January 21

January 21

Today’s letter was written 8 days after my mother’s wedding. As I mentioned in my January 13 post, Harry was in the army and they had no idea whether they would see their parents or each other again.

Harry refers to a Ray Ventura song that was very popular in Europe (the actual title is Tout Va Très Bien Madame la Marquise”– also made into a movie in 1936). Helene mentions the same song in one of her letters from 1941. It seems to be an appropriate anthem for the times they lived in (and perhaps our own?) and for my family’s experience. Why complain about what you have no control over? Make the best of it and use humor to gloss over what otherwise would be painful. Be stoic.

Ray Ventura was a Sephardic/Turkish Jew living in France. Corry Guttstadt said that the band “Ray Ventura and His Collegians” included Turkish Jews and Armenian members. A French friend who is my age said that the song is still sung “when something goes wrong but nobody dares talk about it.” 

I am constantly in awe of my family’s fluency in multiple languages. In today’s letter Harry is eloquent, funny, clever, wistful, all in a second language. The quotes and songs are like a secret language between the siblings - no one else they knew had these same references.

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New Guinea

January 21, 1945

Dear Eva,

You probably remember the song “Tout Va Bien, Madame la Marquise” (the butler reporting that all’s well – only the dog has the rabies, somebody ran away with the maid, the plumbing busted and the house burned to the ground – tout va bien). That’s the way your casual announcement of your engagement struck me. In the five letters in which you mentioned “my future brother-in-law” you haven’t once told me his name or what he is like. Are you afraid that I’d cross you off my will or transfer my insurance to someone else? I ought to make the SPCA my beneficiary – they fight cruelty to animals, you practice cruelty.

On the other hand, you might not think it my business, which it isn’t, but I think it would be proper to let your only brother know whom you are marrying. One of the few traits we have in common, dear sister, is outward stoicism. (Xantippe with a heart of gold, ha!) Anyway, I want you to tell me all about the lucky man who is going to marry you; I want a whole history in your next letter. Can’t you see me: over here tossing around in my cot at night, worrying over the fate of you, beloved sister? (Sob.)

….

How do you stand in the draft? I haven’t any figures or proof to the contrary to challenge the army’s announcement as to the dire need for nurses, but I do know that nurses in some of the hospitals here are doing jobs that a casual or a limited serviceman could do just as well. For instance, the dental clinic in one of the hospitals employs a nurse who sits in the receiving office typing up dental forms and taking care of records. (That’s her job.) During several visits to the hospitals I watched the nurses work in the wards; they keep records of the patients, make daily rounds, stick thermometers in the patients’ mouths, and maybe give them a back rub occasionally; the dirty work is done by the ward boys. I don’t see why trained nurses are required unless they are needed for surgery. Of course, they may constitute good morale factors; but by Jupiter, I don’t want you to be a morale factor!

If you think you want to do your share of ending the war you can find enough opportunities to put your experiences as a nurse to use to prove your willingness to help. However, confine your patriotic efforts to the home front and stay in the states. I don’t want to see you being shipped somewhere overseas. I have dwelled on this subject several times before and you ought to have a picture of what is going on by now. You also ought to know how serious I am about this. Ugh, I have spoken.

Well, about-to-be-married sister, every good thing comes to an end, and so does my letter. Say hello to all.

Love,

Harry

P.S. Don’t fail to submit me to the “Histoire D’Amour” of Miss Lowell and Mr.??? I want to read all about it.

P.P.S. Ain’t I the one?

Photo of Harry taken in January 1945

Photo of Harry taken in January 1945


Harry talks about the possibility of my mother becoming an army nurse in not very enthusiastic terms. In other letters he discourages her from pursuing such a course, essentially ordering her to stay in the States so one of them would be able to do something to help their parents if the opportunity arose.

January 20

On Inauguration Day it seems appropriate to post a copy of my grandmother’s January 21, 1952 naturalization certificate. She was now a U.S. citizen with all the rights and responsibilities that go with it. Imagine what that must have felt like for her, even if she never felt quite “at home” here. From this date on, Helene had an absolute right to live somewhere. She could vote in elections and I imagine she took that responsibility very seriously. My mother certainly did and passed on that sense of duty to me.

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Helene was born in Bohemia, where laws and attitudes towards Jews were tepid at best, dangerous at worst. In her stories, she writes about several antisemitic incidents and memories. There was no escaping being the ugly “other.” After her 1920 marriage to Vitali in Vienna, she was considered a Turkish citizen by the Austrian government, even though she had never set foot in Turkey and did not speak the language. In 1945 when she was sent from Ravensbrück to Istanbul, the government would not recognize her Turkish citizenship. She was alone, stateless, homeless, penniless. She was not welcome anywhere.

I was interested to see that the certificate tells us that in 1952 it was the 176th year since American independence – I wonder if the current certificates include that.

Note Helene’s marital status – she lists herself as “Married”. At this point Helene still hoped that Vitali would arrive on her doorstep one day. Eva (and I think Harry) believed it too. It wasn’t until 1988 that my mother told me that she had finally given up hope of seeing her father again, since at that point Vitali would have been 100 years old and if he hadn’t shown up yet, he never would.

