Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind (27 page)

And how is the world treating you except that you have to work 24 hours a day in your hospital? . . . I have not heard from Valy and I don’t suppose I will now as I have not got friends in neutral countries on the continent who would forward my letters to her. I feel so sorry for her, poor girl, in occupation. I am so lucky to be here. . . .

Valy’s own “disorderliness,” I can only imagine, meant her delay—at least compared with Karl—in joining those who were lobbying for visas to America, in putting her name on those interminable quota lists. The problem facing Valy extended back decades—quotas were instituted during and at the end of World War I, a nativist response in the United States to an influx of immigrants.
Germany’s numbers, officially, weren’t actually all that low—just over 25,000 a year—but there was never a year that immigration actually reached those heights. And then it dropped to a minuscule percentage of that number, as the Great Depression engulfed the States in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Quietly, as the American economy teetered, President Herbert Hoover pushed American consulates to reinterpret and enforce the clause for keeping out immigrants. A line in the law which read if an immigrant was “likely to become a public charge” was reread to mean essentially “needed work,” a move that reduced immigration beginning in 1930 by ninety percent, limiting those coming in to the independently wealthy. By the late 1930s, the numbers had climbed a bit again, but the actual numbers remained well below 10,000 people per year. The
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington estimates that something like 300,000 Jews applied to immigrate to America between 1933 and 1939, and some 90,000 were accepted. It was a battle at the State Department between those who believed that the United States was, for most intents and purposes, full, and those who saw it as a haven of some kind.

Valy is in despair. But instead of focusing on her miserable visa status, or her inability to get herself out of this hell, she worries, instead, about my grandfather. He comes to symbolize everything. Even in the early letters, she feels like she is losing him, and she can’t lose him because losing him means losing hope. She sees him everywhere, in everything she does. She sees her world shrinking—everyone seems to be getting to safety but her, everyone seems to be moving on. Her world is caving in; it is stifling.

And so, instead, she lies in bed at night and imagines a time when he was in her bed beside her, when their only bit of necessary resistance was to defy their mothers—oh, how normal to defy a mother! These two fatherless Jews with their small rebellion—and Valy unlocked her bedroom door and let him in.

Berlin, 12-16-39

My darling:

Your last letter with the really fantastical date of August 27—and nothing since then, not even one syllable—is before me. And I always thought it had to be that way,—that the mail simply did not work. Then, all of a sudden, I met Paula Holländer’s sister. I am happy about this meeting and am anxiously breathing in this little bit of Viennese atmosphere. She told me that she is getting letters from Paula every week. . . .

Do you know, my darling, when I think of you? For example: In the evenings, after my room, overflowing with students who, enthusiastically smoking, spend their leisure time with me, finally gets emptied out and I, after making my evening rounds (when I have nightshift) finally return to my abode that greets me in total disarray and reeking of smoke—just like it was at Mandels, Spieler, Hirschfeld’s, etc. after I unlocked the door for you and quietly sneaked back into the room with you—then I lie down with the absolutely wonderful feeling that I will meet you somewhere tomorrow and will be able to talk about everything again and be with you. Or: I am standing in the laboratory and boiling urine samples . . . and dream of our chemistry course. Do you remember the time, Karl, when we showed up with our sausage sandwiches at this elegant restaurant—I think it was called something like Libig—and were so terribly embarrassed?

And then I think of you when we work at the hospital the way you don’t like it, and every time I pass a newsstand where they sell entertainment journals; when I read something you would love; when I put on a dress you would like; whenever the word “America” is mentioned; when there is talk of love.

Otherwise,—I am doing quite well: I continue to work afternoons in the infants’ group (that meanwhile has shrunk quite considerably) against free room and board. During the mornings I sit in at the children’s ward in the hospital. The “Reichsvertretung” may grant me a Stipendium of Reichsmark 60.00 per month, which I would need urgently for my mama, as the position unfortunately did not materialize for her. Alas, she is again in Troppau, and, of course, without any kind of income.

Life here is nice and much more carefree than elsewhere. Last week we had a beautiful Chanukah celebration during which I received generous presents from everyone and, among other things, got a medal with the following inscription: “And then there came a little person in a white coat. You already know her. And our little ones, in particular, do. When she enters the room, they all shout: ‘Auntie Doctor, are you free today?’ And then there is a lot of ruckus. And the students, or so I hear, love and respect her as well—that’s the reason we give her this medal.” . . .

Goodbye, my beloved boy

In the meantime, her life is in flux. The Kindergartenseminar has suddenly lost the building at Wangenheimstrasse; it will soon be aryanized and the school will be absorbed into a different part of the city, a smaller building, forcing Valy to seek work elsewhere. She treads water, and works and tries to make sure the reason she stayed behind—her mother—can actually be with her. Without her, none of it seems worth it at all. Worse still, she feels abandoned by everyone, forgotten.

He is not writing. It has been three months of silence. In America, he is still banging on doors, trying to pick up the pieces of his life, doctors are writing about him—the executive secretary of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Medical Scientists, a doctor he has met only once, is busily determining his future. “Dr. Wildman is a person who would most likely fit into a smaller hospital. His appearance is not very prepossessing, though he is of medium height and quite well built,” a letter in his National Committee for Resettlement of Foreign Physicians file notes. “His manner is reserved and his English is fair.” Another, a typed card, simply says “Single. Nice Personality.” He is a specimen.

Perhaps the letters really do not arrive. Perhaps he writes and they disappear. Or perhaps he does not write to Valy, because he has nothing to say or because he is ashamed of what he would say if he did write. He has no real
news
yet. No way to prove he has mastered this country. He has his own survival story, after all. He is busy trying to keep from drowning in America.

