From: Ijuhy, Brazil
2 January 1927

Esteemed Staats-Anzeiger!

I want to kindly ask you to include these lines in the columns of your valued paper, so that our parents and friends will know that we are still among the living. We are really faring badly in our new homeland, the praised Brazil.

Until recently we worked under the imaginable worst conditions in the Brazilian coffee plantations. The people here are so overworked that they stumble over their own feet. We are so ragged that one thinks we are gypsies.

When we were finished with our work there, we hoped to receive some additional money. But we deceived ourselves and had to pay back 2 milreis and 500 reis. Many still had to pay more.

People who immigrate to this place are all sold and have to work like slaves. But thanks to God, we are now free again. We no longer are in the coffee plantations in Sao Paulo. We moved to the State Rio Grande Do Sul.

Dear friends, if you would see us among the local Negroes, you would not recognize us anymore, because we are almost as dark as the natives.

Where we are situated now, it is better because we can go to church again. Our church here is nicer than the one in Krasna.

I am informing Markus Fenrich that I received three letters from him. I replied right away, but do not know if he received my letter.

Further, I also greet Joseph and Johannes Fenrich, Peter and Anton Seifert, and Anton Gedak and wife. We thank Mr. Gedak for the reports from the old homeland.

In closing, I greet my parents in Bessarabia and also all readers and editor Mr.Brandt.

Alexius F. Fenrich