Voices of the dead

Harry didn’t see it that way, but didn’t say anything. The Sternbuchs were deeply religious Orthodox Jews. He didn’t want to offend them.

Recha cabled his uncle in Detroit the following week.

Harry Levin is alive and well, living with us in Montreux, Switzerland. Will arrange for passage to the United States when possible. Please send visa.

Yours sincerely, Recha Sternbuch.

Harry stayed with them in Montreux till the end of the war. Recha and Yitzchok were gone most of the time on their crusade to rescue Jewish children, the orphans of Europe. She was the toughest woman he’d ever seen, standing up to the police in Switzerland, and the authorities in other European countries, protecting refugees, saving thousands of kids.

When the war ended, Harry and a group of five hundred Jews sponsored by Recha took a train to Lisbon and boarded a ship on August 20, 1945, arriving in the port of New York two weeks later.

With the American visa Harry had gotten from his uncle, he went right through customs and immigration, no one giving him a hard time, no one to bribe. He had money and a place to live and nothing to declare. He exchanged his Swiss francs for American dollars at a bank on Fifth Avenue. Harry walked the streets, looking up at the tall buildings, amazed by the size of New York, almost overwhelming. He had seen shots of it in movies, but nothing like the impact of being there.

He stopped at a bookstore and bought an English-German dictionary and a map of the city. He walked to Grand Central Station at 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Bought a one-way fare to Detroit, a fourteen-hour trip with all the stops, arriving on September 4, 1945 at 8:17 in the morning.

Harry took a taxi to his uncle’s house on Elmhurst, between Dexter and Linwood, the directions said, riding in morning traffic on Woodward Avenue, four lanes of automobiles in both directions, seeing Detroit for the first time, the city waking up, alive. It was small compared to New York, but still larger and more modern than the European cities he’d been to.

It was a nice-looking house, two-storey brick with a big porch in front and a green lawn, in a pretty neighborhood with a lot of trees. Harry was excited. He hadn’t seen his aunt and uncle since they left Munich in 1940. He rang the buzzer, waited, the door opened, his aunt looked at him and yelled.

“Sam…”

Harry stepped into the foyer, Esther hugging him, hearing Sam’s voice in another room. “What is it?” And then Sam appearing, coming down the hall toward them.

“My God, am I seeing who I think I’m seeing? Harry, why didn’t you tell us?”

“I wanted to surprise you.”

“Surprise us? I almost had a heart attack. Where are your things?”

“This is it.”

“Esther will take you to Hudson’s; it’s a department store. You’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I’ve never seen anything like any of this.”

“You like baseball, Harry? That’s right, you don’t know from baseball. I’m going to take you to see Hank Greenberg, greatest ballplayer in the world.”

“Harry, you’re going to like it here,” Esther said. “We can buy fruit and vegetables even in winter.”

“How about apples?” Harry said.

“As many as you want.”

“You hungry, Harry? Of course you are. Esther, get him something to eat.”

It didn’t take any time, Harry fell in love with American girls and baseball, playing in the street and going with his uncle to see the Tigers. He fell in love with the pickles from Grunt’s market on Dexter, and television, watching Roy Rogers and Gene Autry and The Milton Berle Show. He loved going to movies at the Avalon Theater and going to Boesky’s and Darby’s for lunch and dinner. But mostly he liked the fact that in America you could do or be anything you wanted.

10

Munich, Germany. 1971.

9:15 the next morning, Harry was having breakfast, studying the grainy photographs of Ernst Hess’ estate taken with a long lens. The house was big, a classic Tudor with dark exposed timbers, with stucco walls, steep roof lines and half a dozen tall chimneys. The windows were rectangular, with one- and two-storey bays and decorative leaded glass panes.

It was more mansion than house, ten photos showing the front, sides and rear, and the gardens, pool and tennis court behind it. There were several shots of Hess taken at different times. Hess in business attire, coming out the front, getting into a black Mercedes, Rausch, the linebacker he’d thrown over the table at Les Halles in Washington DC, standing in the frame. Hess in bathing trunks, climbing out of the pool, gut hanging out. Hess in the garden with a tall, slim dark-haired girl, identified as his daughter, Katya, age seventeen. There were also photos of Hess AG, the Zeppelin factory, two airplane hangars and a three-storey building built on an alpine meadow outside the city, the snow-capped Bavarian Alps in the background. And a final shot of Hess’ apartment building in downtown Munich.