Lodz, 5 June 1925 To the dearest of my dear ones, Sol, and your dear wife Esther, Yesterday, I received your letter along with a check for $20, and I want to answer right away. Your letter is lying on the table. I read it and devour your eloquence, your phrases, your penetrating ideas, your jokes, and think to myself how to answer you, what to write to you. After all, don't you have a better understanding of what's taking place here, don't you see it all more clearly there in Chicago than do my closest relatives here in Europe? And, the most important thing is that you are so interested in your uncle, that you can't forget him. Dear Sol, I am not adequate to the task of expressing, with my steel pen, my thanks or a blessing for your emotional attachment to me, your empathy for me. Your words remind me of an experience I had with an ill person. On one occasion, I stayed over night. It was an old and chronic illness, and the patient was not a fool. He understood his plight very well. The diagnosis was dire from the very beginning; the patient was made nervous by the prescriptions; all the doctors were in doubt as to his recovery. He didn't allow anyone to visit him; no friends; no nurses; no attendants. He cried out constantly that he wanted to leave this world because there was no reason for him to remain. All his relatives and all his best friends despaired of him and said, "Yes, it would be better for him to die rather than to suffer." During the course of this debate between life and death, his mother approaches him and gives him some medicine even though she is not sure that it will help him, but but even so... Everyone is sleeping, everyone is tired, his wife is thinking...(the worst), the children don't understand, his relatives have their own problems, his friends can be counted on only if there's a party, not...chas v'cholilah. Only his hapless mother is suffering because her son's illness is her illness, his affliction is her affliction. Nevertheless, she is awake the whole time, pats his forehead every few minutes to gauge his fever, gives him his medicine and her blessing for a complete recovery. She beseeches and mutters a prayer quietly for a healing for her son. Dear Sol, to portray such a scene one requires a gifted poet, e.g., Y. L. Peretz, Sh. Ansky, Spector, and so on. I'm not an author, and I'm not a poet. Yet, perhaps you've had the occasion to stand by an ill person in such a situation. If one carefully analyzes such a scene of the mother with a spoon in her hand at the bedside of her son and, at the same time, looking at her son with eyes that overflow and that express her commiseration, her love, her encouragement, you should know, my dear one, that this is the most touching drama which can play itself out in a home, chas v'cholilah. Why do I set out this entire word picture for you and, really, of what am I trying to convince you? Perhaps I I'm flattering you hypocritically because you sometimes send me something. No, my devoted and beloved one, given the way we have been able to understand each other through letters, there is no subject so intimate that we would withhold it from one another. I see that I'm dealing with a devoted and faithful person who, regardless of the gravity of my situation...just like that other invalid...always comes forward with medicine, pats me on the head, feels my pulse, mutters something quietly, just like that mother. Sol, answer my questions. What is that lonely, powerless mother thinking about at that moment with her spoon of groats or her spoon of soup? Surely, to make her son well. And, on the other hand, what does her son have in mind when he opens his eyes and sees that all the people are tired and have gone to sleep, because he bothered them too much. Only...only his helpless, powerless mother cares. She is awake, she is trying to save him, she tends to him, she doesn't cease to encourage him. And when the son is so critically ill that he can't respond because of his weakness, he opens his eyes, looks around to see who is standing by him, who is tending to him. And the tears that slide down his face at that time no ordinary (uninvolved) person would be able to understand... only...only a person with a noble soul or a great poet, or one's own mother, or a close...a very close...friend, such as you, dear Sol. I write you this much, my devoted one, (so as to point out) that just as that invalid doesn't thank his attentive mother, for tending to his needs, but leaves it to her to find everything in his tears, similarly with me. Why thank you, or give you a blessing? In the tears that I shed reading your letter, you will find everything... I read your letter in which you comfort me and encourage me not to be depressed. You write that "if a small ring breaks away from a love bracelet, it can be repaired, it can be soldered." Truly, your observation is pearl-like. Your encouragement to me is not like that given by a young nephew, but rather by an aged, loving mother to her only child. How can I not be depressed and discouraged when I look around me and consider my plight? My best years, my flowering youth have vanished. I'm almost forty years old, a time when a person should feel that he's at the highest point of his life and existence, not even taking into account all of the difficulty and suffering that I have experienced: lived through a gruesome war, suffered beyond my ability to endure; lived in Lodz and then in Kinsk, then back to Lodz and again in Kinsk, now here in Lodz for four years; three years spent with...(my in-laws)...in a prison, as if sentenced to a term of years, always on the lookout for a way to free myself, to breathe free air, free from...(my in-laws), free from those who are not "menschen." Thanks to you, my devoted one, a year ago I was able to rid myself of all my suffering. As I wrote to you, I didn't (even) have an easy time acquiring this apartment. I accepted it all in stride; I thought that perhaps the measure was full. I left (my in-laws) as if it were after a fire, without money, without anything, broken, shattered. I took a fresh look around at how bad things were and at all the things that we lacked. Nevertheless, I felt very fortunate that I was able to earn enough for a "pound of bread" without anyone's help, but through my own initiative. I finagled, I swindled, I did business, and managed a whole summer and half the winter last year. It's not important whether I earned money or not. What is important is that my family and I survived. Not such a great accomplishment, but serene, pleasant, respectable...under the mezuzah...it was enough. But the Master of Heaven has been angry with me for a long time. He wants to shorten the years granted me, so he afflicts me with an illness. A small thing; a pain on my side. But who does anything about such small things? Who bothers himself with such minor ailments? But...if it doesn't get better, it surely gets worse. I go to a doctor; he says that it's due to a cold. I go to another doctor; he says it's nerves. A third says it's my kidneys. A fourth says it's sand on my kidneys. In short, everyone has an opinion, and I know that I have a sickness...whatever it may be, nerves, kidneys, sand, gall stones, I'm not well, and I feel that I'm not getting better, but much worse. Your grandmother, my mother, was here with me for Passover. But how can she help, other than to sympathize with me? I understand my situation too well, and really didn't want to cause you any pain. I understand very well that if you were able to help me, you would. Perhaps you sometimes help me beyond your means. Secondly, how long can this go on? Do you want to try to fill a sack full of holes? You want to cure a critically ill person by all available means. I doubt whether that can be done, and think of you as that mother who wants to cure her son. In my tears, dear and faithful Sol, you'll discover everything. How sad I am that I have to write you such letters and that, up to now, I have nothing good or pleasant to communicate. Nevertheless, I ask nothing of you, my devoted one, and request nothing because I understand only too well that it's high time for me to be able to help myself. And if I'm not able to do so, you my devoted one will not be able to accomplish anything. Take my advice, and "go to sleep" just as all the friends and relatives of the invalid did...because you're tired, and you have your own problems and infirmities. With this, I close my letter with heartfelt regards for you and for your dear wife and your in-laws, your father, sisters, uncles, et al. My wife and children, my mother, sister, brother-in-law and family send their best regards. Please answer promptly. With respect, Your uncle, Wolf Lewkowicz All material Copyright 1995 by Marshall L. Zissman and Sol J. Zissman.