Gerda Guttfreund Part II: Brazil

Gerda’s trip to Brazil did not end in Rio. The family reunited with her uncle (who lived in Sao Paolo) the next day.

The next stop was Santos. There my uncle was already waiting and took us to Sao Paulo to his house, which was in a nice neighborhood. Bedrooms, one was for my uncle’s family, one was for our family, and one was for the parents of my aunt who lived there. Downstairs was where the living and dining room were. In the living room lived the brother of my aunt. And we lived very harmoniously all together, and very soon it was Pesach and the seder was absolutely beautiful. The father of my aunt presided it and he was dressed all in white and against a big white pillow and it was a wonderful reunion for everybody.

But when they were cooking during the day, each one with a little coal stove with one pot, the old gentleman was very unhappy. He said, “Just like the gypsies!” We lived a few months with my uncle, and I was very sad when they found a small business for my father, which had two rooms in the back. It was in a different neighborhood. Because I could have gone on living that way. I just loved to be all the family together.

(So you moved out of this house and into your own house and your father then started his own business?)

Yes. He had a small business, a small grocery store. But unfortunately at that time, especially well-to-do people who were our—let’s see—

(Clients.)

Clients. They would not pay immediately. You had to write down what they owed you and then go to their offices and go through a lot of people before you got your pay. And since we had no capital, we had to close. And that was the end of my studies, too. And when one of the clients came to buy a few things and my mother said, “Would you please pay us what you owe us? We have to close,” he immediately made the check and he saw me standing there, and he said, “What about your daughter?” And my mother said, “Well, she has to start to work.” “What has she studied?” “Well, she went a few months to a school where she learned some typing and bookkeeping and so on.” So he said, “She can work for us.” He had a German bookstore. “I have an elderly secretary who could use some help.”

So I got a job. And I earned as much as my father, which was not much. (laughs) Not even the two together. And we moved to a pensión, into one room where the cooking was done and the washing of the dishes. My father had his own bed because he was working very hard physically. I had to sleep in one bed with my mother, and I was at an age where I did not like that at all.

I was already in a youth group, which was wonderful, all kids like me that were immigrants and had to work. Some worked and studied at the same time, and we helped each other. It was a wonderful support group for all of us. We went into nature and we spent, like, carnival or Christmas two, three days in some abandoned house by the lake. We cooked and we sang and we made bonfires and we read stories by Edgar Allen Poe by the bonfires. It enriched my life. It was really the most important thing of that period.

(Do you remember the name of the youth group?)

Well, we called it Kadima, which means “Forward.” But it was not so important. We were not all coming from a Zionist background like I did. Some came from socialist backgrounds, but it didn’t matter. In my work, after a short time the boss called me and said, “Gerda, you will never be a secretary.” And I agreed. I used to fall asleep sometimes, it was so boring to put things in alphabetical order and bills in alphabetical order. But now and then they would call me to the bookstore to serve, and I loved that. And he said, “We like the way you deal with people and the way you love books.” Because I used to read a lot when I could take books home, but I had to be very careful not to open them too much, put something, paper around them that they wouldn’t get dirty.

The people who worked there were very special. They were all immigrants who had been professionals with a very good cultural background. They decided to make a list for me of all the books that a cultured person must have read, of the world literature, but in German, because it was a German bookstore. So I read the Russians and the French and the Germans, (chuckles) everybody, one after the other. I could ask them questions if I didn’t understand, or they told me to look up in the encyclopedias.

We also had art books and reproductions of paintings, and there was one woman who had studied at the Reinhardt art school in Berlin, and she gave me lessons in history of art and to see the different techniques and how to recognize the different periods. It was a wonderful experience.

(So you worked there until they had to close?)

Ja, they had to close, because no German books were coming any more, not even from Sweden, where the books that were forbidden in Germany were published in German, but nothing came because of the war. So they had to close. But since my boss was really a musician and an artist, he was very broad in spending for all the friends of these immigrants that used to meet, really, every day at the bookstore, and he would invite them to eat and drink. He finished completely with all the money he had and with lots of debts, and he told me one day, “Tomorrow they will come and take everything away that we have in the bookstore. You choose what your heart most desires.” And I wanted the complete collection of Tolstoy and a—how do you call it? an engraving?

(An art book?)

No, no, a mother and child by Käthe Kollwitz.

(A print?)

It was not a print. It was even with her signature. I don’t know right now what you call it. You know, you have woodcuts and you have all kinds of things that you can do a certain number of copies. If they have this also on top of it, the signature by the artist, it is valued very much. And I loved that picture and since I was eighteen it has accompanied me.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC