SIX
Prague, 1939
Erich sat quietly by himself in the lecture hall, the events of the previous evening still clouding his mind. Within minutes after the Munich Dictate was signed, ripping the Sudetenland for good from the Czechoslovakian borders, hundreds from the National Socialist Party, including many German Sudeten students, had taken to the streets across the so-called “liberated” lands wildly smashing and destroying everything Jewish in their path. Nothing was left untouched. To Erich, it was as if the ancient gods of old had risen from their stone graves and, rubbing the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, set forth again to destroy all that was good and decent. Where does this German thunder come from? he had repeatedly questioned himself throughout the night. Even the holiest of the Germans, Martin Luther, had slaughtered thousands of Jews and non-Jews. Perhaps the odor of intolerance is wedded with violence and has its own special gene, Erich finally concluded, because reason has no room for its smell. To see it this way, intolerance must be a wide pathway for evolution, clearing the way for dumping the unfit that stand in its way. But such crazy thinking was his father’s along with a growing army of other German doctors and scientists, not his. So why would he even consider such a ridiculous connection?
Erich was shaken from his thoughts by the entrance of Rector Mann onto the stage followed by a high Nazi medical officer in full uniform, who had been kept hidden from the students until now.
“Students and future doctors of the Third Reich, be seated,” Mann ordered in a military tone. “Those of you who will not become German doctors are excused, unless you too wish to hear the good news being offered today by Dr. Weber from the Health Ministry.”
Extending his hand, Mann brought Weber to the large lectern positioned boldly in the front-center of the large hall, emblazoned with the ancient university crest. Erich watched the short, squash-like medical officer move to the podium, wearing tiny rimless spectacles that only emphasized his rotund bald head. Though he was from the Health Ministry, he wore the officer’s green ensemble of the German army, complete with a side arm and Nazi insignia. Observing the man, Erich wondered if his own father too had relinquished the sacred white coat for the Nazi uniform when he succumbed to the call of the Nazi temptress, so cleverly disguised behind the mask of eugenics. Years had passed since he walked away from Berlin and his father in disgust at the growing voices calling for the cleansing of the Aryan race. His father’s voice had been one of the loudest and most influential in the medical profession in supporting the virtues of sterilization. What Erich did not know now was the full extent of his father’s involvement in the Nazis’ medical ethos, the Nazification of the medical profession. Nazi policies with regard to sterilizing or killing people considered unfit for a society of the strong had been subtly combined with a vigorous enthusiasm for extending various forms of medical care to the entire German population. In this way, his father and the other doctors could continue to view themselves as authentic physicians, regardless of whatever evil smell the Nazis showered on their profession. Later, Erich would come to realize that a society of the strong did not include the “pitiful” Jew.
“Good morning, future healers and saviors of the glorious Third Reich,” were the most understandable words Erich heard from Dr. Weber’s high, shrill voice, as he began what would become to some, including Erich, a very troublesome speech to follow. For thirty minutes he talked of Germany’s awaited day in the sun, praising its righteous might that all nations near and far trembled from. Then in an awkward gesture, he flung his short arms open wide, which caused him to look even more ridiculous to Erich, and made the pronouncement that the students must be the new medical and biological warriors for the state. Erich heard little else, his mind fixed on the words “biological warriors,” until Dr. Weber spoke of a new shortened curriculum for the medical school, one that would focus on military medicine and population politics and racial biology, not that which would ordinarily be expected of a well-trained German doctor. His mind raced ahead to what this man was speaking in truth about, that the students were to become involved in a holy synthesis of marching boots and books. They were to engage in paramilitary training as students with a commitment of their bodies and minds to an all-out war against alleged enemies of Germany.
Then they came, as Erich knew they would—the only words that would give any rational meaning to what Dr. Weber was saying. They had always been there, unhidden for many years. But no one heard them as doctors except the likes of his father, who saw only what the greatness of science could do when combined with an ideology calling for racial purity.
Pausing before he spoke, Dr. Weber looked slowly around the room, staring at times at different students until they became uncomfortable with the coldness in his eyes.
“The Jews are our misfortune, a grave misfortune to a greater health for Germany. But let me say, that problem will be dealt with in time, medically, I promise you.”
The silence invoked by these words was deadening, as if no one had heard them. Or perhaps they weren’t even uttered, in of all places, a medical school. For Erich and some other students, it was like preaching a sermon to a full congregation on why believing in the Trinity was such a terrible mistake and needed to be dealt with. Erich, though, looked down at his textbooks, away from the source of the vitriolic rhetoric steaming up the lecture hall. His father’s day had come, and in time he knew he would have to go home to face him.
