Cape Town, Undated

The letter was left unfinished and now I have received your letter, in which you write that you have received the money. I wish that God should see to it that I should be able to send more. It would be so nice if I could come home with 70 or 80 000 roubles. But hopefully God will provide as much as I need and a little more.

I thank you for your information about Shulman and his wife. Please inform me how they are getting on in business, and how Pinchas from ‘Legehl’ and also how Mahtech and Paizak of ‘Kotzen’ are getting on. Also Shmuel Rubin from Panemunė [i] although he does not write to me, I should not be writing to him – I am not writing to him. I am only asking you quietly how he is getting on because I am interested to know it, and this I am allowed to do because I am so far away from everybody – so I’m allowed to know everybody’s business. Please write to me what Yaacov Kretzmar is saying about Benzion. How does he live there? And why does he want to go to Russia? Please write to me about everybody separately as much as possible.

I am finishing my writing. – It is already late at night. – Moishe is already asleep. His letter is nearly finished and it happens that you fall asleep in the middle of writing as e.g. Pesach like the last piece of the afikomen. I would rather have finished my letter and then gone to bed.

Goodnight, pleasant rest and best of happiness as is the wish of your faithful husband,

Tuvye Kretzmar

I greet cordially my dear parents – my dear father, Yehudah Leib Kretzmar, and my mother, the chaste and modest Beila, and my honoured brother Yaacov, and my sisters, Hinda [ii] and Chana, may you all live well – Dear Parents – I have no news to write. I am well TG and wish to hear the same from you. About business if you earn more it is better of course, and if it is less you have to be patient in patience silently – better times will arrive. Keep well and make good business, as is the wish of your son, Tuvye Kretzmar. I greet my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law, and his wife my sister, and also my sister-in-law, and brother-in-law, Aaron Morris, may you all live well, From your loving son, Tuvye Kretzmar

Notes:

[i] Panemunė is the smallest city in Lithuania, near Kovno.

[ii] Hinda, her husband Shlomo Nachamowitz and son, Eliyahu, were killed in Birzh on 8 August 1941, shot into two pits along with 2,400 other Jews in the nearby forest by Gestapo officers with 30 Lithuanian helpers. Starting at 11 a.m. they were shot in groups. Having completed the task by 7 p.m., the killers returned to the town singing.