NINE
Berlin, 1939
Traveling to Berlin from Prague became an eternity for Erich. No sooner had the train left the station than it was brought to a standstill, the first forced stop of many, as long columns of Germany’s huge army crowded the roads and railroad crossings ahead. Moving slowly alongside the endless winding of marching men and trucks and cannons and tanks, all moving eastward towards Poland, Erich believed that war was near. Hitler would not be satisfied just with Prague and Austria; Poland was too inviting, and perhaps even the vast Ukrainian fields of Russia. When the train stopped at a point where the rail tracks and the road ran parallel across the Elbe River, Erich could see clearly the face of each passing soldier, seemingly all blue-eyed and blond to him, though they weren’t. As the train started its own journey across the Elbe, he wondered how many of these young warriors would be sacrificed to slake the thirst of the few in power. What if he were with them? Would he be as afraid of dying as he was now? Watching the cold-blooded murder of the old Jewish couple without protesting had stained him like Cain when he slew Abel, leaving his badge of courage on the sidewalk covered with their blood.
Long into the day, Erich’s train joined another row of tracks, and then another, as it moved slowly into a wide rail yard leading to Berlin’s central station. Freight cars loaded with war material filled all but two tracks. Erich wondered if war might come while he was in Berlin, as he watched hundreds of loaded transport trucks exiting the rail yard, each carrying their share of deadly weapons to the awaiting German army gathering on the Polish border.
Away in Prague for seven years with his medical studies, he had seen little of Germany, twice by his count. Had he tried, he couldn’t have imagined the greatness of the beautiful city that lay spread out before him. The scene was exhilarating. Wide boulevards lined with massive trees and glistening marbled buildings had replaced quaint streets once rowed with small stores and houses, many Jewish. Nazi swastikas flapping wildly with each burst of wind from passing traffic, mostly military, hung from the street corner lamps like Christmas banners, reminding everyone of Germany’s might. Having taken Austria and Prague as it did, an air of invincibility covered the streets like the deadly gases in the Great War. But it was to the broad skies over the city that Erich looked. This time, when war came, the enemy would come from faraway lands across the oceans like invading aliens from distant worlds, filling the skies with vast armadas to destroy the land and people. The Great War had not touched the homeland, stopping at its borders. There had been little to rebuild when the armistice came; but this time, Erich believed, the skies would be filled with a fire unseen since the dawn of man, destroying all who stood in its way without mercy.
Erich’s determination to see his father and finish his studies at Berlin University seemed to weaken with each step he took. He no longer knew the city and was forced to seek directions to the university from two approaching elderly women. After giving him the directions he sought, the younger of the two abruptly asked him, “Why aren’t you in uniform like the rest of our young men, ready to defend the homeland?”
Taken aback by the woman’s sharp rebuke, Erich offered no answer and moved quickly past her. Such a question would be asked again, he was sure, and he began rehearsing different responses to find the most believable as he walked on towards the university.
The towering university had not changed, but a huge swastika now fluttered from the tall flagpole at the entrance, where the flag of the fallen republic once unfurled. Entering the building, “Heil Hitler” filled his ears from a small group of uniform-clad students standing near the hallway leading to the administrative offices. Not knowing whether their greetings were for him, or for each other, Erich chose silence and quietly entered the rector’s office, leaving the students wondering who he might be. Finding no one there, he returned to the hallway and walked straight to the students still grouped nearby.
“Please, tell me where I might find Herr Dr. Schmidt.”
“Yes, he is in the auditorium speaking to a large audience of visiting professors and doctors. Do you know him?” responded several students, stirred by the mention of Dr. Schmidt’s name.
“He is my father. Thank you,” Erich said, turning to leave, causing the students to immediately straighten their backs and pay greater notice to someone they believed of importance.
The long and painful journey back to his father was ready to end. They had neither spoken nor seen each other during the last seven years of his absence from Germany. More angry than hurt at his son’s refusal to accept the new science of eugenics and the great promise it carried for cleansing the Aryan race, Dr. Schmidt welcomed Erich’s self-imposed exile to Prague. Even then, though, he could not turn him loose into the streets penniless—he was a Schmidt. Writing a short note to him, he offered only the allowance, nothing about reconciliation. No other letters would come from his father, only brief, sweet words every now and then from his mother in Dresden, always urging him to return home.
