“The writer of this letter is a distraught mother who is being taken away with her family to an unknown destination. […] I am sending you an adoption document for my little daughter, in which I give her up for her own good. In this way, perhaps she will be saved and they won't take her. I have no other choice […] I beg of you, love her like a mother, so that she feels my absence less keenly. Don't tell her where I am.”
Isabella-Bella Fodor from Cluj (Kolozsvár) wrote these heartrending words to the Szomors, a Christian family looking after her eight-year-old daughter Gita in Nagyvárad. Isabella also signed a declaration waiving her parental rights to her daughter Gita, and agreeing to Gita's adoption by the Szomors. In the declaration, Isabella requested that Gita convert to Christianity and receive a Catholic education. At the end of May 1944, the Jews of the Cluj ghetto, including Isabella and her mother Emilia, began to be deported to Auschwitz. Isabella and Emilia were murdered in the death camp. Gita's father, Chaim Fodor, was drafted to the Hungarian Army labor battalions and did not return. Gita survived.
Isabella's letter is one of 13 last letters from the Yad Vashem Archives that have gone on display in the fourth and final installment in the series of online exhibitions showcasing last letters from Jewish men, women and children murdered in the Holocaust. Most of the letters were donated to Yad Vashem as part of the national “Gathering the Fragments” campaign. They were sent from Ukraine, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, the Czech Republic, France and Russia to relatives and friends from homes, hiding places, ghettos, jails and camps. Written in a variety of languages – Italian, German, Dutch, Hungarian, French and Russian – these missives are sometimes the sole evidence that the person existed, and they make it possible to tell the stories of individuals in the Holocaust and give its victims a name, a face and a memory.
After Italy surrendered to the Allies in September 1943, the Germans occupied most of Italian territory, including Milan, and began nonstop hunts for Jews. Every Jew they caught was arrested, regardless of citizenship or record of service to the Italian state. In April 1944, this happened to Claire-Clara Sorias (née Arditti) of Milan, who had Turkish citizenship, and her two-year-old son Giuseppe-Yosef. “My thoughts are with you,” Claire wrote to her husband Moϊse-Moshe and her five-year-old daughter Carmen from the jail in Milan where she was incarcerated with Giuseppe. “Please Moϊsino, don't worry about us. We have everything we need... We will see each other soon.” Moϊse did all he could to have his wife and son released. A few weeks after Claire was arrested, so was Moϊse. Claire and Giuseppe were deported to Auschwitz in October 1944, and Moϊse was deported there two months later. All three were murdered. Carmen survived in hiding in Italy.
The exhibition also features the story of 10-year-old Jacob Hijman and his parents Philip and Diufje Marcus from Amsterdam. After the occupation of the Netherlands and the first deportations of Dutch Jews to the east, Philip and Diufje obtained false papers. Their son Jacob was sent into hiding with his maternal aunt Rosa-Roosje Matteman. Jacob would write letters to his grandparents from his refuge:
“I hope you have great fun on Uncle Koos’s birthday. Oma and Opa, I send both of you good wishes on the occasion of the birthday of your only son. Please congratulate him for me. Lots of kisses and regards, JHM [Jacob Hijman Marcus].”
On 8 June 1944, Jacob and Rosa were caught and sent to the Westerbork concentration camp, and then to the Terezin ghetto. In Terezin, Rosa was put to work sorting metals, a job that spared her from deportation. When Jacob's name appeared on the list of people slated for deportation from the ghetto, Rosa decided to go with him and switched her name with someone else on the same list. On 23 October, Rosa and Jacob were deported to Auschwitz. Jacob was murdered in the gas chambers on arrival, and Rosa passed the selection and survived until the camp was liberated. Two months later, in March 1945, she died of food poisoning. Jacob's parents and grandparents survived.
This online exhibition is generously supported by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany.
This article originally appeared in the "Yad Vashem Jerusalem Magazine," volume 89.
