Page 35 of Hell to Pay
When we were all sitting with our backs against the wall and Dr. Becker and I had turned off our flashlights to save the precious batteries, I said, “Forgive me, but I don’t know how long you’ve been here. I haven’t known anything about my father’s … activities until tonight, and I still know very little. He said it was safer for me not to know, but as I’m here now, the option of safety is no longer available. Would you tell me, if you don’t mind, what has brought you here?”
He didn’t go tense, or I didn’t feel it. I couldn’t see him, of course—we sat in a darkness too complete to pierce, for there was no light source at all in this underground cavern. He merely said, “Let’s move to the other side of the room,” and told his children, “Lie down and go to sleep now.” He shone the flashlight, and I realized that he’d brought some kind of rough pallets out from the other room; at least, I hadn’t seen them when Father and I had come through before.
When the children had settled themselves, he spoke. Hisvoice was quiet enough still that I had to strain to hear it over the sound of muffled explosions. “I was in a privileged marriage until four weeks ago,” he said, “as my wife Eva was Aryan.”
“A privileged marriage,” I said, feeling my ignorance. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said, “that although I haven’t been allowed to practice medicine openly for years—how foolish the Nazis are, prosecuting such a brutal war while barring a full fifteen percent of their doctors from practicing!—we haven’t been sent east, because Eva was Aryan. I’m being frank with you, maybe too frank, young as you are, but I haven’t had much chance at conversation during these past weeks.”
“Please,” I said, “I want to know. I’m young, but I hope I’m not thoughtless or stupid.”
“Then I’ll tell you,” he said. “It will serve to take our minds off what’s happening out there, anyway. I was put to work in a munitions factory, our apartment and most of our possessions confiscated, and the children, of course, were barred from school, but we were allowed to stay, and to survive. We were sent to live in aJudenhaus—two rooms in a mean little apartment building, surrounded by other Jews, some in privileged marriages and some not. The house was subject to inspection at any time by the Gestapo, during which our possessions were scattered or destroyed, our food taken, and we ourselves subject to blows and abuse, but we survived. I received half the normal ration coupons as a Jew, but I did receive those, and again—we survived. Eva and the children received coupons for more, for a bit of meat and butter, even some milk, and we got by with gifts of food and coal from some of my former patients, especially your parents, which we shared with our neighbors. We made new friends and had a life of sorts, despite being moved twice as the Jewish population shrank and less housing was needed.”
“Shrank,” I repeated.
He said, “Let me check on the children.” A matter of thirty seconds, and he was beside me again. “Asleep, thank God. We must be well into the small hours by now, though it’s hard to keep track of time down here. So. Where were we? Oh, yes. The Jews have gradually been evacuated, as they call it, over the past years. To Theresienstadt, the authorities said, where there are work camps. They took the old and sick first, though, and what work could they have done? That ruse was seen through quickly enough. At first, too, we’d receive the sad notification that the person had died of a heart attack—it was always a heart attack, unless it was ‘shot while trying to escape’—but after a time, they dropped even that pretense. I don’t know, though, whether those taken were kept at Theresienstadt or sent farther east. Many Jews have been shipped to Poland, one hears, and none have ever come back. But here we stayed as others were taken, and Eva taught the children at home—she had been aFrau Doktorin her own right, a professor of psychology, until she was forced to leave the University due to our marriage. She told me that we had only to be patient and wait out Hitler, that the end was bound to come soon. Unfortunately, it hasn’t come soon enough, because a month ago, she died.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Yes,” he said. “She contracted pneumonia—the house had very little heat, she had to queue for food for hours each day, and there was never enough to eat. All of that stresses the body, and when the mind is fearful also, one’s defenses weaken. I tried to get medicine for her, but as a Jew—” He broke off. “So we weren’t able to wait out Hitler after all. Pity, as we must be very close to the end now. The Russians advancing on one side, the British and Americans on the other—we’d thought so many times, since the German catastrophe at Stalingrad in 1943, that defeat was inevitable, thatsurely the surrender would be forced upon Hitler in three months, six months, nine months … Yet here we all are still. I don’t believe he will ever surrender. He’ll see every German dead first, and every building flattened.”
