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.

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?

May 21, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I hope that I don’t have to go calling next Saturday afternoon. Going calling is very tiresome. I think that I prefer going to school. All the parlors are the same, very unpleasant. They are either green or gold sometimes red, Grandmother calls it plush and they all have glass cases that are full of things that you are not allowed to touch. Little statues of sheep and milk maids and windmills and ladies sitting in chairs with gentlemen standing over them playing the guitar or mandolin. Some of the parlors have sofa pillows with fringe or tassels or shredded leather with Indian heads and colored beads. I would really love to see a parlor like the picture of one in my “Little Lord Fauntleroy” book. That picture was of a room with a big window and lots of sunlight and the drapes were flowered and on the tables were pots of real flowers. Maybe only in England the parlors are like that or maybe there are some rooms like that here in this country too but Grandmother’s friends and relatives have these gloomy ones. There was one friend of my Grandmother’s who was kind and sweet and I was happy in that house. She never told me not to do anything and when Grandmother kept telling me not to do this and that she said, “Oh! The dear child can’t hurt anything, do let her play.”

Today’s entry brings back memories for me. My mother would often take me along when she visited friends in Larkspur. They had no children and their house was very orderly. My mother would constantly admonish me not to touch anything. I was always terrified and uncomfortable there.

By the time I was born, “calling” was no longer something that one did. Yet when I was in high school, the company that sold senior photos included an option that included a few hundred calling cards that included one’s name and nothing else. My friends and I exchanged them with notes on the back at the same time that we were signing each other’s yearbooks. I had no idea what they really were for, but my mother insisted they would come in useful one day. They haven’t.

December 31

Looking back and going forward

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Today we reach the end of 2021 and of my daily blog presenting Helene’s and her family’s letters and papers. My goal this year was to give my grandmother her voice, because throughout her life, she wanted to be heard and read, had a great deal to say, and was incredibly eloquent in saying it. Helene was many things to many people – Eva’s and Harry’s beloved mother; Vitali’s darling wife; the Zerzawy boys’ treasured aunt and their last connection to their mother who died when they were very young; a dear friend to many; and my cousins’ and my own sweet grandmother.

Over the course of this year, I found that other family members also wanted to be heard. We saw papers covering more than a century and spanning much of the globe. Just this last week, for example, we were taken on a rich journey – from a desolate World War I prisoner of war camp in Eastern Siberia, to Christmas in Bohemia, to Vienna during a freezing winter in World War II, to London, Istanbul, San Francisco, and a World War II army training camp.

I now know my family in a much deeper and richer way, and have an appreciation for relatives who always seemed distant and not really part of my immediate family’s story. I am filled with love for people who once were strangers, some of whom died decades before I was born.

If you are interested in (re)visiting the blog from the beginning, click here.

I am grateful to my subscribers who joined me on my journey and provided wonderful feedback.

I am going to miss “seeing” my family every day, but intend to find a way to tell their story in a different way, perhaps in book form.

I will end the year with some family photos:

 Vitali and Helene at a dinner party in Vienna, probably in the 1920s:

Vitali is second from the left in the top row, Helene second from the left in the bottom.

Looking at the above photo, I am reminded of a trip my husband and I took to London and where I met his cousins for the first time. We have a very similar photo taken of all of us in a restaurant with 3 other couples. I wonder if some of the people pictured above were relatives from San Francisco — perhaps including Tillie and Julius Zentner?

One of the few photos we have of the entire family in Vienna - Vitali in shadow, probably taken in around 1930:

Helene and her two children:

Helene in San Francisco, with her son Harry, Eva, and Eva’s husband, probably taken around 1946 or 1947:

My mother, my grandmother, and me:

What’s Next?

Looking to the future, I plan to do something different in 2022.

In the February 13th and November 22nd posts, I wrote about a family tree created in 1996-1997 by the husband of a distant cousin. He included anecdotes and footnotes, including one which mentioned that Hilda Firestone, the daughter of Helene’s cousin, had written a “diary/book about the family”. When I saw the note, I was eager to see the diary, but could not figure out how to find it. Then one day as I was looking for something on a bookcase, I discovered I had a copy that had been given to mother!

Hilda was born in January 1904 and her mother died just a few days later. She was raised in San Francisco by her grandparents and her aunt Tillie. Included in this blog over the past year, we saw one letter written by Hilda and several written to her from Helene and from Harry. From them, we can imagine an intelligent, empathetic, funny, caring, and loving person – another woman with a message

In 1912, Hilda was given a diary in which she wrote nearly every day. In 2022, I will share 8-year-old Hilda’s observations of her life and of San Francisco. She did not write every day, many entries are brief, and I have few related materials, so it will be different from my posts in 2021. If you are a subscriber, please feel free to continue or to unsubscribe, depending on your interest.

Happy New Year!!!

December 24

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Today we have a letter from Helene in Istanbul to her nephew Robert Zerzawy in England. Yesterday, we saw a letter from Robert written a day earlier to her children in San Francisco. In it, he recalls their childhood in Vienna. Today, Helene does the same today and remembers happy times she had with Robert and Paul in Bohemia.

“There is no greater sadness than to remember
the happy times amid the misery.” 

Istanbul, 24 December 1945

My dear Robert!

