TWELVE
Erich, Leipzig, 1940
Erich and Leipzig were never strangers. He had traveled there many times alone and with his family from their home in Dresden, to attend the great music festivals held in the city throughout the spring and summer months. How could he not like Leipzig? Art, his first love, called to him from every corner, and the musical notes of the old German masters filled the air wherever he walked. St. Thomaskirche’s magnificent baroque organ, played by Bach and Mendelssohn, was there, still to be listened to by those who continued to nurture their soul with an ethereal passion for life. He would be comfortable there, working in the pediatric clinic, waiting for the right moment to leave Germany. Perhaps through neutral Switzerland he could find safe passage to England where Julia had gone. Time seemed on his side now, he believed, and the dark nightmares of the two murdered Jews in Prague would grow distant and no longer haunt him.
Professor Werner Catel, a distinguished psychiatrist in his own right, reluctantly welcomed Erich to the Leipzig Pediatrics Clinic for no other reason than his father’s prestige and standing in Hitler’s Chancellery. Introductions to the medical staff, and anyone else who might be important, were always prefaced with “He is Herr Dr. Vicktor Schmidt’s son.” In time, his father’s name became a suit of impenetrable armor, protecting Erich’s pseudo-prestige wherever he went in the clinic. He had become politically important at the age of twenty-nine, and no one would try to cross him. But Erich cared little for those around him, and carefully avoided offering the slightest hint of friendship when working with them. Maintaining such a detached persona would keep him free of obligations and serve him well in the trying days to come. What he really wanted was experience, nothing more, before he tried to leave.
Three months into his work at the clinic, Erich received an urgent note from Dr. Catel requesting that he accompany him to the Görden Institution in Brandenburg in the afternoon. Nothing more was said, leaving Erich puzzled at the sudden development, yet thrilled over the opportunity to visit Görden. Everyone in medicine was aware of the extensive research being conducted in this important hospital, especially in exciting new treatment protocols for the mentally ill. Psychiatry was at its best there, Erich knew.
At two o’clock he was in Dr. Catel’s office, anxiously waiting to start their visit to Görden, a visit that never came. Instead, Dr. Catel had gone alone to Görden, leaving word for him to be in his office the first thing in the morning. When morning came, he went to Dr. Catel’s office, still quite angry at being left behind.
“It is official now, Herr Doctor. We are to have our own Special Psychiatric Youth Department here at the University of Leipzig,” Dr. Catel said, smiling broadly as Erich entered the office. “We are to play a leading role in developing the most advanced therapeutic possibilities for treating mentally ill children.”
Unimpressed, Erich asked curtly, “Why was I left behind? You should have a good reason.”
“Your tone is insolent, Dr. Schmidt, but I will overlook it because of your father. Now come with me, I want your opinion on a special case brought to the clinic early this morning.”
Dr. Catel strode from the office and down the main hall with Erich following and took the emergency exit steps to the second floor, where two other doctors were waiting for them. Both ignored Erich, who was not their favorite person. Turning to their right, the group walked down a short hall to a small, isolated ward in which there was only one patient, an infant boy named Knauer, born blind, with one leg and part of one arm missing. “Apparently an idiot” had been written in red on his bedside chart by the attending physician, who was not with them. What immediately seemed unusually strange to Erich and the others was that the infant had been admitted to the hospital by his father and not by a physician.
Looking at the pitifully disfigured child lying before him, Erich knew why the boy was here but refused to believe it.
“Dr. Schmidt,” Dr. Catel began, staring hard into his soul. “Would you agree there is no known way medically to heal the mind of an idiot?”
Erich nodded hesitantly.
“What then would be the most humane treatment we could offer this poor child to cure his miserable existence?”
Erich worked feverishly to clear his mind from what he was hearing. Dr. Catel had purposely trapped him. The bastard had cast out a line baited with compassion and he had grabbed it like a starving pond fish.
“It would seem to help him die peacefully, but that’s not a matter for doctors to decide. He is still a human being—a person, though a woeful one,” Erich said, finally finding his voice.
