Ear­li­er this week, Sarah Wild­man 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’sVis­it­ing Scribe series.

I’m a lit­tle bit obsessed with let­ters and the way we all once lived – pen or type­writer to paper, con­sid­ered mis­sives that were sent off to our loved ones, with­out hope of a reply in sec­onds or min­utes, but with a wait that spanned a day or days or weeks or months. In shoe­box­es at my par­ents’ house I have my own col­lec­tions of love sto­ries, friend­ships, con­ver­sa­tions that didn’t take place elec­tron­i­cal­ly. But of course, as a teen, we had the phone, which we would hold on to, for hours on end, even ​“long dis­tance,” which reduced the num­ber of let­ters sent, if one wasn’t ​‘away,’ say, or specif­i­cal­ly feel­ing roman­tic, nos­tal­gic, or hard to reach.

In my grand­par­ents’ era, with mail that arrived twice dai­ly, the news was near­ly always sent by post – be it urgent or mun­dane – as the phone, or telegrams, were lux­u­ries reserved for only the most severe cas­es. In my col­lec­tion of let­ters, there are hun­dreds of post­cards that were just as like­ly to men­tion the train times, health sta­tus, or casu­al updates as they were to dis­cuss the major prob­lems of the day. Take this one – from a recent­ly arrived cousin, dat­ed late Decem­ber 1939. ​“Dear Karl, Wel­come! For the time being, only in writ­ing. We should be hap­py to see you soon in per­son. Please let us know when you are com­ing, and when we should go to Brooklyn.” 

There were dozens upon dozens of post­cards in my col­lec­tion writ­ten in scrawled Yid­dish between my grandfather’s broth­er-in-law and him­self. These were often almost impos­si­ble to deci­pher. Late in my writ­ing of the book, I was sit­ting on a flight return­ing from Tel Aviv, sur­round­ed by a large group of friends from Bor­ough Park, Brook­lyn. To my left was an impos­si­bly thin woman, and to her left was her hus­band who spent most of the flight immersed in Pirkei Avot, the lessons of the fathers, on the oth­er side of the aisle from me was a friend of his. Occa­sion­al­ly they leaned across to talk to each oth­er, pur­pose­ful­ly avoid­ing eye con­tact with the women. 

In fact, the men ignored me entire­ly, until I opened my com­put­er. Then the friend across the way peered at my screen. ​“You speak Yid­dish?” he said, incred­u­lous­ly. No, I admit­ted. In fact I’ve been hop­ing to get these translated. 

And sud­den­ly a group of men became ani­mat­ed, dis­cussing the trans­la­tion of my let­ters as fer­vent­ly as a trac­tate of Tal­mud. The let­ters, they said, were near­ly a translit­er­a­tion of Ger­man writ­ten into Yid­dish (I sus­pect­ed this). Most­ly they said very lit­tle, they hoped for health, and they hoped some­thing ter­ri­ble would hap­pen to Hitler. 

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. 

Relat­ed Content:

• The G.I.‘s Rab­bi: World War II Let­ters of David Max Eich­horn by Greg Palmer
• Adven­tur­ers Against Their Will: Extra­or­di­nary World War II Sto­ries of Sur­vival, Escape, and Con­nec­tion-Unlike Any Oth­ers by Joanie Holz­er Schirm
• Read­ing List: Holo­caust