove and tiled countertop. Above the sink was a window facing the outside staircase that let in natural light.

Along the next wall were counters with storage above and below. Most useful of all was a slide out butcher-block cutting board. Then space for a small kitchen table where my mother, father and I ate most meals.

Along the third wall, a second door led to a small formal dining room. On one side of the doorway was a shallow closet that had a fold-out ironing board – a handy contraption that made ironing less daunting. As new wrinkle-free fabrics became more popular, many people in similar houses took out the board and created a spice cabinet.  

Along the final wall was the refrigerator and more counterspace and cabinets. 

There was no dishwasher. In the 1960s, my mother who worked full time was eager to find labor and time saving solutions to cooking and cleaning. She bought a “portable” dishwasher which was neither very portable nor efficient. It looked like a giant hair dryer with a long hose that attached to the kitchen sink faucet. It took up so much counterspace that it was a short-lived addition to our household.

My mother tried several new-fangled appliances in the late 1960s/early 1970s. One was a rotisserie that was supposed to easily and efficiently roast delicious chicken and meat – at least in our household, it promised a lot more than it delivered. It took up a lot of valuable space so it quickly went the way of the dishwasher.

The one kitchen tool my mother had which I miss to this day was an old-fashioned grinder. The contraption clamped to our cutting-board. It had attachments for grating and grinding things as coarsely or finely as desired. Apparently many people used such a device to make chopped liver, not something my mother did. It was operated by means of a hand crank – no electricity needed. One attachment ground almonds to the perfect fineness for my mother’s and grandmother’s Viennese crescent cookies. I have never been able to recreate that consistency with any of the tools I have in my kitchen.

Every Thanksgiving my mother would use the grinder to make fresh cranberry relish. For some people, it is only Thanksgiving with a can of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce making the satisfying splat into a serving dish. For me, it is my mother’s relish – refreshing, sweet, and tangy. Just cranberries, oranges, and sugar.

My mother soon learned to use a different place to grind the cranberries when she clamped the grinder onto its usual location, the pull-out cutting board. As she ground the berries on the board, the kitchen became awash in cranberry sauce – a sea of red all over the board and floor.

When my cousin Tim sent me a bag of unmilled wheat berries in 2021 after reading letters about my grandmother’s nephew sending the family wheat when he was a soldier in World War I and flour was scarce, I regretted not having my mother’s grinder – that would have been the perfect tool to make the berries into flour!

One kitchen tool I still have from my mother is a jar opener – a simple thing made of metal and wrapped in vinyl. I have never found a better device to open difficult containers and thank my mother each time I use it. [In preparing this post, I discovered that such an opener still exists — it’s called a jar wrench and is used for canning.]

I grew up with Revere Ware pots and pans, made of stainless steel with copper bottoms. They were equal to any task and seemingly indestructible. When I moved out into an apartment of my own, I proudly bought my own set. When my husband and I joined households, we had 2 sets of Revere Ware pots and pans. After both of our mothers, we had 4! I couldn’t bear to get rid of any of them, both for sentimental reasons and because they were all still perfectly useful.

When we remodeled our kitchen several years ago, we installed an induction stovetop because we cannot have a gas stove where we live now. Induction is closer to cooking with gas than a traditional electric stove. Induction uses electromagnetic cooking and the cookware must work like a magnet. Unfortunately, none of our Revere Ware worked! Finally, we no choice but to let those copper-bottomed pieces go to homes that could appreciate them.

In my mother’s kitchen in 1998

A day to remember fondly

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Today would be my Uncle Harry’s 99th birthday and Hilda Goldberg Firestone’s 119th. My grandmother and mother never missed a birthday and I learned to do the same. I will raise a toast to both of them.

Hilda and Nathan Firestone, around 1940

Harry taking delight, perhaps around 2010

Recently I’ve been rereading stories my grandmother Helene wrote about her childhood in Bohemia in the late 19th Century. When she was two or three years old, she came down with scarlet fever which resulted in her being almost deaf in one ear. That caused her to pay close attention to whatever anyone said to her. She trained herself to memorize what she heard so she wouldn’t have to take notes in class – notetaking would have caused her to look down at the paper and not be able to read the teacher’s lips. She prided herself on her wonderful memory. During the stress of war and separation from her children, she realized that she had lost some of that skill and regretted being confused about people’s birthdays.

