Munich Signature Read Online Free PDF Page B

the mighty steel factory into a crematorium within seconds after the first flowing metal touched the coal. There had been no chance to run. Few of the workers who died in those brief moments even knew what force consumed their lives.
    The lights from cars and fire trucks and ambulances seemed dim as they remained a block from the searing heat of the blaze. Sirens were drowned out by the noise of the roaring inferno and the groaning of twisted metal as the factory fell in on itself.
    Reich industry officials shouted their replies to questions from dozens of reporters who gathered at the scene. “Causes will be thoroughly investigated . . . widows and orphans compensated . . . No doubt the work of Jews and foreign saboteurs . . . Steel production will be delayed only a short time. A matter of days.”
    It was common opinion that no one could have survived the blast. Besides the handful of loyal Nazi foremen who were lost, the rest had only been common criminals anyway. The Reich had been fortunate in that way. “Survivors? The devil himself could not live through that hell! Heil Hitler!”
    ***
     
    Shimon clung to the piling of the dock a hundred yards from where the demolished factory burned. The fires lit the dark night like daylight. Fragments of the building, blown with him into the river, now burned on top of the water.
    The pain that raced up and down Shimon’s neck and back caused him to scream again and again, but his voice went unheard or unheeded. He longed for death. Such agony was too great for him to consider the miracle of survival. He did not ponder how he had come to fall in the water as the world all around him had disintegrated. Had he been blown free of the building? Had he crawled to the pier and thrown himself in the cool water? Had some gracious hand lifted him up and shielded him?
    It did not matter. Yet another explosion shook the night. Shimon ducked his head as a shower of metal fell into the water around him. The air itself was charged with heat and fumes that almost choked him. Death would be merciful.
    The air was torn by a series of blasts. With his last strength Shimon slipped beneath the water and held his breath as another shower of debris crashed into the waters. Only his hands remained exposed as he gripped a rusty iron spike protruding from the splintered wood. To let go of that spike would be to let go of life, to slip away forever and inhale the cold waters of the Elbe River into his tortured lungs. And yet, Shimon could not let go. Again and again his thirst for air thrust him to the heated surface where he gasped and shouted Leah’s name before he submerged himself beneath the waters once more. “Leah! Leah! Dear God—”
    All through the terrible night he gripped the spike until at last the fires blended into the daylight and died away. As dawn broke he heard the exclamations and curses of his Nazi masters as they prowled the boards on the dock above him.
    “The work of Jews and saboteurs. Two hundred dead inmates, more or less. A small factory—not much loss to the Reich, after all.”
    ***
     
    The skies above Hamburg were still black with the smoke of last night’s explosion. The sidewalk was covered with soot. But the old woman did not seem to notice the mess.
    In spite of her seventy-eight years, Frau Trudence Rosenfelt carried herself with a certain dignity and determination that made the crowds in front of the Hamburg Office of Immigration part when she approached. Perhaps it was the cane that made the people step back for her and the little entourage that followed after her. She held the cane high and in front of her face, like a drum major leading a band in a Fourth of July parade back home in New York. Her diminutive form was dwarfed by heads and shoulders all around, but there was the cane, clearly visible even to the smallest of the seven Holbein family members who followed quick-march behind the grandmother they called Bubbe.
    Frau Rosenfelt’s granddaughter,