When I received your letter filled with love, the first family letter in my exile, I cried for the first time since I’ve come under the radar. Today is almost predestined to hold my lost Paradise before my eyes. Do I not in spirit tear off a calendar page every day, and every day, every minute, every second, which I spend here without purpose, useless, and unhappy, did I not know that today is the day that I have chosen as the eve of a family week? Outside the sun shines as if it were May, only the sadly short days remind me that we are still deep in winter. The long nights are horrible, I fear them more than the Gestapo, blessed memories.

Robert, when I was ordered by the Command in Ravensbrück, along with 31 other respectable women on the 28th of February, to go to Turkey, none of us thought nor believed that we had been given freedom. I dared to ask what will happen with our men in Buchenwald and the “Political Superintendent” replied that he could give me no precise answer to this, but that he believed that we might meet them in Lübeck or in Sweden.

Our group waited five days for Turkish students living in various German university cities. On the fifth day came transport with about 150 persons, consisting of women, men, and children, Spanish Jews who lived all over the world, but who had been housed en famille in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. My courage and hope to be reunited with Vitali grew. We were transported via Flensburg-Copenhagen to Elsinore, from there to Sweden and Helsingborg where a reporter from a Stockholm newspaper promised to notify Eva. Through him it became known that I was in Sweden. From Helsingborg we were taken to Gothenborg, where we waited for diplomatic transport.

The general consuls of Vienna, Berlin, and Hamburg comforted me by saying that those form Buchenwald took another route and perhaps would be taken to Turkey via Marseille. My courage began to sink. Via Skagerak and Kattegat we went to Norway, then the Faroe Islands where we picked up internees from  England, and from there to Liverpool (how close I was to you), Lisbon, Gibraltar, along the north African coast to Port Said then via the Dodekanese through the Dardenelles to Istanbul.

Vitali’s sisters, who had read my name in the newspaper immediately looked me up and overwhelmed me with questions. “Where is Vitali?” Why didn’t you bring him with you?” “How could you go away without him?” It was not meant as badly as it sounded. The people had, and have, no idea about what and how it was in Europe. When I finally managed to convince them that I was not responsible for world affairs they became nice and friendly with me. A feeling of friendship (hostility?) towards them, and also they towards me, has not been overcome. It is strange that I seem to not only have more rapport with the younger generation, but that I understand them better. 

The difference between East and West is too enormous. Yesterday I received an answer to my inquiry to: Foreign Relations Department, British Red Cross & Order of St. John, Wimborne House Arlington 35 London SW 1. A MmeY. St. Martin Watts requested still more data that should help to make the finding of Vitali easier. For two months my completed and signed papers have been ready at the consulate; in the meantime, two ships have left without me; because of fatal circumstances my departure was prevented. Perhaps it is better so, perhaps before the departure of my ship I’ll hear some news of Vitali and I can answer the unspoken question: “Helen, where is Vitali? – Read: Cain, where is your brother Abel?” – I can give a joyful answer: He lives!

Robert, my dear dear boy, I have read your letter so often, and again, or more correctly, I’ve discovered a kind of “dislocation” of the heart and mind. You ask yourself, how all of you, who did not have to go through my suffering, can understand this through my eyes? I am so happy that each of you was spared this.

Love is a kind of Hydra, that for every head that you cut off grows nine new ones. Had I ten children and fifty nephews, my supply of love would not diminish, on the contrary it would overflow. (Pardon my pathetic style it is not intentional. I am no longer accustomed to writing letters and when I go from one extreme to another, I beg for your complete pardon.)

Robert, everything in this world has its price. I have paid the highest price for my good fortune. When I built a nice home for my children it was not just my thought, as it is with all mothers, that her children would have a better life than she herself had, but a vow that I made when I came back from “relaxing vacation” in Brüx. It took weeks before I recovered from my recuperation trip. To see you freeze, I mean mentally, in the comfortable warm rooms, always cuts into my heart. Paul’s moody nature and your caring disposition are the results of an apparently brilliant, but joyless and loveless youth.

Your little mother did what and how she could. Robert how often have I longed in the last two years for that love, which, when I was still young and immature I scorned, because I believed I was being crushed by love. I also yearn for Vitali’s care, tutelage, and his desire to think of me.

Robert, perhaps it seems to you that I see my past life through rose-colored glasses. No Robert, believe me I was lucky that I could build myself up and that I did not fall into depression but was always mentally fully conscious. Paul can verify this for you; I talked with him about it once. I did not lead a Polykrates existence which an Egyptian king would have envied. On the contrary, I always said that I lived the purest life of the treasure seeker: “daily work, evening guests, unhappy times, joyful celebrations.”  The joyful celebration is what I lived for: celebrations of all beliefs, birthdays, all were celebrated joyfully; my children should see only happy faces around them, enjoy music and happiness, eat well and much, “My fiery writing on the wall: Brüx.”

Robert, dear, as you have written me this dear and sweet letter, I believe that you were thinking of the same outing that Paul, you and I made from Brüx up to the Sauerbrunnen. As we passed a particular part of the marvelous row of chestnut trees, where a construction site was for sale at the time, one of us thought that we should build our family castle in the air at this place. We spun our wishful daydream further, until we came to the coffee house and lying there on a nice birch bench, we imagined everything down to the smallest detail. I remember this as clearly as if it were yesterday, and that an oncoming freight train brought us out of our day dream and forced us to think about our return trip. I glanced once more to the right to my beloved Borschen, one of them straight ahead at the church tower, whose song, “Enene, Enene” still rings in my ears today. When I take the next boat, I’ll be at the Aja Sofia in about 30 minutes and will think of the simple village church of Bilin and hear the bells chiming like the music of the spheres. Just as Wagner’s gods dreamed of their Walhalla, I dream with you of our home. The price that Vitali and I have paid does not seem too high to me. When the children left home, I did away with all birthdays and holidays, that is, I postponed them and said inwardly that we will celebrate them later. There are now so many to catch up on and with the new ones that must be celebrated, then our reunion will be one joyful celebration after another, as the magic word, my magic word rings.

