Copyright

Franklin Felsenstein

Published On

2024-03-25

Page Range

pp. 459–512

Language

  • English

Print Length

54 pages

Thirty

“The Little Fruit That Fell From The Tree”

  • Frank Felsenstein (author)
Chapter of: No Life Without You: Refugee Love Letters from the 1930s(pp. 459–512)
Vera searches for a maternity hospital and works to conceal her pregnancy from the shop girls at M&S, Mope disagrees with her continuing her demanding work schedule in her condition. Vera is contacted by a relative on behalf of her sister and brother-in-law, following their use of the Kindertransport scheme to send their two youngest to stay with their Grandmother in England, demanding that she write to the Head of the Jewish Refugees Committee and ask him to assist with their application for refugee status in England. Mope falls ill for a week in Moscow, choosing not to alert his pregnant wife so as not to upset her, then works at an auction for a length of time, busy enough that he finds it difficult to write to Vera. At the time of the auction, Vera loses their child, and doesn’t tell Mope until after the auction, so as not to cause him extra stress. When she does tell him, he is incredibly distressed, both for the loss of the child and that she had hidden it from him.

Contributors

Frank Felsenstein

(author)
Reed D. Voran Honors Distinguished Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Ball State University
https://www.bsu.edu/academics/collegesanddepartments/english/connect-with-us/faculty-staff/emeritus-faculty/felsenstein-frank

Franklin Felsenstein (aka Frank Felsenstein) is the only son of Maurice (“Mope”) and Vera Felsenstein. He is the Reed D. Voran Honors Distinguished Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Ball State University in Indiana. Before that, he was Reader in Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Leeds in England. He has also held appointments at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, Vanderbilt University, Yeshiva College, and Drew University. His publications include Anti-Semitic Stereotypes: A Paradigm of Otherness in English Popular Culture (1995), English Trader, Indian Maid: Representing Gender, Race, and Slavery in the New World (1999), and (with James J. Connolly) What Middletown Read: Print Culture in an American Small City (2015). He has edited works by Tobias Smollett (Travels through France and Italy), Peter Aram (A Practical Treatise of Flowers), and John Thelwall (Incle and Yarico). He and his family moved to the United States in 1998. He and his wife now live in Chicago.