A 102-year-old woman unearths WWII love letters from her lost fiancé, revealing a poet’s devotion

For roughly 80 years, hundreds of letters laid untouched in a cardboard carton, following Dr. Deborah Eiferman from home to home. Tucked away on closet shelves and in basement corners, were pages inked with the fervent longings of a young soldier madly in love.

Last year, at 101, Eiferman unsealed the box for the first time in decades. Inside it, she found bundles of postcards, poems and yellowing letters, each stack neatly wrapped in red ribbon. Line after line, penned long ago by her childhood sweetheart, overflowed with declarations of burning desire. As she read through them, she felt herself swept back into the past –  falling in love with Jerry Robbins all over again.

“He hoped to be a well-known poet,” remarked 102-year-old Eiferman. “I realized my purpose in living this long is to see his material published someday. I have lived this long because I have a job to do.”

The lovebirds were both born in 1923 to Jewish families in Brooklyn. They met in grade school at the Yeshiva of Flatbush and were inseparable by the time they were 10. Over the years, their blossoming friendship bloomed into a budding romance. Eiferman couldn’t say exactly when their dynamic changed – only that it happened whenever their  “hormones kicked in.”

By the time they reached their final year of college in 1943 –  Eiferman at the Jewish Theological Seminary and Robbins at Yeshiva University – the U.S.was deeply entrenched in WWII. 

“He was an extremely ethical, spiritual individual,” she explained. “He said ‘I can’t be an objective observer of what’s going on in Germany. To my people. I have to take a more active role.’”

In the spring of 1944, Robbins relinquished his deferment. The night before enlisting in the Army, he wrote a poem titled, “Wait for Me, World.”

Eiferman still remembers their farewell with painful clarity, down to the gut-wrenching feeling that loomed over her as they parted on a subway platform in Washington Heights. She boarded a nearly empty train home, with only an elderly woman sitting quietly nearby.

“I burst out crying hysterically and this woman came over to me and said, ‘Can I help you?’” she recalled. “I said, ‘nobody can help me now.’”

After reporting to Camp Upton on Long Island, Robbins was sent to Camp Wheeler in Georgia for basic training. There, he crafted letter after letter, writing Eiferman at least once a day.  At the time, she went by her maiden name, Berlinger. 

Each correspondence closed with words of unwavering devotion.

 “Remember that I am completely, passionately, irrevocably in love with you;” “I adore you Deborah Berlinger, more than I ever loved before or will ever love again; “Have I written out recently how much I dream of you constantly – how life seems worthwhile only because of you?”

Among the letters Eiferman treasures most, is one sent just a couple of months into training. In it are words brimming with hope – and a marriage proposal. 

“The things I live by are peace and freedom and friendship and good books and sunshine and writing, and most of all the the love of the girl I adore,” he penned in one letter.

On the morning of December 24, 1944, her fiancé took off for the frontlines. Private Robbins was one of more than 2,000 American reinforcements shipped to regions of Belgium, Luxembourg and France to fight in the Battle of the Bulge, the last large-scale German offensive in western Europe. The troopship was set to cross the English Channel en route to the French port of Cherbourg.

Just five-and-a-half miles from its destination, disaster struck. A torpedo launched by a German U-boat struck the rear of the ship, sending water rushing into its lower compartments. The SS Léopoldville was sinking.

Its 14 lifeboats could hold only about half of those on board, many of whom had little to no training in evacuation procedures. Masses of servicemen plunged into the icy waters. Hundreds died of hypothermia or drowned. Others were crushed by an allied vessel assisting with rescues.

Jerry Robbins was among nearly 800 Americans killed in the Christmas Eve catastrophe. He was 21.

“I found a letter that said, I don’t want to die before I have a chance to live,” Eiferman shared. “And he did. I look at the bottom and it says aboard ship, Dec. 22, 1944. Three days before he died. And the poem he wrote on it was ‘If I Should Die, Oh God.’”

Eiferman said she never mourned her late fiancé. Mourning was focused on death, tragedy and her “shredded future,” she noted. Instead, she moved on. She collected reminders of Robbins and sequestered them away in the cardboard box, where they sat forgotten, aging alongside her. 

After his passing, the war now over, she sparked a relationship with an army man who himself knew of Robbins, from his time in the service. Before that, they had served as co-directors of a youth group together.

In 1948, she married Irving Eiferman, a practicing lawyer.  Over the next 64 years, she admits, she never once thought of Robbins.

But Deborah loved her life with Irving, who never failed to slip words of gratitude and love into their conversation daily. The two had three children, two girls and a boy – now adults with their own children and grandchildren. Irving died in 2012 at 92. 

In 2024, her daughter, Leora, offered to help clear out a room used for storage in Deborah’s Riverdale apartment. About 40 minutes into spring cleaning, Leora walked up to her mother with a cardboard box. Scrawled on the lid were the words, “Go Through.”

Since uncovering the letters, Leora and her husband have transcribed and digitized each one.

“I am aware that I am blessed and I’m enjoying every minute of it,” she expressed to The Press. “I had a wonderful life with Irving, but I want to give one of the gifts back. Jerry never, never had a chance to live. And he had so much he wanted to live for.”

In 2015, Eiferman authored the memoir, “My Extrairdinary Life.” She is now working on a new chapbook featuring Robbins’ poems and naming him as a posthumous author. 

When asked for the secret to a long life, she answered without hesitation.

“Gratitude,” Deborah stated. “Gratitude for every blessing I have been given. For every person I loved and who loved me.”

She hopes the world will love Robbins, too.