Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind (56 page)

Without Pavel Kuča, I would still be wandering the Czech countryside lost; I never would have found my way to understanding Valy’s life in Troppau. Pavel took my hand, literally, and led me around the country. In Israel, Laurence Weinbaum and my Ramat Gan family, Shely and Kami Ben-Shem and Sharon Ben-Shem Da Silva, brought me Reuven Ben-Shem’s part of the story. Toby Ticktin Back makes Jerusalem another home. From Madrid to Berlin to San Sebastián, Baruc Corazón has been a constant friend.

In London, Carol Levene opened her home, her heart, and her cache of letters. She gave me the incredible gift of understanding the fullness of this story. Ernest Fontheim, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, agreed to revisit a very sad chapter of his life with me, and welcomed the chance to celebrate Hans.

Back in America, I am forever grateful for the friendship, support, and love of Stephanie Handel, Madeleine Remez, Jonathan Becker, and Zeenat Rahman. Wendy Blum, my other mother, has been a shoulder, a shelf, and, above all, a friend since I was in the womb. Morgan Fahey, Diego Salazar, Shola Olatoye, Miguel Aguilar, and Shayla Harris were supporters from afar to whom I often turned for advice. Elsa (Marleny) Diaz cared for my children when I was holed up with my computer or far away around the globe. My in-laws Mishele and Kenneth Halpern were always quick with support, cheerleading, child care, and a kind word when I needed one.

I am grateful to Noam Scheiber, Shar Taylor, Cathy Alter, and Jeanette Buck for reading various confused versions of this book, providing essential feedback and editorial recommendations, at all hours
of the day and night. To say this book would be poorer without their input is an understatement. Sacha Z. Scoblic and Lisa Goldman generously took time to read my ideas for the book proposal years ago; notes they provided then have finally borne fruit.

Valy’s story owes everything to June Thomas and David Plotz at
Slate
, who agreed to run the first ten thousand words about my search. June’s editorial eye on the
Slate
series made all the difference to its success.

My parents, Joseph and Margot Wildman, kept these letters for me when I was traveling around the world, and, of course, believed in me from the beginning and nurtured my (sometimes unfathomable) obsession with the past. My father’s interest in Jewish history in particular was clearly contagious (and his meticulous eye saved this text from numerous errors). My mother’s humor and levity considerably lighten what might have been a sad process. It’s impossible to thank them enough. My aunt Judy Wildman is always available for a question, and advice. My sister, Rebecca Wildman Repetti, and my brother-in-law, Michael, make my world a better place.

More than anyone, this book would simply, full stop, not have been possible without the support of Ian Halpern, my partner, whose unflappable belief in me long after I stopped believing in myself sustained me and this project these many years. He has read this book nearly as many times as I have, offered advice, an editorial eye, a calming hand, borne the brunt of child care, and given me more love, latitude, and superhuman patience (so much patience) than any one woman deserves.

Finally, for my two wonderful girls, Orli and Hana, the two little Jews who grew during the long gestation of this project. Pregnancies and book writing are not natural companions, but they kept me looking toward the future, even when I was so deeply mired in the past. I only regret they did not arrive soon enough to meet my
saba
, C. J. Wildman, without whom, obviously, this book would not
exist.

Notes and Sources

Other than the letters between Karl and Bruno, nearly all correspondence with my grandfather was in German. Valy’s letters were translated by Ulrike Wiesner, with the exception of August 1939; this was translated by Kathleen Luft. Letters from Hans, Lotte, and Uncle Julius were divided between Luft and Wiesner. Letters from other friends—including Alfred Jospe, Paula Holländer, Reuven, and files from Vienna school friends were translated by Wiesner. Karin Isbell translated the letters of Maria Richterova.

INTRODUCTION: IN THE BEGINNING

“If not, then not”
 in Valy’s folded note:
The line in German is: “
Wenn nicht, den nicht”
; the lyrics of “Der Eine Allein” are by Hermann Löns, translated by Kathleen Luft.

CHAPTER ONE. SITUATION EXCELLENT

“The National Committee for Resettlement of Foreign Physicians was organized more than two years ago”
:
David L. Edsall, N. C. Tryon, and Tracy J. Putnam, “The Émigré Physician in America, 1941: A Report of the National Committee for Resettlement of Foreign Physicians,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
117, no. 22 (November 29, 1941), p. 1881.

National Committee for Resettlement of Foreign Physicians
:
Information comes from Laurel Leff’s paper “Combating Prejudice and Protectionism in American Medicine: The Physicians Committee’s Fight for Refugees from Nazism, 1939–1945,”
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
28:2 (Fall 2014).

CHAPTER TWO. THE WONDERFUL CITY

rumor of Jabotinsky holding up a suitcase and shouting in the packed Konzerthaus, “Run, Jews, run!”
:
George E. Berkley,
Vienna and Its Jews: The Tragedy of Success
,
1880–1980s
(Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1988), p. 246.

