Yesterday I went for my citizenship papers. Since I had studied very hard I had no trouble answering all questions. It will be 90 days before I get my papers.
Studying for her Citizenship Exam Click to enlarge image
We are now looking for an apartment. In the last 2 weeks we have seen about 50. Some furnished and some unfurnished. So far we can’t make up our minds. What we like is too expensive and what would fit our income we do not like and some places Jews are not welcome (here too).
Cost of Living – U.S. 1937
Sunday we will go to a German frankfurter evening by a sports club, and tomorrow I will go to my first meeting of the Business and Professional Women’s Club. Grace Gray is president. Maybe I wrote you 2 and ½ years ago that I made my first English speech for that group.
Madge and Edith will come to Chicago for 10 days in July. I am very much looking forward to their visit. Aunt Flora will probably come here at the same time.
Dear ones,
As you know we finally moved to a 2½ room apartment on the 19th floor of the LaSalle Towers.
La Salle Towers
On Leonard’s birthday, July 4th, I arranged for a little party, the first time in my life alone and in my own home. Leonard, who always told me he won’t have anything to do in the kitchen, has been a very big help since we moved here.
Although the apartment is cleaned by the building – maid service is included in the rent – he uses the carpet sweeper frequently and most of the time washes the dishes. He also went shopping for his party, going out 3 times and coming home with help since he could not carry everything, including a stepstool, carpet sweeper, can opener, etc. Besides enough food for a regiment instead of just a buffet dinner, well, we had enough to eat for a week. He is really very neat and clean except for his cigar ashes.
Trudel’s First Party
Doddo’s recipes and cookbook arrived just in time since I am preparing a big dinner every night and as you know I never cooked at all. Last week I had 10 people for dinner which consisted of the following:
Appetizer: tomatoes stuffed with egg salad, topped with anchovy and a little parsley, followed by real homemade chicken soup, then wiener schnitzel with white asparagus, Cucumber salad made with sour cream which is very hard to get here.
Best Tasting Frankfurters
Flora, Madge and the Welches at 73rd St. Beach
For dessert I tried to make my favorite chocolate cake. Since I did not do my shopping in advance, I used a cigar box instead of a cake pan, lined with plenty of wax paper. Also I forgot to get plain wafers and had to use salt crackers, besides without a kitchen scale I had no idea of the difference between a German or an American pound. Well, by that time I was so tired and angry at myself that I just made a Jello, too. And the cake did come out so well that Madge asked for the recipe. I made It again when the Weils had dinner with us. I never thought I would enjoy cooking so much.
73rd Street Beach
Madge gave me the recipe for Leonard’s favorite while driving, but I remembered enough to look it up in my new (old) cookbook. I made it that evening and Leonard emptied the whole platter of bread Krimselchen without leaving even a little crumb for me. I never taste my food while cooking.
The next evening we were at the Welches on their beach. Enclosed sending you 18 photos, most of them on the beach at Welch’s building. One day we went to the South Shore Country Club, one of the biggest, most elegant country clubs in the U.S. We had lunch there as guests of Aunt Flora.
South Shore Country Club
South Shore Country Club from Friend’s Apartment
Luncheon at South Shore Country Club
One evening we had dinner at an old beautiful farm house a few miles outside Chicago.
I do not play any cards and have no intention to learn it. I rather sew and find many other more interesting things to do. After Leonard’s family left I spent an evening at Samuels again. They know of so many people who have come here lately.
Fortunately I am on a 3 week unpaid vacation. Otherwise I could not do all that.
In 6 weeks I will be a citizen!!
Please send me a silver toothpick for Leonard, but no electrical appliances – they are better and cheaper here.
Love,
Trudel
Beach Party at the Welshes
73rd street and the lake
Parties at the Edgewater Beach Hotel and the South Shore Country Club
Movies from Trudel’s Sumter trip
In March, 1937, Trudel wrote a letter about her trip to Sumter, where she first met members of LJG’s extended family, many of whom came to Chicago and are included in the photos and video above. My cousin, Al, recently found the film I included in this post and a film of some of the events Trudel wrote about in March. I have added that video to the March letter.
Trudel originally began this letter by asking,” How do you like my new stationery?” Unfortunately I don’t have a copy of the original stationary.
I will go to the German services for Rosh HaShona.
[Rosh HaShana was on September 5 in 1937.]
Hebrew-German Machzor
I have changed jobs again, much nicer place and nicer people. I managed to get a job for Trudel Batzner there too, and we are working together since Monday. We eat our lunch sandwiches in the park by the lake, across the street, as long as the weather is so beautiful.
Trudel and Trudel – not on a lunch break
Thirsty
Trudel and Trudel go out.
Lunch in the park
Enclosed are more photos.*
Saw a very good movie on Saturday: The Wandering Jew with Conrad Veidt. [Scroll down for a clip from the film.] Then to Old Heidelberg Rathskeller for dinner. They play and sing only German songs there.
Old Heidelberg Dining Room
So sorry about Erna’s appendix. Good riddance.
Love
Trudel
*Many of Trudel’s photographs from Summer 1937 were included in earlier posts. However, Trudel’s album has a page with a few scenic few photos taken that summer in Ottawa, Illinois. Here is one of them.
Ottawa, Illinois, 1937
The notes in Trudel’s album do not indicate why she was in Ottawa. But it was at about that time when her husband, my father, began to work on the Radium Dial Poisoning case in Ottawa. See the Case of the Living Dead Women for newspaper stories about the case. The case consumed their lives for over a year, which may be one reason why Trudel wrote only a one or two more letters in 1937.
This the last of the complete letters in the set of some three hundred pages Trudel translated, some 90 letters originally written between May 1934 and September, 1937. I hope to post additional materials in the weeks and months to come – some information on her life for the next 60 years, perhaps a new photo gallery and other things. For a special treat, don’t miss the continuation of this note and the recording linked there, just below the letter and above the video clip.
Leonard
One of Trudel’s Sons
.
Papa
September 7, 1937
Happy birthday Papa! Wish we could celebrate with you.
Leonard went with me to the German service** Sunday evening and I saw many people I know.
Monday morning we went to services at Temple Sholom and Leonard was very enthused about the rabbi, who he heard for the first time. Actually, he had not been in a synagogue in four years, but saw so many people he knew.
Temple Sholom
Rabbi Louis Binstock – Temple Sholom
We saw another excellent movie, “The Life of Emile Zola.”
Love,
Trudel
The last letter – continued
Trudel was an exceptionally positive woman, and she constantly expressed gratitude throughout her life. A few years ago I came across a recording of her practicing the “Sheheyonu” for my bar mitzvah in 1956. It is a Hebrew prayer offered at every happy occasion and every holiday and celebration. It is a difficult tongue twister. Over the years it became her prayer. At every occasion we would ask her to recite it.
Listen to Trudel recite it, in Hebrew and then in English. Let us celebrate with her.
** In this letter and her previous one Trudel writes about going to the “German service.” I have been unable to identify the specific congregation she was referring to. However with the assistance of the Chicago Jewish Historical Society, I have learned she may have attended a service at the North Side Jewish Center Congregation that was started around 1936-7 by German Jewish refugees and about 1946-7 changed its name to Congregation Ezra and later Temple Ezra. If she went to her friends in the Hyde Park neighborhood, she could have attended the Habonim Congregation, or one of the established congregations that were started by German-Jews — Sinai Temple, Kehilath Anshe Maariv, or Isaiah Israel.