One source of confusion was the date of her young cousin Hilda’s birthday. She knew it as January 12th or 13th (her son Harry’s birthday). As we learned last year, Hilda was born on Friday January 13th, 1904. Her family felt that was a bad omen, particularly in light of her mother’s death due to complications of childbirth, so celebrated her birthday on the 12th.

What follows are excerpts from and links to letters we saw in earlier blog posts where my grandmother and uncle make sure that Hilda knew they remembered her birthday, even from afar.

Vienna, 20. Dec. 1940

…I remember once you wrote to Harry that your birthday is either 12 or 13 January too. Therefore, accept my best wishes for that. Spend this day especially gay and happy and not a sad thought may disturb your pleasure. Enjoy your life as profoundly as you can. It is a pity for every day you don’t do it. I hope you have a good temperament and laughing is easier for you than weeping. Unable to give you a little birthday gift, I give you the second musical lesson (Melody Harry will instruct you) in German.

From Helene to Eva in San Francisco:

Vienna, 27 December 1940

When I sent the official birthday letter to Hilda, which only included a heartfelt greeting to you, you must have been thinking to yourself: “what marvelous stuff is mom up to now?”

From soldier Harry serving in the South Pacific to his sister Eva in San Francisco:

December 16, 1944

Please have some nice flowers sent to Tillie and Hilda on their birthdays, January 11th and 12th, and be sure to have the cards sent with them.

From Helene to Eva and Harry in San Francisco:

Istanbul, 11 January 1946

…I am sending Hilda, Tillie, and Harry my most sincere wishes for happy birthdays. Everl and her husband I wish to all the best to their second anniversary [actually it was their first] and that our European sadness will turn into American happiness and joy. I have certainly counted on the fact that this week of family celebration is something I will be able to spend with you, and it would have also been possible if I hadn’t been thrown to the wolves again. But in Vienna, one said: “if God wishes, then the broom will stand up.” And certainly God wants me to have you again.

December 31, 2022

A few final words about Hilda

Some readers were confused because Hilda, although Jewish, took such delight in Christmas. In her eulogy, Joan Zentner said: “Her Grandfather and her nurse Alma were her favorites. Here was a dichotomy, as Alma was a devout Catholic and Grandfather was a devout Jew. He was not Orthodox and the Pierce Street home observed all the Ritual Holidays. Hilda attended [Jewish] Sunday School, as well as occasionally attending Sunday Mass with her devoted nurse. Her young mind compared and analyzed the two faiths and philosophies. While she thought little of angels and heaven, she adored Christmas…. She loved this holiday so much that she convinced her Grandfather, and Christmas was celebrated to the joy of all at the Pierce Street household.”

Joan typed up “Rainbows and Worms” and this year my posts have come from a copy of it that she had given my mother in 1991. According to Joan’s eulogy, while Hilda was unhappily married and living in Brazil, she passed the time by writing about “her childhood in a book which she called ‘Rainbows and Worms’; it is a detailed account of life in and around Pierce Street, and no doubt drawn from a meticulously kept diary.” At last we have the answer to a question I often asked myself and others have asked me – did an 8-year old really write this diary? If Joan is correct, Hilda edited and probably embellished the diary she’d written as a child. It would have been written in the mid-1950s when Hilda was in her early 50s. (At the very same time, my grandmother would have been typing up her memories of her childhood in Bohemia from 1889-1902!).

Although I have had Hilda’s original copy for a few months, I avoided looking for fear of getting caught up in comparing differences between it and Joan’s version. Here is the first entry from Hilda’s original typed copy:

Hilda’s first paragraph of “Rainbows and Worms”

Over the past few days I’ve posted photos of the gravesites of the people we have read about over the year. My cousin and I visited the Jewish cemeteries in Colma in September so we could see where Hilda is interred. Jacob Levy’s family plot is in Salem Memorial Park. Tillie is buried in her husband Julius Zentner’s plot at Home of Peace Cemetery.

