Hers was the dark understory to my grandparents' "miraculous" escape, the one left behind. What could it have been like for her after her sister and brother-in-law got their U. She would have been alone in the Judenhaus , or more likely forced to share a room with a stranger. She would have been alone during the horrifying deportation to Gurs.
My father and grandparents and Max would have written letters to her -- and she would have written them back -- but what had happened to those sad anxious letters? It was with some trepidation that I opened the second folder, Refugee Case File number 10, At first this seemed to be the case with file number 10, The earliest letter, sent by my father in November of a little more than a year after Frieda had been deported to Gurs , asked if the American Friends could send packages to Frieda "who is in a most desperate state of affairs.
And, without these "vital goods," he wrote, "it is hardly imaginable how she could overstand the coming winter. The answer, although it is not in the file, was certainly that the American Friends Service Committee was not allowed to send goods, only money, to the internees. I was hoping that there might be a personal exchange with Frieda, or perhaps some evidence of my father's State Department visit to try to save her.
But I knew this wasn't very likely. Ron Coleman, curator of the American Friends' archive, had cautioned me not to set my expectations too high.
Most of these files contained only letters about making arrangements to send money to France, he said. The next letter, dated March 19, , was written by my grandfather, as were the rest of the letters in the file. For the next five months, he sent straightforward requests to send money to Frieda, enclosing money orders in each letter. In the black market of Gurs -- where Frieda could have spent the money for an apple or an egg or possibly even some woolen underwear -- everything was exorbitant.
