January 1

January 1, 2021

I realized that I have letters and documents from almost every date of the year, although from many different years. My plan in 2021 is to post something from or inspired by my family papers every day in 2021.

My grandmother was a lifelong letter writer. At a time before the internet and cell phones, she managed to keep up with relatives and friends around the world. In stories she wrote about Viennese café society, it sounds like she spent every moment of spare time at the Café Central meeting friends, people watching, reading her favorite newspapers and magazines, and writing, writing, writing.

In addition to letters written from my grandmother to her children and nephew, I also have a handful of letters written to her. That is where we find ourselves today.  On January 1, 1949 a relative wrote to her from Europe thanking her for the Christmas gifts she’d sent. From this and other letters people wrote to her, it is clear that she spent what little money she had buying things for people left behind. Life in Europe in the late 1940s and 1950s was one of deprivation. Helene wanted to share the bounty of America with those left behind. It’s not that she had a lot of bounty to share - she worked as a housekeeper and companion to pay the bills. The writer said: “I’m certain you spoil us much too much and I definitely wish you would stop doing so, or I’ll get cross.”  

Helene in San Francisco walking downtown. In the background is the Golden Pheasant Restaurant at Powell and Geary. Date unknown.

Looking forward to a new year

I was always amazed by my mother’s and uncle’s resilience. After reading my grandmother’s papers, I see that she taught them to face the unknown and potential adversity with hope and humor (while always preparing for the worst!). As I happily say goodbye to 2020, I will endeavor to face the future in a similar fashion. Hoping for good things for all of us.

Layers

In 2021, I hope to post something each day, quoting from and/or inspired by a letter or document related to my family.

My husband and I both grew up in San Francisco and moved back “home” in 2015. Revisiting and rediscovering places both familiar and new has been a rich and sometimes disorienting experience. Particularly with each passing year as people we love are no longer with us. I often go past a place and think about being there in the 1960s, 1970s, all the way to the present day. About the people I was with who are now ghosts. About the person I once was.

Exploring my family papers and history by looking at a particular day of the year feels similar – what was going on in the world, in my family in 1886? 1902? 1918? 1939? 1946?... Layers of memory and layers of meaning.

Looking toward 2021

In the coming year I hope to post almost everyday, drawing from a wealth of materials that were written almost every day of the year (in different years, but covering almost every date). If you are interested in being alerted to new posts, please subscribe by going to my contact page. You should be able to subscribe beginning in the next few days.

New answers bring new questions

Lately, I’ve had two questions that I couldn’t answer: 1) when and where Helene’s father Adolf Löwy was born and died, and 2) when and where Helene’s brother Max died. My mother thought Adolf had died when Helene was 12 or 13. However, I have a story by Helene where she talks about when she was 15 and her father was still alive. My mother thought my grandmother and her mother had gone to Vienna before WWI because Max was living there and practicing medicine. My mother didn’t remember meeting him and thought he might have died in 1920 or 1922 and that he may have had a son named Karl who might have come to the US.

In August I attended a virtual conference on Jewish genealogy. Many sessions were taped for later viewing and I have watched a number of workshops since then. Being fairly new to this subject, each session gives me new skills to do family history research. I am in awe of the number of amateur genealogists out there who volunteer thousands of hours of their time documenting and cataloging towns, families, birth and death records, etc. to save unrelated familes from being lost to history forever.

As with any research activity, after I stumble on some new tidbit of information, I often find that I cannot recreate the steps that got me there. Like Hansel and Gretel, I’m lost in the woods. Here I try to recreate one pathway while it’s still fresh in my memory.

There is an organization called JewishGen that is an incredible resource for research into Jewish genealogy. For example, they have a Jewish burial database that has information on burial records all over the world. I’m pretty sure I found information about the death of two of Helene’s sisters. But I couldn’t find an Adolf Löwy who fit the place and age that my great-grandfather would have been. I found 2 different burial records in Vienna for a Max Löwy who could have fit age and possible death date, and was pretty sure one of them was my Max. JewishGen also has records of doctors in Vienna but I couldn’t find a listing for Max Löwy.

This week I watched a session on “Czech Torah Scrolls Journey and its relevancy to family history research”. I didn’t have a lot of hope that I would learn much, but since my grandmother came from that area and the handout included Bilin, I decided to listen. The main presenter was Julius Müller (http://www.toledot.org/), a Czech genealogist who was mentioned in a number of other sessions - clearly he is someone I need to contact!

