New York is the destination of Xavier March and Charlie’s planned escape and the intended site of their first public appeal. Their route there gives the city a decisive role in the novel’s struggle over whether documentary evidence can cross borders and challenge a state-controlled account of history.

Destination and publication plan

As they discuss their future, Charlie tells March that their flight will land at New York’s Idlewild Airport early the following evening. They plan to go directly to the New York Times building, where she knows an editor, and make multiple copies of their material so it can be printed as soon as possible. New York is therefore not merely a place of refuge: it is where their private evidence is meant to become public testimony.

March doubts that an American newspaper will publish the material, and then questions whether anyone will believe it. Charlie insists that the facts can change history; if the Times refuses, she says she will distribute copies herself on Fifth Avenue. Her contingency plan makes the city’s streets as important as its newspaper offices: publication might begin through an established institution, but she is prepared to carry the documents directly to passersby.

Evidence crossing borders

The plan to reach New York sits within a wider history of obstacles to moving information and money out of Germany. In 1934, Gestapo agent Georg Hannes Thomae went to Switzerland on Reinhard Heydrich’s orders to identify German account holders. He posed as an intermediary, using bank deposits to expose accounts; once identified, their holders were arrested and pressured to disclose details. The German authorities then sought the return of assets through formal cables.

The Gestapo also intercepted communications between Germany and Switzerland. In response, the Swiss National Assembly passed a banking code that made disclosure of client holdings punishable by imprisonment, and Thomae was exposed and expelled. Swiss banks nevertheless came to regard German accounts as too dangerous, and by 1939 the numbered-account business had collapsed. Against this background, the couple’s intended journey to New York is a bid to carry evidence into a different public sphere, rather than rely on channels that surveillance and political pressure can close.

A contested refuge

New York represents possibility, but the evidence does not establish what happens after the planned arrival. The city’s significance lies in the intention attached to it: March and Charlie mean to bring their documents to a newspaper, reproduce them, and expose a history that the German authorities can suppress at home. Their plan makes the passage from private possession to public circulation the crucial step, while leaving its success unresolved in these scenes.