“But 1937-that’s when Japan invaded China.” I hadn’t slept through world history completely, after all. “The Japanese let them in?”

“ Shanghai ’s open port was what made it wealthy. That early, Japan wasn’t planning on war with the West and saw no reason to change anything.”

Alice looked at Joel, then at me. “Rosalie Gilder was eighteen, her brother Paul fourteen, when they fled Salzburg by train for Trieste, to board the Conte Biancamano. Their mother, Elke, a widow, and her brother, Horst Peretz, had tickets to Shanghai three months later by the overland route-Trans-Siberian Railway to a ship at Dairen.”

I asked, “Why didn’t they all go together?”

“ Germany had annexed Austria a month before. Extermination wasn’t yet the Nazis’ plan for the Jews; they meant to force them out. They’d arrest Jewish men, and only let them go once their families produced travel documents. That happened to Horst. Elke was able to get train tickets, so he was released, but three months was a frighteningly long time to wait. She moved heaven and earth to get berths on a ship leaving sooner, and managed two. She sent her children. She hoped she and Horst could follow on another ship.”

“Did they?”

“No.”

“So they went by train?”

“They never got out.”

My gaze fell to the photo again, sister and brother smiling on a windy day. I looked at Joel. His face was carefully blank. It occurred to me he must have grown up hearing countless tragic variations on this same story.

“In the letter you see a reference to their suitcases,” Alice resumed briskly. “Jews who left weren’t allowed to take much money, or anything valuable. Paul and Rosalie packed only clothing and a few household items-a pair of pewter candlesticks, for example.”

“What happened to things people left behind?”