• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Dvr H.Adler
PAL/30775
650, G.T.Coy R.A.S.C
“B”Platoon     

May 1943

For the last four days I’ve been looking in vain for a quiet corner so that I could peacefully write you a letter. In vain-. [..] I was, I saw myself always surrounded by an uproar, which didn’t harmonise at all with the peace with which you have filled my being during our second week of life together.

Now and again I think I envy those people who in the middle of an infernal noise, can cut themselves off and write letters to their relations. But this is only a passing feeling, for I very quickly realise that they don’t have Yvette, so they cant love, as I love. And in that – well understood- I don’t envy them! […]

However it would be naive, darling, to attribute my silence exclusively to the lack of an ideal corner.  There is something else as well.  Much more powerful than that […]

But […] I am afraid of getting tangled up in psychological motives, which would only result in some stupid platitudinous psychological reflections.

It concerns my love, the state of my soul, our last week together, and our separation.  Is it only possible to summarise that in one letter? Is it possible to confine in words a man’s whole life? Even in the most beautiful words that humanity knows… No, oh no! And I know that you will say the same thing yourself also. You see, Yvette, at the moment of your departure, when my eyes still saw you, I laughed- Do you remember?  I laughed as loudly as I could, with all the strength of my love. What do you think of that, to be kind? To make the departure easier? To reduce my unhappiness? Do you think that my laugh was willed, conscious?  It was unconscious. It was not the result of will. That laugh came from the depth of my entrails. Why? […]– That’s what I can’t manage and never will manage to put into words. But I believe that it is above all because I still have your face before my eyes. It is also because I am “at peace with myself”. At last, at peace with myself!  I know that there is nothing in the world that could give me greater pleasure than what I have just said to you. And although that might seem comical, strange and illogical to you- a vicious circle- that is how it is, and it’s true: is it that consciousness which is the source of my equilibrium and my peace. I know darling that you had to wait a long time to hear these words.  You were patient, intelligent and loving and it is your love which has cured me of my abominable sickness which consisted of a certain doubt established in my soul and which for a long time preyed on me and prevent4ed me from appreciating men and things at their true worth.

I have already punished your ears with that lack of tenderness that I considered the main thing about my former life. You don’t need to reflect on it to believe it. You feel it and it is even truer. I pined miserably for it right up to now when I found it in you, my darling. I don’t know what miracle allowed me to keep in my heart an image of tenderness so pure and exact – in me who had never known it at all- I had always imagined that I (on) could not be more or less tender. I felt that one could only be tender- that’s all. It is a unique and indivisible sentiment- and it is that tenderness that I have found in you. […]

Tell me, Yvette, is it possible only to speak or write about everything which stirs the heart when it lets itself be carried away by the pictures, the thousand tender memories of our last week! Oh no, darling, no my tender little Yvette- it is quite impossible.

Consider a little.

Our walks. The three of us: You, Ouri and me. Oh darling, darling!  It’s good that I stayed in Tel Aviv. Isn’t it good darling? You don’t regret it do you?  I was so entirely happy, so entirely, if you knew…. He is all right, the little one. And he has a very lively spirit. I love his little hands and his intelligent eyes. He enriched our afternoons and gave me lots of things to think about.

There is one regret. A regret that will remain forever, alas: the pity that he is not mine, as he is yours. That makes me feel bad. In any case, little Ouri has, better than anyone, made me understand how fine our life will be, when we are reunited again forever. […]I think of that ceaselessly. That and the memories – that is my daily life. Besides that, there is what you know. Our friends with their petty disputes, my work ever more tedious (dull) and my conscience ever more torn by the fact of being a sort of shirker.

Returned to my camp in perfect order, I there came across my name on a list of candidates for a course for NCO’s and I applied au mieux to get my name off the list. I succeeded in that.

[…]

I embrace you most tenderly,

Your Henri