In Hilda’s eulogy, Joan Zentner wrote of how close Hilda and her nursemaid Alma were: “Her alliance with Alma was bonded by a love and faithfulness throughout life. Alma is buried in our Family Plot in Colma very near Hilda’s mother and father.” We didn’t see Alma’s grave on our initial visit, so after finding Hilda, we went back to Jacob Levy’s family plot, but Alma was nowhere to be seen. As I was writing about Hilda over the past few days, I looked at all of the photos I took at the cemetery in September. On that first visit, I visited the graves of other family relatives who are more part of my mother’s and grandmother’s family story than of Hilda’s. One of those people was Erwin Fulda, who offered to provide financial assistance to help bring over my grandparents in 1939 (as did Aunt Tillie and Hilda and Nathan). He is also the boy who Hilda played with in 1912.

Erwin is buried in the Fulda family plot at the Home of Peace Cemetery. I took photos of his grave as well as others in the plot.

Could Alma R Orack be Hilda’s Alma?!

In preparing for our visit to the cemetery, I did an online search for where to find Hilda. I learned that she had been cremated and that her ashes are in the Hills of Eternity Mausoleum (not far from where Wyatt Earp is buried). My cousin and I found the rest of the family, but Hilda’s crypt eluded us. After wandering around the mausoleum for a long time without success, someone working at the cemetery directed us to the room she was supposed to be in, but we still were unable to find her. We jokingly agreed that Hilda chose to elude us because she wanted us to make a special visit to see her. We called the cemetery after our visit to confirm we had been looking in the right place, and we were assured we had been.

A few weeks ago, we returned to the cemetery, went to the same room, and within less than a minute we found Hilda! This time we realized she shared a space with her beloved Nathan. However, as you can see, Hilda’s name is difficult to read. Apparently etching skills did not improve over 40 years.

Hilda always had hoped to have her diary published. After Joan typed the manuscript (and edited it a bit), she sent it to a publisher. The last item I share with you is a response from Doubleday.

Several readers have asked me if I will look for a publisher. Perhaps the time has come and the world is ready to hear Hilda’s voice. There are differences between Hilda’s original and the one I used this year. If I ever try to get it published, I’ll have to spend some time comparing the two!

For subscribers to my blog, I have an idea about something I might do next year, but plan to write far less often. Please don’t be surprised if you do not hear from me for awhile. Thank you for going on this journey with Hilda and me this year!

December 30, 2022

1950s-1980s

As I mentioned in the December 26th post,  a few months ago my relatively new-found cousin showed me many documents and photos about Hilda. Included in these materials was a eulogy her mother Joan Zentner had written for Hilda’s memorial. From that, we have a picture of how Hilda spent the rest of her life.

Joan wrote that after Nathan’s and her father’s death, “there was a desperate loneliness, and a wanderlust took hold. Her first stop, Norway, was to visit her dear friend Asbjörn Finess. This friendship grew and became everlasting….. After Norway she wandered around Europe from Italy she decided to visit a friend in Israel where she met her second husband, George Haimovici. It was a very quick courtship with a dip in the mikvah and they were married and took off for Rio de Janeiro where George felt he could make a new life and fortune. All of her friends and family shared her letters and worried.”

Hilda certainly doesn’t look happy in this immigration card photo that I found on Ancestry.com:

Apparently one impetus for leaving San Francisco was to get away from Aunt Tillie’s influence. This confirms my mother’s and uncle’s desire to leave the family influence as quickly as possible: Eva going to nursing school and Harry joining the army.

From the eulogy: “For a while Hilda fantasized that George was more than he really was, and busied herself with writing, …practiced the piano and made new friends. Her marriage ended in divorce about five years later.”

By 1958, she returned to San Francisco. Her friend Asbjörn Finess had moved from Norway with his wife, and for a time she lived with them. Like Nathan, Asbjörn played viola in the San Francisco Symphony. In that setting, she rejoined the musical world, became more social, and took delight in life again.

San Francisco Examiner, December 25, 1958, p28

Hilda and Asbjörn in undated photo

After her divorce and after Tillie died in 1962, Hilda permanently returned to San Francisco. Having inherited money from her aunt, she was able to live comfortably with whichever dog was in her life at the time. In the 1970s, while between dogs, she took a few long trips to Europe, visiting friends and having a marvelous time.

By the late 1970s, her physical health had deteriorated badly and she was quite infirm. She spent her last years at the Jewish Home for the Aged (her time there may have coincided with that of my grandmother’s). Hilda wrote in a letter to a friend: “I wish I was as matter of fact about my physical condition as you seem to think I am. I’m not really. I’m in a fury about it, but I don’t talk about it because it would be bad manners. I’m especially upset when I cause my friends so much trouble. They do everything but draw up architectural plans before seating me in a room with a lot of other people. I’m invited to a wedding next month, and I’m told they already found the right place and the right chair for me to sit on during the reception.”