I have apologized for my jumping around, but I’m not quite as crazy as I seem after this letter, but it is impossible to keep one’s thoughts straight when one shares a single room with 8 strangers and one sleeps in the same room with them, and each of the 8 receives visitors and they converse in a motley of strange languages. 

Do you know that I only found out by pure chance that Eva is married and that only just now after months at the consulate I was told the name of my son-in-law? Everl wrote a short letter to her cousin Lisette De Sevillja in May in which announced that she married on the 13th of January (Harry’s birthday), that she thinks I’m in Sweden and that Harry is still in the South Pacific. Robert that is all I know about my children. Wasn’t old Galotti right when he said, “He who does not lose his sanity in these circumstances has nothing to lose.” In my whole life I have never heard so much talking as here, and have spoken so little myself. I find it merciful to live in this Babel. I’m in the greatest company. A young Greek woman was reading her Shakespeare, a fine Oxford edition, next to her Glossary. At night I give myself concerts, I hum my Beethoven, my Mozart, my Schubert. I only here learned to understand the Wanderer Symphony: where you are not, there is happiness. Beethoven never let his audience go home in a gloomy mood; therefore, let us both sing with a different note: joy, beautiful spark of the gods -- or is it still too early. Since I’ve been here, I’ve heard no word more often than “patience,” I live with it. Robert, perhaps we will see each other before this letter reaches you.

Please greet and thank Otto and Kamillo for me, I myself kiss you with unbroken love.

Helen 

Helene begins her letter with a quotation from Dante’s Inferno, which prepares us for the sad and nostalgic tone that follows. Robert is the most emotional of her relatives, and, along with his brother Paul, they are the only people left with a connection to and memory of their childhood in Bohemia – she and her nephews’ mother grew up in Bilin, and the boys grew up in Brüx (now Most), about 8 miles away. Here, she writes of a day she spent with her nephews in Bilin, where they saw the Sauerbrunn – the mineral spring, and the Borschen – the mountain looming over the town which we read about in the April 22nd post. She hears the church bells calling her childhood nickname, Enene. However, when Helene wrote about her childhood memories in the 1950s, she had very little nostalgia for Bilin – she made it clear that she was thrilled to leave it far behind when she moved to Vienna in 1902.

We hear echoes from letters of written years ago: Helene invokes the legend of Polycrates which she wrote about in a letter to her children in 1939 – see December 14th post. Eva and Helene both wrote of “castles in the air” — see April 27th and September 24th posts. She recalls the things that we have seen bring her the most comfort – poetry (Goethe and Heine - see links above) and music – perhaps the same things that helped her survive the past few years.

Although the vast majority of Helene’s and the Zerzawy brothers’ correspondence was in Harry’s possession, my mother Eva had all of the letters their mother sent from Istanbul in 1945-1946. In 2006, a friend translated this letter for me. He had trouble with some of the references and I couldn’t make sense of them either. After being immersed in my grandmother’s words and life for the past few years, her stories and references now all have meaning.

Despite the sorrow and loss of the past 6 years, Helene tries to shake off her mood and end on a lighter note to lift her and Robert’s spirits, quoting Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s 9th symphony.

December 23

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Today we have a letter from Helene’s nephew Robert Zerzawy in England to his cousins Eva and Harry in San Francisco. At this point, Helene has been in Istanbul for over six months after having been released from Ravensbrück.

23 December 1945                  Green Pastures, Bridport

Dear Eva and Harry,

I have to thank you for sending me copies of your mother’s letters from March. I hoped to have a reply from Mr. Joseph de Sevilya but so far there is no response. So I can only hope that you will have heard from Istanbul in the meantime, and that the cryptic behavior of your Turkish relations will have found a quite trivial explanation.

Hilda has somehow acquired the role of an information center on our family affairs. Through. Her I know in outlines about you, for instance that you, Eva, are married and you, Harry, had a victorious return home from the South Pacific with no bad effects other than a tendency to scratching your skin or something like that which by now, I hope, has ceased to trouble you. Speaking of scratching: I guess, our mutual relationship will have to be built up again from scratch too. All you remember of me is, I assume, my little car which doesn’t exist any longer. (Or one should reasonably think it died ignominiously somewhere in the Ukraine or in the Balkans. I was informed from Prague that by force of Government decree I am again the lawful owner of the vehicle provided I can trace and provided it is in a usable state.)

And what I recollect of you apart from table hockey with spoons and stencil paper balls after lunch or cacophonistic duets are Harry’s illustrated weeklies which I hope he kept up in the jungles so giving documentary evidence of their superior lawfulness as compared with the nice mess in Europe or elsewhere in so-called civilized regions.

So it may be quite entertaining to renew our acquaintance and perhaps we like each other. I for my part am looking forward to it and with this pleasant prospect I am sending you my warmest wishes for the New Year and that with Helen with us we shall be a happy family.