 

January 19

Throughout my journey to make sense of my family history, I have found myself creating stories to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. I have been fortunate to solve many of the mysteries, often discovering that the story I told myself was completely off base. That was the case with this newspaper article:

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Helene’s husband Vitali was an unusual man with an unusual profession. See the section on Metaphysics & Mysticism to learn more.

When I first saw this article, I assumed it was from the early to mid-1940s. According to IMDB, there was no film with the title mentioned in the article but there was a short film made in 1941 called Hands of Destiny in which he discussed the handprints of Mussolini, Hitler, Churchill and Roosevelt. He also wrote the screenplay for and appeared in a documentary of the same name in 1954.

The reason I decided it must have been an article from the 1940s is that I found 2 copies of the article in my documents — one in my grandmother’s papers and another in the box of Paul Zerzawy’s papers. Paul died in 1948. I knew that Helene had sent Paul documents related to Vitali’s profession in Vienna in order to show that he had a way to make a living if he and Helene were given visas to come to the U.S. before 1941.

In June 2020, I realized that in addition to online genealogy resources available through the public library, it’s possible to look at many old newspapers. I spent several hours one day trying to find the dates for a number of newspaper clippings I have in my archive. It turns out that this article appeared the San Francisco Chronicle on January 19, 1955. Not in the 1940s, not while Paul Zerzawy was still alive.

San Francisco Chronicle (online), 19 Jan 1955 19

San Francisco Chronicle (online), 19 Jan 1955 19

One question I may never be able to answer is whether Vitali and Helene knew Ranald. He had spent time in Vienna. Perhaps he even gave the lecture on metaphysics that Vitali attended which inspired him in his future pursuits? I have found that my grandmother kept articles and papers for more than mere interest or a reminder of times she remembered. When I first saw this article, I thought it had been kept to show Vitali if and when he arrived in the U.S. that it might be possible for him to make a living reading palms. The fact that two people in the family kept the same article makes me think that it was saved not just because of his profession, but because they knew him.  

Ranald had quite a life and was an excellent storyteller. When I read How to Know People by Their Hands (published in 1938), in which he discusses and the hands of famous people including those listed above, I wondered how much of his autobiography was true and how much was made up to form a mythology as a showcase for his work. Decide for yourself by reading the introduction of his book, available on the Internet Archive.

January 18

As mentioned earlier, I only recently began to get the letters translated that were written in old German handwriting. Today’s letter was translated on New Year’s Eve eve and seemed like an auspicious beginning for this year’s blog – a letter to Helene!

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When I began to research and understand my family papers, I attended a meeting of the SF Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society at the San Francisco Jewish Community Library. It was a monthly drop-in meeting entitled “Brainstorming With the Mavens.” I had no idea that such organizations and resources existed. The “mavens” are amateur and professional genealogists who volunteer their time to help people like me get started or overcome roadblocks on their genealogical research. One reason I attended was that I wanted to know whether I needed to find a Czech translator as well as a German one. The WWI letters looked so foreign that I could not believe they were written in German. I brought a copy of a letter and a maven immediately confirmed that it was in German. That in itself was interesting information since my grandmother’s family came from the Czech area of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Not uncommon for Bohemian Jews but I did not know it at the time.

Today’s letter was found in an envelope addressed to Paul’s brother Robert, so my archivist and I both assumed it was a letter written to him or to the Zerzawy family as a whole. To my astonishment, it was written to Helene, my grandmother and Paul’s aunt! I assume the letter arrived in the envelope it was found in because the envelope and paper look like the same stationery.

One reason it never occurred to us that the letter was written to Helene was that her name is completely unrecognizable (to me at least) in Sütterlin:

The name “Helene” written in Sütterlin

The name “Helene” written in Sütterlin

                                                                                    18 January 1918

Dearest Helene!

The dear k.u.k Fieldpost once again creates a lot of torturous suspense for me. But possibly it is not its fault and it is innocent and it is caused by the change of address.

Please for now learn the following facts:

I am healthy and I spent the day in the following manner which is usual manner during the truce/cease fire: partly military exercises, partly doing nothing. Very lazy. Once again I am commander of the unit in the company. The weather is very beautiful, clear and dry.

Your package with gloves and the letter with the rosette it seems has gone missing. It probably will be in Hungary or fallen into enemy hands.

I will write more when I am in a better mood, which will especially be the case when I will have heard from you and the other dear ones.

Yours with kisses

Paul

Translator Amei Papitto and I couldn’t figure out what a “rosette” was – something in the shape of a rose - based on images found on the internet, perhaps it was something out of fabric or rose-shaped cookies. I’d like to think that Helene sent him cookies for the holidays since she loved baking. The family’s wry sense of humor comes through when talking about the lost package.  

January 17

Surviving past pandemics, part 2

In the 1950s, Harry bought a typewriter for his mother and encouraged her to put her words to paper. Helene wrote a number of stories recalling her childhood in Bilin. She was a wonderful storyteller and apparently had an amazing memory – where it has been possible to corroborate details, I find she always ends up having given an accurate account of things.

