Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind (47 page)

As for my humble self, my parents are far more worried about me than I am. They’re not entirely wrong, however, because the difficulty is primarily my livelihood after my parents’ departure and my emigration, both where and how, because I would not only have to pack all my things alone, but also deal with the authorities on my own, and first be declared legally of age so I could do that. Nevertheless, I continue to be in favor of having my parents leave as soon as possible. . . . So, it’ll work out.

He is frustrated, he writes to a friend named Lilo who seems to have passed on the letter to Ilse, that his parents refuse to leave him behind—“my parents aren’t willing to leave without me and thus they are putting the whole thing in jeopardy. We all have to coax them, otherwise it will really go wrong yet.”
The emigration options, at first, are merely stymied by money, but somehow, one after the other, they slip away, both for him and for his parents. He remains cheerful:

Dear Ilse and Yogi,

. . . You surely know that I work in the kitchen now, where we, a team of three, cook the fleishik [meat] food for 100 people (as the milkhik [milk] kitchen is completely separate). From that alone you can tell that it has to do with an extremely Orthodox operation, and that is a real contrast to the lab, quite seriously, because apart from me they all come from the former [Orthodox] community, and my boss, of course, wears a sheitel. In short, one is always more pious than the next, and in the first few days I made a lot of blunders. Also, when I [mentioned] that I enjoy eating crab, my comrades, who by the way are very nice, came close to falling off their chairs. Best of all I like the food, which is really ample, even though there hasn’t been any meat in this kitchen for months. . . . The work I have to do in the kitchen is not always pretty—or what would Ilse say if she had to take on 50 herrings or peel onions in great quantities? But everything is all right, though it took me a long time to get used to the herring. But there’s a lot of nice work too, and I have already learned to properly peel potatoes, peel rhubarb and asparagus, and even make pancakes (always in two pans at the same time). And in the case of the herring and onions, I would like to say . . . Gam zu l’tovah! [This is also for good.]

But his sanguinity begins to ebb. His letters become increasingly anxious. The dates are cut off but I try to organize the letters by level of worry:

Dear Yogi,

In response to a telegram that I have just received from my parents, I’m sending you enclosed my curriculum vitae, a certificate of good health, my birth certificate, and two passport photos. . . .

You’re probably as just well informed about the whole matter as I am. . . . Naturally, this is one of the most unpleasant moments we’ve experienced in the past 6 years, but I want to ask you to keep a clear head here too, and not to expend more energy or effort or money on this matter than you can really afford, because it’s better if at least you three continue to live in somewhat well-ordered circumstances, instead of all of us falling apart over this business. . . . I ask you also not to involve Ilse overly much in all these things, because we want to handle these “men’s matters” among men, to the greatest possible extent.

For today, then, all the best, and warm regards.

And then:

Breslau, August 6

Dear Ilse and Yogi,

. . . A few days ago, my mother was at the information center for emigrants to request her passport and Dad’s passport. But she was informed there that the passport could not be handed over until a certain amount of money was deposited for me. Then we spoke with the British Consulate in Breslau, which advised us for the time being to just send the permit, without the passport, to Berlin. This now has been done. . . . Now, finding a job will probably be the most essential thing, and I’m sure you will manage to do so somehow. . . .

Carol holds up a letter from Boots, the British pharmacy company, rejecting Hans in his application for work. They are concerned he will not be up to speed in the English language, and with English
practices. She muses aloud, wondering if they know their rejection was a death sentence. There is one photo of Hans, smiling genially, tie a bit askew. Carol’s daughter Jess, she says, looks eerily similar to Hans: family who knew Hans were always struck by it. “Especially round the eyes.” Amid these missives, there are also reports on the family. Hans’s father, it seems, has cancer and undergoes radiation therapy. Hans donates blood. There are pages and pages on his father, Rudolf, and his progress.

And then, I see, buried in the pile: bits and pieces about—and by—Valy herself—letters she has written to Uncle Walter, letters Hans has written about his girlfriend.

As we sort through the piles of decaying paper, Carol and I talk about families not talking, and of how relatively little connection her children have to these letters, how distanced they seem from their own history. I wonder—does the third generation really
need
this story as much as I think we do? What am I doing here with my fingers on seventy-year-old pages from the dead, chattering with a woman on the other side of the Atlantic, while my own daughter sits at home in America? Is it worth it? We talk about our families—Carol’s husband, Eric, still legally bound to her, lives not far away but not
with
her. They remain close friends. At this point she likes her life, her cottage, her independence. In fact he comes around twice while we sort and talk, once to help with house repairs, once to come out to dinner. He is white haired and handsome. And he goes home at the end of the evening.

On a break during day two, Carol and I sit in the garden soaking up improbably nice weather, eating shortbread and drinking tea in the sun as Carol’s upstairs neighbor’s children shout and laugh around us. Their chatter fills the background of my tapes. We talk about her mother’s collection of women friends, all survivors as well, all refugees, who all lost someone, or many. They were one another’s families, she says, they watched one another’s children, they stayed close throughout their lives. She talks again about her mother, how devastated she remained, how damaged she was, by whom and what she had lost.
And the collection bears that out, the massive torrent of early letters, the assurances of possibility in 1939 that give way to the Red Cross–restricted allowance of twenty-five words—
poems
, as the women of the Silent Heroes Memorial in Berlin had described them—the weak assurances that all is just fine sent from Berlin to London and back again.

