The German Suitcase

by Dinallo, Greg

  “God be with you,” Tovah said, softly in Yiddish.

  “And with you, Tovah,” Max replied in the language she had taught him as a child. “May He be with all of you and with Eva and Jake.” He hugged his mother, shook his father’s hand, and got into the car with the chauffeur. In less than fifteen minutes Max would be at SS Headquarters on Schellingstrasse where his orders awaited.

  While Max was bidding farewell to his parents, Anika was driving across Munich to the Bundesstrasse No. 2, the roadway that cuts through the Alpine foothills to the town of Starnberg 30 kilometers to the south. The weather made driving hazardous, and it took an hour to reach the checkpoint at the northern tip of Lake Starnberger, a desolate area of iron-gray trees and drifting snow. The road narrowed and led to a bridge where a barricade marked with a swastika had been set up. A guardhouse stood nearby. Wisps of smoke curled from a stovepipe that pierced its snow-covered roof. A Nazi flag hung stiffly from a pole affixed to the facade. As the slush-spattered Volkswagen approached, a sergeant came from the guardhouse and walked toward the bridge. A sidearm hung from a belt that encircled his greatcoat. Anika slowed, expecting he would raise the barricade and wave her on as he always did. Instead, he held up a hand, forcing her to stop, and then stepped to the driver’s window. Anika sighed and lowered it. The close-set eyes of a face she didn’t recognize stared at her from beneath a Nazi helmet.

  “You are going where, fraulein?” the sergeant asked, his breath coming in gray puffs as he spoke.

  “Skiing,” Anika replied, impatiently as the wipers chattered across the windshield. “Can we go now? We’re losing all the warmth in here.”

  “Skiing where?”

  “Garmisch-Partenkirchen, as I do most weekends in season. Ask Lieutenant Junger. He’ll tell you.”

  “I don’t see any skis,” the sergeant went on, unmoved by her protestations.

  “They’re in our chalet on Eibsee.”

  “Eibsee,” the sergeant echoed as if impressed. “A rich brat from Munich. A good-looking one too.” He reached through the open window and started toying with Anika’s hair. The dog growled and lunged from the back seat, snapping at his hand. The sergeant shrieked in pain. His eyes darted to the blood oozing from a gouge on one of his knuckles. He cursed and drew his sidearm, aiming it at the dog’s head.

  “No!” Anika shouted, shoving the Luger aside. It fired, wildly, sending Eva and Jake diving for cover.

  A lieutenant came running from the guardhouse with his sidearm drawn. “What’s going on, here?!”

  “Her fucking dog bit me!”

  “With good reason!” Anika retorted.

  The lieutenant recognized her and holstered his pistol. “Lower your weapon,” he commanded, glaring at the sergeant. “Holster it. Now!”

  The sergeant seethed with anger, then complied.

  “Fraulien Kleist,” the lieutenant said, sounding embarrassed. “My sincere apologies.”

  “Accepted,” Anika said, with a smile that could have melted the frost forming on his helmet. “It’s always good to see you, Lieutenant Junger.”

  “The pleasure is all mine. Please excuse my sergeant’s rudeness. He’s newly posted and eager to prove himself. I hope you won’t feel compelled to report this to your father.”

  “No, I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  “Thank you for understanding.” The lieutenant gestured to the barricade, prompting the sergeant to raise it. “You idiot!” he bellowed as Anika drove off across the bridge. “You know who her father is?! Herr Konrad Kleist. Head of Kleist Industries and close friend of the Führer!”

  Inside the car, Anika glanced to the rearview mirror to see the checkpoint receding in the distance. “How’d I do?” she prompted stimulated by the encounter.

  “You’ve got a lot of chutzpah,” Eva replied.

  “Yeah, enough for all of us,” Jake chimed-in. “There’s a little puddle on the seat back here…”

  Kunst barked as if in protest.

  “…and it wasn’t the dog,” Jake added with a self-deprecating cackle.

  They still had almost 60 kilometers to go before they would reach Partnach Gorge and the abandoned cabin; and for the next several hours, Anika drove south through Traubing, and across the Hirschberg-Alm, continuing on to Weilheim and into the twisting, snow-blanketed hills of the Murnau district.

