Postcards translated by Ite Toybe Doktorski on April 29, 2012 through ViewMate of Jewishgen.com:
February 16, 1940
Dear Sister Kady, dear brother-in-law Pinny, and children, may you all live happily. We received today your postcard from January 10. I am responding immediately. We are all in good health. We receive frequent letters from mother and the children, everything is OK with them. Finally we received a letter from Ruven on November 8m 1939. It took eleven weeks for the letter to reach us. Once he finally writes to us it happens as if on purpose that it takes eleven weeks for the letter to reach us. We learn nothing from his letter. He doesn't say if he is working; about his wife he also says nothing. He just writes a few words to say that he is in good health. So go figure. That is why we ask you, Kady, to write to Simen (Grandpa Samuel) that he write to us a detailed letter on how Ruven is faring. How is his relation with his wife? Does he work? Does she work? Because in his letter there is no information. Write directly to Simen to tell him to write to us. We greet you all heartily. We great heartily Simen and Minnen and the children, also Reuven and his wife.
Max and Rose
(Written across, near the right-hand edge) Maybe you should send on this postcard to Simen.
Postcard #2:
Kamyshlov, December 20, 1943
Dear brother, sister-in-law, and children, may you live happily.
Yesterday, the 29th of December I have finally received the first postcard from you in the two years that we have been here (2 years exact were completed last December 18). We thank God that we at least hear from you and how you are faring. But we are very surprised and we take it very much to heart that you don't even send us any greetings from Reuven, let alone news about his life and how he is faring. We have already written to you that Rebecca and her son have been here with us since last August. We are staying all together in a very small room. Since she is our very own sister we couldn't do otherwise than take her in. We are all in good health. Myself, Roze, Ide, Rebecca, and Ize, we manage, but from Ide's husband we haven't had any news in a long time. Ide's son left for the army in November 13 this year. About Ide's husband we enquired everywhere and we couldn't get any confirmation that he is still alive or not. We feel sick from it. We greet you all and your families. Special greetings to Reuven. We ask you to write to us and he should also write to us. Long life to our powerful Red Army and to our leader, comrade Stalin.
Max
Notes from translator:
1. Ide's husband probably joined the Red Army to fight the Nazis.
2. From this last greeting on this postcard you mustn't infer that Max was a communist. They were refugees in far away Asian Russia, existing on a pittance and on sufferance, without any rights and no future, hopping to survive this horrible war and go back home. I have seen in my own family letters of the same period from people in similar circumstances that ended with the same communist greeting, while we permanently know that the writer was a Lithuanian orthodox Rabbi who had never embraced communism. The communist salute was only for the benefit of the censorship official to make sure the postcard got through. Those were the times….
My notes:
1. Kady and Pinny in the first postcard refer to Max's sister, Katie Trugman barnett and hr husband Philip Barnett.
2. Reuven was born in the US when Max and Rose were living here. They all went back, but Ruby was sent first to Katie, and then to NY and Sam when Max and Rose could not get him to do anything. Probably a rebellious teenager but possibly to keep him from the army. I knew he was married but have no idea to whom. He died young of kidney disease (the same illness that took Benny)
3. Max was the postmaster of Volochisk and had been imprisoned there for receiving letters in English (from Sam and Katie) so I agree that the Stalinist greeting was for censorship purposes. The family in Russia was always afraid and often would stop the exchange of letters and packages do to fear.
3. Remember that we also have postcards from the 1960's showing that they knew Grandpa had died and that my father had died. The postcards from Blema mention that Rose and Eda (Ide) were still alive and that “son” lived far away. I always took that to mean Izya (Ize), Rivka's (Rebecca's) son, but now find out that Eda had a son too.
Postcard #3 Also translated by Ito
The right hand edge has been cut off so the subject or the sense of many sentences is lost. Ito has translated as best he could.
Year seems to be 1945
He writes to his dear sister and brother-in-law (Katie and Philip) that he is in Kamenetz for a month, all costs paid by the government, to recover from a foot fracture. He was prescribed salt baths, mud, messages and some electric treatment, and he has recovered his health there. Somebody else (name cut off) in the family has a cold and is coughing a lot but he hopes it will soon get better. He sends regards to the whole family and asks them to write often.