Love in a Cabin Trunk

Chronicle (Levin), 6 January 1949, Page 5

Love in a Cabin Trunk

Received Wednesday, 7.55 p.m. EREMANTLE, Jan. 5. A former German paratrooper who, hidden in a trunk, was smuggled into his fiancee's cabin aboard the Yugoslav migrant ship Partizanka, is now being kept in the locked cabin untii the immigration authorities decide whether he shouid be permitted to land. This was disclosed when the Partizanka reached Premantle en route to Australian ports and New Zealand. The girl concerned is pretty Pxaulein Elsa Biaich, aged 21, . who is travelling to join her father in Melbourne. She says she met Hans Heinrich, aged 24, former paratrooper/ at her uncle's 'house in Cyprus where they fell in love. She and her mother, who is travelling with her, planned that he should sfcow -away by hiding in a trunk 36ins x 2iins x 18ins and being carried aboard ship. The trunk was fitted with inside locks and breathing hoies were bored in the lid. It was marked to travel in the hoid but she cried untii a stewara brought it "to her cahin. Five hours after the ship sailed the paratrooper emerged hut he lived mostly in the trunk untii a steward saw the lid lift three days later. Af terv the discovery she paid his fare and radioed her father asking him to guarantee Heinrichoas a migrant. Heinrich has no |apers hut says he fought in Russia, Greece, Italy and Prance. He claims he brihed a British merchant crew to take him from Bremen to Alexandria and that he travelled to Cyprus in a Royal Navy ship. The pair first met in April, 1948. , 1