An Inheritance

In September 1935, Gunther and Rebekka Gross feared that the latest government proclamation would lead to other even more stringent laws which led them to decide to do the unthinkable.

On December 5, 2020 Christopher James received a potentially life-changing letter that he laughed off. Ten days later he received a second one.

Chris was sitting in the office lunchroom, a bemused look on his face under his mask. “I got another one,” Chris said, handing an envelope across the table to his friend, Richard. “And get this – this one arrived by courier. I had to sign for it! They must think they’ve got a real live sucker in me. But I didn’t even bother opening this one.”

“So, are you handing in your notice?” Richard asked, pulling the letter out. Handing in his notice was something Richard dreamed of doing, as did just about everyone else working the phones at the call centre.

Chris smiled. “Yeah. Right.” Then he looked at his watch. “Hey, we’ve got to get back. Our fifteen minutes are almost up.”

“Okay. Can I hang onto this? I’ll read it between calls. Not often I get to see numbers like ten million dollars floating around.”

They went back to their desks from their coffee break and plugged in their headsets. When the floor supervisor wasn’t looking Richard stole glances at the letter Chris had received advising him of his newfound wealth. These scams get better and better, he thought as he read through the letter. When he read it a second time he began to think that maybe it wasn’t a scam, until he caught himself and realized it must just be the sophistication of the scammers.

Richard was waiting for Chris at their lunch break, but he barely noticed his arrival at the table. He was engrossed, checking back and forth between the letter and the information he’d called up on his phone.

“Looks like these jerks really suckered you in,” Chris said, chuckling.

“What are you looking up?”

“I don’t think this is a scam.”

“What? Don’t be ridiculous. An inheritance from a long lost relative. I don’t have any relatives on my dad’s side. Everyone in my Gran’s family was killed in the war. And I know everyone in my mom’s family. They’re all listed in the family bible, every last one of them. But none of them have much, certainly not enough to leave anything to me.”

“No, no, listen. Your grandmother, your dad’s mom, what was her name?”

“Mary. Why? What does –?”

“How would they know that? If this is a scam, how would they know your grandmother’s name?”

“I don’t…. Lucky guess?”

“And the return address. That’s what I was checking. It is a law office in Germany and the guy who signed it, he does work there. And the phone number and email address are both real, too. There may be something to this, man.”

At home that night Chris told his girlfriend Felicity about the letter and about Richard’s comments. She laughed at first, but when he persisted with, “What about Gran’s name? How would they know that?” she stopped laughing.

“It looks like you want to pursue this,” she said.

“I think so,” Chris replied. “And there’s one other thing, Flick. There’s no amount in the letter. It just says to contact them about an inheritance. The scammers always put an amount in. Some ridiculous number in the millions. This is a mystery.”

“Okay then. Write them.” Her skepticism was evident in her voice. “But don’t give out any information. No banking numbers, not anything personal, like your birth date.” Felicity thought for another moment. “And maybe create a new email address for them so you don’t get inundated with more scams.”

As soon as he got home the next evening Chris started talking. He didn’t even take off his coat.

“I wrote that law firm this morning, Flick, and they answered back. And I don’t know, but I think Richard may have been right and this is real. They had all this information. They knew my mom and dad’s names and when they got married and they had my birth date, too. And they sent me a copy of Gran’s records from the orphanage in Hamburg and the registration of her marriage to my grandfather.”

Felicity was looking at the documents on Chris’s phone. “They’re all in German.”

“Of course. But Richard knows a bit and it says it’s got her name and when she got to the orphanage, and he said it corresponds to one of the raids when the Brits bombed the city. Oh, and there’s one more document, in English, when her boat landed at Halifax.”

“Wow. So, what’s next?”

“It’s in the e-mail. He said he needs some information from me before he can release all the details. He wants to set up a time for a phone conversation to go over it all.”

“Oh-oh. That’s a red flag.”

“You’re still suspicious, even with all this?”

“It seems too good to be true.”

“But it’s Christmas. Maybe it’s a Christmas miracle.”

Felicity pouted. “Speaking of which…. You haven’t looked into the living room.”

Chris looked. “You bought a tree,” he beamed, delighted with the five-foot pine. “How did you get it up here?

“Christmas miracle,” she chided, keeping to herself the help the apartment superintendent gave her.

“It looks great. We’ll decorate it tonight.”

The next morning, Felicity was humming to herself as she came into the apartment, happy that she’d taken a few days off work to get ready for the holiday. She was carrying bags and bags of presents and almost dropped them all when she looked into the kitchen. Chris was sitting at the table, pale, his fingers drumming on the table.

“What are you doing home? Are you okay? Are you sick? What’s wrong?”

Chris’s words were slow and deliberate. “Gran lied to me, to us, to everybody. If it’s all –”

“Lied about what?”

“Who she was. Her family. Everything.” He looked up at Felicity. “He said she had a sister, Flick.”

Felicity put the bags on the counter and sat beside Chris. She took his hand in hers. “Tell me everything.”

“I called him at my break this morning. They have an 800 number and after I hung up, I just couldn’t stay. I couldn’t concentrate on the calls. I told Edwards I was feeling sick and I came home. What he said. Hans, the lawyer, he said…. He told me Gran’s parents were Jewish.”

“How is that possible? She was the most Catholic person I know. Jewish? In Germany back then?”

“Yeah. So in 1935 the Nazis passed these laws against the Jews and Gran’s parents saw that things would go bad for their kids –“

“Kids? Plural. Your Gran and this sister. Were there any others?”

