Publisher's Synopsis
The letters by Ella Wenger presented here as an edition reveal practically all facets that made up the life of Jewish citizens in Vienna under the conditions of National Socialism in the years between the Anschluss (1938) and the beginning of the 'Final Solution' in 1942: exclusion and harassment, Discrimination and disenfranchisement, the loss of work, property and housing, crowding into less and less living space, despair and suicide, and finally deportations; but also the efforts to assert oneself and escape. The messages from the approximately 70-year-old woman to her family who had emigrated show how life for Vienna's Jewish population was becoming more and more restricted; but they also show the courage and life-affirmation with which the writer braces herself against the increasingly hopeless situation. Her function as a hub of information, as a broker between emigrants, those who were about to leave and those who stayed behind, was more than family care - it was an attempt to save remnants of the material basis of life, to provide information, to establish relationships activate and maintain social contacts. The world she describes goes far beyond the relationship between mother and daughter: Because the National Socialists politicized everyday life, everyday things became political. Family care and political action merged, sometimes to the point of indistinguishability.
