Joyce Oates: The Gravedigger’s Daughter

Your cousin

Palo Alto CA

1 November 1998

Dear Rebecca Schward,

Thank you for your letter and for your response to my memoir. I have been deeply moved by the numerous letters I’ve received since the publication of Back From the Dead : A Girlhood both in the United States and abroad and truly wish that I had time to reply to each of these individually and at length.

Sincerely,

Freyda Morgenstern

Julius K. Tracey ‘48 Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago

Lake Worth, Florida

November 5, 1998

Dear Professor Morgenstern,

I’m very relieved now, I have the correct address! I hope that you will read this letter. I think you must have a secretary who opens your mail and sends back replies. I know, you are amused (annoyed?) by so many now claiming to be relatives of “Freyda Morgenstern.” Especially since your television interviews. But I feel very strongly, I am your true cousin. For I was the (only) daughter of Anna Morgenstern. I believe that Anna Morgenstern was the (only) sister of your mother Dora a younger sister. For many weeks my mother spoke of her sister Dora coming to live with us, your father and your Elzbieta who was older than you by 3 or 4 years and your brother Joel who was also older than you, not by so much. We had photographs of you, I remember so clearly how your hair was so neatly plaited and how pretty you were, a “frowning girl” my mother said of you, like me. We did look alike then, Freyda, though you were much prettier of course. Elzbieta was blond with a plump face. Joel was looking happy in the photograph, a sweet-seeming boy of maybe 8. To read that your sister and brother died in such a terrible way in “Theresienstadt” was so sad. My mother never recovered from the shock of that time, I think. She was so hoping to see her sister again. When the Marea was turned back in the harbor, she gave up hope. My father did not allow her to speak German, only English, but she could not speak English well, if anyone came to the house she would hide. She did not speak much afterward to any of us and was often sick. She died in May 1949.

Reading this letter I see that I am giving a wrong emphasis, really! I never think of these long-ago things.

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.