“No. Just the two girls. So, they found families, people who would take them in, Christians, and who would say the girls were theirs. But the couple that they placed Gran with, they were in a car crash during a bombing raid and they were killed. So, Gran went into an orphanage and that’s where she grew up.”

“A Catholic orphanage.”

“Yeah. And they changed her name, too.”

“It wasn’t Mary?”

“No. It was a Jewish name with a hard ‘Ch’ – Chava, I think is how he said it, Chava Gross. With a long ‘a’. Her sister was Miriam and she tried to find Gran after the war, but when she couldn’t locate the couple who were raising her, she gave up.”

“Do you think your father knew any of this?”

“No, probably not. I wish I could ask him, but….”

Felicity squeezed Chris’s hand. Both of his parents had died young from different cancers.

“This lawyer, he said it’s not so uncommon. Some people who’d been in hiding through the war were afraid that it could happen again, so they kept their secret identity. And maybe Gran felt abandoned, by the Jewish God and by her family, and she decided to stay Catholic.”

“You’ve got a whole family in Europe, then,” Felicity mused.

“No. That’s just it. Gran’s parents were killed in one of the concentration camps. Jeez, I can’t imagine.” Chris, feeling tears welling up, took a deep breath before continuing. “Her sister was the only one who survived, and she never married.”

“If she’d given up finding your Gran, how did this lawyer get to you?”

“She got sick a year ago and decided to make a major attempt to find out what happened to her sister. Before she died. She hired investigators and they tracked Gran down.”

“Amazing. After all this time. I guess you’d really like to meet her.”

Chris sighed, shook his head. “She died before they had tracked Gran past the orphanage. But she had put in her will that until there was proof that Gran had died and had no heirs, her estate was to be held in trust.”

“You’re the sole heir then.” Felicity tried to sound casual. “Is it a big estate?”

“Millions. In Euros.”

A smile lit up Felicity’s face. “We’re rich then?” She wanted to get up and start dancing around the kitchen. But she wondered why Chris wasn’t as excited as her. It couldn’t be because a great-aunt he’d never known was dead. “Why aren’t you –?”

“There’s a catch.”

“What?”

“There are conditions in the will.”

“What, like you have to ‘be of good character’, or something. You fit that bill alright. Or, do you have to spend a night in a spooky mansion, like in all those horror movies?”

“No. It’s serious, Flick. It’s serious. I have to be Jewish.”

“You’re kidding.”

Chris didn’t answer.

“You’re not kidding. But you’re not. We’re Catholic. We go to Mass, well not every week, but not just at Christmas.”

“I know, Flick.”

“We’ve taken Communion, gone for Confession.” Felicity watched Chris nod in agreement. “That means you’re out of the will, then?”

“No. Not necessarily.” Chris took a breath. “If Dad had been female, then apparently I would automatically be Jewish. But since he wasn’t, I could fulfill the terms of the will by converting.”

“Oh my God! No more Christmas?”

“Or Easter.”

“And all those strange foods you have to eat. Those cracker things.”

“Um… matzoh, it’s called.”

“How do you even do it? Convert, I mean.”

“That was my second phone call. Hans had the name of a Rabbi here, just in case. These Germans are meticulous. The Rabbi, he tried to talk me out of it, told me that I didn’t sound committed to the concept and that it would be too hard. Then I told him about Gran’s history and he changed his tune. There’s a year long course I would have to take and –“

“Hebrew. Would you have to learn that, and what’s the other language?”

“Yiddish. And no, that’s not what I… There is more.” Chris took a deep breath. “Circumcision.”

“God, no! You wouldn’t.” Felicity looked at him out of one eye, as if she were taking aim. “Would you?”

“Some rabbis insist on it, but the one I talked to doesn’t. He would if I wanted to, but otherwise he said it would just be taking a drop of blood and saying some prayers.”

“A drop of blood from…?”

“My penis. Yeah.”

“Small mercies. So when does the course start?”

Chris bit his lower lip. Then, “There is another thing, Flick. And this is….” Another deep breath. “I told the lawyer I’m in a relationship and we don’t have any kids yet, but we’re thinking about it maybe, and he said we would have to raise them Jewish.” He noted the stunned amazement on Flick’s face and hurriedly continued, trying to lighten the mood. “But it’s easier with babies. They don’t have to take the course. You just have to dunk them in a ritual bath thing. And, if it’s a boy…”

“You have to snip him.” Felicity was shaking her head. “I don’t know, Chris. This is…. My parents. What would my parents think? No baptism for their grandkids. They would be horrified. They would be sure they’d be going straight to Hell.”

“It’s a lot, yeah. And it’s all hypothetical. I mean, I can say I’m not interested.”

“Not interested in millions and millions of dollars?”

“It’s only money. I mean, put that against no Christmas, no midnight mass. This would be our last tree. We don’t go to church all the time, but Jesus has always been part of my life. How can I just erase Him? And your parents, yeah. How could I continue to have a relationship with them?”

Felicity had only been listening with half an ear. She’d been thinking and then asked, “What will happen to the money if you turn it down?”

“I asked the same thing. Apparently, Miriam was pretty buttoned up. The money would go to some really conservative German political party.”

“To some right-wing populist yahoos? No, we can’t let that happen. You have to agree. You have to do it.”

“But what about…? It will really upend my life. What will happen to… us? If we’re on different pages?”

“We won’t be. You won’t take your conversion course alone.”

“What? You would? What about your parents?”

“They’ll get over it. It will be a good test of their Christian values. We’re in this together, Chris, except....”

“Except what?”

“I won’t have to get circumcised.”