Thonon, 24 January 1941

My dear Lore,

I was very happy to have had some news from you and I thank you very much for it. Firstly I received your letter from 16th November that you had sent to Ernest and which arrived here 11th Jan. The 15th January I received your letter from 19th October and your card from 24th Nov and yesterday your letter from 2nd Nov, with the coupon. Please write to Uncle Max and tell him that I have safely received his letter from October on the 9th January.

Last week I sent a letter to Ernest and I hope that you received it. I am in good health and I hope that same of you.  I always have some news from our grandparents but since the start of the year, I haven’t received anything more from them. Tell your friend Elaine to put some words to her future husband in your next letter.  After that I am going to try to give you both a surprise. My dear Lore, do you or Uncle Max not know someone in Spain to whom you could send the letters for me? Like that the letters arrive about 5 times quicker. I will send this letter to Ernest still and I will try to send the next directly. Aunt L. has written a letter to a friend in America asking her to help me. This friend then wrote to me and I have given him the address of Uncle Falk to try to have some news of you.  It is now very likely that you will receive a letter from her. I must note that I am not well in ‘my plate (self?)’ for I am making mistakes.  – My dear Lore, do you think that you could send me a photo of you?  If yes, send it in the next letter to Ernest for I am sure that I will receive it from him.  I have still not received the letter in which you tell me that you are reading a French book.  What would you like to do after leaving school? My dear Lore, ask Uncle Max if he has received a letter from anyone who will send me news of him?

25 January
This morning I received a letter from our grandparents and they are well.  They still don’t know that I have received some news of you and Uncle Max but am going to write to them about it in my reply.  Now I have a surprise for you. Can you imagine that Mr B, Mama’s friend, has received permission to send me a little money to enable me to continue my studies. What’s more, he has written to our grandmother so that she could ask my tutors to make a request so that he would be able to send me my money. I am going to speak about it to the Director and I hope to be able to continue my studies soon. I will have to catch up a trimester, but I am sure to get there. The money that Mr B is going to send me will just suffice to pay the school until the long holiday, but I will need a little too for my affairs are in a terrible state.

My dear Lore, you already write French well and I assure you that I can’t write in English as well as you write in French. You always make some small mistakes that I already pointed out two years ago. For example, one doesn’t say: Je pense très souvent á tu but, je pense très souvent á toi. I am sure that later when I have give you some particular lessons, you will no longer make mistakes. I always continue to collect stamps and I hope the same of you. The weather is very good today and one could believe in Spring in it.
Grandmother wrote to me on the contrary that the weather was very cold. Down there there is a lot of snow and that the roads are frozen.  If Elaine does not know how to write in French tell her that she can also write in English for I understand almost all in reading. I am going to write to you from time to time and I would like to ask you to always send me some coupons please.  Is Uncle Louis always down there and has Aunt Margot’s health improved?

Before ending, I would like to ask you to say hello to everyone.

I give you a really big hug,

Your Oswald