On occasion, I will step in as blog publisher to add some editorial notes to the writings of Clara Lewin, my great-grandmother.
Acknowledgements. First, I should like to credit and thank by name the German team whose work has made it possible for new generations of Clara's family and others to come to know more of our ancestors. Astrid Lohöfer, the team's coordinator, Dr. Jürgen Lorenz, and Erika Laribi have given generously of their time and thought in making the transcriptions and adding useful footnotes, and we of the Sachs-Lewin-Feiler family are grateful to them. Ms. Lohöfer also introduced me to Dropbox, which has made it possible to conveniently share the letters and transcriptions via this blog.
Written clearly in an elegant but archaic script, unreadable even for most Germans, Clara's letters have opened or reopened a window for many of us into the lives of our family during the generally dreadful decade of the 1930s. It's testament to the vitality of her letters that Clara has come alive not only to us, her descendants, but also to members of the transcription team, who have told me how Clara and her family have grown upon them. We hope that other readers will discover this blog and its story of how one German-Jewish extended family dealt with Europe's descent into war and beginnings of genocide in the 1930s.
Thanks too to my brother, Daniel, who has been an invaluable fact checker regarding family history. His published autobiography ("Through Turmoil to Tranquility") includes a detailed family history with many photos, but it's out of print. A second edition in paperback is in progress. I'll let you know when it appears.
Daniel has also updated the family genealogy, which I will publish here soon to help Clara's readers understand who's who.
Translation. Until it's possible for me or others to make better translations of Clara's letters, I'll be using Google Translate, currently the best of bad alternatives. Yes, GT often renders German-English translations that are utterly unintelligible, but other software options are usually worse.
Consider just the translation of Grossmama, as Clara usually signed her letters to her grandson, George, and his wife, Leonie, who were our parents.
In the context of a letter, Google renders this word acceptably as Grandmother.
Babylon leaves the word untranslated: Großmama, which is OK.
Free Translation translates it literally and humorously: Large mama.
Babelfish renders it humorously (and ambiguously): Large mummy.
Webtranslation is fine with that word: Grandma; but otherwise clumsy to use and as unintelligible as Google Translate.
For the present, I'll stay with Google Translate, but if you know of better translation software, please let me know. Better yet, if you're bilingual and are willing to improve on the translations, please do so and send them to me. We more-or-less monolingual English speakers will be grateful. Let me know too if I may credit you with the translation.
Auf Wiederschreiben,
BDS
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
Exodus from Europe
Today is the birthday of my grandson, George, whom I still call by his childhood name, Orgi. [pronounced with a hard 'g' please.] He and his wife, Leonie ("Lonchen"), whom you've already met, have two children, Daniel and Benjamin. For this occasion, I have looked again at letters that I sent to him and Leonie in July of 1937, the same year as the letter to Lonchen posted earlier (24 January blog), and I'm posting some of them here.
That was a very full year for my family. Since 1933, George and Leonie had lived in Madrid, where he was on the faculty of the new university and where their sons had been born in 1934 and 1936. With the Spanish civil war threatening Madrid later in 1936, they left in August for the beach resort of Alicante, where they and myriad other refugees stayed for a few months seeking ways out of Spain and into safe next destinations. Finally, through the kindness of the British consul in Alicante, they moved to an off-shore British destroyer, where Benjamin's diapers dried on deck among other refugees' clothing. Then, after a few days, they transferred via a launch from a German (!) cruiser to another British destroyer, the HMS Greyhound, which took them to Marseilles. The train trip from there to Paris was the only routine part of the whole venture.
Curt, my son-in-law and George's father, had already been in Paris since 1933, when Nazi decrees in Germany forced Jews out of their university positions. While his family remained in Berlin, he took a position at the Musee d'Ethnographie du Trocadero (now Musee de l'Homme). George, Leonie, and their children moved into Curt's room on the top floor of a cheap hotel in the Rue St. Roch, where they stayed for months while they, and Curt, sought a safe country for emigration and the visas to get there. Other family and even some friends stayed in that hotel room with them for brief periods. Daniel usually slept in the bathtub, but sometimes George or a visitor slept there, where they were more or less sheltered from the cries of one-year-old Benjamin, who slept in a dresser drawer. The family also ate some meals and washed dishes in this room, and of course washed diapers as well.