Robert 

After discovering all of my family letters and papers that Harry stashed away, I spent several years organizing, archiving and translating everything. Since this was a perfectly legible letter in English, somehow I never read it until I was preparing today’s post! What a treasure it is.

Robert was born in 1899. His mother – Helene’s sister Ida – died when he was just 2-1/2 years old. His step-mother/aunt died when he was 11. His aunt Helene was the nearest thing he had to a maternal figure throughout his life.

I believe Joseph de Sevilya was married to one of Vitali’s sisters. As we learned from Helene’s letters from Istanbul, during the first part of her time there Vitali’s family often visited. However, most of them had little ability to help financially and the agency supporting the prisoners kept moving them to save money on housing, making it difficult for the family to even know how to find her.

At this point, Helene and Hilda have never met – nor have Robert and Hilda. Yet, they maintained a warm correspondence. The three of them were the most emotional and sensitive members of the family, and found kindred spirits in one another.

Unlike his brother Paul, Robert hadn’t spent much time with his young cousins. He never lived in Vienna, so they only knew each other from brief visits and letters. Paul and Robert often traveled together and would reconnect on these trips. In a few lines, Robert paints a vivid picture of the noise, fun, and laughter of the Cohen household in Vienna – they knew how to make their own fun even though they had little money – making music, improvising games and entertaining each other. Sadly, only one of Harry’s illustrated weeklies survived.

In Paul’s vacation photos, he included two photos from a May 1931 trip with captions that read “Breakdown #1” and “Breakdown #2”.

I wonder if this was Robert’s car? They went to Herceg Novi and Lovcen National Park in Montenegro. I found a Youtube video of someone driving what was probably a similar route through the park.

As we saw in later letters, Robert remained in England and only saw his family in person again once or twice again in his life.. I share with him the wish that they had been able to be a happy family again.

December 11

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Today we see two letters from 1958 between Helene and her attorney Paul A Eisler. The letters were found together and they were translated on the same day. I imagined Helene’s December letter would be a reply to Eisler’s September one. As is so often the case, my lack of German led me to jump to the wrong conclusion.

The letterhead reminds us how addresses and phone numbers changed over the years. Rather than a zip code, the area of San Francisco is indicated by the number 4. The letterhead uses the old phone number convention – “YUkon” to indicate the first two digits of the telephone number, instead of numbers 98. When I was a child, we still used the names. It was easier to remember a word/2-letter prefix plus 5 numbers than 7 numbers. I suppose the convention fell out of favor when we began to use area codes more often.

September 2, 1958

Subject: HILFSFONDS

My dear lady,

We are very happy to be able to tell you that quite soon the amount of 20,000. Schillings as a payment will reach you. You will probably receive the money in September and we ask you right after that to send to us the equivalent of 2,066.10 Schillings, which is the honorarium for our Viennese lawyer. As you already know, we here do not take any honorarium for allowances from the aid fund.

At the same time, we would ask that you make an appointment by telephone with our office since we will need your signature for any possible future allocations. This needs to happen as soon as possible, because the period designated for this to happen is going to end on the 10th of this month. 

Greetings,
Paul A. Eisler

“Hilfsfonds” is the generic term for relief fund – during COVID Austria provided “Corona Hilfsfonds”. Here, it refers to the Fund for the Settlement of Certain Property Losses of Political Persecutees (see page 23 and forward of the document in the link). The purpose of the fund was to make “lumpsum awards to natural persons who were the owners of properties, legal rights or interests in Austria which … were the subject of forced transfer or measures of confiscation on account of the racial origin or religion of the owner or in the course of other National Socialist persecution of the owner…”  The awards were for confiscated bank accounts, securities, money, mortgages, and “payment of discriminatory taxes”.

According to an inflation calculator, $700 in 1958 is worth about $6,400 in 2021.

San Francisco, Dec 9. 1958

Dear Dr. Eisler!

I just can’t help express to you how impressed I am that you put on such a successful evening. It was a great success indeed. My guests (paying guests of course) were enthusiastic, especially my young daughter-in-law -- 100% American – she sang with gusto and with an incomparable American accent, only part of Viennese songs. We had a splendid time. I most sincerely thank you for the lovely evening. Your talent, improvising and propagating the feeling of a Viennese Heuriger is really quite astounding. It must be something you inherited. Attorney and impresario also. 

With my best greetings

As I mentioned above, the content of this letter was unexpected — rather than a business letter regarding the legal matter he was helping her with, Helene writes of a music-filled evening, much like the ones she enjoyed in Vienna. Helene’s son Harry got married in 1958. Throughout their marriage, Harry and Marie made beautiful music together. At age 95, she still loves to sing.

I wonder whether the musical evening in 1958 was a fundraiser like the one Paul Zerzawy was involved in that we saw in the October 14th post.

December 10

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Today we see two letters written six years apart from Helene’s friend Paula. During the war, Paula was one of the few friends who visited Helene while she and Vitali were separated from their children. Paula continued to write until at least 1955. As we saw in the July 11th post, mail from Vienna was still being censored, this time by the Allies. As in earlier posts, we see Paula’s letters become less coherent as the years go by. Her sentences often go on for over 150 words, long even by German standards. My translator tried to find natural breaks to make the letters more comprehensible. 

Vienna, 10 December 1946

My dear dear Helene!