Something he said led me to https://www.geni.com/, which other conference speakers had mentioned several times. One speaker said that this was a site that is trying to create a “family tree of the world”. It is pretty public so people have to be comfortable sharing freely their information.

On Geni, I typed in either Adolf’s or Max’s name and actually came up with a mini family tree that had been created in 2018. It included Adolf and Rosa, Max and his wife and children (!) including Karl and Karl’s wife, and two of my grandmother’s sisters who had died in Bilin. Nothing about my grandmother though. Unfortunately, the tree did not have the answers to my questions. But I thought I must have discovered a relative who had created the tree and contacted him. No, it was created by a man in Israel who I guess along with many others (volunteer or paid, I don’t know) is gathering information from vital records to create these trees.

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Family tree found on Geni.com. Note that most of the family members I know and care about aren’t listed! Click on image to enlarge

Interestingly, Max’s oldest child is listed as Otto and included a birthdate in 1902. but there was no further info. Karl was listed as being born in 1904 as Karl Otto. I thought it was odd that both children would have Otto in their names. I went back to the Jewish burial database and found that an Otto Löwy had died in Vienna in 1903 at the age of 10 months. I assume Karl’s middle name was in his honor. And that Karl was named after Max’s mother’s beloved brother Karl Kraus who had died in 1889 and had been very kind to the family (something I recently learned when transcribing a story by my grandmother about the 1889 flu epidemic).

Having more names in Max’s family, I went to Ancestry.com (which during these days of Covid can be accessed from home through your local public library) and found a NY draft card for Karl where he lists Max as next of kin and shows Max’s home address and the address of his medical practice! Then I found Max’s intent to apply for citizenship as well as a ship manifest that show that he and his wife arrived in NY in March 1940 on a ship coming from Caracas, Venezuela! Nothing about when Karl arrived - before, after, who knows? I’m sure I could find more info out and perhaps some day I’ll look.

Learning all this has made me rethink the story of my grandmother’s life that I’ve created from all the documents I had and it has raised so many more questions. My grandmother wrote lovingly of her brother Max in her stories about her childhood. My mother thought he had died when she was a baby or before, so clearly they did not spend time together in Vienna. Did Max leave Vienna as early as 1922? Had there been a falling out? Did he go somewhere else in Europe? When did he go to Venezuela? Why did he not stay in contact with my grandmother? It’s surprising to me that my grandmother had to rely on more distant cousins for assistance to get to America. They were Max’s cousins too! Of course, I don’t know the story of Max’s journey and whether he would have had resources to help. But couldn’t he have written?!

Contemplating Loss

Over the past few months of shelter in place, I have spent many hours reading through my grandmother’s papers. Sometimes I feel as though I am experiencing life in the past and present simultaneously.

As the number of Covid-19 deaths in the US have reached almost 160,000, I have been thinking about the number of lives cut short, the loss to their families and friends, the contributions to the world that will never be. At the same time, I have a deeper understanding of my grandmother’s family and the amount of loss she suffered over almost a century.

One thing that strikes me is that many of us in the first world have had the luxury of not having to face much loss in our lives, sometimes “only” losing family members and friends who have lived to a ripe old age. That wasn’t the case for my grandmother or indeed for most people of her generation. Death and loss were sad, but not unusual.

Helene was the youngest child born in 1886 to Adolph and Rosa Löwy. My mother told me that Rosa had 13 pregnancies, but most of the children died in childbirth or infancy. As a child, Helene knew her sisters Ida, Matilde, Clara, Irma, and Flora, and her brother Max. As far as I can tell, by 1918, Helene’s only surviving sibling was her brother Max, although I’m not even sure of that.

Ida married Julius Zerzawy in 1894 and died in 1902 following a miscarriage, leaving 4 young children behind. Ida’s death had a devastating effect on the Löwy family — Rosa and Matilda left the family home to take care of the Zerzawy children, leaving only young Helene with her father. Matilde married Julius in 1903, becoming stepmother to her nephews and niece, and had a daughter Käthe in 1904. Matilde died in 1910. By 1918, Helene’s only surviving nephews were Paul and Robert. Her nieces died in 1916 and 1918 and her nephew Erich died as a prisoner of war in Eastern Siberia in 1918. By that time, young Paul and Robert had lost 3 siblings, their mother, and their stepmother. As a soldier, Paul no doubt had experienced even more loss.