She died peacefully and painlessly in 1984 at the age of 80. Postscript tomorrow.

December 29, 2022

1940-1951

Although we learn and change and grow over time, it is amazing to me how much we are already fully formed as children. Hilda’s love of animals is evident on every page of her diary. She showed a sensitivity – to music, to her own emotions. She was absolutely honest and could not dissemble.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Hilda and Nathan made a home for her young cousin Harry when he and his sister Eva arrived from Vienna in October 1939. Their first cousin Paul Zerzawy had arrived in the U.S. a few months earlier, unsuccessfully tried to find work in New York, and headed to San Francisco to be with his young cousins and have the support of the Firestones and other cousins. Hilda and Nathan would have enjoyed Paul’s company as he was a talented musician. Although trained as a lawyer, because of his English skills and lack of license, the only work he was able to find in the U.S. was as a musician and piano teacher.

Paul Zerzawy at left with Hilda and Nathan Firestone next to him. Date unknown. It is possible that one of the man next to Nathan is Yehudi Menuhin.

In 1940, San Francisco must have felt a million miles away from the war in Europe, although the Viennese cousins were a reminder. The Golden Gate International Exposition was an exciting event that took place in 1939 and 1940. My mother Eva had fond memories of attending as often as she was able. Hilda and Nathan enjoyed visiting the fair, as evidenced by these handwriting analyses they had done:

Handwriting analysis for Hilda Firestone (see initials on bottom right)

Handwriting analysis for Nathan Firestone (see initials on bottom right)

It is interesting to see what their handwriting said about them! The check marks indicate that traits were particularly strong. Hilda’s handwriting showed that she expressed emotions and feelings, could be moody, was determined, had high ideals, could be sarcastic, impatient, and stubborn, could hold a grudge, was inclined to worry too much, and had a good memory. It seems pretty on target from Hilda’s diary as well as from the letters we have from her later life!

Nathan’s handwriting showed many of the same traits. If the system has any merit, I wonder whether that shows how well-suited they were or whether they became more alike over time.

San Francisco Examiner September 21, 1941, p41

Music continued to be the center of their universe. Here is a a profile of Nathan as a musician.

San Francisco Chronicle, December 29, 1941, p. 11

 And here is a portrait of Hilda and Nathan with their dog Mouffle, showing how true it was that “Dogs — particularly cocker spaniels — are an affectionate avocational interest of Firestone and his pianist wife.”

Hilda’s happiness ended abruptly with Nathan’s death in September 1943. Unsurprisingly, her life was never the same and it took her many years to be able to find joy again.

Here is a copy of Nathan’s eulogy given by conductor and music professor Albert Elkus:

Nathan’s obituary appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 23, 1943. He sounds like a wonderful man. I wish I had known him.

San Francisco Chronicle, September 23, 1943, p10

Hilda was devastated by her loss. She wrote a heartbreaking letter to my grandmother who was in 1946 waiting to come to the U.S. after having been interned at Ravensbrück. As we could see in the letter Hilda wrote, one source of support in her life was her cousin (and my grandmother’s newphew) Paul Zerzawy. They remained close and their shared love of music undoubtedly gave her comfort. She mentions that he had been ill. He died in July 1948, appointing her executor and leaving most of the few worldly goods he had to her. His death notice lists Hilda as his survivor.

San Francisco Examiner, July 26, 1948p11

Apparently Hilda remained active in the music community. In February 1951, she was one of the sponsors for sonata recitals given at the San Francisco Museum of Art by pianist Lev Shorr and his wife.

After her father Sol Goldberg retired from his job in New York City, he moved to San Francisco. After Nathan’s death, Hilda lived with him and they appear together on the 1950 census when he was 78 and she was 46. They also had a live-in maid. He died on September 28, 1951.

San Francisco Chronicle, September 30, 1951, p20

His gravestone is next to his wife in the Levy family plot.

 By 1951, all of the important men in her life had died. What to do next?