Finally I got the dear letter from you and am very sad that you hurt yourself. I hope everything is okay now. My dear Helene, you write if I have already received the package. I have actually gotten two — one small one from France and nothing else yet except those. It will come in time. It always takes awhile. There was a ship strike and that had an effect. In any case, I thank you so much, but I worry that you scrimp and save and maybe that your children have a hard time. Maybe don’t send any more because I couldn’t stand if you were to suffer because of me, because I know how much you love us and you want to give us everything and I thank your dear children for all the things. Dear Helene, I was at the Kultusgemeinde [Jewish religious community in Vienna] again, and through the newspaper I reported to Herr Krell that maybe we could still find out something. I see Vitali so often in my dreams and I see that I believe that he must come soon. I can’t believe that this splendid person wouldn’t exist anymore. Annemie also talks about him so much and it’s so strange that the child was born in the same month as your husband, and he was always so proud of that — do you remember? Everything that she did was good. Dear Helene, I must tell you one sad thing. I was at the doctor and he told me that if my child doesn’t get better food with more fat in it, she will probably only survive for two years. She is growing so quickly that her heart and her lungs cannot keep up. Can you imagine how I feel at the thought of losing my child? I was in Salzburg again and got various things for the child. God should make it so that she does not get sick on me because it is so cold and we have no coal for the winter. Only 200 kilos for the entire winter and my mother has promised that she would give me some of hers.

Yesterday Frau Else was here to visit us and of course we speak about you and she loves the child, gives the little one a pretty red cap - you know how the little one is always dressed beautifully, so if we can keep it together we’ll make it through this ugly time. Dear Helene, you ask what I am doing and what I am living on. I have two rooms and a closet - the closet I have rented to a Jewish boy. He is 27 years old and was in a concentration camp. He is going to America as soon as it is his turn. So sometimes I cook when he brings things. And then I earn something too. He has plenty of money and he pays well. I have fixed up my room so that’s it’s cozy here. I certainly have lost a lot, but in the living room I have managed to keep it together although some things are still broken. However, you know a woman’s hand can sometimes make things look better, but actually everything that was in the basement was stolen, especially my underwear and my clothes. I am so poor with my things and I don’t really have much to wear anymore, but another time will come. The main thing is that when the little one has it, you know I just live for the child. Dear Helene, Else will also write to you and she will go to her sister’s in America and then I will be alone. Yes, I would love to see you again. It was so nice when we were together, such splendid people as you and Vitali, sometimes I think maybe we all will get together in life again. I cannot believe that I will never see you again and your wonderful children. My dear Helene, you write it is a matter of course that you send me packages. No, my dear, first your children have to work to do that and then I have done everything out of love for you and I am just so sorry that you have gotten so few of the packages of all the good things. Helene, dear Helene, I would love to have a picture of you and from your children. The one I have with her tennis racket, you can’t really see very well and if you had one, we could look at you and your children every day. Annemie is sending you a picture of herself of her soon and a letter. I am curious to see when she finishes it. She has clairvoyance like Vitali did. She often says something that is really exactly right. Now, when your letter has arrived, then she says “Oh I see that is from Tante Helen and Irna” and together and the next day it was really so - both letters were there. So she loves her grandmother very much and everything is about the child for her. She wants to spend a few days in Salzburg at Christmas, she gets to go there because she doesn’t have school because they don’t have coal and the school rooms are too cold for the children to be in so she gets to go visit her much beloved grandmother and then she has better food there, because then she can get milk which is not possible in Vienna. Oh, how good it is that you are not in Vienna anymore dear Helene and that you don’t have to go through this bad time here. As much as I would love to have you here, I wouldn’t want you to starve, that would be terrible, and the extreme cold. Yes, Helene, this year you will spend the first Christmas night with your beloved children. I wish with all my heart that it goes very well, that you have a good day, and won’t be so sad. I know and I understand that you really miss Vitali, but look, maybe there will be a miracle that happens and I cannot believe that this dear and good man will not come soon. Herr Krell is doing everything he can to find out something. Dear Helene, I am going to write you an address now which you can probably do more easily in America than I can from here. Write to the organization Hic [probably HIAS] and then you must give them all the exact information you have - that your husband was alive in March 1945 and he got away from Buchenwald in the long marches. At this time he was entirely healthy and that I got another letter for the child’s birthday and he asked for a certain kind of package which I also sent. Dear Helene, your nephew is not doing so badly with money and maybe he as I have done can write everywhere. And I will try to see if my lawyer can help in some way perhaps. He had someone from Buchenwald staying with him back in the day, a fellow understood that he knew someone named Cohen and that he was there when they marched. Helene, I still have hope and I don’t give up, my dearest.

Paula’s post-war address in Vienna was on Invalidenstrasse, less than a half-mile from Helene and Vitali’s old home on Seidlgasse. The package Paula received from France may have been sent by Lucienne Simier, with whom Helene became close at Ravensbrück — see May 8th post. Paula makes it clear that post-war Vienna is not a desirable place to be.

[Received December 8, 1952]

My dearest Helen!

I thank you for your dear letter. You must have already gotten mine. I see that you are also having problems with your apartment and yes my dearest, it’s about time that you get some peace but all difficulties go away and we just have to go through everything, my dear Helene. Just keep the faith and all the difficult stuff will pass by, as soon as Vitali is with you things will be very different. You will have read what has happened in Prague [Probably referring to November 24, 1952 trial] and of course that will have consequences for us too and it is better that Vitali hasn’t come yet because otherwise he might have to go through difficulties here again like in the year 1940, and he realizes that.