After several happy years with Vitali and her children, Helene again faced tremendous loss when she sent her children away to safety in America. Then came four years of worrying about them and watching her opportunity to follow become nothing more than a dream. Then separation from Vitali as they were sent to Ravensbrück and Buchenwald, and she was never to see her husband again. Finally she came to America, was reunited with her children.

In 1939, Helene’s nephews Paul and Robert made their way to the US and England, respectively. I cannot imagine the loss and disconnect they felt as they left the old world behind to start anew in a different country and a different language, leaving in Vienna their Aunt Helene, their only surviving blood relative. Paul worked tirelessly but unsuccessfully to bring Helene and Vitali to San Francisco. Although a lawyer by training, he eked out a living in San Francisco as a piano teacher, dying in 1948 at the age of only 53. His brother Robert died in London in 1967. Helene survived them both.

What would it be like to lose everyone and everything? I am in awe of my grandmother’s resilience facing loss, rebuilding her life, and finding ways to continue in the face of such tragedy and loss.

Vitali and Helene at home

As I transcribe my grandmother’s stories, I am getting to know who she was as a person. At the same time, her writing sheds light on her children’s personalities as well as my own. I hear my mother echoed in her humor and outlook on life. And sometimes I hear echoes of my own voice.

In addition to complete stories, I have fragments of writing that either I will find later on had been incorporated into full stories or were the beginnings of ideas that never were fleshed out. Yesterday I found a few versions of a story (or two?) about Helene and Vitali’s home life in Vienna, entitled variously “Water Come” and “Vitali — A domestic Study”:

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Water Come/Vitali — a domestic study

Vitali has a genius for influencing people to do his will. His way of doing so is simple but effective, compelling rather than repelling. That his wishes are realized always he takes for granted, as if it would be the simplest thing in the world. He doesn’t give a damn for what people think or say about him.

Once, it was an awfully hot afternoon in August. The Viennese suffered through a heat wave. People who were forced to be on the street didn’t walk, they crept.

The children were on vacation, our household help had her day off, and we both were relaxing on a couch too lazy to move, even to talk. He interrupted our dulce far niente* by saying:

-Chérie, I am thirsty, I want a glass of water.
-I am thirsty too, but I am too lazy to get up.
-That is why I want you to bring me a glass of water.
-I think your way to the faucet is just the same as mine, why don’t you fetch it yourself?
-It is so agreeable to relax.
-I agree with you.
-I am glad you do, it does not happen very often.
(I become taciturn)
(Vitali after a while started: Water come, water come, water come, water come.
I: What means that?
V: I am playing Moses, only I have no stick with me.
I: Do you want to beat me?
V: No, Chérie, I would hit the wall only to get water. Continuing his sing song: Water come, water come, water come, water come, water come.
(I faked snoring; Vitali, lowering his voice but continuing his monologue)
Water come, water come, water come, water come.
(It drove me crazy; I got up and came back with a tray of several glasses of fresh water.)
Vitali gave me a big nice smile, saying:
Have you seen, piccola, how obedient water can be if you know how to deal with it and force your will on it?


I had the very desire to throw at least one glass of that “obedient” water into his face, but the way he was smiling victoriously was too irresistible; we both were laughing like two naughty children after they had done something funny.

*note: dulce far niente is Italian for “sweet idleness”; also a poem by Finnish poet Aaro Hellaakoski, published in 1928

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The Story Unfolds

My mother and her brother did not encourage their children to ask questions about the past. My uncle was a sunny optimist who didn’t want to discuss the past, which would bring up painful memories. I have no idea how much guilt they may both have had for having been unable to save their parents from the camps, despite the fact that they were teenagers without resources and had done the best they could.

As psychological theories evolved, my mother had a new source of guilt after her mother died when “talk therapy” came into vogue. When my grandmother first arrived in the U.S., the prevailing theory was that talking about painful events would only make the situation worse. My mother told me that she would always change the subject if my grandmother wanted to talk about all she’d been through.

Giving Helene the tools to tell her story

As I described in the “Hidden Treasures” section, I have been sifting through an enormous amount of material and am sometimes daunted by the process. One part of my grandmother’s papers has truly overwhelmed me, as it did my mother.

At some point in the 1940s or 1950s, my uncle bought Helene a typewriter and encouraged her to write down her stories to get them out of her system. My grandmother was obedient to her son’s encouragement and began writing. She wrote and wrote and wrote.

