A. Stein
Tuesday, December 10
My darlings,
As far as the bag is concerned, you seem to have misunderstood me, dearest Fany. The clothes were with the bags in the dirt and wet. You can imagine how much damage that did to the clothes. In the meantime, I’ve been able to buy three old bags so that I don’t need my bags from home anymore. As far as the package containing Ms. Stein’s medication is concerned, I’ve given up hope of receiving it. The person concerned who took it over from Sonin is unbearable, malicious and obnoxious. According to him, he wasn’t able to bring it over from Ataki. I’ve been running round for 3 weeks and been lied to constantly. Just to save as much as possible, I found a man who delivers the mail from there everyday and whom I promised half of the content. I went to the person concerned with this man and it was agreed in my presence that the package would be handed over to the second person. Only, I had to confirm to the first person that I had already received the package. Since then, 8 days have passed and I keep being lied to by the second person. So we’ve been the victim of fraud. Please write to Sonin immediately and tell him that, although I confirmed receipt of the package, in fact I haven’t received it. I’ve given up any hope. Tell Sonin to be very
careful next time. It’s better not to send anything than to lose it. My dearest, thank you very much for the shoes you promised, they were just what I needed, but I hardly think they will reach here. It is very difficult to get things here. That makes the misery and despair here even greater. We’re starving here, it’s so miserable. People are literally dying of hunger. We haven’t had bread in 3 days. Yesterday I got hold of 2 little black loaves of bread 1 kg each and paid 220 rubles for them. No meat in 10 days. You can’t get anything even with a lot of money either. If we had received bread rather than sweets, we would have been more than happy. In spite of all that, we can’t complain and we are still better off than others. We hardly get any food in the tea hall. We work hard and we have to be satisfied. There is a rumour going round here about returning home but I don’t believe anything, “Ipa” as usual. I’ve come to terms with being exiled but I’m very worried about my child. He is increasingly demoralized here. No possibilities of education, no textbooks. We are all living in a crowd like gypsies. Hopefully salvation will come soon.
Lots of kisses, yours, Sami