Letter from Ernst Papanek to Beate Pappenheimer, December 15, 1965

Just before I left for the second part of my study and lecture tour – this time to Europe—I got the album to which you contributed. This is one of the reasons for the delaying of my answer until now after my return.

I admit that I am not too happy to be reminded that I am 65, but since I deny it anyhow—and since I know that 65 years is not any more what it used to be—I can relax and “enjoy” what you wrote.

It is not just that I enjoy your letters, it is what they express: a relationship and friendship which means to me quite a lot. There were children in my life before Montmorency, and there have been children in my life since Montmorency, but never was there a group of people with whom I felt so closely connected in every minute of the day and whose growing up on their own and against so many difficulties I was able to follow appreciateively and gratefully. Of course, it was to a good part that we, in spite of Nazism and cruel dictatorship, never gave up believing in the humanity of mankind. But you were and you are the proof for this belief, and I cannot thank you enough for your practical support day in and day out. Without believing in mankind, life would not be worth while living.

I refuse to be embarrassed when one of you writes in her letter that “...no material punishment imposed by you could have hit us harder than our own shame and uneasiness you confronted us with. (No, no, dear, ‘shame’ is not the right word; there was never a reason for being ashamed, there sure was sometimes a reason for a second thought and for uneasiness). You taught me then that the penalty of my own conscience weights heavier than any physical punishment, that everybody deserves to be given another chance, and that applied confidence in a human being, regardless of his age, is the only way to mutual understanding. Without some of the hope you instilled in us, many of us who were fortunate to survive could easily have given in to despair and futility.”

If you say I taught you that, please understand that I had learned all that with you, and your help made it into a permanent, though flexible   -2- practical, constructive method for a cooperative, educational approach to a dignified living together and learning together although the world did not look too good, not human at all, to us at that time.

Thank you also for making me feel good when one of you writes about our visit to the studio of N. Aronson: “..the autographed reproduction of one of Aronson’s sculptures has accompanied me...and now that painting means so much to me, I often think back to that exciting day when I was introduced to the world of art.”

Along the same line: A few years ago when Lene and I attended a conference in California, one of the initiators of this album showed us around his shoe shop in Orinda which he had developed into quite a factory. He told us that he had hated it when he was assigned to the shoe repair shop in Montmorency, but when he came to the USA, he started to repair shoes, which nobody else did. At first he made an “emergency” living, but soon a comfortable living for his family from what he had learned at our workshop.

Remember Jumbo, who went daily from Montmorency to Cordon Bleu in Paris to learn cooking? He is now a highly renowned bakery owner who, in his best schwaebisch English, teaches the women of San Francisco, over television and radio, how to cook and bake.

Thank you for the nice pictures with your husbands and wives and your kids, who are all lovely, of course. Thank you, Lutz, for sending us your poetry; your intellectual and spiritual kids are lovely, of course. There are the children of so many of you – and all are lovely, of course. There are stories of an M.D., a rabbi and social workers, telling us that they wanted to be of service to others.

Remember your representative’s responsible leadership when, for instance, “someone’s” room at Eaubonne was messed up, for whatever the reason might have been? No wonder to see him now working on the “Water-kant” in labor relations and management. And no wonder, either, to see the president of the OSE-Homes Parliament now as professor at Cornell University and a leading expert in international labor relations. His wife is a child of Montmorency, and so is Gustl and Hanna, and Henne and Ilse.

Happy about so manny things, we still are not easily able to forget those who perished in Hitler’s holocaust—Gunther, Inge, Horst, Mandl, his wife and their child, and more than 50 others.

I would like to tell each one of you about the others; here are only some highlights which came up with the letter album I received from you on my birthday. I still hope it will be possible to give you a full report one day.

A chapter of the book on refugee children, on which I am working, was printed last year in the Saturday Evening Post under the title, “The Boy Who Escaped from Auschwitz.” The name of the boy was, of course, not his real name. More than 50 “Montmorency children” called or wrote to me when they had read the story. Each one knew the real name; almost all offered help to bring Ernst Koppel over or to invite him to their homes. We hope to get him over to the USA. We are in touch with him and suggested that money for the article be used for the trip. I do not know whether he wants to stay here; I even doubt it. But what we all together could do – and this is not very difficult for us but very important for Ernst and all of us—is to show him that he is not alone in this world, and that he has friends—nay, I would say almost a family—all over the United States, in France and in Germany.

For this chance to be so closely connected with you, Lene and I thank you far, far beyond the words we can use for expressing it. I love the album you have sent to me for my birthday. There is nothing which can make me more happy than to know that you are still our friends.

Many thanks again to you and your wives and husbands and children who must be as happy to know you as we are.