Ear­li­er this week, Sarah Wild­man wrote about trans­lat­ing let­ters writ­ten in Yid­dish by her fam­i­ly and shared a short read­ing list and an inter­est­ing let­ter that did­n’t make it into her book,Paper Love: Search­ing for the Girl My Grand­fa­ther Left Behind. She has been blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series.

It was hard for me to leave out any of the words writ­ten by Valerie Schef­tel – Valy – the woman my grand­fa­ther left behind. But there were a few that didn’t fit. And Valy’s let­ters – as dev­as­tat­ing as they are – some­times, too, ranged to the mun­dane, just like all the let­ter writ­ers of her day includ­ed the tiny things that now make up our email feeds. Life, even in depri­va­tion, was not always worth fill­ing up a page about. 

And yet, even Valy’s short­est notes can wal­lop me with sad­ness. The fol­low­ing is a post­card that didn’t make it into the book in the end, even though it too car­ries so much. (Trans­la­tion was by Ulli Wiesner.)

Post­card from Valy, Berlin, Rombergstraße 2
to KW at St. Luke’s Hospital

04-28-1940

Dear­est Karl,

Today a card arrived from Uncle Isi­ue in which he writes that you had received a let­ter from me on 01 – 17. But you did not write to me?!?! Why not, my boy? I sim­ply can’t believe that you do not want to write. You prob­a­bly already have received my let­ter of the 18th of this month. Noth­ing much has changed here for the time being. Since I have a lit­tle more free time now I work in Pathol­o­gy, which I like a lot. I work with the micro­scope, just as you taught me, and am mak­ing good progress. Here, spring has sprung sud­den­ly, and every­thing is unbe­liev­ably beau­ti­ful. One could almost be tempt­ed to be hap­py and joy­ful. Do you remem­ber, Karl, — the young birch trees in the Vien­na Woods? Time and time again, I think of them!

What are you doing, dar­ling in your nun­nery? Do you think, you’ll ever let me know any­thing about it? Paula’s sis­ter will hope­ful­ly leave for the USA in 14 days. Maybe you’ll see her so she can give you a full report. I am afraid that I will not be able to come for a long, long time due to the quota. 

All the very best to you, Karl, and many kiss­es from your Valy

Greet­ings to your mama, Zil­li . My moth­er sends her regards as well

So short – and yet so much. Oth­ers are get­ting out of Berlin, even as she is stuck under the quo­ta sys­tem that denied thou­sands of oth­ers a chance to cross the Atlantic. 

Valy and my grand­fa­ther used to walk the Vien­na Woods, the Rax Moun­tains, the gar­dens of Vienna’s Augarten. She mus­es on that time again and again her letters. 

But I am struck by more here: Just like her mem­o­ries of her time in Vien­na, Valy car­ried that micro­scope wher­ev­er she went, even the Gestapo men­tion it in their files of her. 

Sarah Wild­man has report­ed across Europe and the Mid­dle East for The New York Times, Slate, and The New York­er, among oth­er pub­li­ca­tions, and is a for­mer New Repub­lic staffer. She is the recip­i­ent of the Peter R. Weitz Prize from the Ger­man Mar­shall Fund of the Unit­ed States, ​“for excel­lence and orig­i­nal­i­ty in report­ing on Europe and the transat­lantic rela­tion­ship,” for the series in Slate where here book Paper Love: Search­ing for the Girl My Grand­fa­ther Left Behind orig­i­nat­ed. Wild­man lives in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

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