Dismayed from the continuing blackened words spewing forth from the doctor, Erich started to walk out in protest, but thought better about doing so. Such a defiant act alone would be silly and laughed at and would accomplish nothing. Besides, something the man had said earlier before the ranting against the Jews began had stirred his interest. All medical studies would be shortened, which would allow hundreds of students to join Hitler’s great crusade immediately.
Erich wasn’t about to join Hitler’s legions, but a pretension of doing so, he realized, would turn him loose much earlier from the clutches of the university. He could graduate in the coming spring, a matter of months, two years ahead of time. How qualified as a doctor he and the other students would be, absent the extra years of clinical work, was not his problem. He would be a psychiatrist, anyway, far removed from all the blood and guts pouring and leaking out of wounded soldiers, treating only their broken minds, might they have one. It seemed the ancient Nordic gods were smiling on him again, and would soon do so for Julia and her family, something the Hebrew God seemed reluctant to do at the moment, he thought. Surely now, a medical degree, albeit a woefully shabby one, would carry Julia and him far away on the happy wings of sanity to a safe new homeland.
When Dr. Weber finished, Erich stood up, applauding wildly in pretended joy with the other students at what he had said. Spotting Franz Kremer, the tall, blond Sudeten student whom he detested, Erich waved to him with a forced smile, then walked over to where he was standing.
“A wonderful message, don’t you think, Franz?”
Franz studied Erich’s sudden change of character, for their dislike of each other went far beyond mere opinions, striking at the heart of anti-Semitism. He hated Jews with a passion, while Erich slept with them. It was that simple. The persona Erich projected now was strange, and probably a sham, Franz quickly concluded, yet the door was always open to converts. Whether from fear or a belief in the cause didn’t matter, so long as they became Nazis. In fact, to Franz, a conversion out of fear was far more reliable than belief. Fear makes demands on the most basic of our instincts—surviving; nothing else matters. One’s soul can easily be bargained for then, because one has become nothing more than a terrified blob of human cells, each fighting for survival regardless of the cost.
“Yes, a great message of hope for us,” Franz said finally, responding to Erich. “I am surprised, though, by your remarks. They seem strange coming from you. The little Jewish whore is no longer important to you?”
“Julia? No, she is history, a mistaken experience. Forget
her. I have been studying the words of Professor Franz Hamburger of Vienna, a true medical believer in a real renaissance of medical science on Nazi foundations. You have heard of him, I suppose?” Erich said, inwardly delighted in the sophistication of his lies to Franz.
“Yes.” Franz replied, though he hadn’t. “Do you agree with him?”
“In every way. He is a very influential thinker.”
Erich was unsure whether he could carry the façade any longer without laughing in Franz’s face and turned to leave. Pausing at the door, he looked back at Franz and the Nazi armband he was wearing.
“Tell me, where can I get such an armband?”
“You must join the party first, like your father, Dr. Schmidt. He would be proud,” Franz said, half smirking.
Stunned by the mention of his father, Erich struggled to keep his composure. To hear his father’s name tossed so casually into their conversation by Franz brought threatening new questions to Erich, not the least of which was how important was Franz to Berlin now.
“My father? Do you know him?”
“Not personally, but the Gestapo does. He is a highly respected doctor whom the party will look on with great favor when the Jewish question boils over.”
“What does the Gestapo have to do with my father?” Erich asked meekly, regretting terribly his rash decision to talk and josh with Franz.
“Not so much your father, but you.”
Franz’s words came at Erich with the fury of a winter storm. Laced with an icy demonic fear he had never felt before, they coursed through his body like a winter river, numbing his mind momentarily and blocking out the face of reason. Ice climbing with his student friends in the Austrian Alps always produced an exhilarating thrill laced with fear, too, but it was of a kind without which such a dangerous undertaking would be meaningless; yet the hidden meaning there was that you might die. Later, looking back on this brief episode with Franz, he concluded that the power of this emotion when turned loose and allowed to roam unbridled was far greater than anything the human mind could handle. Rather, it was totally alive and animalistic, like a herd of cattle stampeding wildly and uncontrollably, frightened by the jagged bolts of lightning and booming thunder of a storm. Without an understanding, the mind becomes blank, empty of reason, and we know nothing of what we might do to stay alive. There are no boundaries, except for the strongest.
