Rebecca Gratz to Anna Maria Boswell Shelby Gratz - February 15, 1850

Rebecca tells her friend Maria about the current social events of Philadelphia, including a parade and a ball, and gives updates on the health of her family members.

Frances writes to her sister Rebecca about the improving health of her family, of their brother Benjamin in school, of acquaintances and visits to Baltimore, and instructions for wigs for herself and Sally Etting.

Rebecca urges her friend Maria to bring her entire family to Philadelphia after the death of Matilda (Maria's step-daughter) and promises that everyone will be taken care of.

Anne Dore Russell, née Weidemann, a non-Jew, was born in Brandenburg, Germany in 1926. She went to school from 1933 to 1945 in Brandenburg. Her father told her about experiences of Germans opposed to Hitler. She knew that her uncle was sent to Sachsenhausen and heard about a Jehovah’s Witness who was imprisoned and later killed for his beliefs. A neighbor who had been a Nazi sympathizer, had a mental breakdown after executing Jews as a soldier on the Eastern Front. She speaks briefly about Kristallnacht and life in Branderburg under the Nazis. Her father, a civil servant, lost his position in 1933 because he was a Social Democrat and belonged to the Socialist Party (SPD). He told Anne Dore why he opposed the Nazi regime. He avoided using the “Heil Hitler” salute and secretly listened to the BBC (British Broadcasting Company). She learned to be careful in public because of her father’s beliefs. The local police took her father into protective custody in July 1944 during a roundup of men suspected of involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler. She mentions the behavior of local Nazis near the end of the war, after which she went to Humbold University in East Berlin and then the Free University in West Berlin.

Rachel asks her cousin Rebecca to help her husband choose a house for them and tells her about the visit of her deceased stepdaughter's husband and children at her house.