Aaron Silberman’s son has just returned from Berlin and had, I hear, a narrow escape. The talcs he tells of what he has seen, floggings, the forcing of quarts of castor oil through clenched teeth and the consequent hours of dying through the slow agony of bursting guts, are not pretty ones. These things may be true, and they may, as you have said, be but the brutal surface froth of human revolution. Alas, to us Jews they are a sad story familiar through centuries of repetition, and it is almost unbelievable that the old martyrdom must be endured in a civilized nation today. Write me, my friend, and set my mind at ease.

Griselle’s play will come to a close about the end of June after a great success. She writes that she has an offer for another role in Vienna and also for a very fine one in Berlin for the autumn. She is talking most of the latter one, but I have written her to wait until the anti-Jewish feeling has abated. Of course she uses another name which is not Jewish (Eisenstein would be impossible for the stage anyway), but it is not her name that would betray her origin. Her features, her gestures, her emotional voice proclaim her a Jewess no matter what she calls herself, and if this feeling has any real strength she had best not venture into Germany just at present.

Forgive me, my friend, for so distrait and brief a letter but I cannot rest until you have reassured me. You will, I know, write in all fairness. Pray do so at once.

With the warmest protestations of faith and friendship for you and yours, I am ever your faithful

MAX

* * *

Deutsch-Völkische Bank und Handelsgesellschaft.

München

JULY 9, 1933

Mr. Max Eisenstein Schulse-Eisenstem Galleries San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

DEAR MAX:

You will see that I write upon the stationery of my bank. This is necessary because I have a request to make of you and I wish to avoid the new censorship which is most strict. We must for the present discontinue writing each other. It is impossible for me to be in correspondence with a Jew even if it were not that I have an official position to maintain. If a communication becomes necessary you most enclose it with the bank draft and not write to me at my house again.