As the family members filled their plates, talk turned to Mihowa. Freida Sima’s parents, Nachman and Devorah, were now alone on the farm, and most of the Enzenberg (as the Eisenberg family was called in Europe) children were living in Czernowitz, called Cernauti by the Romanians. Romania had declared itself neutral but no one knew how long that would last. France and Britain were now at war with Germany, but Hitler had made no new military moves since Poland’s swift defeat.
After lunch came the traditional hour of letter writing. For years, the Eisenberg siblings would sit together at the monthly family circle meeting and write a joint letter to their parents and siblings in Europe, relating the family news of the prior few weeks. The paper would then be passed to the uncles and aunts – Devorah’s brothers and sisters – for their own greetings and news.
“Hopefully this war will be over before it can spread any further,” said one of the aunts, while a more recent arrival from Europe shook her head at the naïve statement.
Freida Sima wondered how long it would take before they stopped getting letters from Europe. She recalled how she had been cut off from her family for over four years during the Great War. This time, her parents were twenty-five years older and not surrounded by seven young children. How would they cope?
Her heart went out to her mother, who had so wanted to stay in America, and who had cried her heart out to her eldest daughter the night before she returned to Mihowa. Six years had gone by but Freida Sima remembered her mother’s words as though they’d been spoken yesterday: “You know the Tateh. I can’t leave him alone any longer.”
Now all Freida Sima could do was pray that Romania would remain neutral for as long as possible.
Tragically, that neutrality didn’t last long at all. In June 1940 the Romanian government evacuated northern Bukovina, surrendering it to the Red Army. Romania soon became a Fascist dictatorship, joining the Axis powers in November 1940.
Just as Freida Sima had feared, letters from the Bukovina stopped arriving, and she was once again cut off from her parents, experiencing thoughts and fears she hadn’t known for a quarter of a century. This time, at least, she had a husband, children, and brothers surrounding her, unlike the situation during World War I, when she had only uncles and aunts.
The same war that made her fear for her family in Europe was having a very different effect on her family in America. Even before the U.S. entered the war, the growing conflict had begun transforming the American economy. For the first time in a decade Mordche Kraus was working full time, with union-backed painting jobs lined up weeks in advance. Just like he did before the Depression, he would hand his weekly pay envelope to Freida Sima, keeping only enough for cigarettes and carfare.
“Now I can put aside a dollar a week again to send back ‘home’ for tickets,” she thought the first time her husband brought her a full week’s salary. Only after a moment did she realize that even if she found a way to get the money to Europe, her family could no longer leave.
* * * * *
A year later the United States was at war. More than sixteen million American men and women would serve in the military during the next five years. Within months, Freida Sima proudly pasted three blue stars on her first-floor window, one for each of her three stepsons, Harry, Ben, and Stewart, who were serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. Only Herb, married with a daughter and almost thirty-five, received an age deferment.
