Paul sends his love, and promises to write though I think he will not. But no matter; I will faithfully correspond for us both. Please, please, Mama, come soon!!!

With all my heart,

Your Rosalie

In the silence I became aware of comings and goings in the Waldorf lobby. A bellhop pushed a luggage cart across the carpet. Well-dressed men and women read newspapers and sipped coffee. If you ignored the taxis beyond the doors, this could be the saloon of a great ocean liner itself.

I looked at Alice Fairchild. “I don’t understand. These were Jews escaping the Nazis? But-they were going to Shanghai?”

“It was their only choice.”

“What do you mean? I thought they went to other countries in Europe, or came here.”

“Survivors did, after the war. But as the Nazis rose in the thirties, countries all over the world closed their doors. Everyone knew what was happening, but no government was willing to deal with a flood of desperate refugees.”

“Even the U.S.?”

“The U.S. had small quotas by country and looked at the Jews as Germans, Austrians, Poles, wherever they were from. All the normal paperwork was required.”

“This is a surprise?” Joel asked me. “There were Chinese quotas, too, you know.”

“I know that. But I thought-”

“It was just you? Wrong.”

I sipped tea to hide my annoyance that Joel had caught me out being ignorant, and in front of the client, too. “Well, but Shanghai? It seems so… unlikely.”

“I’m sure it did to them, too,” Alice said. “But visas were relatively easy to get, and often passengers off ships weren’t asked for papers in any case. Anyone who could get there could stay. It was the only place.”

“How many refugees went?”

“Twenty thousand.”

“Twenty thousand?” Where had I been during world history class?

“The story’s not well known.” Alice read my mind. “It’s been eclipsed by the war, the concentration camps. They began arriving in numbers in 1937. By 1942, fighting in Europe and the Pacific had closed the routes.”