My grandmother organized her stories into binders and in chapters, presumably hoping to create a book. She often used pseudonyms of her name (“Nehoc” for Cohen, “Lenow” for Löwy). Today’s story is in the chapter entitled “Child Without Childhood.”  It was found in the same binder as yesterday’s newspaper article about the 1889 flu pandemic.


First page of “Earliest childhood: Influenza Epidemic 1889”

First page of “Earliest childhood: Influenza Epidemic 1889”

Story by “Helene Nehoc” (translated and somewhat edited):

Earliest childhood: Influenza Epidemic 1889 /Helene Nehoc

The harsh weather, with snowstorms that never seem to end and howling winter storms could not have impressed this child somuch  that she would never forget such a day ever again. Little Helene Lenow didn’t find out until quite a bit later what really happened on that ugly day.

In the house, in which mostly music and laughter predominated, overnight there had arisen a frightening vacuum.

Neither her mother nor her big sisters were heard or seen. Not even Marischka, who was the long time house help, paid any attention to her. The child waited fearfully in her crib. Finally the girl came, took the little one out of her cage, and dressed her and brought her into the living room. There she told her that she had to be well-behaved and stay put, because it was icy cold and windy outside; in a few minutes she would bring breakfast in to her.  

She usually had breakfast in the comfortable kitchen and in Marischka’s company, who would make funny faces for her. She was annoyed at not being able to do so and she started to cry. Soon, Marischka came back, brought coffee, a piece of coffee cake, and a little plate of preserved fruit.

She put the tray — on which everything had been prepared bite sized — on a comfortable chair, and put a footstool in front of it and left after she had tied a bib on her beloved Helenku with her eyes all red from crying and she put her finger up to lips to show that she was to stay quiet, and then she left the room. 

Enene (which was her nickname) stayed sitting on her footstool without moving and listened carefully to even the quietest noise. Everyone who passed by the hallway went on tiptoe. Only the terrible storm was howling with a strength that did not seem to dissipate. Other than that there was a depressing silence. Even the very loud printing machines whose noise otherwise would be coming up from the basement to the top floor, were standing still, with the exception of the platen press which was used for express orders in a smaller format such as business cards, envelopes, or death announcements. On that strange day, the last of these were the only things that kept the machines going. The influence of the epidemic saw that neither man nor machine got even a short break. 

From a room in a faraway part of the house which was used for packing and storing manuals and handbooks, Enene heard the plaintive melody of the Moszkowski Serenade. Her brother, a music student, had gone back there to practice. He had no idea of the devastating catastrophe that had already happened.

The child, attracted by the magic of the music, woke up from her trance. With the instinct of a sleepwalker, she dragged the footstool over to the door in order to open it. She did not make any sound and followed the sound of the music. With her doll in her arms, she sat down on a little wooden box which was intended as a footrest for whoever was working in there. She paid attention to the melody of the music which she already knew. This time it wasn’t the power of the music that calmed her down, but the fact that it interrupted the silence which had brought her to such a panic. This fear was somewhat mollified by the presence of her big brother, but it never entirely left her. Fear of the unknown, a fear which later came back sporadically when Helene Lenow was an adult.

Before Max had finished his practice, there was a piercing scream from their parents’ bedroom. He put his violin down, grabbed his little audience member under his arm, and ran with her down the long, dark corridor which led to the living rooms. In the hallway, he put the little girl down and ran into the room where the scream had come from. Mrs Rosa Lenow had had a violent heart attack. The heavy smell of Hoffmann’s Drops (spirit of ether), which she always carried with a few pieces of sugar in her apron pocket, filled up the hall.

Enene stood on the same spot the whole time, just where her brother had left her. A miniature Lot’s wife. From there, she could see through the door that the storm had opened that someone was covered with a linen blanket and was laying on the bed. This door led to the room in which Mother’s brother Karl stayed when he was a houseguest. The hall was like an icy basement, but the child did not move from that spot.

Someone came out of the parents’ bedroom and carried the little girl into the living room, put her on the sofa, and covered her up with a blanket, kissed her and said: “Sleep child, sleep.” But the great excitement was really too much for her to fall asleep. This room seemed to be the only one that had been untouched by the mysterious events in the house.

Helene held her doll even more tightly, and was amazed that none of her big sisters came in to play with or read something to her. If someone had told her that with the exception of her, Max, and her eldest sister, everyone was very ill and that her other four sisters, following the advice of the doctor, had been brought up to an otherwise unoccupied room in the attic, she would probably have wanted to go up there to them.

After awhile, Ida dressed her for going out and carried her with her lips pressed tightly together, unable to speak even a word to friends. Enene was afraid she must have done something really bad, because Ida was really mad and didn’t want to talk to her anymore. A deep guilt made the poor little thing even sadder. She began to sob and put her arms around the neck of her big sister, who without saying a word, stroked her hair.

Enene knew nothing about who these people were, in whose house she was now supposed to live, and what they were called. Just as little did she knew why she had to leave home. Had she really been that bad? 

After a few weeks she was picked up by Ida, who wore a new black coat and a new black hat and gloves. She was very pale and looked even more serious than usual. Enene did not recognize her home.

Mother, Enene’s sisters, and Marischka all wore black clothes. Father and Max were wearing black bands on the arms of their dark suits. Everyone was unusually pale and had all gotten a lot thinner. 