Franz noticed Erich’s sudden pale, stupor-like appearance and took hold of his arm.
“Are you ill, or did I frighten you?”
“A little of both perhaps. I suppose the idea of the Gestapo here secretly in Prague would frighten anyone. But tell me, if you know, why their interest in me? Is it because of my father?”
“You are not my friend yet, Erich, nor my enemy. However, we need not choose now which it will be; that time will come soon enough. I will tell you this, though: your relationship with Dr. Kaufmann and his family has not gone unnoticed.”
“They are nothing more than friends.”
“They are dirty Jews. Nothing more needs to be said.”
Erich stared at Franz, trying to fathom the disease of hate festering in this man’s body, oozing out now from every pore like sickened yellow puss. Where does such hate come from? Erich could only shake his head at the wonder of Franz’s ignorance, and even that of his own. He knew very little about him except that his father was a very wealthy manufacturer in the Sudeten and was a main financial source for the National Socialist Party there. From the first day Franz entered the university, he would boast constantly about his father’s direct line to the Chancellery in Berlin, and the important party members who would gather around his father at state dinners as if he were Hitler himself. Through such boasting, he immediately became an important leader of the Sudeten students, very dangerous, and never afraid to challenge the university over who should control the minds of the students. Quickly reinstated from his suspension by the university after the Sudetenland became Germany’s, Franz ruled the student body, and he knew it. At the moment, though, he was tiring of the game being played out with Erich, and looked at him with mounting anger in his eyes.
“I will tell you this also. Hitler will come to Prague soon and the Jews will be arrested. The important ones first, like your Dr. Kaufmann and his friends, and then the rest.”
“Franz, we are to become doctors, you and I, not soldiers. Politics and the Jews are not our concern,” Erich said foolishly, trying to insert reason into the terrible discussion and help dispel his own fears.
“Ha! You fool. Didn’t Dr. Weber’s words just yell out to us to arise as doctors in defense of the Third Reich? There is much to be done with glory for everyone.”
Erich noticed for the first time the large gathering of students beginning to crowd around him and Franz, eagerly anticipating some sort of physical confrontation. They were there for Franz should he need them. Erich knew what they wanted, but said nothing more, and began pushing his way through the circling crowd. Then he stopped and looked back across the open circle at Franz.
“You are right, Franz,” Erich said, smiling. “Glory does await us. What kind I can only guess, but I do know we will be doctors, and that should make us different from all the rest.” Then he saluted mockingly and walked from the lecture hall. He would go to Julia and her family to find the warmth he so desperately needed now, but he would wait until evening when the shadows were longer and he would less likely be seen.
Standing alone, hidden in the spreading fingers of darkness cast by the Old Town Hall, Erich waited patiently for the astronomical clock to strike eight before starting across the Old Town square to Julia’s home. Paranoia is the first triumph of fear, and it was beginning to smother him. All else comes easy, he kept telling himself, once reason sinks in the rising waters of paranoia. And it is then, when reason drowns and dies, that monsters appear and everything becomes false, including who you are.
At the first strike of eight from the massive clock, Erich walked rapidly around the corner of the Old Town square, stopping briefly in front of St. Nicholas Church to listen for any light taps of following footsteps before disappearing into the winding streets of the old Jewish quarters. Julia’s street seemed darker than usual to him this night; few lights shown in the houses and apartment buildings along the street as he made his way to her place. Turning into her walkway, Erich saw two menacing shadows moving slowly towards him from the right and braced himself for what he believed was about to happen. The shadows moved closer but abruptly stopped when a ray of light from Dr. Kaufmann’s study suddenly split the night with its brightness. No longer able to conceal their identities, the bolder of the two stepped forward to confront Erich.
“We have been waiting on you.”
Recognizing both men as classmates, Erich heaved a sigh of relief.
“Karl, Rudy, what are you two doing here? I nearly pissed in my pants from fright.”
“Good,” Karl said. “You should be afraid. Perhaps you will come to your senses now and leave Julia to her Jewish friends. Next time someone who is not your friend could be standing here.”
Erich looked closely at the faces of his two friends and saw only despair, no longer the carefree happiness they had shared through their early years of schooling back in Germany. Every winter break, the Austrian Alps awaited their frolicking in the deep snow and their fearless skiing on the steep slopes, each racing the other two regardless of the danger. Summer found them eager and daring to try to scale the highest of the rocky trails. But when they came to Prague together, they tolerated Julia’s gradual intrusion into the threesome only because of their close friendship with Erich. A greater loyalty, though, had fractured their tight circle now: duty to the state. And like the changing shapes of drifting clouds, all else would disappear, never to be the same again. What one might feel and believe today would be gone when tomorrow came.
