Rebecca Gratz to Maria Gist Gratz - April 20, 1823

Rebecca informs her brother Benjamin about the supplies she is sending to him at military camp, describes the medical treatment of a general, and updates him on the health struggles of family and friends.

Rebecca tells her friend Maria about Sarah's (Rebecca's sister) upcoming surgery and conveys news regarding several of Maria's relatives.

Rebecca writes from Saratoga Springs to her brother Ben about their brother Joseph's improving condition, the visit of his doctor, and of extended family.

Rebecca tells her brother Ben of her move to Spruce Street and the latest news of his warden Mary Riggs in France. She also updates him on the health and travels of various family members.

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.