This was before computers or even electric typewriters and she was using an English keyboard which didn’t have German diacritical marks, so it must have been slow going. No cutting and pasting, no copying from previous drafts. I do not know whether she began by writing her drafts in longhand, but she kept many versions of some of her typed stories and it’s not always clear which version, if any, is the final draft.

Although she fictionalized her maiden name and a few other surnames, it appears that the stories themselves were what she recalled and were not fictionalized.

She produced at least a dozen binders worth of writing:

My mother had the best of intentions and wanted to go through the binders, translating stories from German, and organizing the writing so there weren’t multiple versions of the same story. But she never managed to do it (and as with everything, probably had a fair amount of guilt about it). I don’t blame her! Although I have had these binders for a few years, I too have avoided trying to make sense of their contents. When Kelsey created the archive, I handed the binders over to her and asked her to come up with some sort of order so I wouldn’t have to.

Only now have I been able to begin the process of reading and transcribing Helene’s stories and it is slow going. I cannot imagine how my mother would have managed with just a typewriter herself.

Helene made do with whatever she could find to keep things organized, sometimes gluing paper on the spine to show the contents:

Apparently she ran out of paper clips and didn’t have a stapler, so some stories are bound together by string:

As I begin to read her papers, I am finding that Helene’s writing continues to answer my questions. Unfortunately some of the stories listed on the binder spines didn’t end up in the binders, so at least a few that I would have loved to read are missing (for example, a story about moving to Vienna and one about her first job).

One question I’d been trying to figure out how to answer over the past few months — particularly in this time of shelter in place when going to libraries is impossible — was the population of Bilin (now Bilina), the town my grandmother lived in until at least her late teens. On the JewishGen site, I discovered that approximately 75 Jews lived in Bilin in 1900. However, I could not figure out how to find out the total population of the town. Last week, I transcribed a story Helene wrote entitled “Dandelions in May 1902”. In the story she describes a momentous year where family life was turned upside down by the death of her eldest sister. In telling the story, she mentions that at that time the town had about 6000 inhabitants (according to Wikipedia, currently approximately 17,000 people live there). Question answered!

Although there are hundreds of photos, I do not always know who is in the picture. Unfortunately when I was ready to sit down with my mother for her to help identify people in the photos, she was no longer able to do so. Although Harry often talked of our looking at the photos together, there was always some excuse not to do so. Toward the end of his life, I realized we would never know the identity of people in the photos. In general that’s true. However, my grandmother’s writing is helping identify people as well.

In addition to photos my mother and uncle brought over themselves, they also had Paul Zerzawy’s photos which they got after he died in 1948 in San Francisco. My mother had his photo album and Harry had a box of miscellaneous photos and papers.

Below is a photo from Paul Z’s photo album:

In the above photo, I recognized my grandmother (second from the right) and her mother (older woman at the back on the left). Since it was in Paul’s album, I figured it was a photo of he and his siblings but I did not know the identity of the woman sitting next to my grandmother. I was able to piece it together and understand a rich story using two items from the archive: the story “Dandelions in May 1902” from Helene and the Zerzawy Family tree from Paul which was created in the 1920s or so.

From the family tree, we learn that there were 4 Zerzawy siblings born to Julius Zerzawy’s first wife Ida (Helene’s oldest sister): Paul, Klara, Erich, and Robert. Ida died in 1902. Her sister Mattl married Julius in 1903 and gave birth to a fifth child Käthe in 1904. Thus, I assume that since there are 5 children in the photo, the woman next to Helene is her sister Mattl who died in 1910. The youngest girl looking at the camera (and us) must be Käthe. Which means that the photo was probably taken around 1908-1910.

Will the world ever change?

I began writing this several days ago and it seemed appropriate to post it on Juneteenth.

Over the past few months, the world has seemed out of control — the pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of people all over the world and in the midst of that, the country and the world seeming to wake up to the killing of black and brown people every day at the hands of those in power.

At the same time, my book group decided to read “The Plague” by Camus. As I read it, I felt like I was reading my grandmother’s letters while she was trapped in Vienna and separated from her children who had been sent to relatives in the U.S. There was the same sense of helplessness, loss, and isolation — very similar to how so many of us are feeling these days.

Delving into my grandmother’s papers has been an education both about my family and about the world. It’s heartbreaking to think that the promise of America is a nightmare for so many. And that it hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. My grandmother’s correspondence reflects her disillusionment. In 1939, she sent her children away for a better life (and the opportunity to actually have a life). For the next 6 years, she heard little from them. She was reunited with her children in 1946 after being unable to leave Vienna for over 3 years, being imprisoned in Ravensbrück and then essentially being imprisoned again in Istanbul while trying to get papers and money to make the voyage to San Francisco.