Rudy, the youngest of the three, spoke next. “We have joined the National Socialist Party, Erich, and you must join, too. It
is right that you do.”
“Nothing is right anymore, Rudy. Everything is strange, even friendships.”
“We are still your friends. Why else would we be here? We came to warn you,” Rudy said, with some hidden pride in his voice.
“And Julia?”
“She has never been our friend, only yours,” Karl spouted loudly.
How distant these dear friends had become in a matter of minutes, Erich mused. He no longer really mattered to them, nor they to him. One’s future carries little meaning when undressed by fear, only that which you are afraid of, and what tomorrow might bring. But Erich knew they were as afraid as he was in a world that no longer made any sense.
“You should leave before the wrong parties find you here,” he said, placing his hands on his friends’ shoulders as if it were a final goodbye to another time. Then he turned away from them, hurt and angry at their callous dismissal of Julia’s friendship from their life. As he had, they too had broken bread in her home.
As he stepped onto the front porch, Julia opened the door quickly before he could knock.
“I watched you from father’s study talking with Karl and Rudy. Are there problems?”
“Where is your father?” Erich asked, ignoring Julia’s question.
“Waiting for you in the kitchen. We can have coffee and some dessert there.”
“The kitchen. I have arrived at last,” Erich said, laughing nervously.
“No. It is warmer there. The night seems strangely colder for some reason,” Julia said, turning away from him.
Entering the small kitchen where Dr. Kaufmann and Hiram were, Erich glanced hurriedly around the sparsely but brightly decorated room. How strangely different it was from his own in Dresden. There, uniformity in design and purpose set the décor. While unspeakably clean, nothing was alive. No warmth or love leaped from the walls to grab you as it did here. Four seemly ancient wooden chairs of questionable reliability and a table leveled by a carefully measured stack of wooden chips under two legs occupied the center of the room. On one wall were two odd paintings of bearded old men, whom Erich believed must be religious because they meant nothing to him. Everywhere, in the windows and along the countertops, brightly colored flowers sat in an odd array of containers, bringing their own special joy to the soul’s eye. But it was the pleasant mixture of lingering aromas that stirred the senses of all who entered.
Seated, Dr. Kaufmann rose when Erich entered the room.
“Please come sit down,” he said, extending his hand to Erich. “Mrs. Kaufmann has brewed a pot of fresh coffee and baked my favorite apple strudel for a late dessert.”
Erich sensed a hidden embarrassment in Dr. Kaufmann’s politeness and looked to Julia for some kind of explanation, but she continued to avoid his eyes. Hiram, though sitting directly across the table from him, would not look at him either. It was as if he had intruded on some holy day, though they had not meant it to be so. When Mrs. Kaufmann set the apple strudel dish in front of Dr. Kaufmann, the faintest of tears could be seen glistening in the corners of her eyes before she turned and left the room. Dr. Kaufmann started to slice the warm dessert but stopped and laid the cutting knife back down on the table. He was clearly sick at heart with what he knew he must say to Erich, but before he could begin, Mrs. Kaufmann returned to the kitchen leading by hand a young woman, trailed by two small children. Their clothes were soiled with filth from days and nights of hiding from police and rampaging mobs roaming the streets in every Sudeten town searching for Jews and gentile anti-Nazis.
Erich needed no introduction to the frightened woman, nor did he especially want one. Her kind had not gone unnoticed. A steady stream of weary and frightened refugees were pouring into Prague, first from Germany and Austria, but now from the Sudetenland, their horror stories numbing the civilized minds of those who would listen. It didn’t take a bold imagination to grasp what life would be like for Jews when Hitler came to Prague. History’s mistakes are forever repeated because the world will always sit smugly apart in its false innocence asking the same question: how did all of this come to be? Erich looked at the scared and crippled humanity huddled in the corner of the kitchen and knew then there was no more time left. After the woman told her story of watching her mother and father and other Jews chased naked through the streets in Karlovy Vary before being murdered, no one could bargain another tomorrow from God. One could only wonder years later where He had gone.
“Erich,” Dr. Kaufmann began again, his voice more unsure than before, “we will break bread together this last time, then you must go.”
Stunned by Dr. Kaufmann’s abrupt words of dismissal from their life, Erich searched Julia’s face for an answer, but she quickly turned her back to him, sobbing softly.
