Handwritten letter

Handwritten letter fragment (partial page, damaged/torn)

1940from [München/Munich, Germany, based on context]between Julius Oppenheimer, Elsa Oppenheimer, Mina Weiler

Original — Deutsch

[Oberkante des Blattes abgerissen; von der obersten Zeile sind nur Buchstabenreste erhalten — nicht lesbar]
[... illegible]                                            auch von uns [?] [...]
[...]ren lb. Brief lb. Mina u. freut es    uns, dass Ihr die Feiertage gut
verbracht habt u. dass Du lb. Fritzl[?] Dich    in Deinem neuen Heim
wohl fühlst. Du lb. Mina möchtest    Helene u. Karls Adr. haben.
Helene[?] Jakob, c/o Spitzer, Rehow Rotschild, Chadera. u. Karl
23. Sevent[h] Street Flat 11 (Regal House) Springs (Transvaal.)
Sie freuen sich sicher von Dir zu hören u. Grüße auch von uns.
Ebenso Markus u. Vallots[?]. Letztere    hoffen wir, dass sie doch bald
etwas richtiges finden mögen.    Marie kommt jeden Sonntag.
Nun noch alles Gute[,]    habt Gottvertrauen u. seid herzlich
von Tante Frieda u. [... illegible]    gegrüßt u. geküsst von Eurer Else.
G[?]e viele Grüße. Tante    Frieda fragt, ob Du ihre Briefe nicht
bekommen hast.?

Translation — English

[Top edge of the sheet torn away; of the topmost line only traces of letters survive — not legible]
[... illegible]                                            also from us [?] [...]
[...] your dear letter, dear Mina, and it pleases    us that you spent the holidays well
and that you, dear Fritzl[?],    feel at home in your new home.
You, dear Mina, would like    to have Helene's and Karl's address.
Helene[?] Jakob, c/o Spitzer, Rehow Rotschild, Chadera [Hadera]. and Karl
23 Seventh Street, Flat 11 (Regal House), Springs (Transvaal.)
They will surely be glad to hear from you, and greetings from us too.
Likewise Markus and the Vallots[?]. Of the latter    we hope that they may soon
find something proper.    Marie comes every Sunday.
Now, all the best[,]    have trust in God, and be warmly
greeted and kissed by Aunt Frieda and [... illegible]    from your Else.
G[?]e many greetings. Aunt    Frieda asks whether you did not
receive her letters.

Historical context

A fragment of a family letter in pencil, signed "von Eurer Else" — Else (Elsa) Oppenheimer — and addressed to "lb. Mina" (Mina Kaufmann) and a "lb. Fritzl[?]" who has moved into a new home. Its substance is the dispersal of the family by emigration: Else passes on two overseas addresses, one in Chadera (Hadera, Mandatory Palestine, "Rehow Rotschild" = Rehov Rothschild) and one at 23 Seventh Street, Flat 11 (Regal House), Springs, Transvaal, South Africa, and hopes that others will "soon find something proper". "Tante Frieda", who appears twice and asks whether her letters have arrived, appears to be Frieda (Sara) Allersheimer née Oppenheimer, who was deported and murdered at Fort IX, Kaunas, on 1941-11-25; her presence is consistent with the metadata date of 1940 and requires a date before late 1941. NOTE THIS IS A FRAGMENT, NOT A COMPLETE LETTER: there is no surviving dateline and no salutation, so the 1940 date rests on the metadata and on internal evidence, not on the document.

On this transcription

Machine transcription (claude-opus-5) — not yet checked against the original scan. 7 passages marked doubtful in the text.

Re-read from the original scan on 2026-07-28. Legibility: fair. [?] marks are deliberate gaps, not transcription errors. PHYSICAL STATE — what is missing: (1) The TOP of the sheet is torn off along a ragged, roughly horizontal line. The dateline, the place of writing and the salutation are all gone. Of the topmost surviving line only the tops/bottoms of a few letters remain along the torn edge (upper left) and an isolated "auch von uns [?]" on the upper right piece; neither is recoverable. (2) The sheet has been torn into at least THREE pieces — a large left piece, a narrow middle strip, and a right piece — and photographed loosely reassembled. The pieces are vertically offset and do not abut, so a vertical band through the middle of the sheet is either lost or hidden, and the middle of every line is affected. The gap widens toward the bottom, so the last four lines lose the most. (3) The LEFT edge is torn/deckled and appears to have taken the first letter or two of several lines (the first surviving line begins "[...]ren lb. Brief", most likely "Euren", but I have not filled it in). (4) The bottom of the text block does appear to be present — the writing stops above the lower edge of the surviving paper and ends with "bekommen hast.?" — so it is the top, not the bottom, that is lost. LINE JOINS: because of (2) I have marked the left-piece / right-piece junction of each line with extra spacing. The join is secure for the upper lines ("...u. freut es | uns, dass Ihr die Feiertage gut" reads continuously) but UNCERTAIN for the last four lines, where the pieces are most displaced; a checker should re-align the physical fragments before trusting "von Tante Frieda u. [...] gegrüßt u. geküsst von Eurer Else" as one line. WORDS I AM UNSURE OF: "Fritzl[?]" — the terminal loop may be a flourish on "Fritz"; "Helene[?] Jakob" at the head of the address line — the initial capital could also be read M ("Meinem"), but the preceding line asks for "Helene u. Karls Adr.", which favours Helene; "Vallots[?]" (a surname; could be Pollaks / Wallats); "Rotschild" is written without the h; "Sevent[h]" lacks a clear final h; "G[?]e viele Grüße" — the first word (capital G, then an ascender loop, not a crossed t, so probably not "Gute") is genuinely unread. "Marie" may be Maria Ruth Kuhn née Fuchs from the roster but this is not stated in the text. MEDIUM: pencil, low contrast, with a fold/crease network across the right piece; several words are legible only by stroke direction. Revised readings: I initially read the underlined place name as an ordinary German town and settled on "Chadera" = Hadera in Mandatory Palestine, on the strength of the adjacent "Rehow Rot[h]schild" (Rehov Rothschild); the second underlined word is "Springs", with "(Transvaal.)" following, i.e. South Africa. I also first took the bottom-left lines as a separate marginal postscript; on closer inspection they are the left-hand halves of the last four ruled lines, separated from their right-hand halves by the torn gap — but see the caution above, this re-alignment is not certain. I did NOT resolve the top line: an earlier impulse to read a salutation there is unsupported, the ink there is only letter-fragments.