October 7, 2005

Dear Jane,

Last night, as I walked my letter to the mailbox through the darkened streets, - the town is saving electricity - , I became aware, that there was much more to be written, - though not necessarily to be mailed.

I cannot do justice to your letter.  The older I get, the more vulnerable to intoxication with candor, usually my own, but in this instance, yours.  After sixty-six years, I find myself enchanted.  What more is there to say?


"For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings."
                 (King Richard II,  Act 3, Scene 2)

A specific answer to your question about my father's incarceration in Buchenwald: On November 8, 1938, we had appointments at the U.S. Consulate in Hamburg to obtain our visas. On November 9, a German Embassy attache in Paris was murdered by a Jew named Gruenspan. That night Jewish homes and businesses were systematically vandalized, and Jewish men hauled off to concentration camps. On our return to Braunschweig, my sister and I were packed off to our non-Jewish grandparents in Berlin. My father had no place to hide and went home. My sister and I did not witness his arrest. Since he was a physician with a large practice, he had patients also in the Gestapo, the secret police, on whom, since he had his U.S. visa, my mother prevailed to have him releaced on the condition that he leave the country immediately. My Berlin grandparents, my mother, my sister and I accompanied him on December 8, 1938, his head clean shaven by the prison authorities, to Bremerhaven and his ship, the Hansa - which was sunk during the war. -  I remember it receding down the Weser estuary.

A week or so ago, my son said to me: "Tolstoi claimed that only the unhappiness of families differs from one the other, that in their happiness all families are alike. When I rewrite Anna Karenina, I will correct his error and begin: There are no happy families." It occurred to me then that perhaps I had succeeded as a parent, at least to a degree.

I am impressed by the extent to which we feel compelled to idealize the possibilities of both private and public existence, and to lament the imperfections in and around us, imperfections which, in the Blue States, we ought to accept as nature or fate, and in the Red States we might refer to as "God's Will."

I like to read and to write letters, and it would please me to hear more from you, and/or to talk with you as your mood, time, and energy permit.