Jewish Stories of Love and Marriage by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso & Peninnah Schram

Author:Sandy Eisenberg Sasso & Peninnah Schram [Sasso, Sandy Eisenberg & Schram, Peninnah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2015-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Letters She Never Received

Lt. Otto Feldman and Else Kranz

Lt. Otto Feldman, a Czech officer, left behind two daughters and a pregnant wife, Else, to join the Austro-Hungarian army in November 1914. He would not meet his son for six years. He was captured by the Russian forces and held prisoner for four years.

February 27, 1915

My beloved little wife!

“Letters she never received!” That’s what I call these pages. At last I have reached a decision. Brooding for weeks, my spirit paralyzed, I feared that I won’t find the strength to save myself from spiritual death. Last night the redeeming thought came to me; Write to her! She who suffers for you at home, whose thoughts cannot get away from worrying about you, who so often has returned your lost self-confidence to you, she must help you now again. Letters are supremely suitable for this! Surely I need not stress that I am always thinking only of you, and it would be a profanation of my feelings if I wrote these lines just to prove to you that this is so. However, I can in this manner make my thoughts of you more profound and that is my aim. “. . . she never received” I call these letters because I do not even intend to post them to you. Only when we are happily reunited in our sunny home shall you read them. I have made up my mind to write very diligently: all my feelings, observations, thoughts and perceptions should be contained in this book.

April 1, 1915

My sweet Elserle!

. . . I will give up my afternoon’s walk since I do not want to lose the pleasure of talking to you, my love. You can’t conceive the high internal value these letters have for me. It is a fact that I am always thinking of home, of you and the children. But to concentrate my thoughts is impossible if you consider that I live in billets with 200 other people. But when I sit down with this exercise book, the whole world round me disappears. I see and hear nothing anymore because I am with you and only with you! And what bliss that is! The effect is not always the same. Sometimes the writing puts me into a cheerful and happy mood, at other times it makes me sad, but I am always content afterwards.

Although I am so many miles far from you, although I must suffer spiritual pain aplenty, I am full of joy and confidence when I look to the future because during the long separation from you I have become even more aware of what you are for me, how my whole existence is imbued with your sweet supple personality. My little mouse, what I would like best now would be to declare my love to you again, but I will rather save it till we are together. In future every look and every word of mine should prove to you that you are all my happiness, my sunshine.

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