Letter from Arnold Zweig to Sigmund Freud, March 25, 1939

Mt. Carmel
25 March 39

Dear Father Freud,

Your letter of the 6th found mein a state of deep depression. We had just been to Jerusalem to say goodbye to Eitingon. He means so much for us on the credit side in the Palestinian scales! Altogether tearing ourselves away from here is frightful, specially for me. I have struck so many roots of friendship here, even though we never seemed to strike economic ones. The unknown would not alarm me at all if I could leave a permanent home behind me here, to which we could return as a matter of course. But to leave everything all over again, to break it all up! We have had to do it so often already! As a child from Glogau to Kattowitz, after the war from Berlin to Starnberg, then back again to Berlin and then from Eichkamp to Haifa by way of Sanary-and now westwards once more. What do you say to this nomadic life against one's will? Anyone who gets as much from his imagination as I do could surely have stayed peacefully in one place, couldn't he?

You should describe your struggle with your ‘dear cancer’ yourself. Indeed I know of no one adequate to deal with the material of your life except you yourself. The postscripts etc. you might leave to us, the reviewers of your memoirs. Eitingon told me that there already is in existence a biography of you by Sadgers1 and an account of the whole sad story. But I know no one who could describe your life and your advance into forbidden territory as the author of Moses could do it. I am delighted as I read it in the N.T.B., where it has appeared previous to publication. It revived in my memory the two unforgettable gifts you and Anna made me in Vienna, when you read the book aloud to me on two occasions, and since then it has been an integral part of my mind and thought. I am full of questions about yourself, but shame and modesty have so far prevented me from expressing these questions and