Today I want to share a fascinating postcard that my cousin Meir shared with me. It was written by his grandfather Berthold Rothschild to his grandmother Selma Adler before they were married. Berthold was serving in the German army during World War I and stationed at the front in Berdowka, a town now located in Belarus, and Selma was back home in Frankfurt. The postcard was sent on October 5, 1918, just a month before World War I ended on November 11, 1918.

The postcard is written in German in Kurrentschrift and was undecipherable to me and to Meir. So I decided to use AI to transcribe and translate it. First, I turned to Claude.ai, which provided me with this translation of the text of the postcard:

Your two dear letters from the 26th of September have made me very happy, especially that the fur has suited you well. The cold weather is here now. I hope only that we won’t be harmed by bullets and bombs. Please greet the household immediately and warmly. I’m looking forward to some rest. Tomorrow my eldest goes with [someone?] to the [front?]. Dorothea came yesterday or the day before. Before I go, I’ll write to you more thoroughly. I must finally summon the courage to send you the last two letters — with warmest greetings,

The text made sense to me except for the reference to his “eldest” since Berthold had no children and was the oldest sibling. But I otherwise accepted that it was an accurate translation.

But to doublecheck, I also ran it through ChatGPT and got this translation:

Your dear letter of Sept. 26 made me very happy, especially that you liked the picture so much. The recuperation/rest cure is difficult for me. Even though I put so much effort into the painting, the colors can change. Please send the main material immediately after [unclear]. I very much wish to have it. Tomorrow I am going to [unclear] with [unclear] in order to bring you the lecture/[reading?] … when I go out the door I will still [unclear]. I will probably not come [for] a whole [unclear] because of the proper/right [unclear].

Greetings and kisses,

How could this transcription/translation be so different? Was Berthold an artist? I knew he later had a photography studio, so I guessed it was possible. But I was doubtful that he had time to be painting at the front—although maybe it was while he was recuperating? But since ChatGPT had many words left out as unclear, I was skeptical.

Then I received an email from MyHeritage saying they now had a tool for transcribing and translating documents, so I figured I’d give that a try, and I received this translation:

Your two dear letters of Sept. 26th gave me great pleasure, especially that you liked the fur. The lining is just poor. Please store it in such a way that it suffers no damage from moths, etc. Please send the crocheted collar to Graf immediately. I need it for the next package. Tomorrow a small box with 17 eggs will be sent to you. Sausage went out yesterday. I will let you know about the eggs. Could I finally receive a good photograph of you? Many heartfelt greetings and kisses

This one was closer to the Claude translation with the reference to the fur. But now instead of bombs and bullets, we have references to eggs and sausage! What in the world?

MyHeritage provided this comment:

The letter provides a fascinating glimpse into the wartime economy and logistics; Berthold discusses sending food items like eggs and sausage, as well as a fur coat, back to Germany. This was a common practice, as soldiers in occupied agricultural territories sometimes had better access to provisions than civilians suffering under the Allied blockade in Germany.

So which translation was best? Well, I ran the MyHeritage and Claude translations into ChatGPT to see what that AI platform said about its competitors, and ChatGPT said it believed that MyHeritage was likely the most accurate; I did the same with Claude, and Claude agreed: MyHeritage was the most accurate.

But I wasn’t convinced about Berthold sending seventeen eggs from Belarus to Frankfurt during the war, so I decided to rely on a human being, actual not artificial intelligence, for help. I asked Cathy Meder-Dempsey of the wonderful genealogy blog, Opening Doors in Brick Walls, whether she would help, and she kindly agreed.

Here’s Cathy’s translation:

My dear Selma!

Your last two letters of September 26th made me very happy, especially that you liked the fur coat. The lining is just poor. Please protect it so that it doesn’t get damaged by moths, etc. Please send the trouser fabric to Hoof immediately. I bought it for my father. Tomorrow a box of (word in Hebrew letters) is going to you. From (a person or place) was sent yesterday. I’ll let you know when it arrives. Couldn’t I finally get a good photograph of you?