“You do understand the danger we face each time you visit Julia. The Czech authorities were here today, your German friends tonight.”
“The authorities here in Prague?”
“Yes, inquiring about our religion and race, even what language was spoken at home. They wanted to see my library and the books and journals I read.”
“They know you are Jews?”
“Of course. That was their only reason to be here. It is happening to all the Jews in Prague,” Dr. Kaufmann responded, surprised at Erich’s naïveté.
Before continuing, Dr. Kaufmann took a long, deliberate sip of coffee, set the cup down and looked longingly at Mrs. Kaufmann, pulling from her the needed strength and understanding she kept stored for him. At the same time, Julia moved around the table and stood close to Erich, their arms touching at first, then took his hand, gently pressing it to her side as her father continued.
“I am afraid when Hitler takes Prague, the end will begin for many of us—Jews and anti-Nazi Czechs, maybe gypsies. They will have the names, just like they did in the Sudeten.”
“I will not come here anymore. Perhaps they will leave you alone then,” Erich said without hesitation.
“As a man, your innocence continues to amaze me, Erich. No, we could be wrapped in the arms of your Jesus for protection, and they would still come because of who we are,” Dr. Kaufmann said, smiling faintly at Erich before continuing. “Now you must leave, please, there is much for my family to discuss.”
Erich could hardly breathe. It was as if a giant bell jar had suddenly dropped over him from the ceiling, trapping him in its vacuum and sucking the last bit of air from his lungs. If Dr. Kaufmann’s words were true, Julia’s fate would be no different than that which awaited her family.
Ignoring Dr. Kaufmann’s request that he leave, Erich inhaled deeply twice before insisting that all the Kaufmann family must leave Prague immediately, and that he would go with them. Hearing Erich’s boldness, Julia released his hand and began to sob softly again as she waited for her father’s words, which she knew would crush Erich, as they already had her.
“You wear your honor well, Erich, thank you. But arrangements are in place for Julia and Hiram to leave by train to Rotterdam and England as soon as their visas are issued. Mrs. Kaufmann and I will follow when we can.”
Erich became silent, thoroughly whipped and unable to speak, his throat dry and hot. Julia would not look at him. Covering her face with a hand towel, she began to cry uncontrollably. Instinctively, he moved to Julia, taking her in his arms. In a few seconds, though, her spine stiffened and she backed away from him, no longer crying.
“Erich can come with us, Papa,” Julia sang out, like she always did as a little girl when the sun finally broke through on a cold gray day in winter, filling everyone and everything with its healing warmth.
Dr. Kaufmann’s heart ached unmercifully as he looked at Julia and heard her happy words. He had talked with her one day, not too long ago, about such a moment as this and what they could expect. Nothing is ever promised by God, he had told her, not even love. We receive what we deserve by our own goodness maybe a few seconds in our life, but it ends there, nothing more. All the rest comes to us by grace, if it comes at all. Julia’s h
appiness was Erich’s and would change in time, he knew, because happiness is made up of a million tiny moments, each one different, each one waiting to be lived. They are there waiting in the darkness where there is no light, but we must always believe so, or there would be no hope.
“I am afraid not, Julia. Your and Hiram’s visas will be conditional on traveling with hundreds of young children as chaperones. You must attend to those in your assigned car.”
“But Papa—”
“Our conversation is over, and so is Erich’s visit,” Dr. Kaufmann said, interrupting Julia. “You understand, Erich, what may be at stake here—my daughter’s and son’s lives,” he continued, turning to face Erich. “Perhaps you can find some way to follow, but not with a trainload of Jewish children.”
Erich remained silent, staring at the floor, mired in a despair he had never experienced nor understood. Many months later, while reading Kierkegaard’s A Sickness Unto Death, he began to understand the magnitude of his depression and the sickness that had seized his mind after Julia left for England.
“I must be going, I suppose,” were the only words Erich could muster, looking across the room to where Julia stood crying next to her mother. Then he went to her and whispered so no one could hear, “I will wait for you tonight in our sacred place. It will be the last time, and then I will stay away.”
Julia said nothing, nor looked at him as he walked to the front door with her father. There Dr. Kaufmann unashamedly embraced Erich for several seconds before watching him step into the night, gradually fading from sight and their life. As he went, the last words Erich would ever hear from Dr. Kaufmann rang continuously in his ears: “You have been a dear friend, Erich. Some day we will be together again, I’m sure. Goodbye and God bless you.”
***