Hilde's Letter

(This is a letter from my father's cousin Hilde discussing Lisa's sister and her family).

Dear Ted:

You asked me about my mother and I promised you that I would write a little bit about her.

She was completely different than your mother, our Tante Lisa. By the way, her name had been Luise as your daughters discovered when they saw our family tree. My mother, Your Tante Grete, was not as beautiful as yours. Neither was she as talented and gifted. She was never jealous, very goodhearted and kind, helpful particularly to people in need.

Only once I heard her making a statement after your brother Milton was born: “I never envied Lisa her beauty or her great talents but I could envy her the four boys.” As you know – I had only one brother Kurt, who passed away in Jerusalem a little over a year ago. Mother had some of the toughness and perseverance of her father, but more of the softness and warmth she must have gotten from her mother. She had been the perfect help mate to our father.

It was not easy to be a Rabbi of a large congregation. So many pitfalls if you say the wrong word or displease a member. Father, being a Yekke (a German) typically, when talking to one of them was not careful enough; but mother always tried to smooth things over and most of the time succeeded. This was her father’s diplomacy.

During the first World War our house was always open to the many refugees who came in open cattle wagons, like herds of animals to Vienna and needed help.

Among other many works, my parents started in our house what is today Israel Red Cross, called Magen David. All the instruments, furniture, drugs, bandages, etc. etc. was purchased and stored in our house before being shipped to then Palestine. Luckily Morgenthau (the father of today’s M.) was the American Ambassador in Turkey, a neutral country. He was a friend of father. He took care of the transportation. How he did it – we never asked.

My mother had nurses and midwifes from Palestine trained in our great hospitals before sending them back. There was a constant coming and going from Palestine. It gets too long to describe all this.

I remember one year, a time close to Passover. My father never had much time left for talks with the family. Therefore my mother went to his office and stood in line. When he opened the door to his study and haw her he indicated that he had no time. Mother insisted that she had waited patiently in line, that it was her turn and he had better listen, otherwise she would not prepare a Seder for the family. Father was stunned. She wanted him to go to the government and ask for a trainload of potatoes, since there was no flour to bake Matzoh. Of course father did and succeeded. Mother and her group of women stood at the train station in the slushy spring weather and distributed enough potatoes to each family to last the Passover week. Then she went home and prepared our Seder.

Do you see here a little bit of her father? She took care of her ailing mother and, as much as he let, also of him. She was a devoted daughter and daughter-in-law. A very kind but strict mother to us. Did not Ellen, your sister, ever tell you about her?

I remember one incident. Mother always went to meet our teachers to find out whether everything was all right: our behavior, our homework, our progress, etc. One of Ellen’s professors complained that Ellen does not greet them. So after a few weeks mother asked whether she is greeting them now. When Ellen told her that she is now doffing her cap all the way to the floor, my mother jumped up and gave her a slap on the cheek. It was so funny! She had been so much shorter than Ellen. Mother was always conscientious. When she accepted a job it was always taken care of properly.

My father and we were always properly, if not excellently taken care of. Yet father, when he came home, would open the kitchen door and ask the maid for her. When she was out on some errand, he got angry and we heard: “Aha she is with Mrs. Bloch.”

I experienced the same after I was married. When I did not agree with my young husband – after all I was used to expressing my opinion all my life – nut now I heard: “Aha you have talked to your mother.” Funny, if it were not so sad and stupid.

You probably know that your parents met in our parents home in Hamburg. Somewhere I had a group photo of your parents and mine relaxing out-doors and your grandmother Tarlau holding me on her lap.

Before I forget, I should mention an incident when I was not more than 6 or 7 years old. Father was than a Rabbi for a large area including Schonbrunn, The Kaiser’s castle, park zoo, etc. But it also had districts with extremely poor people. One day my mother took her cleaning woman and went to a house where a poor woman had given birth to a baby. The young mother had tuberculosis, was bed ridden and had nobody to take care of her or the baby which was not changed for quite some time.

Mother and her help cleaned up the baby, the woman, and the house. Of course she brought food for them and did as much as she could for the moment. She placed the woman in a hospital and the baby in a home. It took all day. When she came home she did not let us touch her, spread a sheet on the bathroom floor, shed all she wore to be burned, took a bath and then talked to us. Which young woman would do something like this today?

About the life in Palestine, mainly Jerusalem, I do not know much. Henrietta Szold, the founder of Hadassah and Youth Aliah was one of her friends. We had many, many frines from Palestine our parents had acquired on their trip to the holy land in 1911. I am still in touch with their children and grandchildren, beside our own friends there. For these people our house in Vienna was their home when on a visit to Vienna and now our home here.

Mother took her Jewish maid with her to Jerusalem and married her off. I met her on my frequent visits. Of course, she is an old grandmother today. Mother had cancer of the colon. So did her mother before her and I today. She was operated on by one of the finest surgeons from Berlin, a Hitler refugee. She had been only 60 years old.

Courageously she went from patient to patient while hospitalized and comforted them, showed them how to handle the colostomy the easiest way etc. Yet, one year later she was dead.

When she and father said good bye to me at the train station in Vienna, I heard her say to father: “take a good look at her, we will never see her again." I heard it and remonstrated. I will be back in a few months to pick up the boys.”

Hitler was faster. The boys had to come by themselves and I never saw my parents again.

These are, of course, only glimpses. but it may give you (hopefully) , some picture of your Tante Grete. Excuse the poor typing and, please, understand that it is impossible to really do a good job unless you are a trained writer.

I wish we would have lived closer all these years. But this is how fate decided and we will try to catch up the best we we can.

Warmest greetings and much love, Hilde.