January 18, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Today Aunt Tillie called for me at school with a horse and carriage and two of her friends with her and we drove to the park. I don’t like one of the ladies. She always looks as if she sees all the way to my underwear. Her name is Pauline and I have to call her Aunt Pauline. I have to call all ladies “Aunt” and gentlemen “Uncle.” Well, we went to a very pretty restaurant full of mirrors, and pink velvet chairs and waiters instead of waitresses, not the same restaurant that Grandmother takes me to. The ladies didn’t have coffee and toast as Grandmother always does; they had something yellow to drink served in little glasses and it made them so much nicer than they usually are, although Aunt Pauline did jump on me about biting my nails. She made a big fuss saying, “Hilda, a big girl like you biting your nails! Ladies don’t bite their nails.” I told her ladies don’t smoke. Aunt Pauline is the only lady I know who does and everyone laughed. Aunt Tillie ordered a lemonade for me and it matched their yellow drinks. I was glad that the color matched and I did not have to drink milk and it looked grown-up and everyone would think that I was. When I got home, I started to tell Grandmother about the restaurant and the pink chairs and mirrors but as I started to, Aunt Tillie pinched my arm hard and she started talking about something else and I didn’t have a chance to say more.

By 1912, automobiles and horse and carriages were sharing the road. I found a photo online taken in Golden Gate Park in 1908. We can pretend that the carriage’s occupants are Hilda, Tillie and her friends. It seems fitting given my family’s love of literature (and particularly Goethe) that they are posing in front of a stature of Goethe and Schiller!

Note to blog subscribers: Hilda did not write in her diary on January 19, so there will be no message tomorrow.

January 17, 1912

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I forgot to say that I sang for Uncle Julius and Aunt Josie. I have a beautiful new song book that my Grandparents in Germany sent to me. It is full of pictures. The pictures are on top of the songs and up and down the sides of the pages. They are of little boys and girls playing in the meadows and woods, and of tiny churches in the snow with lights shining in the windows. The picture I love most of all is the one of God. He is sitting on top of a cloud and on top of a song called “Weißt Du wie viel Sternlein stehen.” He has a long, red robe, and a long, white beard, and sweet blue eyes, and He looks kind, as if He loves everybody. The song says that he does too. The last line says “Kennt auch dich und hat dich lieb.” That means: “He knows you too and loves you.” Anyhow, I sang that song, but I guess not too well, because when I finished it, Aunt Josie asked me to play something on the piano and I played “Fur Elise.” Then Grandmother said that I might go to bed and Alma took me upstairs. I think the family was upset with me and at times that is a great comfort, because I can escape my room and play or write my thoughts in my diary.

Hilda says the book was sent from her grandparents in Germany, which I couldn’t understand — all of her grandparents were in the United States. However, Helene’s father in Bohemia was Hilda’s grandfather’s brother. When I looked up the lullaby Hilda mentions, it sounded familiar. It turns out that my grandmother Helene sent the book, which Hilda mentions in a letter she wrote to Helene in 1946 who was in Istanbul waiting to come to America. By the time Hilda was born, Helene’s father had died, but we see that she and her mother kept up the connection with his American relatives, sending letters and gifts. What an unexpected treat to find connections to my grandmother in Hilda’s diary!

January 16, 1912

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Uncle Julius and Aunt Josie are coming to dinner tonight, and I am going to be allowed to sit at the table in the dining room. Only this time if Uncle Julius brings me candy in a bag, I mustn’t ask him why he doesn’t bring it to me in a box like other people. Uncle Julius isn’t bad, and he looks like a walrus with his huge mustache. Aunt Josie brings me wonderful books, like “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” Tonight, I don’t think she will bring me any, because two days ago she brought me “The Castle of Grumpy Grouch.”

Uncle Julius didn’t bring me any candy and Aunt Josie didn’t bring me a book, but they did bring Grandmother a bouquet of flowers. Grandmother doesn’t like Aunt Josie, and says she is a snob, but I would rather have a snob who brings me books than someone who isn’t a snob who brings stockings. I guess I behaved all right. No one told me I didn’t.

Looking at family history can be very confusing because names are repeated so often in generations. I could not figure out who “Uncle” Julius was since I could see no one on the family tree with that name. Hilda’s Aunt Tillie would eventually marry a man named Julius Zentner in 1930, when she was almost 50 years old. His first wife died in 1929 and was named Josie. The Levy and Zentner families were business partners in a produce firm and their social and business lives were probably quite intertwined. According to Julius’s obituary, the families had rival businesses until after the 1906 earthquake when they decided to join forces to survive. I included an excerpt from his obituary in an earlier post.