Little Helene was the only one who wore a colorful dress and hardly missed Uncle Karl who had died. As a traveling salesman of an old Prague coffee and tea import company he had his own apartment in the capital city, but he took every opportunity — especially before he had a long sales trip — to spend a few days in the circle of his sister’s family, which he considered to be his own. Karl Kraus was one of the first victims of the influenza in this city. He died as a bachelor, 45 years old, and it had been his first and last illness. Helene Lenow could not know that her mother had lost the most ideal brother, her father his best friend and business advisor, her sister Ida her good genius. The rest of them would be mourning for the loss of the person they thought of as their second father.

Mrs Rosa Lenow recovered quickly from her heart attack — that is, she ignored her symptoms because she neither wanted to nor could afford the luxury of being ill. She was too important in both house and business, and she lived almost entirely on Hoffmann’s drops and strong black coffee, both with a lot of sugar.  

Adolf Lenow aged by 10 years in these weeks, and his four daughters who had been felled by the influenza won the battle of death thanks to the superhuman care and concern of the parents, of the two siblings Ida and Max, and the untiring care provided by the family doctor. But death did not give up so easily. Two of them succumbed at a later point to consequences of this evil plague.

Helene Lenow knew nothing about any of that. In her young brain, she only heard the T’ling, t’ling, of the platen printing press, which was woven together with the sad melody of the Moszkowski Serenade, which became a leitmotif — that creepy symphony of ghosts and spirits, to which the howling storm had lent its especially impressive voice.

***

The memories of the influenza epidemic were replaced with later even more horrifying catastrophes — beginning with the outbreak of war in 1914 and ending with the epidemic which was then known as the Spanish flu — even by the families that were affected by it, these memories were driven away, or at least the images had became much paler over time. The narrator managed to pay her tribute to the “Spanish flu” with double pneumonia, but without it happening to her that in her feverish delirium she was scared by the Moszkowski Serenade. However, during the second world war, when she disappeared behind the concentration camp walls which were covered with barbed wire, this sentimental melody, which was mixed with the T’ling T’ling, T’long of the platen printing press which in the meantime had become long since obsolete and had been piled on an iron scrap heap and with that the horrible feeling of being completely left alone, this time in a large family of different peoples who were speaking different languages.

This music piece is for many listeners a very nice da capo, but for the author of her earliest childhood memories, it is a piece of music from Hades, which she escaped from when she had already given up all hope.

January 16

Surviving past pandemics, part 1

I don’t have any documents from January 16 or 17, so for the next two days I am dipping into undated, yet unbelievably timely, materials.

In addition to letters and official documents, my grandmother kept a few binders which contained newspaper articles, quotations, and other ephemera. As I became familiar with the contents of the archive, I realized that many of these items were kept for very personal reasons and sometimes were related to each other.

This article from an unknown German language newspaper was in one of the binders. It was likely written in the spring of 1957:

From an unknown newspaper, probably published in 1957

From an unknown newspaper, probably published in 1957

Is the Asian Flu Seventy Years Old?

The Asian flu is not at all so new and overwhelming/irresistible as one has thought until now. This is the claim of the Dutch Professor Mulder. In his opinion the old people who were affected by the flu epidemic in the year 1889 were immune to the virus. This hypothesis will now be tested. Not that it would do very much good to many people at this point, because there will probably not be so many veterans of the flu from that time. But the proof that the mutations of the influenza virus in cycles of 60 years repeat themselves could lead to some interesting discoveries in our fight against this disease.


The 1957 flu pandemic killed more than 1 million people worldwide, as did the one in 1889.

For a few years, Roslyn and I had been meeting regularly to translate my family’s papers. Like everything, these in-person meetings stopped in March 2020. We restarted our translation sessions to Zoom in June after realizing it would be a long time before we’d again be able to get together. When Roslyn translated this article in August 2020, it was eerie and humbling. Here we were, trapped in our own homes, reading about previous pandemics.

Imagine my grandmother’s life. She was born in 1886, just in time for the 1889 pandemic. In the midst of wartime in 1918, yet another pandemic. And then, a world away in San Francisco in 1957, another one. Today it is easy for many of us to take good health and safety for granted. My grandmother knew that it all could disappear in an instant. We are learning that lesson ourselves.

After Roslyn translated this article, I first thought that Helene had kept it as an interesting curiosity. Here was a professor positing that people who had been exposed to the 1889 flu would probably be immune to the 1957. But there would be so few people still alive almost 70 years later, that his theory couldn’t be tested. In April 1957, my grandmother was just over 70 years old – she must have felt like a dinosaur.

It turned out that my grandmother kept this article for another reason – more on that tomorrow…


January 15

Today we hear again from soldier Paul Zerzawy:

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January 15, 1918

My dear ones!

I have been ordered back to my old company and my address is therefore Ldst TR9/7, Feldcomp. Feldpost 211. If Käthl is not in Brüx anymore, because your last report from 2nd January does not mention it, in that case please greet her from me. I am dying to see the next post.

I am not able to write long letters when I receive yours; you will understand and forgive me, won’t you?

