Letters from Prague

Raya Schapiro and Helga Weinberg found a box of letters among their mother’s effects after her death in 1990. They were written by their grandmother and uncle, trapped in Prague after the Nazi occupation, to the girls’ parents who had escaped to the United States in May, 1939, leaving the two girls, who were five and seven years old at the time, behind. The 77 letters reprinted here span a period of two years, during which the Nazis drew an ever-tightening noose of destruction around the Jews of Prague: each letter is followed by notes of explanation and amplification, as well as notes on Nazi laws and official restrictions and the progress of war. Each letter has a censor’s stamp on it; each envelope bears the still frightening emblem of the Third Reich. The letters dramatically convey the tension, growing daily, of existence under the Nazis, and their tone becomes increasingly desperate as every avenue of escape reaches a dead end.