January 15, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Books are the nicest present of all! One of my Birthday books is called, “The Castle of Grumpy Grouch.” It is about a little girl who is always losing her temper, and sometimes she can’t find it, and then has to go out into the woods to look for it. The woods are very scary, especially at night.

“The Castle of Grumpy Grouch” was written by Mary Dickerson Donahey (aka Mary Augusta Dickerson) and was first published in 1907. The fairy tale was reissued in 1948 and reviewed by Ellen Lewis Buell in the New York Times on June 20: “…this tale combines make-believe and moral in the true Victorian manner. The peppery Princess Floria believed that if she lost her temper altogether she would be a much nicer person….So she started out to reclaim her disposition from the Castle of Sulks where the Giant Grumpy Grouch kept lost tempers in durance vile.”

January 14, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

This is Sunday. This morning I went to Sunday School, and this afternoon Grandmother, Grandfather, and I called on Tante Esther. It was very hard, and it made me hate her more, and I just couldn’t say the things that Grandmother told me to say. I couldn’t say I was wrong. Besides, they didn’t know that I listened behind the door this morning and heard Grandfather say, “The child is not really wrong, stockings are not really a present for a child to receive.” So, I just said that I was sorry that I yelled and threw the stockings back at her, and she kissed me and said that she loved me so, so then, I said, “Please don’t bring me any more stockings for a present.” I think that Grandmother was beginning to be mad at me, all over again, but then the tea things came, and she forgot to be.

January 13, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I didn’t have a real birthday party yesterday, just relations. Tante Esther came, and she brought me two pair of stockings and I threw them at her. I said that stockings were no present, that my grandmother buys me stockings. I yelled and stamped my feet. I am forbidden to stamp my feet. Alma says that only horses do that. I am forbidden to yell too, except when I am alone in my room. Alma said it is bad manners to yell in public. It is also bad manners to cry in public. It is bad manners to do anything in public. Alma says that I must learn that, and to learn to accept a gift even if you don’t like it. Even if you don’t like it, you have to say that you do. I asked if that wasn’t lying, but Alma said no, it was politeness. I don’t see the difference.

January 12, 1912

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

From Hilda’s diary on her 8th birthday:

I hate my birthday. I wish I were never born. Grandmother wishes it too. She says that I killed my mother. How could I kill my mother? I didn’t even know my mother. Grandmother is always telling me I should be grateful to her for bringing me to her house and forgiving me for killing my mother, and for not putting me into an orphan asylum. I know the Orphan Asylum; we go past it sometimes on the streetcar. It is a big gray house. Sometimes the children are playing in the yard, and they are gray too. Their dresses are grey and they are all the same, and the little girls have no hair ribbons. I love hair ribbons. Grandmother says that if it wasn’t for her, that is where I would be. Or else, my father would get married again and I would have a very cruel stepmother who would beat me, and starve me, and make me do all the hard work, and only buy pretty clothes for just her own children, like the one in Cinderella. She says that as long as she lives, that I must remember how good she was to me, and be grateful to her.

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Growing up, the names Tillie and Hilda meant little to me. I knew they were important to my mother’s and uncle’s escape from Austria. Tillie’s name was always mentioned with an aura of awe and fear – she was a force to be reckoned with. Hilda’s diary sheds a light on some of these family dynamics – or helps me imagine them.

Poor little Hilda was raised by her strict grandparents and aunt, never knew her mother and was made to feel responsible for her death. No wonder she felt such kindness and kinship for her second cousins Robert and Paul Zerzawy, who lost both their mother and step-mother while young boys.

When Eva and Harry left their parents behind in Vienna and came to the U.S., Harry lived with Hilda and Nathan Firestone. Later in life, Harry expressed regret that he hadn’t properly appreciated their hospitality – he felt that he was being “given” to the Firestones to be the child they never had. He resented the idea of these surrogate parents, knowing that his own parents were alive in Vienna and hopefully coming soon to San Francisco. As I imagine the hospitality through Hilda’s eyes, she was trying to provide a warm and welcoming home for a boy who was missing his mother, because she knew how hard it was to be in that situation.

January 11, 1912

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

Today is Aunt Tillie’s birthday, and tomorrow is mine. I don’t know exactly how old Aunt Tillie is. When I ask her, she says that it isn’t polite to ask people how old they are, so then I said that all her friends must be very impolite because everyone who comes to see us always asks me how old I am. She said it is quite polite to ask children, and I asked what is the difference. She just said, “Because it is.” That’s just the same answer that Grandmother gives to me.

