On my mother's 99th birthday

If she were still alive, today my mother would have been 99 years old. I’ve been thinking a lot about her during the last few months of shelter in place due to Covid-19. For most of her working life, Eva was a public health nurse in San Francisco. Whenever she took public transportation — which she only did after she gave up driving well into her 70s — she was concerned about dirt and germs and she always would wear gloves. When I would see her after a trip on Muni or BART, she would show me how filthy the gloves had gotten on her travels.

Happily for me, my mom had a collection of lightweight leather gloves that I have been using each time I leave the house, so she continues to take care of me.

For most of her life, my mother had very little expectation of being important enough to be noticed. I only know of two times when my mother was made to feel special: her “sweet 16” birthday, although I imagine that’s not what it was called in Vienna, and “Eva Goldsmith Appreciation Day”, a surprise party I gave her when she was 70 — I wasn’t able to throw it near her actual birthday but did so 6 months later so it was a real surprise. I don’t think I ever saw her as happy as she was on that day, surrounded by family and friends.

On Eva’s 16th birthday in Vienna. She is seated on the right. Behind the girls is a pastel drawing of Helene, which Eva and Harry brought to the US and hang in my mother’s house throughout her life.

Taken at the surprise party I threw for my mother. You can see the expression of complete joy and surprise at being the center of attention for one of the few times in her life.

Contemplating coming to America and being a mother-in-law and someday a grandmother

Toward the end of the war, Helene, who was considered a Turkish citizen, was part of a prisoner trade. She and a number of other Turkish women were taken from Ravensbruck and put on a ship that eventually left them in Istanbul. She had to stay in Istanbul until papers and money were arranged to allow for her passage to the US. While there, she wrote letters to her children and nephews. Her daughter Eva got married in January 1945 while her mother Helene was in Ravensbruck and her brother Harry was in the American army, stationed in the South Pacific.

In Istanbul, Helene began receiving word from the outside world and learned of the changes in her children’s lives.

In a letter dated March 2, 1946, Helene includes a P.S. to her son-in-law:

Many thanks for your kind lines and the courage you have given to me. The very thought to be able to live with and for you makes me happy and I hope never to be a stumbling-stone in your happiness. You quoted a sentence by Voltaire I had not known and I found it very true. I remember another from him about Rousseau: “Poor Rousseau should have a blood transfusion, for his own blood is a mixture of arsenic and vitriol. He is the most unhappy human being because he is the most evil.” Does this quotation not much more fit to Hitler? By and by I feel reconciled with my fate. What it took away from me, it gave to my children: Eva her husband, Harry his independence. I thank you for your effort to look out for a bigger place and I assure you to endeavor to keep your home well as long as you want it. Although I am only a shadow of my own self I wish to be helpful if not even to you but to your children. I am the fairy tale grandmother devoured by the greedy world. Do you know another grandmother who can tell her grandchild this adventure with more authority? Just now I am not afraid by the big bad wolf and you must not fear I will amuse your little son or daughter with the description of the bad digestion of the poor voracious animal.

My dear Ludwig, you have taken from us one of the two most valuable things we possess and still I am not cross with you. It is funny, is it not? Please ask your wife to translate my first little letter into a correct English. I hope to hear from you very soon, but I should prefer to see you personally much sooner. 

Across the seas and across the years

I recently looked at these three photos which seem a snapshot of the immigrant experience. The oldest photo from 1937 is of my mother at her “Sweet 16” party (although I don’t know if they had such a thing in Vienna) - she is seated on the right. On the wall behind the girls is a portrait of my grandmother. Then there’s a photo of the three generations of women in my family - my grandmother, my mother, and me - all together in San Francisco. Finally, there’s a photo with my mother, uncle, and my mother’s caregiver sitting in my mother’s apartment just a few months before she died. Behind them is the same portrait that appears in the photo in Vienna more than 70 years earlier. The portrait and the people all survived such amazing odds to create a life and a family in San Francisco. While my mother was alive, I loved the idea of her mother watching over her.