George even took a weeks-long trip to New York in order to solicit family support, get the necessary paperwork, and look into options for work and for neighborhoods in which to live after arrival. And in the event that New York proved impossible, he made a side trip to Havana to investigate Cuba as an alternative destination.
George returned to Paris with the good news that there were indeed some job prospects in New York and that my nephew, Frank Wolff (I was a Wolff until I married Louis Lewin), would supply the necessary affidavit assuring that George's family would not be a financial burden on the government, even if no job were immediately available. After several more weeks and countless hours standing in lines with other refugees seeking visas, all the documents were in hand.
There is much more of this story to be told, but I'll only add now that with the necessary papers in hand, the family had a reunion at the North Sea beach resort of Scheveningen, Holland. When I joined them there after sending some of the letters below, there were four generations gathered. It was mostly a joyful occasion, though tempered by uncertainty about the future. War already seemed inevitable, and we knew that some of us might not see each other again. Had we known more exactly what would befall our family and the world in the next few years....
Clara
***
First page of 13 July letter, handwritten:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Georg_Leonie%201937-07-13a.jpg
German transcription of letters, 13 July to 21 July:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Georg_Leonie%201937-07-13%20tran.doc
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Georg%201937-07-19.doc
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Georg_Leonie%201937-07-20.doc
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Georg%201937-07-21.doc
Google Translate for letters, 13 July to 21 July:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Georg_Leonie%201937-07-13_21%20Google.doc
Note: The useful footnotes in the transcriptions were kindly supplied by the transcribers.
That was a very full year for my family. Since 1933, George and Leonie had lived in Madrid, where he was on the faculty of the new university and where their sons had been born in 1934 and 1936. With the Spanish civil war threatening Madrid later in 1936, they left in August for the beach resort of Alicante, where they and myriad other refugees stayed for a few months seeking ways out of Spain and into safe next destinations. Finally, through the kindness of the British consul in Alicante, they moved to an off-shore British destroyer, where Benjamin's diapers dried on deck among other refugees' clothing. Then, after a few days, they transferred via a launch from a German (!) cruiser to another British destroyer, the HMS Greyhound, which took them to Marseilles. The train trip from there to Paris was the only routine part of the whole venture.
Curt, my son-in-law and George's father, had already been in Paris since 1933, when Nazi decrees in Germany forced Jews out of their university positions. While his family remained in Berlin, he took a position at the Musee d'Ethnographie du Trocadero (now Musee de l'Homme). George, Leonie, and their children moved into Curt's room on the top floor of a cheap hotel in the Rue St. Roch, where they stayed for months while they, and Curt, sought a safe country for emigration and the visas to get there. Other family and even some friends stayed in that hotel room with them for brief periods. Daniel usually slept in the bathtub, but sometimes George or a visitor slept there, where they were more or less sheltered from the cries of one-year-old Benjamin, who slept in a dresser drawer. The family also ate some meals and washed dishes in this room, and of course washed diapers as well.
George even took a weeks-long trip to New York in order to solicit family support, get the necessary paperwork, and look into options for work and for neighborhoods in which to live after arrival. And in the event that New York proved impossible, he made a side trip to Havana to investigate Cuba as an alternative destination.
George returned to Paris with the good news that there were indeed some job prospects in New York and that my nephew, Frank Wolff (I was a Wolff until I married Louis Lewin), would supply the necessary affidavit assuring that George's family would not be a financial burden on the government, even if no job were immediately available. After several more weeks and countless hours standing in lines with other refugees seeking visas, all the documents were in hand.
There is much more of this story to be told, but I'll only add now that with the necessary papers in hand, the family had a reunion at the North Sea beach resort of Scheveningen, Holland. When I joined them there after sending some of the letters below, there were four generations gathered. It was mostly a joyful occasion, though tempered by uncertainty about the future. War already seemed inevitable, and we knew that some of us might not see each other again. Had we known more exactly what would befall our family and the world in the next few years....
