Shanghai Shadows by Lois Ruby Page B

it clouded again. I suppose he was thinking of being the big brother to his own sisters—dead, no doubt.
    Erich asked brusquely, “So, how’d you escape Hitler?” That was our Erich—right to the point.
    â€œChiune Sugihara,” I said importantly.
    â€œWho?”
    Dovid explained and set the scene all over again for Erich.
    The excitement in Dovid’s voice made my heart swim in a pool of warmth. “It is chaos that day, my friends. Picture it. People swarming the train to get on. Arms waving visas out the window to catch Sugihara’s eye. The whistle howls. Then the train slowly builds into a chug-a-chug-a-chug , and there is Sugihara, running and stamping visas waving out the window until he can no longer keep up with the train.”
    â€œBut visas to where?” Erich asked.
    Dovid’s smile fell behind his eyes like a setting sun. “Well, that is the problem.”
    â€œAch, everybody’s problem,” Erich muttered.
    â€œWe are luckier than some. We grasp in our hands exit visas to Curaçao.”
    Even Erich, who knew everything, didn’t know where Curaçao was.
    â€œAn island in the Caribbean Sea, south,” Dovid explained. “Near the tip of Venezuela. Sea breezes all year around.”
    Here, it was May, and summer was already roaring toward us. It had rained all night, all morning, and the rain had turned the air to sludge. Dovid and I had sweat beading on our faces. Waving palms and sea breezes sounded glorious.
    â€œI never get to Curaçao. It is only a trick to get us out of Lithuania.”
    Erich caught on. “So, that diplomat—”
    â€œSugihara,” I supplied.
    â€œYes, so that guy could issue your exit visas. Clever scheme,” Erich said, admiration clear in his voice. “How many got out this way, twenty? Thirty?”
    â€œTwo thousand,” Dovid boasted.
    â€œImpressive. Where did you go if not to Curaçao?”
    Dovid was enjoying this parceling out of information a tiny bite at a time. “We had Japanese visas, you see. We went to Kobe, Japan. Where else?”
    â€œYou took a boat from Lithuania to Kobe?” I asked.
    Dovid and Erich both laughed, at my expense. Erich said, “My sister has no head for geography. She thinks America’s around the corner from Brazil.”
    â€œDo not!” I pouted. “Don’t stop telling the story just because my brother’s so rude.”
    Now Erich was deeply engrossed. He straddled his chair, facing Dovid. He looked so comfortable with his arms hugging the chairback. A girl would never be allowed to sit that way, and then I became aware of my elbows on the table—which Mother never allowed—and I pulled my arms down to my lap. “Go on, Dovid, please, we’re dying to hear the rest.”
    By then even Mr. Bauman and three free-loading patrons were hanging on every word as well.
    â€œAll of us pile into the Trans-Siberian train. Through the Ural Mountains and across Russia. Until you spend eleven days on a train, you do not understand how big Russia is.” He stretched his arms as wide as they’d go. “The first long stop is Manchuria. Happy surprise to find Yiddish-speaking Russian Jews there.”
    â€œSo far north? In Manchuria?” Erich asked.
    â€œTwenty-five years already. So, finally we reach Vladivostok, and we are loaded onto open cargo barges. Forty hours we travel this way. Don’t tell anybody, but I am seasick all the way down the coast of Korea, into the port of Kobe.”
    â€œJapan,” Erich said with contempt. “I wouldn’t have gotten off the boat.”
    â€œNo? In Kobe we are treated very well, but we are a—curious—to the gentle Japanese people.”
    â€œGentle?” I asked. Gentle certainly didn’t fit the Japanese who occupied Shanghai. We’d heard shocking rumors of the tortures in the Bridge House Prison, where the Kempetai, the