Letters from Lida - 54

   

File 54a. (1)
-5-

… going home from Druskeninkai (2). Today I also will write to Lisa and will invite them to stay with us at least for Sukkoth. Musia (3) already is signed up in Tarbut (4), may God make it good, at least she won’t endure him anymore. Everything is the same with Abram. <His?> children are very spoiled and Gitele is copying Elia’s vocabulary (5). Ida (6) got a very pretty girl.  Moisey already praises his granddaughter and she made everybody happy. Gitele and Elia are making so much noise that I can’t write. Be healthy and happy by the wish of your loving mama Revekka.

 Files 54b-d.

Dear Dorochka! I honestly didn’t understand your letter at all. Don’t think that I am hiding something from you. You know yourself that in the store Meichl (7) did not get along with Mama and Papa and I was very happy when he found a job. I was with him in the store and saw with my own eyes how he is not always right. Mama probably also had to endure a lot from him, but she would never tell me anything. She does not want to get me upset, but I understand everything myself and am just very happy that he is not in the store anymore. We will see how it will go. Things are awful in Palestine, so if you want to come back try to get a guy who will fit to work at the store. You will take care of the house and I will rent a small apartment and, God willing, will get by. If, with God’s help, everything will calm down in Palestine in couple of years, we will go too. I find that now it does not make any sense, although Meilach thinks only about going. I understand why he does not want to be at home anymore. Since you left nothing new happened. You know even before he was against us staying at home, but what could I do? – I am not going to leave the parents alone. You know how much Mama suffered, and what a hard life she had. But why should I write you about it, you know it very well yourself. I know that Meilach in relation to them is far from right. Don’t want to talk about it anymore, I am writing you all this only because you wrote that you may come back home. So try to find a guy who would get along with our parents and fit in at the store. Of course, Dorechka, this is my own opinion and nobody knows what I write to you. Gitele does not let me  write. I wish you, Fanya, X, (9) and Manfred happy, healthy year, God willing. Happiness and health to our family and may God let us be together <Yiddish>. When will this terror in Palestine come to an end? May God let everything be well. Kissing you with love,

Loving Frida

Meichl and Gitele send you their regards.
 

Dear children!

Accept, dearest, our best wishes with the New Year, and also please give my best heartfelt wishes to your father. May God give you health and happiness and that finally everything will be quite over there. Fanechka, dear, some time ago we were waiting for Frida to pass on the news, and now you probably using an excuse that Dorka is with you and she is writing about everything, so I forgive you. Only that, God’s will, you all will be happy and that a peaceful time will come soon. Be healthy and happy by the wish of your loving mama Revekka.

 Congratulations to all of you with the New Year and coming Holidays. May God let us in the New Year be together and that we all be healthy. Kiss you with love, loving Frida.

 Gitele send her kisses and, thank God, is developing well. Fanechka, how would you advise me, to send her to Olia < in the kindergarten?> or is it too early? (8) Don’t want to disturb her mental development, she is a very nice and good girl and it is a pity that you cannot come to meet her.

Loving you Frida.

 (1) This is the end of some other letter.
(2) Druskininkai is a resort 71 miles sw of Vilnius.
(3) Musia [a nickname for Shulamith] is somehow associated with Lisa, but no one recalls how.
(4) Tarbut: religious schools affiliated with Zionism
(5) Gitele is Frida’s daughter. Elia(hu) is Abram’s older son, born 1932, thus 2 years older than Gitele.
(6) Ida is a Pupko cousin, daughter of Fanya & Dora’s Uncle Lev. Family members are divided on her husband’s name, oral tradition saying Moneh Blumenthal, Pages of Testimony saying Mordechai Novoprutsky. They had a daughter Mari ca. 1939, making this a relatively late letter. (Cousin Frida Moll’s Page of Testimony for Ida lists daughter Mari, 3 years old, at the time of the mass murders in Lida – 1942- of which they were all victims).
(7) Frida’s husband Meilach Trotsky
(8)Child's name removed for privacy reasons
(9) Olia Poliachek has succeeded in her plans, and has a Kindergarten. Gitel must be 5 or 6, for her parents to send her there, consistent with a date in 1939 or somewhat later.