“Yes, perhaps. But he came here for treatment and we have none to offer that will change his horrible existence, other than relieving him of it.”
Puzzled by Dr. Catel’s words, Erich and the other doctors looked to each other for an answer.
“Are you suggesting we should euthanize this child?” Dr. Mauer, the senior doctor in the group, finally asked.
“I’ve said nothing of the kind, but it is on the table. The baby’s father has requested we do so.”
“It is plain and simple murder, and I’ll have no part of it,” Dr. Mauer said.
“It is not murder, if it is an accepted medical procedure authorized by the Health Ministry. Would you not agree?” Dr. Catel asked, turning back to Erich.
For a quick second, Erich thought back to his voyage to America with his father, and to Cold Springs Harbor’s genetics center, where the earliest thoughts of eugenics began, even killing the unfit. His father believed medicine would someday come to this, to a carefully planned way of cleansing the gene pool of all the miserable souls. For Erich, though, nothing had changed.
“But it isn’t,” he responded emphatically. “And if it were, it would be the worst kind of wrong, one clearly beyond anyone’s imagination.”
“Your father would not agree.”
“I know, but he has his own soul to contend with, not mine.”
An uneasy silence followed Erich’s words, their meaning clear to everyone in the group, including Dr. Catel. No one said anything, or wanted to, because the idea of euthanasia as a necessary medical procedure to protect the health of the citizenry was too theoretical and too controversial, even to Erich. No Christian doctor in his right mind, he believed, would ever consider taking this final step to reality, even though many would agree with the ultimate end being sought. Would we not safeguard the health of the country by eliminating the diseased few? had been the argument thrown at medicine by the Chancellery. And it was even more compelling, Erich knew, in a national crisis such as war, and Germany was at war. After several more moments of an awkward silence, Dr. Catel searched the faces of the other doctors, hoping for some sort of response, but none came. Meeting the request of the father to mercifully kill his child would be impossible now without involving the Chancellery in Berlin.
“We will talk more about this matter tomorrow,” Dr. Catel said, turning and abruptly leaving Erich and his colleagues in the child’s room.
Seconds later the two doctors left, leaving Erich alone by the child’s bedside. In the years of his medical training, he had never examined, nor worked with, nor tried to treat such a child. Leaning over the bedside, he suddenly clapped his hands loudly, causing the child to stir, trying desperately to see through eyes that saw only darkness. Taking the tiny fingers on the child’s only hand, Erich gently squeezed them but felt no response. Only a crippled animal lay before him that would never be more than it was now.
“Tell me, young Knauer, what is it like to be a blind idiot?” Erich said out loud to the child. “Can you even hear me? Smile or do something, or they will kill you.”
There was no answer, nor would there ever be. To imagine existing within such a life was beyond the limits of human thought. Yet there it was, sprawled our hideously before him, a person only by definition systemically. Before turning to leave, Erich looked at the child once more and sighed. Nothing in his life, not even the church, had prepared hi
m for the present moment.
Walking to the elevator, his mind slipped back to a faraway day in a treasured philosophy class in Prague, to an ongoing debate over one’s existence, always with Julia in attendance. Painting an example of an unwanted life similar to the pitiful Knauer child, the professor posed a question to the class, “Would it not have been better for the child to have died at birth, never taken its first breath of life?”
Julia was the first to raise her hand. “John Stuart Mill would argue no,” she proudly proclaimed. “It would be better to have lived even for one second, taken one breath, than never at all. Life is that precious.”
“Why?” the professor responded. “Where is any value in such a life? Where would it come from? Certainly not from such an existence we are talking about.”
Julia had no answer and sat embarrassed, not looking at Erich.
“You give up too easily, Miss Kaufmann,” the professor said. “Think for a moment. Could you not argue that life itself has an intrinsic value, a worth in itself simply because it is life?”
Again, no one would take the bait, except Julia.
“Then no life would be without value. All would be equal,” she replied proudly.
“Yes, but that idea would be very difficult to accept, I daresay, by many. Would it not be then that the dregs in our society, the outcasts, would be of relative worth to those of us sitting here today in this classroom?” the professor said, smiling at Julia, as the rest of the class laughed, even Erich at first.