  “Max and I spent summers here when we were growing up,” she said, driving down Marktstrasse, Murnau’s main street that was lined with shops. “My parents rented a villa on the lake every year before we bought the place on Eibsee. I learned to drive on these roads. See that building?” She went on, indicating an Art Nouveau facade draped in snow. “Kandinsky had a studio there. He and his artist buddies.”

  “The Blaue Reiter group,” Eva said. “They were in the Biennale when I was in college,” she went on, referring to the international exhibition held in Venice on odd numbered years. “Klee, Marc, Kandinsky, Gabrielle Munter…She was his girlfriend for a while, right?”

  “Sure was,” Anika said, impressed by the depth of Eva’s knowledge. “My mother began buying their work when she opened her gallery after the war. The large Kandinsky in the library was painted when he was living here. It’s called Concert.”

  “I really like the one in Max’s room,” Eva said. “Murnau With Church. The colors just resonate.”

  “I like it too,” Anika chirped, brightly. “But Concert’s my favorite. It was inspired by Schoenberg’s violin concertos.”

  They had crossed the Eschenloher Mos, a plain of marshes splashed with blinding frost, and on through the two short tunnels between Oberau and Frachant. Soon, the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Basin flattened out revealing the spectacular Zugspitze towering above the Wetterstein Range and the ski areas beyond. The artistic chatter had given way to a somber silence and the breathtaking vista went unnoticed.

  The towns of Garmisch and Partenkirchen—joined in 1936 when the Winter Olympics were held there—were on opposite banks of the Partnach River. A contingent of Wermacht mountain troops was billeted in the dormitories where Olympic athletes once lived. A Nazi flag hung above the post office that served as its headquarters.

  Anika took the Mittenwald turnoff, bypassing the town, and headed east toward the Gorge. She crossed the railroad tracks near Kainzenbad Station, angling into a narrow side road. It bordered a rock-walled canyon sheathed with ice where the river gushed in a tumbling rage. At the bottom of the gorge, they came to a snow-blanketed cabin built amidst craggy rocks and towering trees. Before leaving the car, they looked for evidence of squatters, but saw neither tire tracks, nor footprints between the cabin and an outhouse, nearby.

  Jake found an unlocked window and climbed through it, letting Eva and Anika in through the front door. The cabin was almost as cold inside as out, making their every exhale visible. The dog began sniffing the air and padding about as if conducting an inspection. A table with a snapped leg and an armchair with threadbare upholstery were the only furnishings. The power had been turned off which meant the space heater would be of no use though the candles would come in handy.

  “That ought to take the chill out of the place,” Jake said with a nod to the fireplace and cordwood stacked beside it.

  “Which side of the bed do you want?” Eva joked, gesturing to the floor in front of the hearth.

  Anika’s eyes narrowed with concern. “I don’t know about that. The smoke from the chimney could attract attention. I think it’s going to be shared-bodily-warmth beneath a pile of quilts for you two.” Then, trying to ease their anxiety, added, “Don’t fret. I’ll be back by the time you have the drapes hung.”

  Indeed, this would be home for Eva and Jake until Anika returned from Munich with their forged papers. They searched the cabin for a place to sleep and found a small, windowless storage room behind the kitchen. It had no exterior walls, was free of drafts, and would conserve their body heat. They knew that if something went wrong and Anika was captured with them, sh
e and her family would pay with their lives. So, after helping to unload the car and arrange the bedding on the storage room floor, Anika wished them luck and, accompanied by the dog, headed for the chalet on Eibsee several miles west of the Gorge.

  Eva and Jake looked about the tiny room trying to comprehend what had become of them: Highly accomplished, much admired, life-saving physicians in Munich, one day. Fugitive Jews being hunted like animals, hiding out in a frigid cabin, the next. Exhausted, Eva lit one of the candles and, still bundled in her outerwear, crawled beneath the bedding. “Come on,” she said, gesturing Jake join her.

  Jake hesitated, appearing to be uncomfortable at the prospect. “Maybe, I’ll read for a while,” he said, taking a book from his briefcase.

  “My God,” Eva gasped at the steely-eyed image of Hitler staring from the dust jacket and the Gothic typography of the title that slashed boldly across the bottom in a red band. “You’re reading Mein Kampf?”

  Jake smiled wearily. “Sorry. It’s camouflage. Getting caught reading All Quiet On the Western Front can be dangerous to one’s health.”