Dear good Helen, you must not give up hope because otherwise you just won’t be able to stick it out and believe and it will all turn out okay. Look how bad we are doing and still we say there has to come an end to this time too.

My dear good one, we all wish you a good Christmas celebration and especially a happy new year and stay healthy and believe it that it cannot last all that much longer and then Vitali will come because he also has a hard time in Turkey and he shouldn’t really be there and he is living under an assumed name and he must always have some fear hoping that nobody finds it out. Thank God now he is doing better and as soon as he can he will go away. Believe it. More I cannot write about this because he does not want anyone to really notice him.

Dear Helene this will pass and then dear God does not let his children fall. For today I will end my writing and I will write to you soon again and I would hope that you will get the letter before Christmas. We all send you greetings and kisses and we wish you good health and that you will get some peace.

Your dear friends kiss and greet you. We think of you often.

Have hope that everything will be okay 

Kisses, Paula

As we have seen in previous letters, Paula kept Helene’s hopes alive about seeing Vitali again, often asserting that she had been in contact with him. Unfortunately, her optimism was unfounded. In fact, she had seen Vitali in her dreams, but nowhere else.

November 27

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

One thing I’ve missed in my family archive is the sound of my mother’s voice – I have the letters she received, but very few of the ones she sent. We’ve gotten to know the rest of the family, but have heard little directly from her. I was thrilled to find the few letters she wrote to her cousin Paul Zerzawy – 18-year old Eva in Istanbul (June 12th post) and upon arrival in San Francisco (October 23rd post).

Recently, I recalled that I have dozens of letters written by my mother, most of which she wrote to me during my junior year in college in 1978-1979 in southern France. I too kept every letter! One of the gifts of letters from long ago is that we get a sense of the times as they were happening, rather than some foggy feeling for the distant past. We see how the everyday world continues, even as sometimes the world seems to be spinning out of control.

November 27, 1978

Dear Helen,

If this letter is somewhat incoherent, you have to blame the state of shock due to the happenings in SF or related to SF for the past 10 days. I don’t know how much news you get in France about the US except that the events have been unbelievable. Before I start with personal news I better bring you up to date to the events I mentioned above. For the last week or so TV & radio had only reports on the tragedy in Guyana and most people in the mass suicide were Bay Area residents. It was a colony of a SF-based “religious group” which was located in the old synagogue on Fillmore & Geary & set up the colony in Guyana which was being investigated because the followers were not allowed to return to SF. The mass suicide involved over 900 people. You can imagine what the topic of conversation was wherever you went with all the newspapers & other media filled with it. Today as we finished up the clinic, the news came in that Mayor Moscone & Supervisor Milk (the spokesman for the gay community) had been killed by an ex-supervisor who resigned early this month, but changed his mind and wanted to be reinstated and must have gone berserk when his chances dwindled. Now you will understand my state of mind at this time.

When I received your card I started a letter to you and intended to finish it in my lunch hour, since my German dictionary was on my desk and I wanted to write a correctly spelled note regarding my birth certificate. Needless to say, I never got to the letter and to top it all I forgot your card and the letter I had written on the weekend in the office. Now I don’t have your new address and have to wait for tomorrow’s lunch hour and hope nothing will prevent me from sending it.

Now that I got all this out of my system, I can finish on a more personal note.

I am sure happy to hear that your move materialized and that you will have the experience you anticipated. I guess you will be able to use the recipes after all. How are you doing with the caterpillars? Did you ever get your winter clothes? Be sure to take the warmest clothes to Vienna. You might have to buy some snow boots (high waterproof boots). I don’t understand the telephone number. If I call do I have to ask for the “Poste”? I’ll wait to see my telephone bill before I do this however; and let me know the best time to reach you. Is this telephone actually in the people’s house?

Talking about Beethoven, Friday was the last opera this season and it was Fidelio by you know who. After the opera, we went to Elayne Jones’ house until 2am. She is leaving for Europe 12/12 and had thought of getting in touch with you, but instead is going to Spain. She is meeting her daughter in Rotterdam. Her daughter’s name is Hariette Kaufman; she graduated from Lowell with the class that had their exercise at the Cow Palace. She played cello in the school orchestra. Maybe you know her. She is 19 and teaches Englash in a town in Spain 2x a week. She makes 18,000 pesetas a month & spends 10,000 on room and board. The rest of the money she spends on traveling. I haven’t the vaguest idea how much this amounts to in American currency, but sounds to me that if you need to work only 2x a week, living must be cheap there.

I hope she will give me her address just in case you plan to go to Spain and might want to know somebody there. The town is not one I know, so it might be somewhere in the sticks.

Elayne was shocked to hear that you did not play a musical instrument, since she thought Lowell was geared to music. Do you still want some more of the guitar songs?

It will take me longer than I thought to write a German letter and my lunch hour won’t be long enough today; therefore, I will take my dictionary home and give you all the dope regarding the birth certificate. I am not sure how you will go about it without speaking German. That is the reason I will write a letter in German you can show to the authorities.

Things are quite hectic at work and our staff is getting smaller and smaller and at the same time we have more clinics, classes, etc. in the evening which cuts out all the day work. I don’t know if I told you, but I have to give parent classes and also Health Hazard Appraisals. Me and my big mouth. But the tendency is to give group presentations in preference to individual counseling. Maybe I can salvage my job by getting involved in all these activities. They are still talking about substantial cuts and non-professionals making home visits.

