Chapter 43Das Vidaniya
January 5, 1948. I stood on the upper deck of the ship, The General Heintzelmann, as it steamed out of Hamburg harbour. Five levels below in our tiny cabin, my wife, Esther, lay in bed. She felt ill and we had just got under way. The temperature hovered near freezing and felt colder in the strong winds but I liked the fresh air and inhaled it deeply into my lungs. The General Heintzelmann had been a troop ship during the War, transporting three thousand men at a time, carrying them to the European theatre of operations. Somehow, it had managed to elude the U-boats that travelled in packs sinking hundreds of thousands of tons of Allied shipping. Many thousands lost their lives in the icy waters of the Atlantic but this one had survived. That was one reason I felt goo
