on the morning after the Spanish police threatened to turn the small group of émigrés he was with back to occupied France. After Benjamin's death, the rest of his group was subsequently allowed to proceed. According to Fittko, Benjamin carried with him a heavy briefcase which he claimed to be more important than his life. This story was not confirmed by other accounts, causing some controversy. Authorities such as Chimen Abramsky, who was among the first to hear the story and from Fittko herself, give Fittko's account credibility. A briefcase was mentioned in the Spanish police records, but its contents mention only "newspapers and various other papers of unimportant content". Speculations as to its contents have been the subject of scholarly articles and artistic works inspired by Benjamin's story and Lisa Fittko's account of it in her books. With her husband Hans, she escaped to Cuba, and from there entered the United States. She came to international recognition over forty years later through her two widely translated memoirs, in which she describes her actions. She died in Chicago at the age of 95 on March 12, 2005. Selected works Lisa Fittko, Escape through the Pyrenees, Northwestern University Press, . Lisa Fittko, Solidarity and Treason: Resistance and Exile, 1933-1940, translated by Roselyn Theobald in collaboration with the author Evanston, Illinois, Northwestern University Press, 1993 References Further reading Siglinde Bolbecher; Konstantin Kaiser (Hg.): Lisa Fittko. In: Lexikon der österreichischen Exilliteratur. Deuticke Verlagsgesellschaft, Wien & München 2000, , External links Biographical essay by Catherine Stodolsky "In Memoriam: Lisa Fittko, Holocaust Rescue Activist", by Rafael Medoff Page dedicated to Lisa Fittko at the Varian Fry Institute On Lisa's passage with Walter Benjamin Lisa Fittko on the Women Living with War website Interview with Lisa Fittko on YouTube (8 hours total) created by the USC Shoah Foundation Concerning the Controversy about Walter Benjamin's briefcase" Chimen Abramsky in the London Review of Books 1909 births 2005 deaths People from Uzhhorod Ukrainian Jews Hungarian emigrants to the United States American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Female resistance members of World War II Jews in the French resistance Jewish women