My Grandfather’s WWII Letters Still Ring True Today

These are truly tumultuous times.  Many are making comparisons to other times in history, in particular to the Second World War. I’ve been immersed in the ripple effect of that war all my life. My grandparents (and my mother, in utero) came to the U.S. as Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Poland in late 1940 and watched in desperation as the world they knew and loved (and fought to improve as members of the Jewish Labor Bund) was annihilated.  

Between 1942 and 1946, my grandfather, Emanuel Patt (known as Monye), then in his early thirties, wrote a series of letters in Yiddish to his toddler daughter, Rifkeleh (Rebecca—my mother). In them, he shared his thoughts about the harrowing nature of the world they lived in and the brighter world he had dreamed of and worked for all his life.

The letters offer a portrait of both immeasurable loss and tenacious hopefulness—a determination not to give up faith in humanity and our power to turn things around. And they’re unique in having been written while those wartime events were happening, not in retrospect.

My grandfather saved all the letters, typed them up and gave them to Rifkeleh in 1958, on the occasion of her high school graduation, prefaced by a new letter offering them as a key to her foundation, roots and family as she made the transition to adulthood. She, in turn, saved and translated them to English and gave them to me when I graduated high school in 1987. They’ve informed how I understand the world ever since.

I’ve decided to begin publishing and sharing the “Letters to Rifkeleh” in my blog. Here, I’m including the full text of this 1943 letter to show not only my grandfather’s philosophical thoughts and lyrical writing but his full humanness as a young, immigrant father and family man.

November 23, 1943

My dearest nakhesdik [pleasant] little daughter:

Today you become 2 ½ years old. A big girl already. Mama went out for a while and left you in the apartment. So, you’re lying in your room, in your bed, and you’re sleeping. Have a good, sweet sleep!

Rifkeleh! When you grow up and will be able to read what your father is now writing, there will be a new, very different world than what we have now. Who knows if you’ll be able to understand your Papa’s thoughts on a November night in 1943?

Where is the world going? There is no one who has an answer.

But the world is not moving in the direction that your Papa and Mama wanted.

Your mother and father sold their souls to a dream. A dream of a beautiful world. The joys of wealth didn’t appeal to them and leave them cold. They themselves can manage with the minimum. But they have with passion and devotion dedicated their belief in justice and freedom and equality. Many names have been given to their beliefs. It seems to your father there here are the two critical things: that which is immortal in the history of humanity – the striving to self-betterment and advancement, that which is labeled humanism; and freedom, the soil without which humanity can’t exist, the air with which humanism breathes.

But these days there is no great need for these. The world has become a shelf of wares with which one trades. Peoples, countries are leftover scraps of fabric or cans of herring which with the big wholesalers trade in their business. And the individual person – the greatest and most important – is only a thread n the scrap of fabric or one of the pressed sardines

If only strength and physical power dominated – then it would even be tolerable. When the strength of a young hero manifests itself, it doesn’t necessarily have to be hooliganism. There is, after all, beauty in the powerful lifting and lowering of a hammer by a young, singing blacksmith! And this is also how it is in world politics. When a young nation begins to put a halt to destruction, begins building rainbow-bridges from the simple earth to the lofty sky – this is beautiful!

But today it is the power of cunning. It is the invincibility of cynicism.

If your father wasn’t such an incurable optimist, he would surely be coming to some very sad conclusions: we are the last of the Mohicans, Don Quixotes in a world that doesn’t understand what truth and purity mean.

But I want to believe that this is not true: that the elements of victory will wipe out all of today’s vile and common cow-trading. That the nations will delete all the accounts of this present time.

But I’m not certain about this. It could be – yes; and it could be – no.

But about one thing I am sure:

Just as the seasons of the year change, as Spring inevitably follows Winter, as surely will the dawn of humanism arrive, a time when ideas and ideals will rule the world; when words such as “truth” and “equality” will carry more weight than the grocer’s reckonings, when we will breathe freedom and not even be able to be satiated with enough brotherhood.

I promise you, my little girl, that when that time comes, and you and the youth of your generation will tear away the cobweb-covered windows and begin breathing the free air of humanity – then you will find your father and your mother, the incurable dreamers, by your side.

And it is our most fervent desire, our aim in life – to make you ready for that day.

If you will grow up and make these ideals part of your way of life – then this will be your mother and father’s greatest joy. If we will be unable to protect you and your soul becomes poisoned with the cynicism and nihilism of the times – then we will have failed in our task.

You are lying, little Rifkeleh, in your small bed. The golden curls fall down over your forehead. You sleep peacefully and your dream is of a little flower, a kitten, the little piglet that cries because its mother went away. You don’t know anything about your father’s thoughts and the grand philosophies he spins about you.

So sleep sweetly, our comfort and hope!

Your Papa

 

Dreaming About War

I’ve been having Holocaust dreams lately.  Not actual scenes of concentration camps or ghettos, but disturbing scenarios with enough related resonances  to let me know I’m in the territory–cozying up with the inherited terror of my family’s refugee/survivor history.

In one dream, my husband comes upstairs from the laundry room carrying a huge sack of clothes slung over his shoulder. Someone has stolen our brand new laundry cart, which I’d left downstairs.  I rant about the cost of a new cart and fret about not being able to trust our neighbors anymore.  In real life, the next morning, my husband reported that I’d cried out in my sleep, “What are we going to do?!!”

In another dream, I’m overseas at a huge conference center.  My flight home is in a couple of hours but I haven’t packed yet and can’t remember where my room is. I begin a race against the clock to find my room, get my stuff, and make it to the airport.  Nobody will help me, so I run around anxiously, in and out of buildings and through wooded paths.  Finally, I see some members of my group descending a giant staircase with their suitcases. “Wait for me!!” I cry, desperate not to be left behind, alone. Continue reading “Dreaming About War”

Let the healing begin!

As the granddaughter of Jewish Holocaust survivors, Poland was a place I was taught never to forget, but also never to set  foot in.

In the 1980s and ’90s, when Jews around the world started visiting Poland and Eastern Europe to “find their roots,” my grandmother Brucha thought they were crazy.  She’d been a refugee from Nazi-occupied Warsaw, escaping in the months before the Ghetto was locked down. To her, returning for any reason was unthinkable. “To go back to Poland, you’d have to take me in chains,” she’d declare, absolutely adamant.

Naturally, years later, when I decided to attend an international workshop on Healing From War in Poland, I felt terrified.  I shook with fear every time I considered voluntarily getting on a plane to the land my family had fled for their lives– the cauldron where the vibrant Jewish culture of my ancestors was extinguished in the most violent and terrible way. Irrationally, I imagined I might arrive and be immediately imprisoned, or executed.  But I was determined to go, to shake up this mindset that imprisoned me all on its own. Continue reading “Let the healing begin!”