Eva’s “Sweet 16”

Three generations

Across the years and across the seas

The Immigrant Experience

Helene’s nephew (and thus, Harry and Eva’s first cousin), Paul Zerzawy, was sponsored by the son of one of his mother’s cousins, Arthur Schiller, a law professor at Columbia University. Paul had had a law practice in Vienna and perhaps Prague. He arrived in the US a few months before Eva and Harry, at the age of 44. He met Eva and Harry when they arrived by ship and after a few days visit in New York, he put them on the train for San Francisco. After several unsuccessful months looking for work in New York City, Paul followed his young cousins to San Francisco where there were more relatives, a more hospitable climate, and hopefully more opportunity.

From a letter dated March 21, 1940 written to a relative in Haifa:
“Otherwise, we will have to comfort ourselves that as we know from experience, all immigrants spend many months and sometimes years to manage to get a decent income no matter where fate has sent them. For myself, I do not want to complain much because San Francisco is a splendid city with a magical climate; tranquilly living well-mannered kind of people live here who even show some interest in art and music and have no hatred of Jews, unlike in New York. But a regular job is something one cannot find and so I have taken on the career of a piano teacher and accompanist. I earn a little more than my furnished room costs me, which I felt prompted to do because I think I was bothering the older Schiller married couple. ….With the help of the many invitations, I can pretty much make it financially and I hope I do not have to make any more use of the bank account … which is not even enough to buy anything with. But if I’m lucky, the number of my students will increase. I have plenty of company and through the help of all my relatives and my own promotional activities, since the 1st of February - the day on which I started my new activity - I have gained five students. But you see, although I am speaking relatively of luck, it has taken nine months to do this, to get to earn my first dollars. And many others are doing just the same. So don’t give up; it will happen.”

Gifts from my grandmother

This project seems to me both a gift from me to my grandmother - giving her the platform and voice she always wanted - but perhaps an even greater gift from her to me. Through her papers, photos, stories, and letters I am learning all about her life - all the stories I thought were lost after my mother and Harry died.

Perhaps because I share her name, I always felt close to my grandmother. I remember her as a sweet, kind woman who made me feel safe and loved when she was my babysitter.

While we were together, she would call me sweet pet names and talk to me for hours, sometimes unknowningly switching from English to German along the way. These days I imagine that the stories she told me are those I have (re)discovered among all her papers and letters.  

My grandmother loved to bake, especially cookies to give to important people in her life at holiday time. My mother carried on that tradition, as do I. This year I found myself making Pfeffernusse - a German spice cookie my grandmother made every year. I haven’t made them in decades, but being immersed in my grandmother’s life inspired me to revisit the scent and taste of her kitchen.

Pfeffernusse

I don’t have very many memories of my grandmother after I was about ten years old. At that point she broke her hip. As often happens with elderly people (she was in her 80s at the time), her life was never the same. She lost most of her English and retreated into memories of pre-war Vienna. She could no longer live on her own and moved into what was then known as the Jewish Home for the Aged.

My last memory of my grandmother was visiting her at the Jewish Home a few months before she died. I had taken a course in German in college hoping it would help if my mother ever retreated to German as her mother did at the end of her life. During my visit, I was able to understand some of what my grandmother told me. She asked me if I had met her children and pointed to where she imagined them playing in the park. She was so happy in her reality. I have returned to that memory several times over the past few years - in letters my grandmother wrote several times about her happiest memories being the days when her children were young and she went with them to Stadtpark in Vienna. I feel honored to have “visited” with her there.

Young Eva and Harry in Vienna

80 years ago

My mother and her brother arrived in San Francisco in October 1939. Here is a translation of some of her first thoughts on being here from a letter dated October 23, 1939:

Since the exposition is going to close at the end of this week, we went on the first day. I like it better than the one in New York. It is quite similar in character but it is not so big. The external impression is much sweeter and more romantic. The emphasis is on fountains, lakes, and flowers. It is similar to the impression the city makes.

What I have seen up to now, the layout of this reminds me quite a bit of Istanbul. The city is rather scary and has many streets which are so steep that you can’t really walk without slipping. Yesterday and the day before yesterday, it was hot weather like in the middle of summer, but now suddenly it is made place for fall weather. Bertha says that the climate here is usually like that.

Eva at the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island in 1939: