Grendel Publishing

The Wooden Suitcase

The Wooden Suitcase is a memoir of imprisonment in Siberia from 1945 until 1955. It is a tale not only of suffering and extreme hardship, but also of bravery and optimism.

The book opens in 1941, when the author responds to an order to report to the authorities in Berlin during the Second World War. Emmy Goldacker, a part Jewish, German woman, is, because of her knowledge of foreign languages, ordered to work for the State Security Service.

Emmy is sent first to Istanbul, a stark contrast to war-torn Berlin.  She loves the city for its beauty and its peacetime luxuries such as leather sandals and fresh fruit. Much to the displeasure of her employers, she falls in love with, and becomes engaged to Serge, a Romanian agent. She is transferred to Vienna to work at the Japanese General Consulate.

Back in Berlin after the war, Emmy hopes to train as a teacher. However, she is forcibly taken to the Russian Sector, where she is imprisoned and interrogated. She is sentenced to ten years hard labour.

The book describes the train journey to Inta in the far north of Russia. Emmy is wearing only a light silk dress and a thin summer coat. Forty-two Russian and German prisoners are packed closely together in one compartment. They are cold, hungry and louse-ridden. Some die of starvation, others of cold and typhus.
Life in the camps is gruelling. Prisoners are sent out into the bitter cold to fell trees or lay railway track. It is considered fortunate to be allocated a job in the kitchen, where there is enough to eat, or in the warm laundry with its supplies of soap that can be traded for food or other necessities.

Emmy recounts the daily struggle for survival – how she learns to give herself boils using an infected pin, thereby looking too ill to work; how she forms a ‘relationship’ with one male prisoner to protect herself from others.
Yet the spirit lives. A Russian prisoner teaches Emmy Cyrillic script – a considerable feat as pencil and paper are forbidden. Emmy is then able to read books from the camp library – Russian editions of Dickens, Maupassant and Hugo. The prisoners include professional actresses, singers and dancers. Sometimes they perform operas or give concerts. Festivals like Christmas are celebrated in secret with food saved from their meagre rations.
After Stalin’s death in 1953, conditions ease. Prisoners are called by their names instead of numbers. Many are released, but not Emmy.  Emmy serves her whole term. It is not until 1955 that she returns to her mother in Berlin. She is carrying a wooden suitcase that marks her out as a returned prisoner from the Soviet Union.

The Wooden Suitcase has appeared in German, French and Russian. This edition from Grendel Publishing is a translation from the German, 2010, £8.99