It was seeing your picture in the newspaper, Freyda! My husband was reading the New York Times & called me to him saying wasn’t it strange, here was a woman looking enough like his wife to be a sister, though in fact you & I do not look so much alike, in my opinion, not any longer, but it was a shock to see your face which is very like my mother’s face as I remember it.
And then your name Freyda Morgenstern.
At once I went out & purchased Back From the Dead: A Girlhood. I have not read any Holocaust memoirs out of a dread of what I would learn. Your memoir I read sitting in the car in the parking lot of the bookstore not knowing the time, how late it was until my eyes could not see the pages. I thought “It’s Freyda! It’s her! My sister I was promised.” Now I am sixty-two years old, and so lonely in this place of retired wealthy people who look at me & think that I am one of them.
I am not one to cry. But I wept on many pages of your memoir though I know (from your interviews) you wish not to hear such reports from readers & have only contempt for “cheap American pity.” I know, I would feel the same way. You are right to feel that way. In Milburn I resented the people who felt sorry for me as the “gravedigger’s daughter” (my father’s employment) more than the others who did not give a damn if the Schwarts lived or died.
I am enclosing my picture taken when I was a girl of sixteen. It is all I have of those years. (I look very different now, I’m afraid!) How badly I wish I could send you a picture of my mother Anna Morgenstern but all were destroyed in 1949.
Your cousin,
Palo Alto CA
16 November 1998
Dear Rebecca Schwart,
Sorry not to have replied earlier. I think yes it is quite possible that we are “cousins” but at such a remove it’s really an abstraction, isn’t it?
I am not traveling much this year trying to complete a new book before my sabbatical ends. I am giving fewer “talks” and my book tour is over, thank God. (The venture into memoir was my first and will be my last effort at non-academic writing. It was far too easy, like opening a vein.) So I don’t quite see how it would be feasible for us to meet at the present time.
Thank you for sending your photograph. I am returning it.
Sincerely,
Lake Worth, Florida
November 20, 1998
Dear Freyda,
Yes, I am sure we are “cousins”! Though like you I don’t know what “cousins” can mean.
I have no living relatives, I believe. My parents have been dead since 1949 & I know nothing of my brothers I have not glimpsed in many years.
I think you despise me as your “American cousin.” I wish you could forgive me for that. I am not sure how “American” I am though I was not born in Kaufbeuren as you were but in New York harbor in May 1936. (The exact day is lost. There was no birth certificate or it was lost.) I mean, I was born on the refugee boat! In a place of terrible filth I was told.
It was a different time then, 1936. The war had not begun & people of our kind were allowed to “emigrate” if they had money.
My brothers Herschel & Augustus were born in Kaufbeuren & of course both our parents. My father called himself “Jacob Schwart” in this country. (This is a name I have never spoken to anyone who knows me now. Not to my husband of course.) I knew little of my father except he had been a printer in the old world (as he called it with scorn) and at one time a math teacher in a boys’ school. Until the Nazis forbade such people to teach. My mother Anna Morgenstern was married very young. She played piano, as a girl. We would listen to music on the radio sometime if Pa was not home. (The radio was Pa’s.)
Forgive me, I know you are not interested in any of this. In your memoir you spoke of your mother as a record-keeper for the Nazis, one of those Jewish “administrators” helping in the transport of Jews. You are not sentimental about family. There is something so craven to it isn’t there. I respect the wishes of one who wrote Back From the Dead which is so critical of your relatives & Jews & Jewish history & beliefs as of post-war “amnesia.” I would not wish to dissuard you of such a true feeling, Freyda!
I have no true feelings myself, I mean that others can know.
Pa said you were all gone. Like cattle sent back to Hitler, Pa said. I remember his voice lifting NINE HUNDRED REFUGEES, I am sick still hearing that voice.
Pa said for me to stop thinking about my cousins! They were not coming. They were gone.
Many pages of your memoir I have memorized, Freyda. And your letters to me. In your words, I can hear your voice. I love this voice so like my own. My secret voice I mean, that no one knows.
I will fly to California, Freyda. Will you give me permission? “Only say the word & my soul shall be healed.”
Your cousin,
Lake Worth, Florida
November 21, 1998
Dear Freyda,
I am so ashamed, I mailed you a letter yesterday with a word misspelled: “dissuade.” And I spoke of no living relatives, I meant no one remaining from the Schwart family. (I have a son from my first marriage, he is married with two children.)
I have bought other books of yours. Biology: A History. Race and Racism: A History. How impressed Jacob Schwart would be, the little girl in the photographs was never gone but has so very far surpassed him!
Will you let me come to see you in Palo Alto, Freyda? I could arrive for one day, we might have a meal together & I would depart the next morning. This is a promise.
Your (lonely) cousin
Lake Worth, Florida
November 24, 1998
Dear Freyda,
An evening of your time is too much to ask, I think. An hour? An hour would not be too much, would it? Maybe you could talk to me of your work, anything in your voice would be precious to me. I would not wish to drag you into the cesspool of the past as you speak of it so strongly. A woman like yourself capable of such intellectual work & so highly regarded in your field has no time for maudlin sentiment, I agree.
I have been reading your books. Underlining, & looking up words in the dictionary. (I love the dictionary, its my friend.) So exciting to consider How does science demonstrate the genetic basis of behavior?
I have enclosed a card here for your reply. Forgive me I did not think of this earlier.
Your cousin
Palo Alto CA
24 November 1998
Dear Rebecca Schwart,
Your letters of Nov. 20 & 21 are interesting. But the name “Jacob Schwart” means nothing to me, I’m afraid. There are numerous “Morgensterns” surviving. Perhaps some of these are your cousins, too. You might seek them out if you are lonely.
As I believe I have explained, this is a very busy time for me. I work much of the day and am not feeling very sociable in the evening. “Loneliness” is a problem engendered primarily by the too-close proximity of others. One excellent remedy is work.
Sincerely,
P.S. I believe you have left phone messages for me at the Institute. As my assistant has explained to you, I have no time to answer such calls.
Lake Worth, Florida
November 27, 1998
Dear Freyda,
Our letters crossed! We both wrote on Nov. 24, maybe it’s a sign.
It was on impulse I telephoned. “If I could hear her voice”-the thought came to me.
You have hardened your heart against your “American cousin.” It was courageous in the memoir to state so clearly how you had to harden your heart against so much, to survive. Americans believe that suffering makes saints of us, which is a joke. Still I realize you have no time for me in your life now. There is no “purpose” to me.
Even if you won’t meet me at this time, will you allow me to write to you? I will accept it if you do not reply. I would only wish that you might read what I write, it would make me so happy (yes, less lonely!) for then I could speak to you in my thoughts as I did when we were girls.
Your cousin
P.S. In your academic writing you refer so often to “adaptation of species to environment.” If you saw me, your cousin, in Lake Worth, Florida, on the ocean just south of Palm Beach, so very far from Milburn, N.Y., and from the “old world,” you would laugh.