Paul

Since the letter doesn’t have much new to tell us, I wanted to muse a bit on the art of letter writing. First off, isn’t it amazing to see this letter that is over 100 years old? Despite a few stains, it’s in great condition. Many of the others from that time are far more pristine, while this shows some wear and tear. Over the years, this letter traveled from somewhere in Romania to Bohemia to Vienna and Prague and ultimately settled in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I am old enough to have written a lot of letters. I lived abroad at a time when making a phone call wasn’t easy or cheap and it could take weeks to receive a reply to a letter. Every day I would wait eagerly for the mail to arrive, hoping to hear from friends and family at home. I would read each letter several times, hungrily devouring each and every word in order to feel connected to those I missed, trying to hear their voices in the words on the page. Sometimes the replies to my letters seemed disconnected because they were responding to words and feelings I had expressed weeks earlier and subsequently forgot.

People of my grandmother’s generation had learned how to stay in touch and informed. They often kept copies of their own letters so they would know whether their questions had been answered. Keep in mind that keeping a copy wasn’t such an easy thing at that time. Fortunately there was carbon paper (I just checked – carbon paper was patented in 1806). I am grateful for its invention because a number of letters in my archive were copies of letters sent from Paul Zerzawy to Helene while they were trying to bring Helene and Vitali to America in 1940-41. As we’ve seen, during times of censorship, they often numbered their letters so they would know whether the mail was getting through.

In addition to keeping copies of letters, they shared these precious missives with each other, often enclosing letters from relatives with letters of their own – probably another reason my archive is so rich. We will see at a future date an example of postcards where the picture on the card was a photo of the sender – a great way of keeping in touch while giving a valuable keepsake to the recipient.

I appreciate the convenience and immediacy of email and texting and such, but miss the joy of eagerly checking the mail each day. Without all this correspondence, I would not know the story of my relatives or have such a clear sense of their personalities and the world they lived in.   

January 14

Trying to come to America; A mystery solved!!!!


By January 1946, Helene had been in Istanbul for 9 months. She had only recently been receiving letters from her family and had been having a rough time of it alone in a new place, essentially still a prisoner. I believe Yomtov Kohen was a relative of Vitali’s, perhaps a cousin? I have a packet of his correspondence working to help my grandmother join her children in America.

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 Dear Sir,

Referring to your letter of the 10th, I inform you that on the 9th I sent a telegram to the daughter of Mrs Helene Cohen which said: 

“EVA GOLDSMITH, 2379 29th Avenue, San Francisco

 PLEASE PAY IN MY PASSAGE TO HIAS 425 LAFAYETTE ST NEW YORK WHO SHOULD INFORM REPRESENTATIVE ISTANBUL

            HELENE COHEN” 

I hope that Mrs Eva Goldsmith will be able to arrange with the Jewish-American emigration office “HIAS” who will send us the necessary instructions to pay for Mrs Cohen’s passage. As soon as these instructions arrive, we will look for a place on a boat for America.

Please accept, sir, my best regards.


 According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Simon Brod (1893-1962) was “a Jewish businessman from Istanbul, who during World War II helped to rescue an untold number of Jewish refugees who reached Turkey. Brod ran a successful textile importing firm in Istanbul together with his brother Max. During World War II he was employed by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency for Palestine to assist in the rescue of European Jewish refugees who, in one way or another, had been able to reach Turkey.”

HIAS is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

Despite all the hardships and cruelty my grandmother experienced, it is heartening to find how many distant relatives and complete strangers worked hard to help my grandmother reach her children.

As I was preparing this post, I decided to look in the JDC archives again for letters from Simon Brod related to my grandmother’s situation. I know I’d seen his name in earlier searches. Although I didn’t find anything today, I stumbled on a section of the archive related to the passengers on the SS Drottingholm who arrived in Istanbul in April 1945. Over the past year or so I have spent dozens of hours poring through this archive because things aren’t easily searchable. It definitely has the feeling at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie – the treasure exists and is safe, but good luck to you to ever find it! 

One of the reasons I felt I was going down a useless rabbit hole today is that the 148 documents in this particular file were all dated 2/24/1945, well before Helene set foot on the ship or arrived in Istanbul. And yet, there it was! The 5th document entitled “Untitled Typewritten Document” on the 11th page of 15 pages. I do not have permission from JDC to publish the contents of the document but here is a screenshot of my “discovery”.

Screenshot of location in the JDC Archives

Screenshot of location in the JDC Archives


The declaration has answers to 18 questions, some of them Yes-No. Unfortunately I don’t have a copy of the original questionnaire (yet? more searching to be done!). For the past six months, I have been trying to figure out when Helene’s parents had died. I had a few clues and made some assumptions, but had nothing definite. As I mentioned in the January 6 post, finding an earlier date for the end of publication for the Biela-Zeitung implied that Adolf died in or before 1904. Today’s document, despite misspellings and typos of names (Helene Koehn for example), tells us that her father died in 1903 and her mother in 1922. I had looked through Jewish burial records and come up empty-handed for Adolf. I found several possible dates for people with Helene’s mother’s name, but not enough other information to identify the plot as the correct one. Here in an obscure document that probably hasn’t been seen by anyone in decades, I have my answer. From my grandmother’s stories, I had the sense that her father had died soon after 1902, but I had no documentation. I didn’t know about her mother either. I have letters from Paul Z to his grandmother in 1918 so I knew she was still alive at that time, but my mother had no memory of her and thought she had died sometime between 1920-1922. She was right!