I made Aunt Tillie a beautiful pen wiper for her birthday, and it is shaped like a pig. Alma taught me how to embroider beautiful blue eyes on him. This afternoon, Aunt Tillie is going to have her birthday party. Lots of ladies are coming to play bridge. I love Aunt Tillie’s parties because I don’t have to go to them. I can stay upstairs, and try on all the ladies’ clothes that are piled up on my bed, and when they have finished their tea, I can go downstairs and finish all the little sandwiches and cakes that are left over.

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Hilda’s aunt Tillie was born in 1882 and would have been 30 years old in 1912. As I read about Hilda’s family in San Francisco, I find myself thinking about my grandmother Helene and her family in Europe at the same period. Helene was 25 years old, single, and living in Vienna. She often visited her orphaned Zerzawy nephews and nieces in Bohemia who were schoolchildren with no thought of the war to come. Helene wrote regularly to her cousins in San Francisco, sometimes sending gifts to their children.

At a time when people wrote with fountain pens, pen wipers were useful tools, and came in a variety of materials. Helene may already have been working at the stationery shop in Vienna in 1912 — the shop window advertised that they repaired fountain pens, so undoubtedly she sold pen wipers too.

Photo of Helene (and perhaps Harry) in front of her stationery shop in Vienna from the early 1930s. Awning sign shows picture of a fountain pen and the words “Repairs Immediately”

In my family papers, several letters mentioned Tillie’s and Hilda’s birthdays, including a letter from Harry asking his sister to purchase flowers in 1944.

January 10, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

Later yesterday, Suzanne wrote the name down for me, and then she told me a story too. The name of the ballet is “S c h e h e r a z a d e.” Scheherazade was an oriental princess who told fairy tales to the Sultan every night for a thousand and one nights. I guess she did it so he wouldn’t be afraid of the men on the wall, like me. I mean, that is why Alma tells me fairy tales at night. The Sultan loved Scheherazade for doing it, and when all the fairy tales were finished, he didn’t chop off her head as he was going to do. Only Suzanne forgot to tell me why he should want to do that, and I forgot to ask her. Anyhow, she said that Scheherazade had shiny, black hair, so we should call the kitten Scheherazade. I said that I thought that was an awfully long name for such a short cat, and Suzanne said that I was right and so we would call her Sherry for short. So that’s what she is.

January 9, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

Today, I asked Grandfather what the kitten was. He just picked it up in his hands and said, “Why, a girl of course. Most cats are girls.” I asked if a beautiful fairy had whispered that in his ear, and he told me not to talk rubbish. So, at the lunch table, I said that I knew that the cat is a girl, and what shall we call it. The nicest friend of Aunt Tillie was having lunch with us. Her name is Suzanne and she is a dancer. I love her because she always smells of violets. Most people who come here smell of moth balls. She is small, and thin, and wears fluffy clothes with lots of lace and feathers. She said that she is studying a ballet that I don’t know how to spell, so now I can’t write any more until she tells me how to spell it because I did name the kitten after the ballet.

January 8, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

I said my prayers on my knees last night. Alma said that God doesn’t care how you say them, so long as you love Him, and ask Him to do kind things for other people, not only for yourself, but of course, I always ask for my own things first. I really wanted to ask Him to find a pretty name for my new kitten, but I was afraid that Alma wouldn’t want me to bother Him with it. I don’t know yet whether the kitten is a boy or a girl. I suppose God does. I asked Aunt Tillie how you can tell the difference, and she said that one night a beautiful fairy will whisper it in my ear, but I don’t believe it.

January 7, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

Sunday, I wish I liked Sunday School as much as I like Dancing School, but I don’t. The songs they sing there are ugly sounding, not in English, and I can’t understand what they are about, and the stories seem so silly to me. When I tell the teacher I can’t understand, she just says that I will when I am older. I don’t really want to wait that long, but I can’t help but wonder why there is so much confusion and mystery. If God loves everyone just the same, why does he call the Jews his chosen people, and what are we chosen for? Why did he choose them? At lunch today, I did not want to eat my soup, and Alma said it was all right, if I ate all the rest of the lunch. She was so kind, and while eating dessert of bread pudding with lots of raisins and cream, she read me a poem. It was so much more beautiful than anything I had learned in Sunday School. After lunch, I asked her to read it to me again, and I tried to remember it all, but I couldn’t, and Alma said to just try to remember two lines for a little while and then try to learn the rest.