How his father would accept him was all that occupied Erich’s mind. Nothing else mattered. Without his father’s blessing there would be no tomorrows to finish his medical studies, no opportunities to escape Germany and find Julia. He would be conscripted by the Third Reich to fight whatever wars Hitler was preparing to start. Then he would be no different from the thousands of blond and blue-eyed soldiers who marched past his train. He would be nameless except to those that would mourn his death should it come.
Pushing open one of the wide doors leading into the auditorium, Erich moved quickly to an empty seat. No one turned to look at him. Looking around, Erich saw an odd mixture of people: professors properly attired with suit and tie, physicians in white coats, and rows of military officers in their finest uniforms. A group sitting several rows to the right and near the front caught Erich’s attention. There, backs straight with shoulders squared, as if ready to stand and salute if called upon, sat many SS officers, an intimidating presence for any lecturer. Erich looked upward at the stage, which rose five or more meters above the level of the auditorium. Centered on the stage was a carefully crafted mahogany lectern with the university’s coat of arms emblazoned on the front. Behind the lectern, speaking in a steady but tiresome tone, stood his father. Erich tried to focus on his words but was too fascinated by the makeup of the audience. Glancing again at the SS personnel occupying the front row, he looked no further. Heinrich Himmler’s profile captured his eyes. Nothing else mattered now. Watching the intensity of Himmler’s interest in his father’s words excited Erich, but only until he caught the medical necessities being uttered by his father to promote and protect the health of the Third Reich. He was using his intellectual authority to justify and carry out medicalized killing.
“Our collective existence is a medical matter,” he had said, raising his voice loudly for the first time and banging on the lectern with a fist. “Illness is a disgrace that can only be removed from the world by extermination of the miserable! We doctors, then, must be the true saviors of mankind and defenders of the Fatherland.”
Loud cheers erupted throughout the auditorium. Leading the demonstration was Himmler himself, who had jumped to his feet before anyone else, clapping wildly. White-coated students followed, adding the voice of youth to the increasing cheers. Next came the stoic professors, rising as one from their seats as if commanded, clapping loudly but offering few cheers. Lastly, the physicians stood, some still amazed and stunned by Dr. Schmidt’s carefully chosen words in support of active euthanasia. Erich stood, too, and applauded, though not out of praise for his father’s words, rather that he had said them at all while showing some human emotion.
Erich waited for a few minutes for the auditorium to empty before approaching his father, who was standing in a guarded circle away from the stage talking with Himmler and another man. At first Dr. Schmidt’s eyes passed over his face. Then he stopped talking and looked straight at him, his color paling as he recognized who stood before him.
“Are
you ill, Dr. Schmidt?” someone asked.
“No, not at all. My son has surprised me, returning from Prague, which I find quite wonderful,” he replied, reaching for Erich’s hand.
Puzzled by his father’s unexpected warmth, Erich forced a nervous smile as he was introduced to Himmler and two men he didn’t recognize, Karl Brandt and Philipp Bouhler.
“Prague?” Brandt questioned.
“Yes.”
“You were there then, when the Führer arrived?”
“Yes, I was standing near the castle’s great doors. The crowd was huge,” Erich said, relaxing some.
“Wonderful! Wonderful! You were a very lucky young man to witness such marvelous history. You must tell me more someday,” Brandt said, shaking Erich’s hand. “We will leave now and let you and your father visit.”
Standing silently, Dr. Schmidt waited a few minutes for the stage to clear before turning to Erich.
“My prodigal son has returned, I see. But tell me why?”
Disarmed by his father’s distancing again, Erich said nothing.
“Tell me. Is it money? Surely, there is a reason to bring you back to Berlin.”
Erich looked at his father closely. Nothing had changed. He was everything he imagined his father would be after seven years. A little more stooped in the shoulders, perhaps. More gray than color in his hair. Clean shaven as always. But the same tentative eyes, displaying some unknown weakness, remained. His eyes had always belied a falsity to the power he so desperately tried to project. It was his brilliance, though, corrupted with a willingness to push beyond the moral boundaries of doctoring, that kept him in good stead with the Nazi hierarchy. Like the great mass of German doctors, he viewed Jewish patients as a group apart from true Germans and was prepared to treat them as such. A spoken sympathy for “euthanasia” along with a radical approach to eugenics had rapidly elevated his standing in the Health Ministry. In time, he would be called upon by Himmler himself to assist in Lebensborn, the “Spring of Life” institution for breeding the SS into a biological elite. When it became known to him that biologically valuable children were being kidnapped to be placed in the breeding program, he said nothing, but only intensified his research on the hereditarily gifted.