In the late 1940’s, my grandmother sent to friends and relatives living around the world books, articles, and letters about the disconnect and hypocrisy she saw between the message of the Statue of Liberty and the reality of living in the U.S. — although I don’t have any of the letters she wrote, I surmise this from the replies she received from her correspondents.

One book she read and then sent to others was “Knock on Any Door” by Willard Motley. The book is about the effect of poverty on families and individuals and how people may be driven to crime and end up in prison due to their impoverished circumstances. From Goodreads: “Motley researched his novel on the streets of his native Chicago, talking to immigrants about their experiences and visiting juveniles in Illinois's youth detention centers. In Knock on Any Door, Motley creates a painfully vivid picture of poverty, the struggle for ethnic identity, and the flaws of the penal system in urban America.” (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/257127.Knock_on_Any_Door). On its own, the book is incredibly depressing, but made even more so by the lack of progress that has been made since it was published in 1947.

I imagine my grandmother saw the treatment of African Americans in the U.S. as similar to how she was treated by the Germans. She kept a binder of articles and papers that meant something to her. In it, was an article and editorial from 1952 about a case in North Carolina:

For more on the case, go to https://www.aaihs.org/mack-ingram-and-the-policing-of-black-sexuality/

I don’t know what my grandmother would have made of the world we live in today. She always called herself a “fatalist”, but Fate hasn’t been very kind this year. I hope that will change soon.

A different kind of shelter in place

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

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

Here are excerpts from a handful of letters:

On missing her children:

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

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

——-

December 29, 1939

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

—-

March 12, 1940 to Harry

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

——-

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

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

On the bitter cold winter:

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

——-

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

——-

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

——-

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

_____

8 March 1940 from Vienna to Harry

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

——-

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

On whiling away the hours:

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

_____

March 19, 1940 from Vienna to Paul

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

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

On having little money or food:

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

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

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

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

——-

January 29, 1940

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

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March 12, 1940

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

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March 19, 1940

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

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

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

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8 March 1940

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

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March 26, 1940 to Harry

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

_____

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

——-

April 13, 1940

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

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.

Helene - clever from the beginning

Helene was a clever, curious, articulate child. It sounds like her older sisters were much less interested in language and wordplay. She was the youngest of a large family, so her oldest sister Ida was quite a bit older than Helene. Thus, Helene became an aunt while she was still a child herself. Ida’s first child, Paul Zerzawy, was born in 1895, when Helene was about 9 years old. Helene ended up being Paul’s and his brothers’ babysitter, and had a very maternal feeling for them throughout their lives, despite their closeness in age.

Helene’s older sister Ida

In a (translated) letter to Paul in San Francisco from Helene in Vienna on March 6, 1941, she wrote the following memory of a young Paul. As with many of her letters at the time, the main point was to ask her nephew why he didn’t write more often.

