The surviving text
Two sheets, one appeal
German source
Geliebte Mutti,
dieses sind nun die letzten Zeilen, die ich an Dich sende, bevor wir wieder ganz zusammen sind. Lasse Dir den Fortgang nicht schwer fallen. Es ist draussen auch schön ohne Geld, man ist wieder Mensch, bedenke das immer. Deine Kinder haben Dich so lieb, dass es für Dich ein 1000 Mal besseres Leben mit uns sein wird.
Wir geben viel auf und lassen noch mehr an traurigen und schönen Erinnerungen zurück. Für uns bleibt es nun vorwärts-sehen. Wir wollen es schaffen und werden es schaffen. Der liebe Gott wird uns nicht verlassen. Grüsse und küsse alle Verwandten nochmals recht fest von mir. Kopf hoch, nicht weinen, immer daran denken, dass es uns vergönnt sein wird zusammen zu bleiben, davon soll uns nichts abhalten. Nun auf Wiedersehen und Küssen.
Dein Dich innig liebender Sohn Dolf.
English translation
St Moritz, 26/11/38
Carlton Hotel
E. Scherz, Dir.
Dear Mum,
These are now the last lines that I’m sending to you before we’re all together once more. Don’t let the progress be too hard for you. It’s also nice outside without money, one is a person again, always keep that in mind. Your children love you so much, that it will be a thousand times better life for you with us.
We’re giving a lot up and leaving more and more sad and nice memories behind. For us that means only looking forward. We want to make it work and will make it work. Dear God will not abandon us. Greetings and kisses yet again from us to all relatives, nice and tight. Hold your head high, do not show, always think that it will be granted for us to stay together, nothing should keep us from that. Well, goodbye and kisses.
Your you-ever-praising,
son Dolf
English translation by Rabbi Dr. Esther Jilovsky.
Object: Two handwritten sheets on Carlton Hotel stationery, St. Moritz, retained in family custody.
Date: Read as 26.11.38—26 November 1938.
Text: The transcription was prepared from photographs of the family-held sheets.
Translations: The English translation is by Rabbi Dr. Esther Jilovsky. There is no Hebrew translation of the letter.
Presentation: The photographs show the family-held originals. The transcription and credited translation are separate reading aids.
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The letter read aloud in German
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Translation by Rabbi Dr. Esther Jilovsky.Dolf wrote seventeen days after the November pogrom. By then, violence, arrest and forced sales had made the danger unmistakable.
Adolf “Dolf” Reichenbach was nineteen days short of his twenty-fourth birthday. He asked his mother, Margarete, not to fear leaving Germany and imagined the family together again.
There is no Hebrew translation of the letter; German is the source, and the English is Rabbi Dr. Esther Jilovsky’s translation.
Before the letter
November 1938 in Halberstadt and Wernigerode
On the night of 9–10 November 1938, Nazi leaders directed a state-sponsored assault on Jewish life across Germany and its annexed territories. Exclusion by law had become organized mass terror.
In Halberstadt, the Baroque synagogue that had stood since 1712 was desecrated. On 18 November, the city ordered it demolished at the Jewish community’s expense. Fritz Reichenbach was arrested in Wernigerode on 10 November, taken to Buchenwald and murdered there on 22 November.
Last reviewed 4 September 2026.
Historical context: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum · Jüdisches Halberstadt memorial record
Dolf does not deny the loss. “We’re giving a lot up,” he writes. Still, life outside Germany, even without money, could hold dignity.
He is not making a speech. He is asking Mutti to leave. The letter repeats one imperative: Kopf hoch, translated here as “Hold your head high.”
Through this family
Escape depended on people already outside Germany
Ruth and Albert Rothschild were already in the United States before Dolf and Margarete’s American record trail was complete. Susan remembers that Albert’s friend Max wrote in support of Dolf’s move. The letter has not been found, Max’s full identity is unknown, and the passenger records do not settle the final sequence.
American immigration officials expected refugees to show that they would not become a public charge, often through an affidavit or financial support from someone in the United States. A person already abroad could make escape possible.
Sources and wider context: Susan Reichenbach Heyman oral history, 5 August 2026 · USHMM: The United States and the Refugee Crisis