“I really intend to take the German blood from wherever it is to be found in the world, to rob it and steal it wherever I can,” Himmler had wildly proclaimed on one occasion to Dr. Schmidt and others as they lined up, one by one, to give their souls to him for a cause of science that had no boundaries.
How much truth to reveal, and how many lies to tell his father, became the question for Erich. “It’s not money. I came back because I need your help.”
“What kind of help?”
Clearing his throat, Erich tried to look at his father before answering, but couldn’t, and lowered his eyes quickly from his iron stare.
“I want to finish my medical studies here at Berlin University. That is my reason.”
Dr. Schmidt looked closely at his son. He was not the same angry young man who had stormed off so long ago to take his place among Prague’s intelligentsia. The look of despair on his face revealed that truth. But there was more he knew that remained hidden—finishing his studies in Berlin was no reason.
“Are you in trouble?” his father asked in a softer voice.
Relieved by the inviting tone of his father, but unsure of its sincerity, Erich revealed the troubling nature of his last few months in Prague. Included in his story was the disturbing murder of the elderly man and woman. Nothing was said of his love for Julia and her family.
“They were Jews?” his father asked, as if they were supposed to be.
“Yes, I suppose so. Why else would they have been attacked?”
“Being Jews was enough. But you were not involved?”
“No, but my sympathies were well known, and I—”
“That is the past, over,” Dr. Schmidt said sharply, interrupting Erich. “You will speak no more of this matter here or anyplace else in Germany, if I am to help you.”
“They were old people, Father, barely able to walk.”
“What would you have done, if you could have helped them?”
“I don’t know really. I was terrified.”
“A Jew is just a Jew. That is all, nothing more. You must not forget that. You may stay with me until you find your own quarters.”
With that remark, Dr. Schmidt turned and walked to his office, leaving Erich to follow him, which he did, meekly and shamed and more beholden than ever to his father.
Later that night, waiting for sleep to come, Erich’s thoughts turned again to Julia. Darkness always brought her face to him. How difficult it is to keep love silent to the self, when everything about it is alive and screaming at you. Why love at all if the world hears nothing of it? Appearing silently back in the shadows of his mind, Julia’s presence seemed more distant and puzzling to Erich. Fading in and out like faraway radio signals, he caught only passing glimpses of her beautiful existence before there was nothing. Fast asleep, a dream that would haunt him for months to come made its first appearance in the theatre of his soul. Standing alone, he was looking down at the shattered humanity of the old Jewish man and woman lying on the sidewalk, their faces turned to the pavement, twisted in death. Rolling the man and woman over, he looked no more than a second before sitting up in bed choking on his own vomit. The old man and woman’s faces were gone, their flesh torn away by thousands of hungry, tiny maggots now eating into their brains. Later in the morning, when his father questioned the traces of vomit showing on the bed covers, Erich said nothing of his dream, blaming instead a sudden nausea from spoiled wienerwurst eaten on the train.
The same excuse would not carry the next time, which came three days later from a similar dream. His father said only, “You must be heavily troubled,” then walked away not asking why. He had done this all his life, leaving the troubles of his family to Erich’s mother. It was she who encouraged him to become an artist, or a great German philosopher, anything other than following in the giant footsteps of his august father. And Erich loved her for doing so, and she loved him, he believed. Still, it was his father’s love he coveted most, for it would have given him respect.
The third night of dreams left Erich exhausted and beginning to question his sanity. His presence in the scenes played out before his sleeping eyes was becoming too real for his fragile mind. This time, though, the old man and woman were gone, their bodies replaced by much younger ones. Erich knew the faces before turning their heads to look at them. No hungry maggots this time, no rotting flesh, only Julia and Hiram, unmolested and staring at the stars as if they could see them. There was no vomiting by him, only a soft sobbing that comes when something precious is lost.
In time, Erich came to believe that the troubling nightmares were a clear omen of the Jews’ fate should war come to Europe. None would escape it, not even his Julia and her family. The death of the old man and woman was simply God’s way of telling you the truth.