Many heartfelt greetings and kisses,
Berthold

Cathy is fluent in German and reads Kurrentschrift all the time in her own research, so there is no doubt in my mind that this is the accurate reading  as well as the most sensible reading, proving once again that the human brain and human eyes are far superior to the artificial ones.

There was one word written in Hebrew script that neither Cathy nor I could translate, so I sent that on to the GerSIG group on Facebook to see what they could come up with, and Bernhard Kukatzki of that group told me that the Hebrew letters spelled out “eiern” or eggs in Yiddish (or eier in German). So MyHeritage was right to translate the word in Hebrew script as eggs.

But why did Berthold write the word in Hebrew letters? Was it code for something else? Or was he really sending eggs from Belarus to Frankfurt?

I dug a little deeper into the history of World War I to find out why a German soldier at the front might be sending food back home and whether there were any restrictions on soldiers being able to do that. I learned that due to the British blockade stopping ships from sending supplies to Germany during World War I, there was a very severe food shortage in Germany, one that had been developing and worsening throughout the war.

One source described the effects in graphic detail, including this quote from the diary of Princess Blücher, an Englishwoman married to a Prussian aristocrat:

[W]e are all growing thinner every day, and the rounded contours of the German nation have become a legend of the past. We are all gaunt and bony now, and have dark shadows round our eyes, and our thoughts are chiefly taken up with wondering what our next meal will be.

There were food riots, rationing, hoarding, a black market exploiting consumers with exorbitant prices, and “hamstering,” as described here:

Food was more readily available in the countryside, and urban consumers came to believe that rural producers were profitting from their suffering. If the urban poor had relatives in the countryside they could obtain food from them, or they could ‘hamster’ – travel into the countryside and barter, buy or steal from rural producers, though they ran the risk of having the food confiscated by inspectors at railway stations on their return. On one day in June 1917 inspectors at a small West German town confiscated ’36 pounds of butter, 421 eggs, 5 hundredweight of flour, nearly 30 pounds of peas, 42 pounds of veal and 12 pounds of ham’.

That article continued, “From 1917 onwards a deterioration in the health of the nation was clearly visible, with increases in stomach and intestinal illnesses. The Germans estimated that some 763,000 people died during the war from malnutrition and its effects.”

It is thus not surprising that German soldiers like Berthold Rothschild wanted to send food back home to their loved ones. But were they allowed to do that? Although I could not find a specific prohibition against sending food home, I did learn from this source that German soldiers did try to send food home to their families during World War I.

The dispatch of parcels from soldiers to their families also became increasingly problematic. Facing shortages in Germany, many soldiers sought to send home food and various goods, often purchased or looted from occupied territories.

When Allied offensives breached the German front, the military postal service was forced to retreat alongside the troops. The lack of transport options significantly slowed mail and parcel deliveries, even as their volume remained high. By October 1918, even the most modest soldiers recognised the war’s inevitable outcome. Many sought to send home whatever they could—food, objects, clothing, fabric, and money—before the collapse of the front.

Another source suggested reasons why a soldier like Berthold might have been somewhat concerned about being caught sending eggs back to his family in Frankfurt:

The brisk traffic in parcels from the front line to the homeland – via the military postal system or sent back with fellow-soldiers on home leave – played a significant role in supplying families with food and commodities.

At the same time the sending of parcels by soldiers and officers represented a huge burden for the civilian population in the occupied territories, as foodstuffs, commodities and raw materials were frequently requisitioned according to the provisions of the Kriegsleistungsgesetz (War Requirements Act), that is, confiscated and commandeered.

In addition to requisitioning there were frequent occurrences of theft and plundering, which was forbidden by martial law.

Although I cannot prove it, I believe that the reason Berthold wrote the word “eggs” in Hebrew letters was to hide the fact that he was sending eggs back to Germany.

What a remarkable postcard this is—a true historical document. Thanks to Cathy and to Bernhard, I now can decipher this message and understand why Berthold was sending furs, fabric, and food back to Selma and his family. I also better understand how desperate the situation was for Germans during World War I and afterwards, all of which tragically contributed to the Nazi takeover in the 1930s, World War II, and the Holocaust.

And once again, I’ve learned not to trust AI for transcriptions but to turn to reliable human beings for help.