When I was in seventh grade, I read The Diary of Anne Frank, and before my senior year of high school concluded, I had read it twice more. I remember the oppression of the Jews, the intense, demoralizing living conditions, and how unbelievably frightening it had to be living in the times of the horrendous Holocaust. While I read The Diary of Anne Frank as an assignment for school, I don’t remember learning as much history or nearly as much about the culture as I did from this book, Careful Old Letters, by Alexandra Weinbaum.
From the first pages of introduction to the story, I was gripped by the historical account of families desperately torn apart by unthinkable acts of war against Jews. Knowing every word of this book to be true and realizing these horrific things happened to real people made this a book that was difficult to pick up and impossible to put down. The author, Alexandra Weinbaum’s parents emigrated to the United States in the 1930s, but her extended family stayed behind in Poland. The entry to the book laid the foundation for what was to be experienced when reading the compendium of personal letters written between family members during the tragedies of World War II. I can’t imagine the haunted feelings the author must have had as she read the translated letters and postcards written in German, French, and Polish from Jewish family members enduring the ravages of the Holocaust. Alexandra says of the two women who translated the documents, “They were confronted with many challenges deciphering so many different handwritings; researching historically specific references to films, books, and political events; and translating proverbs from Russian or Yiddish. They captured the consistency of voice across individual writer’s letters, especially my parent’s voices.”
The author, herself, is a historian so the entire book is produced with impeccable accuracy and the wholly personal journals are completely credible as sources of facts. As I read, the author’s love for her family and passion for telling her story made it all too real. Alexandra told about her mother’s intense reluctance to talk about the events of the past. Who could blame her? The author says of her own glacially slow speed in opening the letters that she felt, as one writer, Eva Hoffman, explained, “to be curious was to uncover the unspeakable.” Authenticity of what we read in this book is supported by copious Endnotes where sources are identified and period events described.
The letters in the book are, for the most part, arranged chronologically, but most compelling are the apparent seasons of life for Alexandra’s family. The depth and tone woven into each chapter is impossible to convey with an overview. I don’t want to minimize the trauma or uncertainty this family endured as they anxiously tried to communicate across continents in one of the most gruesome times of our history. However, I want to provide insight into the heart of this deeply personal story by writing a short survey of each chapter.
Childhood and Leaving Home-From Lodz to Grenoble (1908 – 1929)
This chapter, rich with historical facts and accurate descriptions of cultural norms introduces the author’s grandparents who were politically engaged, especially her grandfather who was once wrongly accused of being a spy for the Soviet Union. Readers get to know the author’s grandparents, uncles, aunts and her parents. Her parents were able to live in freedom in America because the uncle of Alexandra’s mother sponsored them.
Love Letters from Lodz, Grenoble, and Paris (1928 – 1932)
This chapter lays wide open the building of a relationship between Alexandra’s parents. I thought of Romeo and Juliette at times because, as you will come to understand when you read the book, there were family conflicts that came between Halina, the author’s mother and Mikhal, her father. The letters that went back and forth between them are tense with drama and passion. Mikhal was in medical school and encouraged Halina to continue her education and get her degree. Finances were an issue for both of them, and even though Mikhal did achieve his MD, Halina chose to support his career and not actually pursue dreams of her own.
Halina’s Uncle Julius Love, who lived in America, was a wealthy man and urged Halina and Mikhal to quickly pack all they had and come quickly to the United States. One sentence in his letter to Halina says, “I advise you to hurry with the arrival here because is today’s circumstances and the situation in Europe, it’s impossible to know what might happen.” On April 14, 1938, visas secured, Halina and Mikhal sailed to New York City. They were safe, but other family members would endure unspeakable persecution. In the words of the author, “I believe that the burden of guilt for the loss of their entire families save for two survivors, Dosia and Adek, my father’s cousins, whom my parents brought to the States after the war, marked my parents’ lives irretrievably.”
Letters from Home (1938 – 1941)
Mikhal, although fully credentialed as an ophthalmologist, had to repeat his internship in the United States and was fortunate to find a position at Roxborough Memorial Hospital. Finances continued to be an issue with Mikhal and Halina, but they never let on about them to family back in Poland. In letter after letter that was exchanged, the family in Poland wrote that conditions were very bad there, but they always seemed just as concerned about the young married couple who had left Poland and moved to the States.
On September 1, 1939 Halina’s grandmother wrote her last uncensored letter. On that day the Nazis attacked Poland and everything changed. Each page reveals more about how the war was altering life for the Jewish families. This book review can’t begin to cover the atrocities of victims. Alexandra’s great-grandmother counts 12 postcards she had sent to Mikhal and Halina without any response. Her great-grandmother’s fears were evident especially in her last three post cards. Her great-grandmother died of starvation in the Lodz Ghetto in May 1940.
Voices of Despair-Letters from the Lodz Ghetto (1940 – 1942)
The history written into the pages of this chapter are an education in themselves. The author provides the reality of the Ghettos in the backdrop of all that was occurring at the time. As Alexandra says of the 39 postcards written by her grandmother, “I immersed myself in the physical realities of her existence as well as the emotional torment that she felt but could not openly express [due to censorship].” Desperation, starvation, lack of income and complete inhumane living conditions were their reality, and too horrific to try to capsulize for this brief summary of the book. In evidence to the truth recorded in these pages, the author pens these words. “By September 1942, the inhabitants of the Lodz Ghetto knew that their children and elders would meet certain death when rounded up.” They would be taken to Auschwitz where they would die. Of the 163,000 that once populated Lodz, only 844 would survive.
Voices of Despair-Letters from Warsaw Ghetto (1938 – 1941)
Some family members on Alexandra’s father’s side managed to escape to Warsaw from Lodz, but the circumstances were even harsher. It was next to impossible to find employment and the German government provided only 184 calories per person, per day for food. Documentation of the experiences in Warsaw were secretly documented by Jewish writers, scientists, by people who had diaries, decrees, and other documents.
The letters published in this chapter are exchanges between family members who fled to Warsaw. Letters and packages had to be registered and were still censored. The letters talk about starvation and lack of any means to survive. Each letter asks for Halina and Makhal to please write to them. They desperately want to hear from them, but receive no correspondence. Alexandra says, “I want to believe my parents responded to the letters but they were confiscated by the Germans.”
What impressed me most of all the messages is the tone that was so often of happiness for the couple who had emigrated to the United States and were safe, even though family members were lost to persecution, starvation, and homicide.
This book is an authentic roadmap of history. The inclusion of 169 letters and postcards, photo reproductions and accurate journals summarize the depravity of conditions Jews lived with during this extended period of unthinkable torture. While the letters speak to the living conditions, they also illustrate the hopefulness of the human spirit that is Alexandra’s legacy.
“After my father died [shortly before his seventy-third birthday] I found carefully kept records of the patients he treated, often with operations that restored vision and hope. This was my parents’ legacy and they worked at it with devotion that people admired. Their history, and that of friends and relatives left behind, was carefully preserved in the carton, Careful – Old Letters.”
