My Dear Ones: One Family and the Final Solution. Jonathan Wittenberg

remaining open is to obtain one for Ernst by indirect means. This indirect route is necessary because he is not allowed by the German authorities to own any money abroad, and the British administration and its consulates require him to have a sum of at least 1,000 Palestinian pounds at his sole and free disposal.

      After much breaking of our heads and after consultation with experts we’ve hit upon a plan that should work quickly and inexpensively and be difficult to object to. However, it requires the cooperation of friends abroad: Ernst needs to be given at least 1,030 LP (1,030 English or Palestinian pounds), from a source from whom such a gift is credible on personal grounds …

      This operation can’t be undertaken in Palestine itself, because the immigration certificate is only granted where the above-mentioned minimum amount of fresh capital is brought into the country from abroad. My brothers and sisters in Posen and in Czechoslovakia are themselves subject to the local foreign exchange controls, so nothing can be done from that end. I must therefore turn to you for help in this extraordinary emergency. My big request is that you formally make available to Ernst this sum of 1,030 pounds. This amount must be transferred to the account of Dr Ernst Freimann at the Anglo-Palestine Bank Limited in Jerusalem. I have made all the arrangements here to ensure that the money returns to you as soon as Ernst has emigrated and his papers are in order. Should Ernst for any reason not be able to emigrate, I will be in a position to undertake the repayment.

      Should you not at present have the requisite sum at your disposal, please ask Herr Sigmund Seligmann for his assistance. In these circumstances, where it’s a matter of saving lives, he will surely do everything within his power. I will gladly take responsibility for any costs incurred. With heartfelt greetings …

      Alfred may or may not have known that even as he was writing his letter, the Nazis were sending the ashes of their victims back home to their families in urns wrapped up as parcels. ‘One dreaded the approach of the postman,’ my mother remembered; her father had been sent to Dachau on 14 November. They cremated the bodies, noted Ernst, so that it would be impossible to prove how their victims had perished. The families were then informed that their loved ones had ‘regrettably’ been taken ill and that it had ‘sadly’ proved impossible to save their lives. The truth, of course, was that they had been murdered.