As the weeks passed, Erich realized that his sudden arrival at the medical school had immediately altered the favored status of senior students among the professors. His father’s immense prestige placed him above all the rest and he knew it, and he hated that it did so because of what was expected of him during the clinical rounding with patients. Stressed from the horrific series of nightmares, he would often find a small measure of rest by drifting into sleep during the morning reports. As a result, he knew very little about the patients’ histories and what to expect when questioned by the instructing physician. Each time, when called upon to discuss the prognosis and treatment plan for a particular patient, he would struggle unmercifully, to the delight of the other students gathered about, none of whom cared for him. But it mattered little to Erich how anyone felt about him. After the tragic episode in Prague with the old man and woman, he had come to the conclusion that no one possessed a soul anymore, not even his father; and without a soul to question you, everything
that is done and felt becomes a deception so cunningly hidden that the truth can only be recognized with great difficulty. It is then that one begins to dress in the many different clothes of pretending. None of this would change, not even when the welcoming news came later in the day that the dreaded medical thesis would no longer be required. The Health Ministry had drastically reduced the medical studies in order to provide more doctors for the state. Incompetence was of little consequence to the Ministry—all would be conscripted and ground into the war machine being assembled by the Reich.
At the close of an unusually long day, Erich was summoned to his father’s office, which had not happened since his arrival. To be called to a professor’s office was of no small concern to any student, but to Erich it was doubly worrisome when the professor was your father. Dr. Schmidt was sitting behind his desk when he arrived. Sitting next to him, busily leafing through what appeared to be a stack of official papers, was a man Erich had not yet met.
“Erich, my son, come in, come in,” Dr. Schmidt said with a blustering, authoritarian voice, a false tone that Erich despised, a tone his father had reverted to many times in front of him when impressions were to be made. So Erich knew the importance of the stranger in the room. “Erich, this is Herr Professor Werner Catel, head of Leipzig Clinic. You have heard of his important work with children, I’m sure.”
Erich knew nothing of the man, nor his work, but nodded, acting as if he did to please his father.
“A new young Dr. Schmidt, perhaps to replace the old one,” Dr. Catel said laughing, turning to Erich’s father, who laughed with him, though quite displeased by Dr. Catel’s clumsy attempt to be funny.
“No, not yet, I’m afraid, but another semester should do it,” Erich said.
“A mere formality, my boy, that can easily be taken care of, should you come with me to Leipzig. You will do well there.”
Stunned by what he was hearing, yet unsure of what it meant, Erich turned to his father for an explanation.
“You must listen to what Dr. Catel has to say,” was all he had to offer him.
“I am to be a psychiatrist, not a baby doctor, Dr. Catel. Why would you want me?”
“I could tell you because you are Dr. Schmidt’s son, and that would be enough. But that is not an answer that will likely satisfy you. Rather, let me just say you should know that a child’s mind is not always free from sickness,” Dr. Catel answered, beginning to show a mild displeasure with Erich’s reluctance to simply accept without questioning the opportunity being offered to him.
“But my training is with adults,” Erich insisted.
“Good, children become adults.”
Not used to being isolated from such a conversation, Erich’s father stepped forward to the side of Dr. Catel as an obvious gesture of support for him. “Erich, your class will go straight into the military the very moment they graduate. They have no choice, nor do you, unless the Health Ministry approves a special assignment, as it has now for you,” he said sternly.
It was his father’s words that Erich listened to now, not Dr. Catel’s. Only his father could keep him out of the military, a place where there would be little chance of finding a way to follow Julia to England. Should he try and be caught, he would be shot and his father disgraced. The one possible door he might find open could be in an unguarded hospital such as that at Leipzig. So Erich listened intently to every word Dr. Catel uttered about the new pediatrics project at Leipzig and asked only questions that pleased his father. Strangely, but not to his liking, he found himself professing considerable interest in the idea that he would be an important part of a clinic that was expected by the Health Ministry to become exceptional in its degree of specialization. There all the children would receive the blessings of medical science. None would go untreated, which pleased him greatly.
Later, dining with his father at the faculty club, Erich felt a closeness to his father that had been years in the making. Their talk was of home and family and Dresden, nothing about the war, which both knew was just over the horizon. Before parting for the evening, Dr. Schmidt looked wistfully at his only son for a second.
“These are extraordinary times, Erich, and to survive we must be extraordinary, too,” he said, expressing unusual concern in his voice.
When his words were finished, in the rarest of moments, he reached across the table and touched Erich’s arm. It was the best he could do, but it was enough for Erich. Then he got up and walked away, leaving Erich standing alone in the silence of the night, still wrapped in the warmth of his father’s touch and words, all of which was new to him.
***