The Package. A Tale of the Holocaust

Concerning the plights of Ellen Kaempfer, a German Jewess and her sister, Betty, maligned and persecuted, robbed and beaten, and deported to a work camp in Poland where they met their deaths. Involved in this tragedy is a member of the German resistance, Elfriede Mollenhauer, a member of the German resistance, who takes a package containing Ellen's prized possessions for safekeeping, a crime punishable by years of detention in a labour camp. She escapes arrest by the Gestapo and later, still carrying the package, she has to endure the day and night-time bombing by the allies, and her husband, forced to work for Wermacht intelligence, narrowly misses death in the Dresden Bombing and deserts. Near to the end of the war, Ellen and Betty are transported to what they believe is a recreation camp, Chelmno, where they are asked strip off and are told they will be travelling to a bathing facility, and are packed into vans in which they are gassed with the exhaust fumes.