Now without a mayor, it will be difficult to have a budget for the city, because according to the charter, it has to be on the mayor’s desk the first week of Dec.

Well, I better get this off until the next installment.

Love,
Mom

Like Helene’s letters, my mother’s letter gives us a sense of all that was going on for both sender and recipient. She tells me about all that was happening in San Francisco, talks about necessary paperwork, refers to my recent move and to my planned trip to Vienna over Christmas break.

As my mother mentions, November 1978 was a terrifying time for San Francisco – within a few weeks, both Jonestown and the murders of Harvey Milk and George Moscone occurred. I remember wondering whether I would have a place to go home to and imagined what my life would be like if, like my mother did at the same age, suddenly I found myself having to live the rest of my life in France, far away from family and friends. The news did indeed make it to France. At the time, I was renting a garage apartment from an elderly couple. When I got home from school on the day Moscone and Milk were killed, my landlady told me that “the mayor of California” had been shot. I thought they were referring to Jerry Brown, but soon discovered the truth.

My mother would have been touched by these events by the mere fact of living in San Francisco. But in addition, she was employed by the city and county of San Francisco as a public health nurse, and these were people she thought about every day – many of the Jonestown victims might have been her clients when they were in San Francisco, and the city administrators were her employers. I don’t think it occurred to me at the time how much these terrifying events must have struck my mother to the core – she had escaped Europe to the safety of the United States, and her adopted home was feeling far from safe.

My dream of studying abroad included living with a family so that I would have the opportunity to speak French every day. Thus, I wasn’t thrilled to find myself living alone in a garage apartment. Fortunately, I met Marine, who was in one of my classes. We liked each other immediately and she asked her parents if I might rent a room at their house. She was studying English and thought it would be a great way to practice. Happily, her parents said yes. We were both only children and it was fun to each have a sister, if just for a few months. Today’s letter is the first my mother wrote to my new address.

Although she talks of making a phone call, the cost would have felt prohibitive -- at the time, she was reluctant to talk much on the phone to her brother just a few miles away in Berkeley, because even those calls weren’t free. I only recall one call from my mother while I was living there. I remember loving hearing her voice after months apart, but was shocked to hear that she had a German accent! I never heard it when we were. together every day, but after months apart, it was evident. As I think is common for children of immigrants, as a child, it always surprised me when people commented on the accent I couldn’t hear.

The discussion of the quest for a birth certificate brings us back to the main story of the blog. When Eva came to the U.S. in 1939, she did not bring a copy of her birth certificate. Almost 40 years later, my mother was 57 years old and was looking forward to retirement. She was afraid that if she didn’t have a proper birth certificate, it would be difficult to apply for Social Security.  

A friend and I had decided to go to Vienna over Christmas break. Never one to miss an opportunity, my mother hoped I would be able to get a copy of her birth certificate while we were there, despite it being the Christmas holidays and the fact that I didn’t know any German. Ever the optimist! I don’t recall whether I even tried – I’m sure it was beyond my ability and courage. Happily, my mother joined me at the end of my year in Montpellier, and we took a trip together to Vienna, 40 years after she left. One of her goals was to track down that birth certificate – a story worth a post of its own.

My mother inherited her love of opera from her mother. Unfortunately, that love wasn’t part of my genetic inheritance. Happily, I redeemed myself by marrying someone who loved classical music as much as she did.

I think my mother became friends with Elayne Jones through playing tennis. She was a timpanist for the San Francisco Symphony and Opera and led an amazing life.

In a number of letters, the idea of running into or meeting someone in Europe seems natural and inevitable. I never did see or meet the people mentioned in the letters and the likelihood seemed far-fetched. However, at midnight on New Year’s Day in 1979 as we waited for the subway after attending a performance of Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, traditionally performed at that time of year, a voice from the shadows emerged and said “Hello, Helen Goldsmith” – it was someone who had been a housemate when we were studying in Berkeley. She was in Edinburgh for her year abroad. One of the eerier experiences of my life! And yes, I did indeed attend an opera – when in Rome…(or Vienna).

As an aside, my friend Marine and I recently reconnected after decades, through the magic of the internet. Our language skills our rusty – comprehension is good but speaking/writing is a challenge – so she communicates mostly in French and I in English.

November 25

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

After returning from the war, Helene’s son Harry took advantage of the GI Bill (as he said he would do in his October 27th post), and graduated with a BA degree from UC Berkeley in 1951. In the spring of 1951, he worked in the UC Berkeley Engineering Library for $1.15/hour. Today we see correspondence regarding his application to work for the CIA.

20 November 1951

Dear Mr. Lowell:

Reference is made to our recent correspondence concerning your employment with this Agency.
Since we have not heard from you nor received the completed application forms, we are wondering if you are interested in applying for a position with us. We would like very much to hear from you, so that we may know what disposition to make in your case.

If we do not hear from you within fifteen days we shall assume that you are not interested in being considered for employment with us.

Very truly yours,
L.F. Holmes, Chief
Personnel Procurement

 December 7, 1951

Dear Mr. Holmes:

It is with sincere regrets that I must, at the present time, let pass up the opportunity of working with your agency.

One month before I received communication from you I obtained a very satisfactory position in public relations which I do not want to give up for the time being.