Refusing to concede her argument to the professor and the class, Julia waited a second before answering, to be sure her voice would speak her convictions clearly.
“No, that is not so, Professor Wise.”
There was no laughter this time, only surprised gasps at the boldness of Julia’s reply, challenging a professor so blatantly.
“Where is your reason, Miss Kaufmann, since you have questioned my conclusion?”
Julia did not look at Erich this time for support, nor hesitate to respond.
“You are mixing apples and oranges, Professor Wise, intrinsic worth with systemic—that which we are born with at our first breath with that which society decides we are worth.”
“And?”
“It is the systemic worth that gives way to evil at times. We care not for the intrinsic worth, only what we believe someone is worth.”
Nothing more was said in the hush that followed Julia’s remarks. But the joy in Professor Wise’s face over her ramblings could not be mistaken. Erich would later learn that Professor Wise was one of the first Jewish professors to disappear from the university and Prague, never to be heard from again.
Though he disagreed with Julia’s arguments, he had sat quietly, not wishing to challenge her. A life’s true worth is in its potential, he would have argued, not in merely existing. And when that potential is missing, life has no value. This would allow matters of greater worth to take priority by society. Do we not say this when we hang a murderer who has wasted his potential, he would have insisted. But he worshipped Julia and would do nothing to possibly embarrass her in front of a class of angry young German students. Later, they would discuss each other’s position with her father, whom he deeply respected.
After leaving the child’s room, Erich quickly left the hospital and wandered aimlessly among the artisan shops in Leipzig, many still open. His favorite shop, a menagerie of old maps and great literary books of knowledge, was closed, however. The front windows had been smashed in one rainy night by rampaging members of the Nationalist Socialist Party, most of whom were university students, leaving the priceless tomes to be trampled in the mud and water along the streets, where they lay for weeks, rotting. Only a few ragged glass pieces of the Star of David, marking the store as Jewish owned, remained on the front door as a reminder of the violence. Little was left of the owner’s devotion to knowledge.
Erich walked into an open beer garden and sat down at one of the many empty tables. Most of the young men who gathered here every day before going home were missing, now soldiers for the Third Reich, the joy of their melodious voices silent like the city. Everything was changing with the war. One could sit here for a day, watching in unmoving time, and yet, nothing would be the same tomorrow, Erich felt. If he was going to try to leave Germany, he must do so soon.
“Herr Dr. Schmidt, may I talk with you a moment please?” said a small man, dressed much like a peasant of the fields. Though he didn’t know him, Erich easily imagined who the man might be.
“I am Rudolph Knauer, father of the child you saw today with Dr. Catel in the hospital.”
“Did Dr. Catel send you to speak with me?” Erich asked, irritated with the unwanted intrusion.
“Please, no. I was sitting in an empty room next to my child’s, and could hear you and the other doctors talking.”
“Then you must know that I strongly disagree with Dr. Catel’s recommendation that we kill your son. That is what we would be doing, killing him.”
“I know. But let me tell you, please. I am the one who petitioned the Chancellery for the mercy killing of my son. The decision to do so did not come easy to me, yet, you have seen how pitiful my son is.”
Rudolph Knauer’s mention of the Chancellery in Berlin surprised Erich and bothered him. Whatever the final decision was regarding euthanizing the young child would come from Hitler’s personal office. Since Dr. Catel had involved him, along with the other doctors, his name would now be on the lips of those handling the case in the Chancellery. A dubious honor at best, and certainly a frightful place to find one’s name, whichever way the decision might go. More importantly though, Erich knew that every word he uttered now to Mr. Knauer, or to anyone else about the case, would easily find its way back to Berlin.
Suddenly drenched in paranoia showered on him by this man who had appeared from nowhere to talk about killing his son, Erich listened carefully to the man’s story. It was Dr. Catel and Dr. Brandt who sought the petition from Mr. Knauer to have his son euthanized because of his horrible disabilities, and then carried it to the Chancellery. Hitler, they happily promised to a weary father, would look with great favor on such a request. Mr. Knauer’s story ended then on a second promise that Dr. Brandt would come to Leipzig soon to examine the child.