He was uncomfortable, but his discomfort, he can’t have yet fully understood, was nothing compared to hers. There seems never a
moment when she can relax, never a moment when anything is a given. Life is constantly shifting, and she has to be on guard.

December 31, 1939

My beloved boy! This time, my day off came and went, and I was not able to write to you, my dear. Therefore, I am writing to you now while I am on duty, watching the sleeping children. I hope they won’t disturb me too often. There is one boy, an unruly lad, who is incredibly attached to me. He has caresses that remind me of yours. He strokes my hair and my face, loves to kiss my eyes and looks dearly and deeply into my eyes—not really in a childlike manner. I always have to think of you and you may have sent me this three-year-old boy and with him your kisses and caresses.

All of a sudden it has become quite questionable how much longer I will be able to stay here. The day before yesterday we received a termination notice for this house, which we now must vacate within 2 months. Therefore, I will also lose my position. But, my darling, do not be concerned for me: 2 months is a long time and somehow I’ll get along.

There are still no letters from Karl. And as life becomes more burdensome, this lack of contact with him weighs her down. It is bitterly cold and, in January, the Gestapo announces Jews can no longer purchase new clothing or shoes. The central office of the Reichsvereinigung will now begin to take used items from fleeing Jews and carefully distribute them to those who reluctantly remain. Even passing clothing from Jew to Jew is forbidden without special permissions. And so Valy huddles in all her clothing, and waits for word. Karl is Valy’s only outside link, her only chance.

Six

T
HREE
H
UNDRED
D
OLLARS

A
s 1939 turns to 1940, Valy’s pleas for help are joined by a chorus of pleas from others who lobby my grandfather on her behalf. They push my grandfather not to forget Valy, to help her, to
do something
. As they do, they narrate again and again the problems faced by the refugees on these shores, who were scrambling to pull those left behind across the Atlantic. “Dear Karl, I arrived in New York on October 15th,” writes Paula Holländer in early 1940. She is an old schoolmate from Vienna. “My entire family is still in Germany.” The letter is dated January 18, one day after Karl’s twenty-eighth birthday. Paula continues:

I was able to scrape up a little money that I sent to Switzerland in order to pay for transferring my parents (illegally) to Palestine. I am so clueless that I did not even succeed in getting an affidavit for my sister, who is living with her husband (27 years) and child (1 year) in Berlin. She . . . asks that $3000 be transferred in the name of my brother-in-law. If we were able to document the existence of this account, my sister and her family could come right away. However, who would be able to put up this kind of account? So far, I was not able to find this kind of benefactor. I also have a 25-year-old brother, a dear guy, who fled from Poland to Lithuania; he was born in Vienna, has been registered for a long time, and I don’t even have an affidavit for him either. Don’t you think I am really incapable? With all these worries I have relatively little time to think about myself. I have thought of you often. . . . I could imagine that you would complain a bit about my clumsiness and that you would smile and give me advice on what to do.

Do write to me—that would really please me. By the way, Valy has not had any mail from you in a long time. I don’t have Valy’s address, but she sees my sister often.

Later that year, Paula writes that she has succeeded: “My sister and her family arrived from Berlin . . . and brought me greetings from Valy. While she is doing quite all right, she would very much like to come over here. She is working at the Jewish Hospital, but you probably already know everything.”

Valy knew others were getting their loved ones out, and my grandfather knew, and that knowledge hangs heavy in the letters. The anguish was already intolerable. What had they done that he hadn’t? What had they accomplished that he could not?

In the meantime, bits and pieces of the degradation and humiliation now defining life in Germany were trickling out, exposing Karl to some of the horror. Even strangers implore him to help Valy.

February 24, 1940

Dear Dr. Wildman,

I do not know whether Dr. Valy Scheftel in her letters to you ever mentioned my name. Until March of 1939 I was a rabbi in Berlin, where the Gestapo had tasked me with the care of the Jews in the occupied Sudetenland. It was in this context that I met Dr. Scheftel in Troppau.

I am writing to you in order to inquire whether and to what extent you may be in a position to do anything for the emigration of Dr. Scheftel, and possibly also her mother. I do know that you sent affidavits about a year ago that were submitted to the consulate in Prague. In the best case scenario, the waiting period for Valy would be at least two years and even longer for her mother. Before my own emigration, I tried to do something for the two women, at least economically. As you surely know, V. has been working in a children’s home of the Reichsvertretung. It was my hope that this work would at least feed the two women until they can come here.

The events that unfolded during the past weeks, however, and especially the beginning deportation of the Jews . . . let me fear the worst. I would be only too happy to help them to immigrate to an interim country, where they could wait until their US number gets called up. Only a few weeks ago, my parents-in-law immigrated to Chile. At the moment I am working on the emigration of other relatives whom Valy often sees, from Berlin to Chile. (This is the only country for which it was possible to find visas for the past several weeks. Brazilian visas, for example, are no longer affordable, at least for my means.) Do you think that you or others might be able to do the same for Valy and her mother? A Chilean visa for one person cost me US $150.00, and a confidential source has written to me that additional visas would cost about the same amount. While the visas appear legitimate, they seem to have been issued illegally. In any event, they enable immigration to Chile, as the case of my in-laws, who arrived in Chile on January 3rd, proves. My confidante, a former physician from Breslau, who now is in Santiago, is absolutely trustworthy.

I beg you not to misunderstand me. I only write to you because of my concern as a friend for Dr. Scheftel, who again wrote to me a few days ago. I would be most grateful if you could write to me soon what your position on this issue is, and, above all—something I am unable to decide on my own—whether you consider this solution, interim country with further immigration to the USA, as feasible, as far as Valy is concerned. As far as I know her and her mother, I believe that they would be capable of feeding themselves in Chile until they can come here. And, although it may be difficult in Chile, a hard life in physical safety is preferable to an easier life in constant danger.