These are the lines…

“He prayeth best who loveth best all things great and small,
For the dear God who loveth us, he made and loveth all.”

That doesn’t say anything about choosing anybody. When I go to bed tonight, I want to say my prayers on my knees like the little girl in the picture over my bed. She has long, golden curls, and a blue nightgown and a red rose in her hair, and she is so beautiful that God must love her very much.

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The quotation is from one of the last stanzas of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wikipedia explains the stanza: “As penance for shooting the albatross, the mariner, driven by the agony of his guilt, is now forced to wander the earth, telling his story over and over, and teaching a lesson to those he meets.”

January 6, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

Today Aunt Tillie punished me for biting my nails. I wasn’t allowed to wear my new lace dancing dress to dancing school. I wore my old pink one, and I was very, very, very, very unhappy. Mrs. Hinman brought Victor over to me, and she instructed us to dance the polka step we had learned, but after four or five turns, he ran away, and I ran into the cloak room, and I cried on top of all the piled coats, but I was careful not to muss up my own. Mrs. Hinman came after me and said not to be sad, that there would be another occasion, and that Victor would dance with me again, and she gave me a nickel to buy myself an ice cream cone, but when Alma came to fetch me, and I told her about the nickel, she made me give it back. She said that little ladies do not take money from people and besides I can’t have an ice cream, as it gives me hives sometimes when I eat a cone. Why should something so specially good as ice cream give you something itchy as hives? Does everything so super good give you something that is super bad?

January 5, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

I love Friday because it is only one day away from Saturday, and I love Saturday because there is dancing school and I can see Victor. Victor is so beautiful, and I love him. He looks like Little Lord Fauntleroy, only not such a sissy. Victor has real hair, not a wig, and not curled, but he has a black velvet suit with a starched linen sailor collar instead of a lace one. He looks so elegant. He doesn’t know that I love him. If he did maybe he would dance with me. So far he hasn’t, but it doesn’t make any difference, I love him just the same. Every Saturday night, when I am in bed, I like to think of Victor in his velvet suit and I like to pretend that we are walking in a meadow of pink and blue flowers, and he is crying and I am kissing him and telling him not to cry and I am holding his hand.

January 4, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

It rained today. All the children brought their lunches to school, and while we were eating them, Miss Hare read to us. She read us a fable of Aesop called “The Fox and the Crow.” I thought about it all afternoon. I thought that my Grandmother is just as silly. As that crow was. She would have spit the cheese out of her mouth if a fox had told her that she sang like a nightingale. While we were having our arithmetic lesson, I tried to make a poem out of the fable.

This is my poem….

A silly old crow whom I don’t know
Once stole a piece of cheese,
And flew away into a tree
To eat it at her ease.

That is as far as I got. Miss Hare saw me. She said that I shouldn’t write poems while she was trying to teach us something useful. Why isn’t a poem useful? If it makes you happy, and I should think anything that makes you happy is useful. Of course, Miss Hare doesn’t look happy. People say that she is an old maid. She must be at least twenty-five, but later on, when I told this to Grandfather, he said that children must obey their teachers, so I just put my poem away. Maybe I can finish it in bed tonight, and it will keep me from thinking all the things that I am afraid of, like the picture of the men that hangs on the hall wall across from my room. During the day, I am too busy to think about it, but at night I think they will come out of the frame and steal me away.

January 3, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

I took all the kittens to bed with me last night. That is, not right in the bed, though I wanted to, but they were on the floor, right next to the bed where I could put my hand out, and touch them, but when I woke up this morning, only one was left. Grandmother told me that the rest of them had run away. I think that is a lie, but I couldn’t tell her so. Why is it, grown-ups can tell children anything, and children cannot tell grown-ups anything? Is it because children are not so smart as grown-ups? I think they are. I think I am much smarter than Grandmother. The other afternoon, Grandmother believed Mrs. Evans, that’s the lady who comes to brush her hair. She told her what a handsome woman she is, when she has only to look in the mirror to see that she isn’t handsome at all, although she isn’t hideous like Tante Esther. Mrs. Evans tells Grandmother that she is handsome just because Grandmother gives her money for brushing her hair, and perhaps even a little more money for telling her all these nice things. Mrs. Evans could tell me a billion times that I am pretty, and I would know it was a lie, only she has never told me so, not even once. I’d like to look like Antoinette, that’s the little girl who sits across the aisle from me at school. She has great black eyes, and wavy black hair, and she says that she was named after a Queen. I have ordinary green eyes, and my hair is no special color, and I was not named after a Queen, only after my mother, but once I heard a pretty song about a girl named Hilda who sat at a spinning wheel. After I heard it, I asked Grandmother if she could buy me a spinning wheel but she said that was silly, no one spins today, besides, I had enough to do that needed to be done, and that I don’t keep my bureau drawers neat, and after I learned to do that, I must learn to darn my own stockings. She asked me when I was going to stop daydreaming.