December 28, 2022

1930s

According to the 1930 Census, Jacob Levy was 80 years old and living with his 48-year old daughter Matilda Levy (Aunt Tillie) and 26-year old granddaughter Hilda Goldberg. They still lived in the house at 1328 Pierce Street. Jacob died soon after the census was taken, on April 29, 1930. A newspaper article from 1928 reported that he had been injured in an automobile accident. Perhaps that precipitated his death.

Jacob was buried next to his wife in Salem Memorial Park in Colma. A large stone with his name on it marks the entire family plot.

The loss of her beloved Grandfather must have been traumatic for Hilda and left a huge hole in her life. For Aunt Tillie too. Although almost 50 years old, Tillie had never married. Had she had no suitors? Had she stayed home to take care of her father and help raise Hilda after Tillie’s mother died ten years earlier? Just a few months after her father’s death, Tillie married Julius Zentner (the same Uncle Julius who was married to Aunt Josie, who had died in 1929). They wed on June 9, 1930. Julius was almost 20 years her senior.

We saw in the last post that Hilda was a talented pianist. I don’t know whether music would have paid the bills after Grandfather died. It certainly allowed her to meet and and find community with the musicians in San Francisco. At some point, she met was Nathan Firestone, first violist of the San Francisco Symphony and a member of various chamber music groups. He was 41 and she was 26.

Hilda and Nathan’s engagement was announced in the July 25, 1930 issue of Emanu-El: “Friends are felicitating Miss Hilda Claire Goldberg upon her engagement to Nathan Firestone of this city. The couple will be married in September.” Their engagement was also announced in the San Francisco Chronicle:

San Francisco Chronicle August 3, 1930 p34

They were married in late August 1930.

San Francisco Chronicle, September 7, 1930 p34

From Merriam-Webster: “BENEDICT is a newly married man who has long been a bachelor.”

This story was particularly interesting for my husband whose piano teacher decades after this announcement was Lev Shorr!

It appears that Nathan and Hilda had a wonderful marriage. She continued at least until the mid-1930s to give performances while her husband played in the symphony, chamber groups, and gave music lessons. Nathan’s playing with the San Francisco Symphony was often reviewed in the local newspapers. In addition I found a number of articles mentioning other performances.

Their social life appears to be as full of music as their professional lives were.

San Francisco Chronicle, July 12, 1931 p43

San Francisco Chronicle, January 3, 1932 p33

At this point they were living through the Great Depression. Unlike so many, Nathan and Hilda apparently were comfortable enough and worked to help others in need:

San Francisco Chronicle, April 22 1933 p3

San Francisco Chronicle, July 9, 1933 p33

San Francisco Chronicle, September 14, 1933 p21

In the September 15, 1933 issue of Emanu-El, there was an announcement that Nathan had opened a studio for “the acquirement of knowledge in the art of ensemble playing.” I have a copy of his brochure in my archive:

In, Tillie and Julius Zentner took a 4-month trip to Europe.

Oakland Tribune, May 28, 1931, p42

I wonder whether this is when Tillie met my grandmother and her children in Vienna. The story I had always heard was that she had been charmed by young Harry and when world events made it clear that it was no longer safe to be in Vienna, she asked my grandmother to send him to safety in San Francisco.

In 1939, my family’s story joins Hilda’s. When my mother Eva and her brother Harry came to the U.S. in October 1939, they were split up and sent to live with different relatives. 15-year old Harry lived with Hilda and Nathan as he finished his last two years of high school.

Hilda and Nathan, date unknown

December 27, 2022

The 1920s - Early Adulthood

According to the 1920 Census, 70-year old Jacob Levy was living with his 67-year old wife Sarah, daughter 37-year old daughter Matilda, and 16-year old granddaughter Hilda. The census must have been taken very early, as Sarah died on January 22, 1930:

Salem Memorial Park in Colma, California

Grandmother’s death must have been a huge shock and life in the Levy household must have been very different. Hilda was still in high school. She graduated in 1921.

From Ancestry.com. It lists birth year wrong and she would have been 17 when she graduated.

Hilda continued to enjoy parties with friends:

San Francisco Chronicle, January 16, 1921, page 45. It must have been a party in honor of Hilda’s 17th birthday.

A life filled with music

From Hilda’s diary, we learned of her love of music (although she hated her piano lessons – July 28). Her father was an excellent musician and she wrote of hearing him play flute.

1894 photo. Hilda’s father is on our right.