As you can see, even across the decades it is possible to discover clues and answers to questions. After my mother and Harry died, I regretted all the family knowledge and lore that had been lost. Yet, through official documentation and my grandmother’s words, every day I have a richer sense of their lives, joys, and struggles.

January 13

A day of celebrations

We take a brief respite from tales of war and deprivation to mark some happy occasions.

Harry was born on January 13, 1924.

Helene’s memories of life in Vienna were happy ones, recalling being with family and celebrating important occasions like birthdays and holidays. This is something passed down to my generation and beyond. Harry’s wife coined a term for these gatherings – “Furry events”, FUR standing for Family Unification Ritual – the first such named event came with a stuffed animal for each family member. Gifts were usually creative, silly, fun, and inexpensive. Often wrapped in deceptive ways.

Here is his mother’s note on his 40th birthday (clearly a paraphrase): 

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January 13, 1968.

Where shall I turn,
When the sorrow and grief weigh upon me?
To whom can I express my delight
When my heart is beating faster?
To you, to you my Harry,
I come in sorrow & joy.
You share my joys,
And you heal every pain.

Your mother.

German Mass - Franz Schubert.


Here is Harry wearing a hat my mother brought him back from Russia for his 60th birthday:

On Harry’s birthday in 1984

On Harry’s birthday in 1984


My parents got married on January 13 - perhaps they chose the same day as Harry’s birthday because it was a Saturday and they were not working that day. They wed in 1945 while Harry was a soldier in the South Pacific and her parents were interned in the camps. I’ve always wondered whether she would have married so early had she not felt so alone in the world.

January 13, 1945

January 13, 1945

One of the curious coincidences that occurred recently is that last week I needed a blank notebook. Harry always kept oodles of blank paper and after he died I discovered a stack of blank notebooks. I thought I had used them all up but a few days ago I pulled out a notebook and on the first page in Harry’s handwriting it said “Happy Birthday!” along with a cryptic message that would have gone with whatever eccentric gift he was giving that year. I felt that he was making sure I wouldn’t forget his birthday this year. Happy Birthday, Harry!

January 12

Today is another card from POW Erich Zerzawy.

LT.0058.1918 (1.2) front.JPG
LT.0058.1918 (2.2) back.JPG

12/I.18.

[Printed on card: Do not write between the lines!]

My dear ones! By way of exception, I can write to you again. There is a transport leaving for neutral countries. All of us here hope to follow soon — not to other countries, but just to go home, which nobody will regret. What do you think? You agree, don’t you? Yes, yes, if only it were happening right now already, your Erich would be so happy knowing that he would be able to hug and kiss all of you for real, the way he does now in spirit.

A few thoughts on the card itself – this one has no censorship stamp, and despite the admonition against writing between the lines, he has done so. As he mentions in the card, he has found a way to send this card through other means.

After reading a recent post about Erich, historian Robert W. Cherny, author of Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017), mentioned that “by early 1917, things were falling apart in Russia.  By mid-1918, the country was in civil war.  The army had been dissolved by the Bolsheviks, so who knows what may have happened to the POW camps?” 

This comment led me to do a bit more research and I stumbled onto the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, where I discovered a card with information about Erich which contradicts Paul Zerzawy’s family tree. Since this card was sent to Paul Zerzawy at some point when he was in Vienna, it corroborates my assumption that the year of death on the tree was a typo rather than a lack of knowledge. Especially since the family had letters from Erich dated in 1918. This document says that he fled from Beresowka on July 15, 1918. Presumably the statement on the family tree that he was fleeing for the Chinese border when he died was anecdotal evidence from someone who knew him.

From the International Committee of the Red Cross Archives

From the International Committee of the Red Cross Archives

Below is a map to show where Erich began and ended his life. It shows where he was born in Bilin, where he was apparently captured in Luck/Lutsk, and where he died in Siberia.

Erich Z map.png

 

January 9

I have no documents with today’s date, so I am posting a letter from January 10 since I have two from that date. Here is another letter from Paul to his brother written just a few days after my recent post.

January 10, 1918

Dear Robert!

I have your letter with precious comments on the new year. …

Thank God today my course is finished. The crowned fire-emitting dragon on my lapel which now also designates me outward as a machinist has been earned with much hardship. His excellency divisionnaire raced here personally by car to undertake our final exam. He smiled with satisfaction and the six-week long torture had reached its end. On the 13th or 14th I will return to the rolls of the Regiment Landsturm 9 where my further fate will be decided.

You are doing nothing and hope the same of me? Well, thank you.…

The numeration of the letters, which caused me difficulties because of my weak memory of numbers, I will therefore give up, because the letters according to our experience arrive punctually and uncensored. …

Are you quite healthy? And do you learn anything besides the leçons with Mimi? Also Institutiones Civilis Roman and similar things? Or are you doing things as your brother Paul did in his time? How is your painting going? …

I am doing well despite snow and busy north winds coming from Sarmatishen Valley/Lowland [perhaps Sarmatia? A province of the Roman Empire including Romania]. To do ice skating, I lack the skates. To do bicycling, I lack the flatlands. And to do both, I am lacking the time….

