Berlin: An Order for "Evacuation to the East"

Cioma Schönhaus is 19 years old. Born in Berlin into a Jewish family of Russian origin, he has had to break off his graphic-arts studies and now works as a labourer in an arms factory, one of the forced jobs that still delay the summoning of the capital's last Jews. He wears the yellow star and lives under reduced ration cards and prohibitions that tighten month after month.

Since the autumn of 1941, the Reich authorities have been organising the departure of German Jews to the "East" by convoy. The first trains left Berlin in October for the Łódź ghetto, then for Riga and Minsk. The summons takes the form of an administrative letter: report to an assembly point, with a single small suitcase, for a "resettlement" presented as a labour transfer. No one in the community knows for certain what awaits at the end of the journey, but the few accounts that filter through are terrifying. Schönhaus's parents have already received the order to leave.

When the letter concerning him arrives, or when he realises it will, Cioma Schönhaus has only a few hours to decide. He can report to the assembly point as the summons demands, hoping the "resettlement" is real; stay in Berlin without papers, remove the star, and vanish into the city as a "U-boat" — the Jews who went into hiding in the very heart of the Reich; or try to reach the Swiss border, at the risk of being arrested on the way.