Erich decided to end the conversation. He knew little of Dr. Brandt, other than that he came from a distinguished medical family in Alsace and was a young, gifted surgeon. Being Hitler’s personal physician was enough to know the importance of the man and what he would bring to the Knauer case.
“He is not a man to be taken lightly,” were the only words his father had used to portray Dr. Brandt after Erich called to talk with him later in the evening. But it was what his father voluntarily revealed to him that kept Erich awake during a long night of fitful nightmares, screaming to a world that had no ears to hear. The old Jewish man and woman had come back to haunt him once again. Both looking together at him through the old woman’s dislodged eyeball, they smiled and cried, then smiled again. As a member of the Reich Committee for Hereditary Health Matters, which he had never heard of, it was his father who had passed onto the Chancellery Mr. Knauer’s petition to have his child killed. Now, with Hitler’s orders in hand, Dr. Brandt was coming to Leipzig to see that it was done.
Erich stood at the doorway of the child’s room, not wishing to enter. The gentle air currents moving through the long hallway would be better there and help keep him awake. Standing near the window was Karl Brandt. Tall and impressive and young, he seemed to fill up the whole room. Erich could not help but be impressed by the man’s aura of elegance. If one were to need a goodwill ambassador for killing innocent babies, Dr. Brandt would be his candidate. Though he was talking directly to Mr. Knauer, who was standing next to his child’s bed, to Erich it seemed the words were meant for every doctor in the Third Reich.
After explaining to the crying father that the Führer had personally sent him because he was very interested in the welfare of hi
s son, Brandt stopped for a second, gently stroking the child’s hair before continuing.
“Your child has no future. His life is worthless.”
Then, as if granting a wish from the good princess in a Grimm fairy tale, Brandt said with great pride, “You and your family will not have to suffer from this terrible misfortune any longer because the Führer has granted you the mercy killing of your son.”
Nothing more needed to be said, and Mr. Knauer continued to thank Dr. Brandt between loud sobs of crying until escorted from the room by a nurse. But the ears in Erich’s mind would hear the distraught father’s pitiful sobbing long after he had left the hospital. When evening came, he went back to the room to watch Dr. Catel administer an overdose of morphine to the child, killing him in seconds. For a moment, Erich wondered how it feels to kill someone, especially a helpless child. But it was the dying and being dead that he thought most about. There’s no prettifying death, leaving all that you know and stepping into a strange new dimension that you had never seen before where all you knew and were is no more. To Erich, unless the soul has eyes to see and ears to hear and a mouth to speak, it seemed dying and being dead would be the most frightening thing in the world.
Later still, he sat alone in the same beer garden where he had talked earlier with Mr. Knauer. Sitting several tables away from him were the two doctors who also witnessed the child’s death, as he did. They sat silent, swirling their warm beer, acknowledging no one, not even each other. What had happened was so sudden and unexpected, especially in a children’s hospital. Like Erich, they knew an ancient prohibitive line of medicine had been crossed. A cure for sickness of the mind and body had been discovered: the eradication of life unworthy of life. Soon, both doctors left the table, going separate ways without speaking to each other, or to Erich.
Alone with his thoughts now, Erich wished only that his father was with him now to explain his role in the grim killing of the child. After all, it was he, with Brandt, who had carried the petition requesting to do so, to Hitler. It would be difficult for any son to see his father as a failure, Erich believed, but that was how he now looked upon his father. The true prestige his father had so earnestly sought at first in the world of science, to have his name etched alongside that of Koch and other great German doctors, had eluded him. All that his father would ever achieve would be that which the Chancellery might give him in exchange for his intellect. How could his father ever have agreed to such a poor exchange, Erich wondered, when he had preached to him so many times that the integrity of the mind was the only thing sacred in the world. It must be defended above all else, he would insist, or man’s idea of God would die, and then nothing else would matter. Erich believed his father then, and still did, but could do so only by pretending.
***