The Package.A further extended Edition.: A Tale of the Holocaust.

In Nazi Germany, after he came to power, Adolf Hitler demanded that Germany was to be made free of Jews.

This story concerns two Jewish women, Ellen Kaempfer and Betty Holstein, and a non-Jewish woman, Elfriede Mollenhauer who tried to help them.

Ellen Kaempfer’s Husband was advised to divorce her or be classed as a half-Jew and would suffer the same consequences as all German Jews.
Betty Holstein’s fiancé, a sailor in the German navy, was told, by the Gestapo, he should, for his own well-being, disassociate himself from Betty. This he refused to do and found himself sent to an officer training school and later posted to the battle-cruiser the Graf Spee.

More by chance than circumstance, Ellen and Betty met Elfriede Mollenhauer and they became friends. Although their relationship was short and fleeting, Elfriede tried in vain to secure safe passage out of Germany for them. For Ellen and Betty it became a hope for a better future, for Elfriede it was a chance to help a stranger who became her friend whom she feared she might never see again.

Ellen and Betty, after being sacked from their jobs, were ordered to wear the yellow Star of David on their outdoor clothing. Later they were told they were to be deported from Hamburg to a work camp in Poland.

Shortly before their deportation, Ellen gave Elfriede, who was an active member of the German underground, a package for safe-keeping, an undertaking, that if discovered could lead to a long term of imprisonment in a German work camp, or even death

Elfriede, married to Hans Thunsdorff, a cipher clerk who was forced to work for the Nazis, took the package with her everywhere she went. Through the bombings in Hamburg and Berlin. During the course of the war Hans decided to desert on his posting to Dresden. This he did and made his way to where Elfriede and their infant son Peter were staying, well away from the bombings in northern Germany.

After their deportation in October 1941 Ellen and Betty, found themselves working in the labour camp Litzmannstadt.
On the 7th of May 1942 they were transferred to Chelmno death camp along with thousands of others where they were brutally murdered.
Included in this story is an excerpt from "The Journey."