“in the early years of the twentieth century Vienna
was
Europe”
:
Tony Judt,
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
(New York: Penguin, 2005), p. 2.

Milena Jesenská
:
See Margarete Buber-Neumann,
Milena: The Story of a Remarkable Friendship
, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Schocken Books, 1977).

an extraordinary book about three forgotten slave labor camps
:
Jean-Marc Dreyfus and Sarah Gensburger,
Des Camps dans Paris: Austerlitz, Lévitan, Bassano, Juillet 1943–Août 1944
(Paris: Fayard, 2003).

the Ephrussi banking family
:
Edmund de Waal,
The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance
(New York: Picador, 2011).

The interwar years in Vienna
:
See Berkley,
Vienna and Its Jews
, p. 172; and Steven Beller,
Vienna and the Jews: 1867–1938
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

The immediate time around the Anschluss
:
See George Clare,
Last Waltz in Vienna: The Rise and Destruction of a Family, 1842–1942
(New York: Henry Holt, 1989).

the best short narration of the horrific pre-Nazi-period violence
:
Benno Weiser Varon,
Professions of a Lucky Jew
(Cranbury, NJ, and London:
Cornwall Books, 1992).

CHAPTER THREE. SEARCH NUMBER 557 584

Postwar casualty and war-lost numbers
:
Judt,
Postwar
, pp. 28, 29.

Conan and Rousso present the problem of opening historical material
:
Éric Conan and Henri Rousso,
Vichy: An Ever-Present Past
, trans. Nathan Bracher (Hanover, NH, and London: University Press of New England, 1998).

Bad Arolsen and ITS
:
See Jean-Marc Dreyfus, “À Bad Arolsen, dans la Forêt des Archives Nazies,”
La Vie des Idées
, September 11, 2008, http://www.laviedesidees.fr/A-Bad-Arolsen-dans-la-foret-des.html; and Sarah Wildman, “Paper Love: Inside the Holocaust Archives,” January 2009, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/features/2009/paper_love_inside_the_holocaust_archives/50_million_mysteries.html.

CHAPTER FOUR. WHO SHE WAS

This much I know
:
Information in this chapter comes from: Marcin Wodziński and Janusz Spyra, eds.,
Jews in Silesia
(Kraków:
Księgarnia Akademicka, and Wrocław: University of Wrocław, Research Centre for the Culture and Languages of Polish Jews, 2001); Livia Rothkirchen,
The
Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, and Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005); and Jiri Fiedler,
Jewish Sights of Bohemia and Moravia
(Prague: Sefer, 1991).

By the early 1930s, smart girls like Valy were sent to Vienna to study
:
See Harriet Pass Freidenreich,
Female, Jewish, and Educated: The Lives of Central European University Women
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).

“The Third Reich will win again”
:
Victor Klemperer,
I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years
, vol. 1,
1933–1941
(New York: Modern Library, 1999), p. 268.

Valy’s mother’s file
:
Toni Scheftel’s aryanization papers translated for the author by Ulrike Wiesner.

CHAPTER FIVE. BERLIN

Before my grandfather had even left Europe
:
Statistics here are from Wolf Gruner, “Poverty and Persecution: The Reichsvereinigung, the Jewish Population, and Anti-Jewish Policy in the Nazi State 1939–1945,” www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203214.pdf; and Gruner,
Judenverfolgung [Jewish Persecution] in Berlin, 1933–1945
(Berlin: Stiftung Topographie des Terrors, 2009), translated for the author by Kathleen Luft.

women were often seen as having needs secondary to those of men
:
Marion A. Kaplan,
Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 138–141.

“The emigration problem demanded our greatest labors”
:
Testimony of Alfred Schwerin, in Richarz,
Jewish Life in Germany
, pp. 401–402.

Kindergartenseminar
:
Gudrun Meierhof, “The Jewish Seminar for Teachers in Kindergartens and After-School-Care Facilities, 1934–1942,” translated for the author by Ulrike Wiesner. Unpublished manuscript provided by author.

the League of Jewish Women, a remarkable feminist organization
:
Lara Daemmig and Marion Kaplan, “Juedischer Frauenbund (The League of Jewish Women),” Jewish Women’s Archive, http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/juedischer-frauenbund-league-of-jewish-women.

Marianne Strauss
:
See Mark Roseman,
A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany
(New York: Picador, 2002).

Only works by Jews could be performed
:
Testimony of Alfred Schwerin, in Monika Richarz, ed.,
Jewish Life in Germany: Memoirs from Three Centuries
, trans. Stella P. Rosenfeld and Sidney Rosenfeld (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 401–402.

the population of Jews under age thirty-nine decreased by nearly eighty percent
:
Kaplan,
Between Dignity and Despair
, p. 143.

I pick up historian Wolf Gruner’s book
:
Gruner,
Judenverfolgung [Jewish Persecution] in Berlin, 1933–1945
.

she later wrote a book—called
Outcast
in English
:
Inge Deutschkron,
Outcast: A Jewish Girl in Wartime Berlin
(New York: Fromm International, 1989).