Lodz, 14 May 1933

My devoted and beloved brother, Sol Zissman, wife and son,

I received your letter the second day of Passover and today,
with thanks to G-d, it's Lag b'Omer already, i.e., I have made
you wait for an answer for four full weeks.   If the
circumstances were different, I might not remember how many days
have gone by since the second day of Passover until today. 
However, since we happen to be counting the omer, and since I am
aware that 33 days have raced by from Passover until today, I
now recall that I have not yet made a reply to my devoted
brother.  

Believe me, Sol, that it's futile to apologize to you.  First of
all, there is no apology to make for you because, no matter what
I think of as to an answer to write to you, you won't believe
anyway.  You will say that "This is the way Uncle Wolf conducts
himself recently.  As long as he receives the $10 or $5, it's
quite enough for him.  He is frugal with letters.  A strange
person, this Uncle Wolf..."  However, devoted brother, "...do
not judge your fellow man until you have been in his
position..."  My pen is certainly not capable of setting down
everything that I endure and how I am tormented.

I would certainly prefer not to write you, my devoted one,
because you don't deserve for me to cause you pain.  Why do you
have it coming?  For what misdeed?  Don't you think that I sense
that my letters tear at your heart?  Don't you think that I
recognize that my letters don't bring you any pleasure?  And if
I receive several dollars from you, I often think about them and
wonder "G-d knows whether Shloyme can afford to send this $5. 
Ah, but he sent them nevertheless."  This is your regular course
of action.  You're not able to sit down to the Passover meal
with a clear conscience until you have provided several dollars
for your uncle.  It's unnecessary to wish you well, Sol.  I am
also not going to thank you for the generosity that you
demonstrate for me because you will think there, "Uncle has
learned how to wish one well; he knows the trade very well..."

I will only write this much, Sol.  It's high time for me to be
able to take care of myself, as it is set forth in the Ethics of
the Fathers:  "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?  If I
am only for myself, what am I?  And if not now, when?"  And yet,
Sol, if the time for me to take care of my own needs has not yet
arrived and if there is to be found in the present time of
crisis a friend, a brother, a nephew, who on his way to the
Seder on Passover or on Succos remembers that, G-d knows, if his
brother might not be starving somewhere, the importance lies not
in the $5 but in the love, in the compassion, that blossoms and
unites both hearts.  However, I ask you.  Is it possible to
place a value on this, or is it possible to express it in a
thank-you letter?  Certainly not.  All of the deeds that you
perform on behalf of your uncle should be inscribed in my
thoughts, although I personally have you in my thoughts
eternally, not so much you as your deeds.  But all this is not
enough.  One must experience such things at a stage play or a
motion picture where a person is drowning and someone else
continually pulls him from the depths and doesn't let him sink
to the bottom...

I wrote you at Purim that my sister, Esther, was here to see a
doctor.  She was here for about three weeks.  I thought that she
would need an operation, but it passed without an operation. 
She's a bit better, but not completely well.  The doctors say
that she has rheumatism of the head.  That's why she gets the
attacks so often.  I went home with her to Opoczno two weeks
before Passover.  I was there in Opoczno for over two weeks. 
Lazer baked the matzos, and I was the "controller" of the
matzos.  Good or bad, I earned almost $10 for Passover.  

On Passover eve, I returned to Lodz with the intention of moving
to Opoczno because when my sister was in Lodz and saw how I was
suffering, how I struggled to make a living, she said that if I
were living in Opoczno, she might be able to help me.  However,
she can't help at all in Lodz.  I listened to everything and
thought to myself, "Like the clay in the hands of the potter..."
 I am, after all, very much like the clay in the hand of the
potter.  He makes whatever he wants to with the clay...  Let
Opoczno be Opoczno.  But what will I do in Opoczno when 95% of
the people are poor, naked and barefoot?  The town looks like a
cemetery; the people resemble corpses; the houses look like
tombstones.  What will I do there?  After all, Lodz  is a city
with a population of 600,000, with factories, and I am not able
to find work.  Will I find it in Opoczno?  To be brief, we toyed
with the idea of a small store, a stand to sell in the
marketplace, etc., until the air went out of the bubble of all
of these business enterprises...  

I've been doing nothing in Lodz for five weeks already.  It's
impossible to get a job in a factory.  I have no means and no
way of doing some buying and selling.  This is the way that one
day after another goes by, one week after another.  One becomes
meaningless.  If I earn a dollar during a 2-week period by
negotiating deals, I'm overjoyed.  But how does one survive?

Therefore, devoted Sol, I beg you to send me a solution,
although you are not well enough informed to be able to counsel
me or to give me advice under these circumstances.  I must make
clear to you that my moving to Opoczno won't help at all at
present because Lazer is not a manufacturer from whom I can get
a job in a factory.  He's also not rich.  His entire fortune
consists of $200-$300.  This permits him to run his bakery and
to provide for a family of nine persons.  Their only financial
assistance might consist of their providing me with perhaps $50
on interest from a bank.  And if the business is not able make
the payments, it will be used up.  And what will my situation be
then?  Also, I remind you that Malke is sickly (and) weak.  She
doesn't want to move to Opoczno.  

Therefore, devoted Sol, the world is closing in on me, and I
can't do anything for myself, and I can't come up with a
solution.  I don't know what to do, whether I should do as my
sister says and move to Opoczno or do as my wife says and not
move.  Perhaps G-d will yet help so that times will improve and
I will get some kind of job or some work.

I also write you that I have recently been corresponding with a
cousin of mine in the Land of Israel.  Rather than moving to
Opoczno, I would be more enthusiastic about going to the Land of
Israel, and even though I'm not about to do that, I would
consider it a good opportunity.  Whether it will be possible or
not, I don't know, and I can merely wait and see what the future
will bring us.  Germany and its Fascism has really set back the
world to the views of the Middle Ages, and the whole of Europe
is terrified that the savagery and murders of Hitler might lead
to war...  What more are we Jews to say???  We are an abandoned
people, a people "like a flock without a shepherd..."  However,
however, "In each and every generation they rise up to destroy
us..."

To go on, I read in the Forward about what's going on there with
the kidnappers.  They capture people and demand ransoms.  It's
really incomprehensible that a country such as America should be
incapable of rooting out and defeating this banditry that has
grown in recent years.  We here thought that, with the arrest of
Al Capone, everything (in the underworld) would come to a stop. 
In the final analysis, it appears that his organization cannot
be uprooted.  They're too powerful for anyone to be able to
contend with or defeat...

At the end of my letter, Sol, I will relate for you an event at
which you'll laugh and be astonished.  Just as there's no lack
of confidence men and cheats in the world, Lodz is a city where
there are no kidnappers but simple confidence men and swindlers.
 It wouldn't bother me if they had not attached themselves to
someone close to us!  Listen carefully, Sol, to what happened. 
Two weeks ago, Uncle Emanuel Lewin of Zgierska 74 came up (to
see me) and told me that he had been swindled out of 107 zlotys,
i.e., $18, by a confidence man.  I looked at him, astonished. 
"Who, what, when?  Can you, Uncle, such a poverty stricken
person as you are, be swindled out of $18?"  He told me how it
happened.  A man came up (to his apartment), nicely dressed,
with American glasses and introduced himself as having come from
Chicago and having brought with him for Uncle Emanuel Lewin $20
in cash and a package of used clothing, overcoats, fur coats,
clothing, etc.  At first, Uncle didn't believe that you, Sol,
had suddenly become

(The end of this letter is missing.)                            


All material Copyright 1995 by Marshall L. Zissman and Sol J. Zissman.