Your loyal brother,

Paul


As I’ve mentioned, it’s amazing all the information you can find online. As I was preparing this post, I went down the rabbit hole of trying to find a World War I Austrian military insignia showing a dragon to figure out whether a machinist was someone who dealt with machines or machine guns. I had no luck but that sent me looking for military records. I know they’re out there but don’t know if they’re available via the internet. No luck today. But it led me back to Ancestry.com where I found the same US records about Paul Z that I’d never seen before: today I did something recommended at a genealogy workshop – don’t only look at the document in the database, but look at those documents nearby. Voilà, more information I’d never seen before! Those of you who have done genealogy research know the excitement and fun such discoveries are – not to mention how quickly the day disappears.

Some thoughts on today’s letter:

Today I looked up the definition of “Landsturm”. Apparently the soldiers in these units were usually older (but not Paul) and it sounds like they essentially were reserves, generally assigned to fortresses and towns rather than going into combat.

Paul talks about no longer needing to number the letters they write to each other because they don’t seem to be censored (unlike his brother Erich’s letter which we saw yesterday). I have a wealth of censored correspondence – first from World War I and then my grandmother’s letters while she was in Vienna in World War II. Strange to think that this would have been the “normal” state of affairs for my family as they continued their copious correspondence. There are echoes across the years. They learned how to communicate and how to determine whether mail was received. In today’s letter, Paul apologizes for not being able to keep track of numbering his correspondence. More than 20 years later, Helene asks him and her children to number their letters so she will know if she is receiving all of the mail. Apparently, Paul’s “weak memory” did not improve over the decades.

I am enjoying getting to know Paul – his sense of humor, his self-described laziness, his desire to assure his family that he is fine despite whatever hardships come his way.

Finally, Paul talks about the weather. I have Paul’s photo album filled with WW I army photos, including the one below. I’m cold just looking at it.


Soldiers in snow.jpeg

 

January 7

January 7, 1948

In April 2017, I attended a genealogy workshop at my local public library. By the end of the session, I had learned to maneuver through the library edition of Ancestry.com and found many documents, including the one below.

I was astounded by how quickly and easily I could learn a great deal about my family. As mentioned yesterday, it is worth looking often and in different ways to see if anything new has turned up. There are some documents I found that day in April that I have never stumbled upon again and I continue to find new ones.

Declaration of Intention to become a US citizen

Declaration of Intention to become a US citizen

Helene’s “Declaration of Intention” includes a wealth of information:

-Her address in San Francisco
-Her birthplace
-Her vital statistics
-Her husband’s name, birthdate, and date and place of their marriage
-Her children
-Her last place of residence
-The name of the ship and where it left from – in this case, the SS Vulcania from Alexandria Egypt
-Date of arrival in the US

It’s wonderful to get all of this information in a single document. It has helped me in other searches. It also is consistent with information my grandmother wrote in other letters and paperwork. One of the things that genealogists emphasize is the need to corroborate family stories and lore with official documentation. There are times when I’ve wondered whether my grandmother’s memories might have been faulty, as our memories often are. However, I continue to find articles and paperwork that prove that Helene’s memory was excellent and that she was reporting the truth as she remembered it. This gives me confidence at the times when I don’t have something official, that what she has written is likely true.

This journey has made me feel even closer to my grandmother, not simply because we share the same name. The timing of my research has been especially poignant. A few years ago as we began translating my grandmother’s letters during the war years, I realized that I was her age when she was writing them and then sent to Ravensbrück. Currently I am the same age that Helene was when she filled out this document. Thanks to her efforts to provide a better life for her children, what she went through is completely foreign to my own experience.

Aside: if you are curious about your own family history and have always wanted to try Ancestry.com and similar services, now is the perfect time to do so. It used to be that you could only access these services by paying or by researching in person in your public library. Since libraries have been closed, these companies and the libraries themselves have made many services available from the comfort of your own home. All you need is a library card!

January 5

                                                                                    5 January 1918

My dear ones!

Since an answer to my letter is not here, in the meantime I am just sending you this card to tell you that I am well. The change of name of the military unit … has no significance for me because the course ends between the 18th and 20th. I will then return to my company. From there I will be deployed.

Write to me as soon as possible so that it will still reach me here and only to the included address.

With kind greetings and kisses,

Your Paul


This letter was written just a day after the one posted yesterday. One striking thing about these letters is how quickly and easily mail seemed to travel between soldiers and their families – it was as if they were having an ongoing conversation. Almost like email! It was much different for my grandmother 30 years later when the mail had become completely unreliable. Paul has been training to be a machinist.

Photo of soldier Paul Zerzawy taken in January 1919

Photo of soldier Paul Zerzawy taken in January 1919

January 3

My grandmother was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp in November 1943. In late March 1945 she was part of a prisoner trade based on the fact that she was considered a Turkish citizen because of her marriage. She arrived by ship to Istanbul in April 1945 and was given housing by a Jewish relief organization called the American Jewish Joint Distribution committee (the Joint for short), now known as JDC, while she attempted to reach her relatives and get money to join her children in the United States.