But Carol’s letter trove explains so much. Especially the later letters collected by Uncle Walter, the protected one. Rudolf, Carol’s grandfather, writes to Hans from Theresienstadt, in December 1942, saying he is well but frightened for Hans and indicating, cryptically, that Hans’s mother is “with Uncle Hermann”—who, they all knew already, was dead. Hans’s mother has not survived her time in the east. And Hans, in turn, writes to his Uncle Walter that he has heard Valy will be deported with others from the old-age home where she works in Babelsberg if she is not married, immediately, to a more essential worker. As Walter is the only living, present, older relative, Hans appears to need his permission to marry Valy—to save her. He asks for their understanding and he asks them to send him his—now deceased—mother’s clothing (in his letter he calls her “Mutti,” like Mommy) and shoes for Valy, who has not been able to repair or replace her clothing in two years.

[Shortly before Christmas 1942]

My dear ones:

Yesterday I collected your Christmas package from the post office. As I arrived back home, your dear letter had also arrived. I don’t have to tell you how happy your kind attentions, in both words and deeds made me. It is obvious that such a package would be a special great joy to me, especially since I really have such need for its content.

Everything you sent fits perfectly. The cigarettes almost took my breath away. The wonderful cakes and the . . . cookies, especially the oatmeal ones I really love.

. . . It seems that my marriage will go through now—but only if you agree. Both of us are sufficiently intelligent to see the “ifs and buts” quite clearly. Although I think it possible that we will stay together forever, the marriage at this point primarily serves practical purposes.

My future wife is called Valy (we will wed on January 5th); her full name is Dr. med Valerie Scheftel. She comes from Troppau, studied in Vienna and now works together with her very young mother in the Babelsberg Home her mother leads. Valy has asked me not to talk about her age. In any case, the difference is less than 10 years. She is exactly as tall as Mutti, but somewhat thinner. Mutti’s shoes are a little too big for her, but she is able to wear them. I leave the choice of items that may be appropriate to Aunt Inge.

Now I have to stop writing in the middle of the letter as our break is over. I wish you a very Happy New Year (1943) in all respects and want to thank you yet again for your understanding attitude and for the highly nutritious proofs of your friendship!

With kindest regards, also from Valy,
Merry Christmas 1942!

Your Hans

Reading this, I am pulled up short. “Although I think it’s possible that we will stay together forever, the marriage at this point primarily serves practical purposes.” In the fall of 1941, Valy proposed marriage to my grandfather as a means of saving herself. She loved him, of course, or at least she believed she did (if there is a difference, I’m not sure of it), but here, with Hans, it all seems perfectly clear: the marriage was practical as much as romantic. Does this mean the love affair that Ernest was so sure of was only an elaborate means of evading deportation? I don’t know. Perhaps she did love him, and he her, but that is not the emphasis here.

After a year without being able to even send real letters to Karl—a year when she watched the world disintegrate before her eyes, a year of
train after train sending a thousand Jews at a time to ghettos and camps in the east, a year of terror, the city of Berlin leached of its Jews—a word like “love” may have meant, more than it ever did, “salvation” as much as it meant romance. Was Karl on her mind as they reached out to family to secure a marriage certificate? Perhaps only remaining free mattered. Marrying Hans might not have meant that she had abandoned all ideas of my grandfather, but what did that fantasy matter now?

After Hans’s letter to his uncle, events progress much faster than he had anticipated. Hans moves Valy into his apartment and writes a more desperate letter, soon after his Christmas missive.

Dear Aunt Inge and Uncle Walter,

When I wrote you in my next-to-last letter concerning my girlfriend Valy, I had no idea of the things that have happened in the meantime. I need to make it as short as possible now and send all the detailed explanations later, because every hour is valuable.

The dissolution of the old-age home in which the aforementioned Valy works is imminent, and to prevent her, like the other people employed there, from being deported to the East, the only possibility is for us to get married as quickly as possible. You must believe me—first, that there really is no other way, and second, that under no circumstances can I stand here and watch as this person who is so infinitely near and dear to me goes the same way as my dear mother. I will spell all this out for you later.

Now I need, as documents for the civil registry office, the birth and marriage certificates of my parents and the birth certificates of my grandparents. Please let me know about the following questions as quickly as possible:

1) Do you possibly have the birth and marriage certificates of my parents? If so, please send them to me immediately by registered mail.

2) Where were my maternal grandparents born?

3) When were they born (year and day)?

4) What are their full names?

5) What is the maiden name of my maternal grandmother (Reichenbach?)?

6) Did my parents marry in 1913 or in 1914?

Please give me answers as quickly as possible. Because the notice of intended marriage must be posted before the old-age home is dissolved, everything depends on the speed with which we obtain the papers. I have written to Uncle Paul Fabisch in Breslau regarding my paternal grandparents; he probably will have the information.

The fact that this letter is written in such haste cannot be changed. The marriage problem itself has already been discussed and thought through calmly and with a number of sensible and well-informed people.

For you, the whole matter must seem very romantic and overhasty; however, it is not so, and I beg you to understand and to keep in mind that I regard this separation as unbearable, after the emigration [
Abwanderung,
the Nazi term for deportation to an extermination camp] of my parents and the death of my mother.

Now I will wait to hear from you.

Warmest regards,

Hans

And then there is one more:

Dear Aunt Inge and Uncle Walter,

Please don’t be cross with us for not writing, but things are frantic again right now. The home in B. [Babelsberg] had to be vacated within 24 hours (!), and Valy is moving in with me today (moving in is allowed). We’re up to our ears in work, and besides I still have to go to the factory, where I’m also writing this postcard. So, please bear with me for a while. That’s all for today,