  “So can exhaustion. Come on…” Eva sensed his discomfort, and added. “It’s okay. My brother and I used to sleep together all the time when we were little.”

  “I’m not your brother, Eva,” Jake said with a sigh that hung in the cold air. He was sitting with his back against the wall, watching the light from the candle play across her face. His head was cocked to one side, his dark, unruly hair tumbling from beneath his cap. There was a look in his eyes Eva had never seen before. If she didn’t know better she would have thought it had the intensity of longing, of lust. “It must be the hand-me-downs,” she joked, suggesting that wearing Max’s clothing had affected Jake’s sense of identity.

  “I’m not joking, Eva,” Jake said, sounding hurt. “I’m not your brother and we’re not little, and—”

  “No, we’re all grown up, and that’s how we’re going to act,” Eva interrupted, her tone sharpening. “We’re going to do whatever it takes to keep from freezing to death. If that means pressing our bodies together, our clothed bodies, that’s what we’ll do.”

  “Eva, listen, just for a moment,” Jake pleaded, his voice quavering with emotion. “That first day in class… my God it’s hard to believe it was almost three years ago…there you were, this spirited, intelligent, Jewish and, yes, incredibly beautiful, woman; and… and that’s when I knew why I had risked coming to Munich for Medical School. I’ve had feelings for you from that moment; but you and…and Max became…”

  “And I have feelings for you, Jacob…” Eva said, putting a fingertip to his lips to silence him “…as a fine man, brilliant doctor, and dear friend; but this is no time to talk about it.”

  “Of course it is. It may be the only time. We’re living from day to day. Moment to moment. There’s no future for us. We have only, now; and I’ve been waiting so long to tell you what’s in my heart…”

  “You’re a sweet man, Jacob; but, you know mine belongs to Max. I’m in love with him, and want to be with him, and only him. There is no explanation for such things. They just are. I hope you understand.”

  Jake’s posture slackened, his eyes glistening with remorse. “I’m sorry, Eva,” he said, lowering them in shame. “I’ve acted childishly, improperly.”

  “No, you haven’t. And you won’t. I won’t let you.” She threw back the pile of bed covers and beckoned he join her. “Now get under here. We have to do everything we can to stay alive.”

  “Why? So the Nazis can capture and kill us?”

  “Jacob,” she said with a roll of her eyes, like a mother scolding a child. “It’s time for bed. Now.”

  Jake sighed in concession and did as she ordered. Eva blew out the candle, then pulled the bedding up over them, and pressed her back against his. “Good night, Jacob. God bless.”

  “I hope so…” Jake said, feeling more vulnerable, now, than ashamed, “…but the desperate prayers of our people have gone unanswered for so long, I’ve little faith He’ll hear ours.”

  While Eva and Jake huddled in the cabin’s unfamiliar darkness, 60 kilometers to the north, a motorcycle came down the road toward the Starnberg Checkpoint. Its headlight, masked to a narrow slit, sliced through the blackness like an illuminated saber. The driver and an SS officer, riding in the side car, looked like snowmen in their white-splotched greatcoats. Both wore helmets and goggles and carried side arms. The motorcycle turned onto the snow-covered shoulder and slithered through the drifts toward the guardhouse.

  The painted pine interior had a single bunk, several chairs, a desk with a phone and typewriter, a tack board on which bulletins and fugitive alerts were displayed, and a potbelly stove where a coffee pot hissed. The Sergeant, sporting a bandage on his dog-bitten knuckle, sat at the desk, two-finger typing a report. The Lieutenant stood at a window, smoking a cigarette while keeping an eye on the road. “We have visitors,” he said as the SS officer climbed out of the sidecar and pulled a courier’s bag from the foot well. He shouldered his way through the door, and pushed his snow-caked goggles up onto his helmet before pulling off a glove and taking an envelope from his bag. “Fugitive alert. SS Munich. Top priority,” he said, handing it to the Sergeant.