Dear Paul! Your mother [Ida, Helen’s sister] calls my entry into this veil of tears a bad joke. When my father on 23 November 18.. [would have been 1886] awakened her with the words, “Get up Ida, you now have a little sister,” she turned over on the other side and said, half asleep, “Dad, I’m used to more delicate jokes from you.” She did manage to come to terms with my appearance, but she also decided to raise me in a very strict way, in order to compensate for the errors of the other siblings who spoiled me endlessly. So, for example, she didn’t let me eat too much when there was something particularly good. Later she didn’t let me read the books that made my son [Harry] blush despite Eva’s tales of working in the hospital. Ida seemed to me to have come into the world to not let me have any fun, I often thought. But I got back at her when you appeared on the scene and were spoiled much more. The “Look Ida, look what Paul can do,” was unending, and your poor mother fought against six aunts, an uncle, and a beloved pair of grandparents to let the child be. When another one came and reported to her that the wonderboy Paul had learned something amazing, she explained to us that she wanted a healthy, normal child, not a wonder child. Ida’s “spleen” was incomprehensible to all of us, especially to me who had the ambition to teach you everything I knew even though you weren’t even school age yet, which Ida had forbidden me to do. Why should I not get back at Ida because she’d always forbidden me to do what I wanted to do? I pretended that I had taught you to read. I took a book from Father’s library. It was an example book of typefaces from the company Schelter und Giesecke in Leipzig, and in this there were samples of the most delicate “Nonparaille” [apparently a small typeface] to the thickest letters for a poster and every time there was printed the following litany: “God gave us the spirit.” I decided to go get you and say “Paul, look, here it says ‘God gave us the spirit’” and I turned to another page and I explained to you again “and here it also says ‘God gave us the spirit.’ When your mother asks you ‘what does it say here?’, what are you going to say?” And you answered bravely: “God gave us the spirit.” You got an Indian donut [apparently a pastry from the 19th century - looked like a cream puff] from me and my older siblings kept a lookout when I took you by the hand and went to see Mother. “Ida, Paul already knows how to read!” Ida, who would imagine I could do anything except anything good, practically threw a crying fit and said: “I told you not to drill the child.” I did not step out of character and I took the book and said “Paul, what does it say here?” “God gave us the spirit.” Ida took the book from my hand and opened it to a different page and asked you “what does it say here?” And you answered “It also says ‘God gave us the spirit.’” Ida was getting suspicious and then she took the Neue Freie Presse [Viennese newspaper] that was right in front of her and asked you, “what does it say here Paulchen?” and you said, “God gave us the spirit.” Ida was so happy that I had only taught you to “read” that I didn’t get punished that time. So why am I telling you that? Wouldn’t it have been better if I had taught you to write? Then maybe I would have gotten a letter from you every now and then. If that were the case, then well look I would have answered your questions succinctly and I wouldn’t have to make such long introductions to my writing. Maybe you should just write to yourself. So pull yourself together and return the favor. If it weren’t for this reading instruction, at least you could thank me for the pastry. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. Vitali wants to play Tric-Trac [a backgammon-like game] so I am delivering you from the evil, Amen.
Affectionately
Helen

From Paul Zerzawy’s photo album. Probably Bilin in the early 1900’s. Helene’s mother (and thus, Paul' Zerzawy’s grandmother, as well as the grandmother of Helene’s children Harry and Eva who will be born almost 20 years later) is the older woman on the left in the back. Helene is the young woman second from the right. Possibly Paul Zerzawy is the boy in the middle reading - which by that age he actually was able to do!

Communicating in the most difficult of times

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

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

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

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

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

See translation of camp rules below

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

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

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

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

Women With A Message

As I explain in the section on Metaphysics and Mysticism, I decided to have my palm read to feel a connection to my grandfather, about whom I know very little other than his unusual occupation. This was in August 2017, before I understood the treasure trove that I discovered after my uncle’s death.

When I visited Richard Unger for a hand analysis, I didn’t know what to expect. I had no burning question or issue, just curiosity about the process. My husband Paul drove me to my appointment in Sausalito and we planned to have a nice dinner afterward, so that the trip wouldn’t be a complete waste of time. Instead, as soon as the session was over, Paul tells me that I ran to the car and couldn’t stop talking about the amazing experience I’d just had.

Much of Richard’s approach is the same as has been done by palm readers for thousands of years: distilling from the shape of and markings on a person’s hand their personality, character, and temperament. I was amazed by the specificity and clarity of Richard’s reading. He quickly identified key parts to my personality and the sometimes contradictory things that motivate me to act in life, helping me understand how these traits and characteristics had led me down the path my life’s choices had taken me on thus far. The reading validated things I knew about myself and helped me embrace even those aspects I am less fond of.

In addition to following in the footsteps of ancient palmists, Richard has developed a theory of “Soul Psychology” based on fingerprint patterns that identify one’s purpose in life as well as the obstacles that prevent us from achieving that purpose. This sounded awfully lofty to me. Particularly when Richard told me that my fingerprint pattern indicates that my life purpose is “woman with a message to the masses.” Although his description of my personality, motivations, and character had been spot on, I had trouble wrapping my mind around such a “highfalutin” purpose.

As I delved more deeply into my family’s papers, I realized that my grandmother had spent her life trying to get people to listen to her. She’d always wanted to be a writer, perhaps inspired by the newspaper her father published each week; she’d written thousands of letters, only a small portion of which I have; she’d written stories of her childhood in the late 1800s; she’d told the story of her imprisonment to officials and reporters; she’d even submitted some of the things she’d written to journals, but was never published.

Clearly, my grandmother was a Woman With A Message. Slowly, I came to realize that my purpose was indeed to be a woman with a message, in order to share my grandmother’s story with the world.

My grandmother writing in the back of her stationery shop at the desk where my grandfather did his readings.