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Hilda must be recalling a poem from the 1895 book: “The Model Orator, Or, Young Folks’ Speaker: Containing the Choicest Recitations and Readings from the Best Authors for Schools, Public Entertainments, Social Gatherings, Sunday Schools, etc.”

The University of Florida has a digitized copy of the book. The poem “Hilda, Spinning” is in a chapter entitled “Grave and Pathetic Readings” and begins at Image 251.

The poem begins:

“Spinning, spinning, by the sea,
All the night!
On a stormy, rock-ribbed shore,
Where the north-winds downward pour,
And the tempest fiecely sweep
From the mountains to the deep,
Hilda spins beside the sea,
All the night!….”

January 2, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

January 2
I think men are much nicer than women. Anyhow, my Grandfather is much nicer than my Grandmother, and my uncle Milton is much nicer than Retta, and Ito, our Japanese servant, is much nicer than Gladys, our maid. Only with dogs and cats it doesn’t make any different, the ladies are just as nice as the gentlemen.  This was the first day of school, and something beautiful happened. Wesley’s cat had kittens just two weeks ago. Nine of them. His mother said she would give him a nickel for each cat that he would give away, and I said that if it was all right with him, I would take all of them. We have a big yard, Wesley said I could.  He would have forty-five cents, and I have nine cats. Isn’t that lovely? Wesley carried them home for me in the little box which had a nice, soft blanket in the bottom, and the kittens looked so comfortable, and cuddly. Grandfather was so pleased. I thought he would be. When he took them out of the box there was a note tucked into the blanket, it was from my teacher, Miss Hare. I will copy it into this book so that when I am an old lady, I will enjoy reading it. Besides, I don’t know how to spell all these words. This is the note: “Dear Sir, Please do not be angry with Hilda. This event will go down as the greatest financial transaction made in America since the Louisiana Purchase.”

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Reading the first two entries of Hilda’s diary, we see how much she likes animals, perhaps more than people. Almost every photo I have of Hilda includes a dog and/or a cat. Below is a photo of Hilda with her husband Nathan taken in the early 1940’s. Hilda is holding a kitten.

The 1910 census listed the people living in Jacob Levy’s household:

In 1910, Hilda and her father Solomon were listed as “lodgers.” I believe Solomon did not live with the family very long and went back to New York. He left his daughter to be cared for by her maternal relations. Also listed was a servant named “George Japenese” (perhaps listing his ethnicity rather than last name?), who apparently was replaced a few years later by another named Ito.

2022 - a new year and a new Voice

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

In my 2021 blog, we met Hilda Firestone, Helene’s first cousin once removed. This year, I will post entries from the diary she kept in 1912, when she was 8 years old. We will see life in San Francisco through her eyes.

Unfortunately I have not seen the original, only having a copy which was typed up decades later and given to my mother:

Hilda was born in Manhattan on January 12, 1904 and was named Claire. Her parents were Hilda (Helene’s first cousin) and Solomon Goldberg. A few weeks after her birth, her mother died and in her mother’s honor she was called Hilda for the rest of her life. She soon moved to San Francisco to be raised by her maternal grandparents, Jacob (Helene’s uncle) and Sarah Levy, and by their daughter Tillie. According to the 1910 census, Hilda lived with her grandparents at 1328 Pierce Street in San Francisco. The house no longer exists.

