Draft letter 3 from Berthe Lipchitz to a Minister

Description

Berthe was writing to a Minister [most likely the French Minister of Foreign Affairs]. She describes the situation with her son Andrei Shimkevich, who travelled in 1929 to see his father, Mikhail, in the USSR and has been trying to return to France since. Mikhail resists his return and Andrei tried to escape the country several times, was arrested and put into prison. Berthe asks the recipient to interfere and to save her son. This letter is probably the final version as it has the most information. Full text in translation:

'Sir,
You childhood friend, Jean Giradoux, who is currently travelling, I'm taking the liberty to write and beg you to take under your high protection my poor, young son, Andre Schimkévitch, which is what Mr. J.Giradoux conversed with you about over the winter. Within the same correspondence, the Embassy will also receive an official note, asking the French Embassy to intervene with the authorities of the USSR, so that we can have my son repatriated to France, close to his mother. My son Andre Schimkévitch was arrested a while ago, I think towards the middle or end of May. Near Batoum - Caucase - at the borders of Turkey where they were trying to cross to get back to France, to his country and near to his mother who is sick, this is his sad story.
My son, Andre Schimkévitch, was born in Paris in 1913.
Myself, his mother I'm French as well as my husband, the well-known Sculptor, Jacques Lipchitz with whom I've been living since 1915 and who has been the most tender father to my child. Even with my little child and husband loving each other I didn't feel the need to hide his real father who is living in Moscow.
My son was at the Janson de Sailly high school until the end of October 1927. When taken by an invincible need to meet his father, he almost made it an illness. This is how we decided to agree on letting him meet his father in Moscow, sure that he would get back soon as his father had promised.
But once there everything changed, time passed, and his father still wasn't sending him back to us not because of love, he is married and has another son, but because of self-love. With the child feeling homesick and profoundly unhappy keeps begging us in his letters to bring him back to his country and near us!
With that goal we sent him his French Passport, as he had one, given last winter by the French Embassy in Moscow. It's probably at that time that your friend J. Giradoux asked you to help my son, due to his young age but without being able to give you his address because at that time, due to my son and his father's divergence of ideas with his father refusing to help, there had been a family accident that caused my son to leave the paternal home and hope to get back to France.
Your friend told me to write to you or come and meet you but because I didn't know his address, I couldn't do it.
This child that was so well raised and behaved with us, not knowing how to leave started to live a vagabond life and ended up arrested without me even knowing why.
(Admitting that he made mistakes, we need to not forget that he was a migrant in that country and never fitted with their ways of living not understanding the difference between the countries in some instances).
When he was released and back with his father, with his childish mind, feeling homesick and unhappy he must have think that the only way to get back to France quickly, to his country and to where his sick mother is, was to cross the border anyhow and with no papers, which he was about to do at Batoum- Caucase before he got arrested, around the middle or end of May I think.
Since then he is in prison extremely distressed and alone. Alone in his misfortune and with his terrible enemy, in the person of his father, who wants to get rid of him by any means even if it means sending him to force labor, you can see the situation. He is a child, only seventeen, he doesn't know how to defend himself. He is a French citizen. He has his French Passport in Moscow. It seems that even the USSR authorities consider him French. I'm begging you Monsieur to save my child. To find him - until then he was detained in Caucase, I think anyway, although I don't think in a border city such Batoum that they keep these kinds of prisoners. Right now, he should be heading to Moscow which means he's been or is about to be transferred, who knows maybe he's already in Moscow?
I'm begging you to take pity on my poor child, as he is a French citizen, I'm begging you to act fast, as fast as possible and to take all the steps to intervene against the USSR authorities. To find him, defend him and repatriate him. Of course, I will pay the charges for his journey. I'm begging you sir to be aware of the official struggle concerning my poor child and to understand, even if your friend has not spoken about you as a very sensitive men, the complications of family life.
It's to your heart that I'm speaking sir, I'm begging you to start the process, to find, defend and repatriate my poor son, so young and alone in his misery. He is French, his passport proves it.
Save my son, bring him back to his mother. '

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