This was another time of limbo for my grandmother. After years of separation from her children in Vienna, and then two years separated from her husband who was sent to a different camp, here she was in Istanbul where she knew no one and was not allowed to leave the hotel she was housed in. Her husband’s relatives were able to visit her, but she had no freedom. She was moved from place to place as the Joint tried to save money on housing, so sometimes the relatives didn’t know where she was. In Vienna she was considered Turkish, but Turkey didn’t recognize her as such. So now, with only the clothes on her back, she was alone in a place where she didn’t speak the language, with no means or freedom to leave. A prisoner once again. Stateless, with no passport to be able to travel anywhere. It took her awhile to figure out how to communicate with her children – the only address she remembered for Eva was that of the nursing school she had been attending in 1942. Eva had graduated, gotten married, and moved several times by the time my grandmother wrote to her school address in 1945. Unfortunately too, my mother’s handwriting was not very legible so even when Helene had an address for Eva, she couldn’t read it!

One thing I’ve come to understand from my grandmother’s papers is that she was a very sensitive and emotional person – wonderful traits, but very difficult when faced with the circumstances of her life. She became anxious and nervous, sometimes fixating on thoughts. One of the hardest things for my grandmother was being separated from her husband and having no idea of his whereabouts – in some ways she regretted leaving Ravensbrück because at least there had been some communication between them.

January 3, 1946 – from a translated letter to her nephew Robert who lived in London

“ I am so happy that you have not completely forgotten me and so sad that my letters to Eva were returned as undeliverable. …

I think day and night of Vitali and thank you … for your investigation, God give me my Vitali again! I am here with nobody to share my burden! …
What is up with Harry, I know he was in the Pacific? Can you think of my disposition? Vitali missing, knowing nothing about Harry…. For months I knew that Everl was married, but did not know her husband’s name.

Robert, I have suffered more here mentally than in the camp. There I heard every 4 weeks form Vitali and I thought all of you were safe.

As soon as I know on which ship I will leave, I will give you the news, and urge you to tell all the children and relatives for my sake.
I thank you for your love…. Sometimes I have such stupid thoughts.
Help me to find Vitali”

 

Helene in Istanbul - 1945 or 1946

Helene in Istanbul - 1945 or 1946

January 2

In 1939, my grandmother and grandfather sent their children to live in safety with cousins in San Francisco. They had planned to follow their children as soon as possible, but were thwarted at every turn. For about 1-1/2 years, my grandmother wrote letters to her children every few days. She wrote more than 130 letters – I have over 100 of them. By the second half of 1941, there were far fewer letters; after Pearl Harbor, there were none.

My grandmother numbered each letter to keep track of whether all of her letters arrived. She encouraged her children to do the same so she would know whether they she was not receiving mail or if they were not such prolific correspondents.

During these days of Covid-19, it is easy to imagine the difficulty of finding something to write about when each day is much the same as the last. Helene didn’t want to worry her children about her fears and the true state of the world, so she often resorted to relating old stories and word games, making puns and literary and musical references, and generally doing word play. She didn’t receive letters very often (or at least as often as she would have liked) and many times the letters arrived months after they’d been written so she didn’t feel like she knew what was happening in her children’s lives. On top of everything else, she had to worry about censors who read every letter and might not send one if it contained something they disliked. I imagine they disliked most things.

Here is a translated excerpt from her letter of January 2, 1940:

“This letter … should bring you my greetings for the new year. My wishes for you are the ones I always have. The old year just wouldn’t go away. It was a bad year and did bad things to us.”

Clearly, Helene felt much the same about 1939 as we do about 2020! And with good reason.

She continues:

“Today I was very sure we would get some mail and I looked in my change purse for money to give the mailman but nothing came – no letter, no package, nothing. So I’m writing you whatever sense or nonsense comes to mind. I’m happy I have nothing to report.….

There’s no sense in asking questions. I must be patient until normal postal traffic can be reinstated. I don’t know how much more patience I have to offer. I am still with you in my thoughts – that has not changed. In my fantasies and dreams at least you are present to me. I go with you everywhere and am happy to know you are there. I know there will come a day that this separation will have been made up to us….”

During the rise of Hitler, Jews and others who were persecuted couldn’t imagine that things would keep getting worse. They had lived sometimes for generations in their country or city and felt like proud citizens. With each freedom lost, they learned to adapt to each new restriction and constriction. Helene writes as if some level of normalcy and “normal postal traffic” can resume. But of course nothing would ever be normal again.

Finally:

“P.S. Wishing Harry everything good possible for his birthday. And on the 14th of January I’ll wish Eva the same so that she’ll get it in time.”

One amazing thing throughout my grandmother’s ordeal – she never lost her wry sense of humor. The P.S. in this letter is a good example. Harry’s birthday was January 13 so she is saying she’ll be sure to get her card to Eva out right away, even though her birthday isn’t until May. Harry and Eva shared their mother’s sense of humor – always finding something amusing to say even during the darkest times. A good way to survive and maintain sanity when life continuously throws obstacles in one’s way.