As a young adult, Hilda became a professional musician, accompanying singers, playing at events, and performing concerts.

The following articles appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle mention concerts Hilda played in San Francisco over a ten year period:

At a California Teachers’ Association Institute in 1921:

In the July 28 post, we saw an article about a concert Hilda would be giving on February 25, 1925. Here is a review of her performance from February 27, 1925, page 7.

At a meeting of the National Council of Jewish Women in 1925:

March 8, 1925 page 45 San Francisco Chronicle

A performance at the Pacific Musical Society at the Fairmont Hotel:

January 9, 1927 page 6D San Francisco Chronicle

Performing with the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Association Symphony Orchestra at the Western Women’s Club:

At a concert of the Pacific Musical Society with 2 other artists at the Fairmont Hotel.

December 26, 2022

When I began posting Hilda’s diary in January, I knew only what I had gleaned from a few sources: the names of her parents and grandparents on a family tree, a sense of her personality from a few letters written to her from my grandmother and uncle in the 1940s, her own words in a letter she wrote to my grandmother in 1946, and a handful of photos from the early 1940s that my mother and uncle had saved.

I read about the existence of the diary in a note on the family tree that the husband of a distant relative made in 1997. I was unable to find anyone who could show it to me, but one day I found a copy on my bookshelf! It had been given to my mother in 1991 by Hilda’s first cousin Joan Zentner who was the daughter of Hilda’s Uncle Milton. Although they were first cousins, Hilda was over 20 years older than Joan, more of an aunt than a cousin.

As far as I know, I never met Hilda. Through circumstances that merit a blog of their own, in 2019 I met Joan’s daughter, my third cousin. Although we are the same age, we probably never met until then.

In late spring Joan died and my third cousin came into possession of a trove of Hilda treasures which help us know Hilda more fully. In addition, I searched through the digital archives of the local newspapers and found a lot of articles about Hilda and her family.

From all of the above, I have a much better portrait of Hilda’s life.

Hilda’s childhood

Today’s post will focus on Hilda’s childhood, both before and after 1912.

As we know from her diary, Hilda’s mother died just a few days after she was born. Here is a photo postcard of her parents, Hilda and Sol Goldberg. It includes a note that appears to have been written on their honeymoon.

Hilda was born in Manhattan on January 13, 1904. Because she was born on a Friday, the family celebrated her birthday on January 12th. It wasn’t until she was an adult that she learned her actual birth date. Hilda’s father worked as a buyer for Macy’s notion department in New York City. After his wife’s death, he took a leave of absence and brought Hilda to California to be raised by her maternal grandparents. Hilda’s mother was buried in the family plot at Salem Memorial Park in Colma, California:

Hilda’s father visited as often as he could and took her on trips during the summer (see July 2-16 posts).

I found a number of items about Hilda’s life published in Emanu-El, the weekly publication of Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. In the 1940s, it became the local newspaper for the Jewish Community in San Francisco and is currently called J. The Jewish News of Northern California.

According to the September 1, 1911 issue of Emanu-El, “Among the early fall arrivals at Ancha Vista Hotel, San Anselmo, are:…Mrs. J. Levy [Grandmother] and Miss Hilda Goldberg.” She was in the the congregation’s May 1918 confirmation class (May 10, 1918 issue).

Hilda was very social and attended a lot of parties and events.

From the April 25, 1919 issue: “Probably one of the prettiest affairs of the season, given for the younger set, was the afternoon at which Miss Marion Glaser and her sister, Miss Helen Glaser, presided. In the center of the table was a softly shaded lamp of yellow silk, around which numerous baby roses and ferns were strewn; Dainty place cards and favors marked the places of the guests. Those invited to share the hospitality of the charming hostess were….Hilda Goldberg…”

From the June 13, 1919 issue of Emanu-El:

“Young Folk Enjoy Dancing Party
The members of the school set were delightfully entertained last Saturday night at the home of Miss Helen Harris,…when 20 boys and girls enjoyed an evening devoted to singing and dancing. The guests were:…Hilda Goldberg….”

More photos:

Various photos, unknown dates; Hilda with Brownie in bottom right photo

Class photo, unknown date

Hilda and her father, unknown date

And finally, some of Hilda’s artwork, dates unknown:

One of cross-stitch creations

Self-portrait of a lonely young girl?