The undated photo below is the only one I have of young Hilda:

Here is the first entry in Hilda’s diary:

January 1, 1912

We had spinach, carrots and Tante Esther for lunch today and I hate all of them. Alma said it is wicked to hate anyone on New Year’s Day, so I asked her if I may hate them tomorrow. She said certainly not, and that made me sad. Alma told me that when I am more grown-up, perhaps I may be allowed to dislike spinach and carrots, but I may never even then, dislike Tante Esther. Maybe when I am grown-up she will be dead. She is a very old lady. Grandmother and Grandfather are polite to her, because she is blind, but I don’t think they would be if she could see. She is very mean, and ugly, very little, and fat, and has short hair like a wire-haired terrier, only a wire-haired terrier is prettier and nicer, well-trimmed or well-groomed as Uncle Milton says about his dogs and horses. When Tante Esther comes into a room, she rubs two fingers on all the furniture, then, she rubs her thumb on the two fingers to see if she can feel any dust. That is all I have to write today. Grandmother gave me this little pink book this morning, and told me that every day I must write something in it. I asked her why, and she said, “because.” I hate people who say “because.” Grandfather never says it.

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I don’t know how much editing was done by an adult Hilda or other relative. Sometimes, she sounds far to knowing for her years. Perhaps she was mature for her age, living in a houseful of adults.

Trying to decipher the family tree created in 1997, it appears that Tante Esther may have been Esther Robeck, half-sister to Hilda’s grandmother who was born in the 1850s.

December 31

Looking back and going forward

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will end the year with some family photos:

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

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

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

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

Helene and her two children:

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

My mother, my grandmother, and me:

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What’s Next?

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

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

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

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

Happy New Year!!!

December 30

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

Today we have a letter from G.I. Harry Lowell written at a USO center in Southern California while stationed at the Desert Training Center.

December 30, 1943

Dear Eva,

Three cheers! You saved me from a case of acute flatness of my pocketbook; many thanks for your thoughtful Christmas present. I also want to acknowledge your long letter from the 10th.
My intentions of answering it promptly were good, but as usual something always turned up to interfere with my correspondence. You know, whenever I decide to write to you I bear in mind to word my letter in a “fireside-chat” manner instead of just scribbling the conventional news and unimportant things – as I do in letters to the family. To cut it short, I want to carry on a correspondence with you, that would be equal to informal chats between brother and sister. Ugh, I have spoken.

I had a good laugh out of that matter of Turkish translation; don’t you think that the best thing to do was to send the paper registered to Washington with an explaining letter? Well, they’ll probably draft you anyhow; so don’t worry.

I have been kept quite busy with our intensive training for the last few weeks. I had a lot of fun at the anti-aircraft gunnery school in the desert, where I stayed one week and learned the art of shooting down planes, retail and wholesale. During that week I wasn’t able to shave nor to take a shower; oink, oink, what a feeling of dirty comfort that was! (Confidentially, I would have liked a bath.)

As you know, I am “practically on the boat” as we were told by our officers. Tonight, was the last night that we could go to town. We have been issued new clothing and equipment. Well, it won’t be long now.

I am a real, live nephew of Uncle Sam now. Vive L’Amerique! I sent the paper to Tillie for safe-keeping.

I was invited Christmas Day to the house of the former farm advisor of this county; he is a most interesting and intelligent man who’s been all over the world. We had a nice talk and he gave me good advice and offered a few expert suggestions as to farms in California. Your brother gets around, doesn’t he? The day after Christmas I was introduced to some more nice people who have a nice Victrola, a beautiful home – and the lady is a good cook. I met all these people through a schoolteacher who took a liking to me at the U.S.O. and who has made me her “nephew”; she has some more adopted “nephews” in the army.

How is everything in the beautiful city of San Francisco? Did you have a nice Christmas?

As soon as I reach my destination you will be getting a change of address card denoting my mailing address.

When I got my citizenship papers, the judge had to hold a special session just for me. Usually they give talks to a whole bunch of men, but due to hurried circumstances, the court had to open for me; I felt honored, indeed.

Well, I’ll write you soon if they let me write from the port; otherwise you’ll hear from me when I get “there.”

Love,
Harry
Homo Americanus

P.S. Give my regards to the family at “2266.”

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In the February 3rd post, we saw a 1944 V-mail letter Harry wrote to Eva, addressed to 2266-22nd Avenue in San Francisco, where she was renting from the mother of a friend from nursing school – see November 7th post. In the latter post, Harry counsels his sister to find a way to get along with the family. She escapes the family dynamics by moving out.

Thanks to enlisting in the army, Harry was able to expedite his citizenship. Despite Harry’s thought, Eva was not drafted and she appears to have given up the thought of joining the Nurses Corps on her own (which would have allowed her to get as far away from the family as possible and likely necessitated translating her Turkish passport). Eva signed the Oath of Allegiance and became a citizen on January 8, 1945, just a few days before her marriage. On the same form, she officially changed her last name from Cohen to Lowell (and just days later would change it to Goldsmith!).