Nevertheless, I have not given up my plans of entering either your agency or Foreign Servie for which my training has prepared me. I think that public relations experience will but add to my qualifications for government service.

I have resolved to keep up my studies in the international field and not to allow my fluency in French, German, and Russian suffer in any way, although I have no opportunity to apply this part of my training to the present position.

Hoping that I shall be a more valuable man to you after having served my apprenticeship in public relations, I remain

Yours sincerely,

After graduating from college, Harry looked into a variety of possible career possibilities, including working for the California Redwood Association, as we saw in the October 31st post. In April 1951, he applied to work for the civilian branch of the army as an “Intelligence Research Analyst” in Europe, although he had been told there were no openings at the time. He tries to keep that door open in his letter to the CIA representative.

Although Harry was drawn to a job that would take him back to Europe and allow him to use his language skills, at this point his mother was living with him and he probably rethought the wisdom of his leaving her again.  

November 23

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

On Helene’s 135th Birthday

Family birthdays were the glue that held the family together. During World War I, Helene’s nephews Paul and Erich Zerzawy sent greetings to Helene and their siblings from the front and from a POW camp in Siberia; While waiting to follow their children to the U.S., Helene made sure to write special letters to each of her children on their birthdays and bought Vitali birthday gifts on their behalf. In 1942 and 1943, Helene and Vitali sent notes on Red Cross cards from Vienna when they were limited to 25 words and not allowed to write often; Helene sent greetings from Istanbul while waiting for resources to escape yet another prison; in the 1960s, Robert Zerzawy regretted that he could barely manage to send birthday acknowledgments, apologizing for writing so seldom.

Helene’s 80th birthday in 1966 was a very big deal. In the November 15th post, Robert asked Eva to buy a beautiful bouquet, because he realized he couldn’t order one for it to arrive in time. He also asked her for a family photo which we saw in the September 7th post, although one grandchild was missing from the portrait.

Below are photos of Helene with her 3 grandchildren in 1966. Her “portrait” on the wall behind her was drawn by her son Harry. It is wonderful to see her joy after all her years of sadness and loss.

Here is a card from 4 years later, drawn by Harry’s 9-year old son Tim.

November 22

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Today we have a letter to Helene’s daughter Eva from Jon Eidelson, the husband of a distant relative on my grandmother’s side.

November 22, 1996

Dear Eva,

As you know, I have been helping my father-in-law, David Levy, piece together a family tree for his mother’s side of the family. David’s mother was Elsie, the daughter of Bernhard Fulda (from Hitdorf, Germany) and Bertha Levy (from Litomerice in Bohemia, now the northern part of Czechoslovakia).

I am including a copy of the portion of this family tree that relates to your family. Hopefully you will find it interesting. I would greatly appreciate any corrections, additional information, or comments, and any photocopies of old documents you may have, and have included an envelope for your reply.

Thanks again for all your help.

Fall 1996 was the early days of email and Google did not yet exist. Research was done in libraries and by traveling to small towns in Europe to look for vital records.

In later correspondence, Jon asked some specific questions, most of which my mother couldn’t answer. I can answer many of the questions now, 25 years later, and the names and locations mean something. For example, in the November 18th post, Paul Zerzawy’s first postcard as a soldier was sent from Litomerice. 

After finding Harry’s papers, I contacted the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society and joined JewishGen, an invaluable online resource. One of the first things I looked for on JewishGen was information on the Zerzawy family. By that time, I had found the Zerzawy family tree dating back to 1740 and the World War I letters from the Zerzawy brothers. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I didn’t think this branch of the family was important to the family story I wanted to tell, so I was hoping to find Zerzawy descendants who would find these papers interesting and useful. On JewishGen, I only found one link, and it was to the family tree made by Jon! I do not know whether there are descendants left from that family

We learned about both family trees in the February 13th post. Helene wrote about “Uncle Fulda” in a few letters although I haven’t deciphered the exact connection. As Helene and Vitali were trying to leave Vienna, she wrote to her children asking them to only ask him for financial assistance if it became absolutely necessary. I believe this is a photo of Erwin or his father Bernhard Fulda and Helene during a visit to Vienna in 1929:

This letter highlights a recurring challenge when doing genealogical research – the repetition of names, both first and last. In today’s letter, Jon talks about his father-in-law David Levy, which would lead one to believe that David was a blood relative of my grandmother Helene, whose maiden name was Löwy, which relatives changed to Levy when they came to the United States. However, Jon explains that David was related to the family on his mother’s side – David’s mother’s maiden name was Fulda; his grandmother’s maiden name was Levy.

Earlier this year, I hired a genealogist in Prague to find information about my grandmother’s parents and grandparents. According to his research, Helene’s father Adolf’s parents were both born with the surname Löwy, and in fact, both his maternal and paternal grandfathers were named Jakob Löwy!

In addition to answering Jon’s questions, my mother shared memories of the stories Helene had told her as a child. For example, she explained that her grandfather Adolf had tutored Goethe’s girlfriend. However, as we saw in the September 4th post, according to Helene, the possible Goethe connection was with Adolf’s mother-in-law who had been Ulrike von Levetzow’s milliner. As people steeped in genealogy advise, it’s always important to validate even information that seems incontrovertible by finding for additional references and evidence. As I’ve gone through my grandmother’s papers over the past few years, I have come to trust what she says and recalls. I can almost always find a newspaper article or other reference that corroborates the story she tells.