Esther Feldman Icikson - October 23 & 29, November 5 & 12, 2001
Attempts to Contact Father
And did she weep over your father?
She missed my daddy terribly and we didn't know whether he's dead or alive. So one day, you know what she did, my mom? She sat down with my brother and she had my brother write a letter to Stalin in Russian. And she couldn't send it through the regular mail, so she bribed the mail-man and he mailed it so it wouldn't go through the main office.
And did anything come of that?
Yes. A few months later--or maybe it was a few weeks--uh, the head of the office called her and he told her if she ever wrote another letter anyplace he would take her children away, she'll never see them again. Needless to say she was very frightened.
Yeah.
Except a few weeks later we received a note saying that if she has winter clothes, heavy things for my father, she should wrap 'em up because it's very cold, where he, he is and he needs his warm clothes. And this is how we knew that he's alive.
So you sent them, she sent them.
Of course! Yeah.
All right. Tell me about the leaving Siberia. When did your father come back or did he come back?
Oh we went to him!
You went to Novosibirsk.
You see, now it's already 194...the end of 1941, beginning of '42, I think, and Russia and Germany's at war.
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