Clara
***
First page of 13 July letter, handwritten:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Georg_Leonie%201937-07-13a.jpg
German transcription of letters, 13 July to 21 July:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Georg_Leonie%201937-07-13%20tran.doc
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Georg%201937-07-19.doc
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Georg_Leonie%201937-07-20.doc
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Georg%201937-07-21.doc
Google Translate for letters, 13 July to 21 July:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Georg_Leonie%201937-07-13_21%20Google.doc
Note: The useful footnotes in the transcriptions were kindly supplied by the transcribers.
Monday, January 24, 2011
How to find my letters
Although my comments about my letters will be posted here, the letters themselves can't be. [No jpg. pdf or Word files can be attached.] However, I will use a modern technique, namely Dropbox, to point you to them. Of course, I wrote my letters by hand in German, which only some of you can understand. (My great-grandson, Benjamin, who is managing this blog for me is, at best, mediocre in his understanding of German.)
To make matters worse for most of you, I wrote almost all of my letters in a script [perhaps Suetterlin or Regent] that even most Germans under the age of 60 or 70 can no longer read. However, a group of Germans has generously volunteered to transcribe my letters, and those transcriptions will also be available here.
Finally, for those of you who don't understand German, crude translations of my letters, using Google Translate, will be provided. I will be grateful to any of you who can then supply a better translation, which I would then gladly also make available on this blog.
To see how this works, here are the links to my most recently transcribed letters, which I wrote to "Lonchen." Her real name is Leonie, who is the wife of George, one of my grandsons. (That is why I signed the letters, "Grossmama.") The other people mentioned in these two letters are mostly family, and I'll introduce them to you in good time. I should add that there is nothing of great importance reported in these sample letters (nor in many others), and I use them here just for example.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Leonie%201937-12-04%20tran.doc
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Leonie%201937-12-08%20tran.doc
In these files, the original letter and transcription are shown on facing pages (what some of you call a "pony"), with the translation following. For many earlier letters, the originals, transcriptions, and translations are in separate files.
I hope that you can access the letters without a problem and that you come to enjoy reading them and, in time, getting to know me and my family.
Clara
To make matters worse for most of you, I wrote almost all of my letters in a script [perhaps Suetterlin or Regent] that even most Germans under the age of 60 or 70 can no longer read. However, a group of Germans has generously volunteered to transcribe my letters, and those transcriptions will also be available here.
Finally, for those of you who don't understand German, crude translations of my letters, using Google Translate, will be provided. I will be grateful to any of you who can then supply a better translation, which I would then gladly also make available on this blog.
To see how this works, here are the links to my most recently transcribed letters, which I wrote to "Lonchen." Her real name is Leonie, who is the wife of George, one of my grandsons. (That is why I signed the letters, "Grossmama.") The other people mentioned in these two letters are mostly family, and I'll introduce them to you in good time. I should add that there is nothing of great importance reported in these sample letters (nor in many others), and I use them here just for example.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Leonie%201937-12-04%20tran.doc
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12230734/Clara-Leonie%201937-12-08%20tran.doc
In these files, the original letter and transcription are shown on facing pages (what some of you call a "pony"), with the translation following. For many earlier letters, the originals, transcriptions, and translations are in separate files.
I hope that you can access the letters without a problem and that you come to enjoy reading them and, in time, getting to know me and my family.
Clara
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
A Brief Introduction
This blog will publish the letters that I wrote to my family from Berlin in the 1930s. I am grateful that they were saved by my family, so that those who didn't know me or my family's generation can come to learn something about us and our lives during this decade, which started with the great depression and ended with Hitler, oppression of Jews, war in Europe, and concentration camps.
Fortunately, much of my family left Germany early in the decade. I stayed on with one of my daughters and her husband. Our story and theirs will be told here with copies of my letters and my commentary about them.
Clara Lewin
Fortunately, much of my family left Germany early in the decade. I stayed on with one of my daughters and her husband. Our story and theirs will be told here with copies of my letters and my commentary about them.
Clara Lewin
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