Over the years, I have been handed letters my grandfather wrote to my father and letters my great-grandmother wrote to my grand uncle. I didn’t appreciate the importance of family letters until recently.
Two letters were overlooked from my grandmother’s house. My mother and I didn’t recognize the handwriting. I was about to throw out the letters because I could tell that there wasn’t “any useful” information for researching the family.
Once I read the names on the two letters, I knew I hit the jackpot. My two great-grandmothers from my mother’s family were writing letters to each other.
Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it was mid-1950s. One was living in Kiev, Soviet Ukraine, and the other in Berlin, Germany. Talk about a big no-no during Soviet times.
My mother read the two letters and learned her grandmothers were writing as if they were friends. It doesn’t make sense unless you understand restrictions of Soviet times.
The only way my great-grandmother could know about her son’s new life was through the “friends letters”. Soviet postal workers would have blocked these letters if my great-grandmothers wrote as relatives, exchanging family information.
My mother’s father was the only one in his family who left the Soviet Union. He was an escaped POW of the Germans. The worst thing a Soviet soldier could do was give in to the enemy. Soon after he returned home from the POW camp, he, his wife and my mom left for the quiet countryside of Germany.
That meant my grandfather and his new family could never see, call nor write to his family in Kiev ever again. My great-grandfather died 4 years after my grandfather left and couldn’t come back for the funeral nor send condolences to his mom.
I later learned that my great-grandmother got pictures of my mother and uncle while they lived in Germany. She cried as she held the photos and wouldn’t say who were the children to the family with whom she lived.
I didn’t understand until now how it was possible that she could get the pictures because contact was “ended” after my grandfather left Ukraine.
It took two crafty grandmothers to come up with a plan to fake a friendship so they could tell each other about their families.
It was quite a risk for my mother’s paternal grandmother. Her husband was born a peasant, got trained as an architect and helped construct grand buildings in Kiev. That resulted in a very comfortable lifestyle in Soviet times, even with having six kids.
My other great-grandmother came from a modest family of German cloth makers, married a tailor and was living very simple in war-torn Berlin. But she was the lucky one who could get on a train to visit the grandchildren, whom the other grandmother would never see nor hear from ever again.
The simple gesture of writing letters gave one grandmother comfort that couldn’t be bought.
Related posts on Soviet life:
When family “wild stories” are nothing but reality
Meet your friendly Soviet repatriation officer
Brilliant way to avoid detection and share family news! I loved that a grandmother was able to see photos of her grandchildren despite the rules in place to take that from her.
Wonderful story Vera (it gave me goosebumps!); thank you for sharing.
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You’re welcome!
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Fantastic story! How brilliant those two ladies were, and daring to take such a risk in a tough political environment. Those letters were real gems, and how fortunate that you gave them another review before tossing them out.
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Thanks.
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Great story. Those kind of letters had a lot of hidden messages , in various ways, including writing in lemon or urine or milk between the lines that the recipient could only read if the letter was held close to a flame so the secret could be carbonized and read, as I point out in my “we will meet again in heaven ” book; and also as I read in Eugenia ginzburg’s book, journey into the whirlwind.
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How sad to be disconnected from your family for that reason.
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It definitely is.
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So sad yet so beautiful and joyful at the same time. Wonderful post, 2 phenomenal women.
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Thanks so much. I wish I could have met them.
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What a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing. I recently came into possession of 19 letters and postcards written by a great aunt written between 1865-1895. She lived in Philadelphia her whole life and her correspondence provides a beautiful picture of what her life was like during those 30 years. The prize is her description of seeing Lincoln lying in state at Independence Hall.
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You’re welcome. You are so lucky to have letters from that time period. Scans those letters onto a computer so they will always be safe.
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