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. She will be blog­ging here this week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series.

I am obsessed with let­ters. The only means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for so many in my grandfather’s world, his pre­served let­ters from friends and fam­i­ly enabled me to tap into his expe­ri­ence, and that of those he left behind, when he fled Europe in the fall of 1938. But of course I couldn’t pub­lish every let­ter I found – I couldn’t even begin to untan­gle the sto­ries each one opened up. Yet – here in these blog­ging spaces – I want to go into both let­ters I didn’t use – the col­lec­tion of my grandfather’s was so vast, and encom­passed so many peo­ple it was impos­si­ble to pub­lish them all – and those of oth­ers who allowed me to give con­text and col­or to the sto­ries my grand­fa­ther and his friends told from 1938 through the ear­ly 1950s. 

One thing that stood out ear­ly, as I read through the let­ters sent from 1938 through 1941 when Amer­i­ca entered the war, was that, imme­di­ate­ly, the idea of escape from Europe was not nec­es­sar­i­ly imme­di­ate­ly hap­py’ let alone an end­ing’ – lives were still very much in the bal­ance, and espe­cial­ly for those who made it only as far as anoth­er Euro­pean city – Bucharest or Budapest or even Paris. In fact, even news from those who made it to Pales­tine doesn’t seem all that much bet­ter than those who remained in Europe. This let­ter, writ­ten by one of my grandfather’s clos­est friends, was even­tu­al­ly cut from the book, but high­lights the anx­i­ety of life on the run – for Jews who made it as far as Chi­na, and for Jews who made it as far as Tel Aviv: 

July 221939 

Dear Dr. Wildman

As you prob­a­bly already know, my par­ents have arrived in Shanghai.

While I am hap­py that they flew the nest”, I do wor­ry a lot about their future. Accord­ing to news­pa­per reports, Shang­hai is again a the­ater of war. Hope­ful­ly, I shall be able to bring them to Erez [Yis­rael] very soon.

Now I have to share some very sad news with you. I feel ter­ri­ble hav­ing to write about this, but I also think it is my duty to do so. Oven­stein and Rot­feld have shed their blood for our home­land. Both lived in one of the most dan­ger­ous set­tle­ments of the coun­try, — one of the set­tle­ments that were used to their dai­ly evening con­cert” of shots.

Oven­stein got there with an enor­mous plan for a har­bor. The plan, in and of itself, was excel­lent and, and he was asked to real­ize the project A Jew­ish fish­ery Har­bor on Lake Tiberias.” Rot­feld worked as physi­cian in the area, cut off from the world: Water in front, 2000 m high moun­tains in back, and locat­ed almost out­side the right­ful bor­ders of Palestine.

One evening, an fero­cious Arab attack hap­pened that, how­ev­er, as usu­al was pushed back. Dur­ing the ear­ly hours of the fol­low­ing morn­ing they went to work in the fields, as though noth­ing had hap­pened. They went to work for Jew­ish land and Jew­ish life.

They were attacked from an ambush. Oven­stein died on the spot, Rot­feld sur­vived for a short while.

The coun­try was in shock — two such impor­tant peo­ple, in Erez only for a few months, and already joined the ranks of those who fought and lost their lives for the thou­sands of the Jew­ish peo­ple, with­out shel­ter and with­out solace.

Willy Rit­ter held a stir­ring speech on the day they were buried.

This is the bond of Jew­ish recon­struc­tion, that arose from servi­tude, with the will to re-build. Two have fall­en, the third stands by the grave. Maybe, he, too, will be felled — maybe me, too, and maybe thou­sands of others.

One man falls, and the next one takes his place. An eter­nal bond that nev­er shall be bro­ken because it was forged by our iron will.

Enough for today!

Kind regards from your grate­ful disciple

Fred­dy

Read more about Sarah Wild­man here.

Relat­ed Content:

Sarah Wild­man has report­ed across Europe and the Mid­dle East for The New York Times, Slate, and The New York­er, among oth­er places; she is a for­mer New Repub­lic staffer. She is the recip­i­ent of the Peter R. Weitz Prize from the Ger­man Mar­shall Fund for excel­lence and orig­i­nal­i­ty in report­ing on Europe and the transat­lantic rela­tion­ship” for the series in Slate where Paper Love orig­i­nat­ed. She lives in Wash­ing­ton, DC.