Happier times

Helene, Vitali, Eva and Harry seemed to have had a lovely time in Vienna before life became difficult and dangerous. They enjoyed music, both in public and at home - Helene’s nephew Paul Zerzawy was a talented musician (which allowed him to pay the rent when he moved to San Francisco and could no longer practice law). They often played “tric-trac”, a form of backgammon. They took walks and played in the park.

Here are a few memories Helene wrote of while separated from her children - she didn’t want to worry them with what life was like in Vienna and she didn’t have much else of current interest to share with them. So sometimes she wrote recollections of happier times with her children.

From a (translated) letter dated July 29, 1940, Helene recalls:

“Whatever path we take, I just see you - every square, every street, every house reminds me of our walks together. In Stadtpark I see you as small children; near the Prater Park, I see you as a little older youth, and in the city I have this picture of you in more recent times. This is a driving force that takes me there nearly every day. I stand there by every shoe store, not because I really want to buy a pair, but in memory of Eva and in the same picture window I see Harry’s thoughts. This kind of activity has become a very typical one for me. Sometimes I catch myself looking around for you if you’re maybe just catching up to me and at which picture window did you stop to look? With these crazy ideas, I spend my days.”

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Young Harry & Eva in Vienna

From a (translated) letter dated March 5, 1941 (Ebi and Everl are nicknames for Eva):

“It is an unwritten law for me to hum a melody when I am in the bath. Not just any melody, but one from the era of “Mutti prüf much!”. Of course I begin with the summer night’s dream which Ebi would associate with the entrance march for the guests on the Wartburg. I as the next harmless parasite climb up to Juliet’s balcony for the nth time. Eva’s answer is ‘hey, this time you can’t trick me, mom!’ ‘Manon!’ A third time my daughter can still guess and then it’s Harry’s turn. I am exercising my brain. Eva: ‘I know what comes now.’ I sing an aria from ‘Samson and Delilah’ and Eva knows that it is ‘Tiefland.’ Probably I have sung it so badly that she couldn’t recognize it. Don’t worry about it Everl. I know lots of people here who think Johann Sebastian Bach is from somewhere in the Vienna Woods; who think Mozart is a physicist who discovered a noticeable sphere; that Hölderin is the inventor of powder made of insects; that Beethoven is the ‘spiritus rector’, a quotation from Götz; and that Götz himself is the person who invented the patent for estimating LMIA.”

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Eva/Ebi in 1923

From a (translated) letter dated January 24, 1941 (Ebi and Everl are nicknames for Eva):

“My dear, dear Everl!
I always when I haven’t had any letters from you for awhile notice that among the things I have lost track of is also the sense of time. When I think about you I don’t think about you in your current form, but these pictures of times long past appear to me. We write ‘January 1941’, but my memories are in May 1923 [when Eva would have been 2 years old]. Papa Vitali and Mutti Helene meet at Krieau and the motto is ‘Ebi Wagerl allein schieben’ - Ebi wants to push the stroller. Marie and her daughter are waiting and rather annoyed because they are waiting for us to show up which we were supposed to have done by 3 o’clock. Finally, exhausted, Mr. & Mrs. Cohen show up, but little Miss Eva doesn’t seem to be there. Not even a bundt cake could convince her to come the table. The shopping cart was steered through the various aisles and we could tell from Marie’s face that this getting together of our two daughters was not a great pleasure and we had hardly drunk our coffee when the threatening clouds started to show up. We asked the waitress to pay and the wind was already playing the prelude to a storm symphony with the tablecloths. The waitress nodded at us to show that she had heard us, but other guests at other tables held her back because they like we wanted to hurry up and get home before getting all wet. ‘Come Eva, get into the stroller, it’s going to rain now, come on Eva.’ ‘No, I’ll push it home myself’ was her most definite answer to this. The thunder was already coming and the storm seemed fairly far off. I didn’t see any reason to force the issue because Eva was stepping right along, pushing her stroller. We reached the main street. I was allowed to cross this one, but we were hardly over to the other side before I heard it again: ‘Ebi wants to push the stroller home all by herself’. Thank God we had already passed the .... We were getting close to the Institute for the Blind and once again I was allowed to cross the street and I thought maybe my daughter would give up on doing the driving but then I heard it again: ‘Ebi wants to push the stroller home’. Resigned, I looked up at the sky. The sky seemed to understand my problem, but recommended that I hurry. There’s a big bolt of lightning. For several seconds we stood on the Rotunda Bridge and it was like being in a big picture with the light. The thunder which followed right after proved not only that the storm had already reached us but it caused fear in everyone except for Eva. Papa’s patience was at an end and he ran as fast as he could to the deities of the storeroom [Penaten - Greek household goddesses and also a name of a diaper rash cream]. Eva was exhausted but just as determined as ever to do what she wanted to do and she pushed the stroller in front of her. I looked up at the sky again. I implored the lord of the heavens to wait just a few minutes. But the heavens had no more patience. I saw Sofien-Saal [concert hall around the corner from their apartment]. Should I wait out the storm under this roof or should I try to confront the weather for a few more steps? Eva interrupted my meditation with the phrase that I had already heard quite enough: ‘Ebi wants to push the stroller home all by herself’. It was 9 o’clock by now and we were sopping wet. The 2-year old little imp had gotten her way. I was amazed at the determination and single-mindedness that must have informed her subconscious and depressed because I feared that I had relinquished control of this little being. But fortunately it didn’t hurt anything.

