Letters From the Lost: A Memoir of Discovery by Helen Waldstein Wilkes

Author:Helen Waldstein Wilkes [Wilkes, Helen Waldstein]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, History, Social Science, Jewish Studies, Jewish, Holocaust
ISBN: 9781897425534
Publisher: UBC Press
Published: 2009-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

In an undated letter also written in the fall of 1939, Fanny reports that among Else’s many visitors, there are some who are trying to send their children to England. “How does one part with a child?” I ask myself again. “How does one know if the worst is yet to come?”

Today, as I watch my own toddler grandchildren seek shelter in their mother’s arms, I cannot imagine the courageous parents who prematurely parted with their children.

Fanny’s heart breaks for her daughter and for “all these good people” who are leaving. As she points out, they are not leaving in search of a better life but because their own peaceful existence has been shattered, much like the ultra-modern Bata shoe factory whose demise she describes.

My dear children,

I thank you very much for your kind and detailed letter and I am answering it right away so that we will soon be lucky enough to hear more news from you. How nice it is to read your letters, my dear children. I follow your lines while imagining everything in my mind.

Now the hay has been brought in. It was surely a more difficult undertaking than in than our little fields in Strobnitz, especially since you have so few wagons.

Here, the weather has been mostly bad. Sunday night we had such bad thunderstorms in the area between Iglau and Zlin (hailstones weighing ¼ kg.) that all crops were destroyed and the roofs of most houses were blown away or smashed. The Bata factory in Zlin was totally demolished. Its vaunted glass roof caved in and all the machines are unusable. Thousands of windowpanes have been reduced to a heap of shattered glass.

Now you will have finished unpacking the lift. Did everything arrive unbroken? Do you, dear Gretl, feel more comfortable in your new home? Is Helenka happy too to have her own things again? How many rooms are there in your house? And that reminds me, where do you get the wood for the stove? Do your woods produce some fuel? I have another idea. Could you create some kind of bathing facility in your little creek, even if it were only a Sitzbad? Could the water be dammed up?

Now I close with the sincerest of greetings and kisses to you, my dear Hellygirl and a request that you bring us pleasure soon again with your news. Your faithful mother Fanny.

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