5, 1922

Vienna

Dear Sister Minna & Brother-in-law Nandi:

With happiness I reach for my pen. In this hour of sadness you provide much happiness. We are very happy, because we did not know if you were still living or not. We need to let you know that our dear mother died on April 23, 1919, three years ago. Father said "not to get upset." Fate has dealt us a heavy blow by leaving us alone. We have a roof over are head, but everything is expensive. One kilo lard costs 3400 kronen, one kilo flour costs 10500 kronen, and one loaf of bread 8000 kronen.

Poldi is no longer at home, he got married. "C" is a socialists, he joined the party. I have been working for an attorney for the last 10 years as a typist and stenographer.

Mother suffered a heart attack while washing on Easter. At that time it was very bad, you could not buy anything. Mother said the laundry is still very dirty. She wants to wash the laundry again tomorrow, when she can buy soap. We had to let another family do their laundry. So our laundry had to soak in the water until Wednesday when we had the time and soap, but are good mother died in between.

On this particular day I arrived home in the afternoon and have to leave pretty soon again. Mother had already started the fire in the washhouse and wanted to leave for the washhouse. I asked her to please stay at home for a half-hour and a hour since the fire would not go out fast. I shouldn't have let her go, as she asked me to go with her, but I didn't do that.

Then a solicitor came and sold another family some potatoes and they came to us to borrow a scale. Then after that I let mother go downstairs to the other family and I had to go back to work. I couldn't tell mother a proper good buy, I only waved with my hand from the other family's window. That was at 2:15 in the afternoon, and at 2:30 mother was dead already. The family wanted to wash curtains and for these they wanted to Lobar and found her dead. There was a lot of smoke in the washroom, we just don't know anything else. Another family heard yelling but didn't know that it was my mother, but thought it may have been the daughter of another family who had burned her hand. Where mother hit her head she had a blue spot. Then they brought both families to our apartment where the policeman asked the paramedics what had happen, and he could not tell us. He telephoned the police doctor, who arrived and diagnosed a heart attack. In the hospital, where they performed an autopsy, they said "she died from a massive stroke." The neighbor from the other family came to get father at work and a daughter from the neighbors came to get me, she said "mother is unconscious." You can imagine if I had known that, ten pair of horses could not have dragged me back to work.

I stayed home for a day and finished the laundry with Frau Freihartze, who used to live in the Einfeldergasse and at that time lived in our street, whom I told everything when I ran to her. Mother always talked about you all the time and always wondered what you were doing and if you are still living. If she had received your letter she would have been so very happy just as we are happy now, without mother however.

I love all of your children as well, they should write to me even if it is in American. I can imagine what it means even if I don't understand it. I gave your letter to Leopold, I don't know when they were all born and what their names are, but that does not matter. When you named Olga you thought about me, but why did you not name your children Anna, Moritzi, Luise, Poldi, Ferdinand or Johann, Maria or Walter, Berta Henrich Rosa also sounds good, they are all German. I know some people who went to America. That Wandi's father died you properly know already from Maria Amenschka's father, mother and brother died during the last war. How was your winter?

We had to move and now live at #4 Hindensbergstrasse 10, 1st floor, door 38, 7th yard. You can also write to Schleifungsgasse 14A, Freihaus. You still write well in German. Please excuse my bad handwriting and that I have not wrote to you in so long but I always have so much to do, I have a wash iron, darn and cook. My mother always told me I should write. We are all well and hope the same from all of you. Now I don't know anything new to write anymore so I am greeting you with a 1000 kisses from Father and Olga.

Please write very soon and often. I am waiting 2 months and by then I should hear from you preferably in German or American.

PS. Mother was very thin when she died, I thought the last day before she died she floats like an angel, that is good for her, and then she died.