Your letter came and now I am back on earth again. I picture you when you left and in years maybe my grandchildren will say ‘little girl wants to push the stroller home’ and I will see my memories in front of me. Harry, with his horribly exotic pronunciation and Eva in her little gray travel costume, the way she handed me a 50 pfennig coin through the window of the vehicle to bring me good luck. I have made sure to keep them safe.

It is time, I have to wake up now, because Papa is ready to go to the post office.”

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The route Ebi pushed the stroller (almost 1-1/2 miles). Click on image to enlarge.

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Young Harry in Vienna with parents, Helene’s nephew Paul, and Helene’s cousin Bertha from San Francisco

The Sky of Ravensbrück

Historian Corry Guttstadt (author of Turkey, the Jews, and the Holocaust) asked me: “How did your grandmother learn to write so well in English?” Her letters from Istanbul at the end of the war were beautifully written, almost poetic. I understood from my mother that Helene was extremely well read in several languages. The entire family loved words and wordplay. Her children both quickly became fluent in English, able to write cleverly in their adopted tongue. Harry easily learned other languages as well.

Recently I realized that some of the letters my grandmother sent from Vienna to relatives in San Francisco prior to 1942 were written in English. The letters were fairly well written, but nowhere near as fluent as the letters written in 1945-1946. I wondered whether it was a function of how stressed and sad my grandmother was while stuck in limbo in Vienna, having had to send her children away, hoping to come to San Francisco, but trapped by confusing laws about citizenship, heartless bureaucracy, and a lack of funds to be able to join her children. Her many letters over that period indicate how distraught she was.

After coming to the US in 1946, in addition to letters, my grandmother kept miscellaneous items. Harry had kept two of her binders, which included newspaper articles; poems, essays, and songs that she typed up in English, sometimes including the original German; and notes and memories of her own. Sometimes I had heard of the authors, sometimes not.

In one binder I found a poem she had typed up entitled “The Sky of Ravensbrück” by Gemma Glueck-La Guardia [sic], with a small newspaper clipping noting Gemma Gluck’s death in 1962.

This caused me to research who Gemma Gluck was. I discovered that she was a prominent person, although not because of her poetry. She was the sister of New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. The siblings were born in Italy. Fiorello came to the US for his education and remained. Gemma stayed in Europe, married a Hungarian Jew, and ended up at Ravensbrück during the war. Gemma had written a memoir which was republished in 2007 under the title “Fiorello’s Sister: Gemma LaGuardia Gluck’s Story”, Rochelle G. Saidel, ed.

Although I had seen the poem in my grandmother’s papers, I didn't read it until I discovered that I could not find poetry by Gemma Gluck. It then occurred to me that my grandmother might have known her. The last stanza in the poem bears this theory out, beginning: “This is for my Helen dear...”

Awhile later, I found a small page ripped from a notebook with the poem written in pencil, but not in my grandmother’s hand. I imagine that this is the original poem, given to my grandmother by Gemma before she left Ravensbrück.

The original, written by Gemma in Ravensbrück?

I bought Gluck’s memoir, wondering whether I would read about my grandmother in its pages. I did not, but I may have found the answer to Corry’s question - why my grandmother wrote so well in English. Chapter 5 is entitled “Underground English Classes” - apparently Gemma taught English to fellow prisoners who hoped to end up in English speaking countries after the war. I imagine that my grandmother was one of her students.

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