  The envelope contained two alerts. FUGITIVE JEW was printed in large letters across the top of each. The name Dr. Eva Sarah Rosenberg was beneath her photograph on one. Dr. Jacob Israel Epstein beneath his photograph on the other. The alerts stated that Major Heinrich Steig at SS Headquarters be notified immediately if they were sighted or captured; and that they be taken alive for purposes of interrogation. The photos had been obtained from Eva and Jake’s student files which Steig had confiscated. Taken three years ago when they first came to the Medical School they depicted young, bright-eyed idealists eager to study medicine and the art of healing.

  The sergeant’s eyes widened at the sight of them. He waited until the courier, who had poured himself a mug of coffee, had finished it and departed before showing them to the lieutenant.

  “Tack them up with the others,” Junger said with a dismissive exhale of cigarette smoke after giving them a cursory glance. “We’ll keep an eye out for them.”

  “It’s a little late for that,” the sergeant said with a self-satisfied smirk. “I think they were in the car, this morning, with your girlfriend.”

  “What?” the lieutenant said with a puzzled frown. “You mean with Fraulein Kleist?”

  The sergeant nodded, smugly.

  “You realize what you’re suggesting? The Kleists? Harboring Jews? Are you positive it was them?”

  “I’m not sure about the woman. She was so bundled up I could barely see her face. But him—” he stabbed an angry forefinger at Jake’s picture. “—He was in the back with that fucking dog. I was staring right at him.”

  “That’s…that’s incredible. I can’t believe it.”

  “Well, I’d hate to be the one who has to explain to SS Major—” The sergeant paused and glanced to the alert “—Steig, why we didn’t report our sighting.”

  “You’d hate to be the one to wrongly accuse Herr Kleist of harboring Jews, either. Believe me,” Lieutenant Junger retorted. He inhaled deeply on his cigarette, then turned to the window and stared at the blowing snow, wrestling with the dilemma.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  During the week following the photo session in Zach Bolden’s studio, Stacey and Tannen concentrated on developing other creative phases of the ad campaign; and contacting past Steinbach clients who possessed pieces of luggage that had attained vintage status. They had just wrapped up a meeting with several who had agreed to participate when the CD’s from the Wiesenthal Center arrived. Tannen popped one into his computer and began reviewing the data with Stacey. As promised, archivist Ellen Rother had photo-documented, and annotated the historical significance of every item in Dr. Jacob Epstein’s suitcase.

  The visual and written data revealed that: The documents which had been partly visible wh
en Ellen opened the suitcase were Jake Epstein’s Displaced Persons Identity Card issued by a post war processing center and his Austrian passport. A photo, taken in his early twenties, was affixed to the latter by a metal rivet. The clothing had been manufactured in Europe during the period. Though of high quality, their total cost would have been about forty Reichmarks, or four U.S. Dollars at the 1945 exchange rate. Also among the items were: an empty Sturm cigarette package, a copy of All Quiet on the Western Front in a Mein Kampf dust jacket, a pillowcase, and a dog collar. Each of the snapshots found in one of the pockets was a close-up of a concentration camp prisoner’s forearm. Each had a different number tattooed on it preceded by the letter A for Auschwitz. A few ended with a tiny triangle, designating a female prisoner. Though the prints were faded and crackled with age, the numbers could still be read. However, the shallow depth-of-field blurred everything beyond, making the prisoners’ faces unrecognizable. The CD contained nothing more shocking than the concentration camp uniform that had brought gasps when the suitcase was opened. Regarding the latter, Ellen’s report noted that a yellow triangle, which designated the wearer as a Jew, had been sewn above the left breast pocket as had a patch of white fabric with a prisoner number—A198841—stenciled on it.

  That was yesterday.

  This morning, Stacey, Tannen and Steinbach were selecting which of Zach Bolden’s photos—the ones he’d taken of Jake and Steinbach together—would be used in ads that would soon be running, simultaneously, in Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper’s, GQ, Esquire and other fashionable magazines. The luminous, gritty, black-and-white enlargements had been tacked up on a wall in Tannen’s office. Like the lined faces, gnarled fingers, fading tattoos, and depth of character of their two well-worn subjects, the nicks, scratches, gouges and stains in the suitcase’s pebble-grained leather, along with the white, hand-painted personal data, were highly resolved, and rendered in extreme detail.

  Steinbach’s quick eyes darted from one to the other as he walked slowly past them. “They’re perfect. Perfect. The client’s always right…except when he’s wrong. Mea culpa, kid,” he said to Stacey. “I owe you one.”