“But why?” This was the kind of question I’d always longed to ask Father, but he’d shut me down each time.What you don’t know, you can’t tell,he’d told me tonight, but things were different now, weren’t they? I couldn’t be shielded anymore, and part of me was glad of it.
“I don’t know,” Dr. Becker said. “Our studies of the mind are in their infancy, but Eva had theories. She was working on a book, in fact, when she died. That shows you how strong she was, and how hopeful. In every era, she pointed out, there have been men who loved to destroy.”
“Wars,” I said.
“No,” Dr. Becker said, “not precisely. I’m not talking about those like the Prussians, who see war as man’s natural calling, with their dueling scars and focus on discipline and authority, or even the Japanese of the past, with their samurai swords and codes of honor, but men—unusual men—who take pleasure in humiliating and dominating others and bend their entire lives to the pursuit. Hitler is an extreme example of this tendency. Megalomania, paranoia, sadism … we have the words for it, but too little understanding of how and why a man is born or grows into such a person. Mussolini, Franco, Stalin, Hitler … they are of a type, though why the modern age should be cursed with so many of them is a question for wiser men than myself. Or wiser women, perhaps, like Eva. Women sometimes see into human hearts and minds more easily than men do. A doctor can tell you the structure of the brain, the heart, but of their workings on human behavior? On that score, we men of medicine are almost wholly ignorant. Men with this perversion are most dangerous when blessed with the sort of malignant charisma that can draw an entire people in to share their warped viewpoint. Here again, we see the type.”
He'd been speaking more loudly. The explosions seemed to be growing less frequent, but the roar was, if anything, louder, and somehow, smoke was filtering in. How, I couldn’t say, as sealed off as we were here.
“Thank you,” I said. “For explaining. Sometimes I feel as if I’m going mad, or as if I’m the only sane one in a mad world. I seem to see everything so … so backward from the way others do. But if you’re willing to tell me …” I hesitated.
“What?” he asked.
“When Frau Dr. Becker died,” I asked, “what happened to you then? It can’t have been just that you no longer had an Aryan wife, can it? The children?—”
“It was exactly that,” he said. “I was no longer privileged, and the children, as first-degreeMischlinge—born to a Jewish father, and with two Jewish grandparents—were in a precarious position as well. The edicts have only grown harsher as the war has continued, and what would once have been allowed is now forbidden. Within a week of my wife’s death—how efficient these Nazis are—I received a notice to be ready for evacuation the next morning. The children and I were to bring a suitcase each and report for transportation.”
He stopped, and I didn’t know how to go on. “Surely, though,” I tried, “children …”
“If you think that,” he said, “that there is any mercy for children, you know nothing.” His voice was harsh, suddenly, and too loud.
“The bombing has stopped,” I said. “Hasn’t it?”
He listened. “I think so.”
“But there’s still a … a noise. What is it? Do you think it’s safe to check?” I’d been so fearful when Father had left me down here in the dark, and now I was as fearful of venturing out.
“We’ll wait a few minutes,” Dr. Becker said, “to make sure the bombing is truly over. Your father will come back, I expect, when he can slip away.” He sighed and shifted position against the wall. “I must apologize for my rudeness. It’s difficult when so many are determined to close their eyes to what’s happening around them. To answer the rest of your question, I came to your father when I could think of nothing else to do. It was that or—” He broke off, then, after a minute, said quietly, “It’s been hard for the children, though, these past weeks, hiding like this, so soon after losing their mother.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. How inadequate those two words are, and how often they’re the only words one can think of. “It was that—coming to Father—or … or what?”
“Veronal,” he said, and if his voice had been tired before, now, it was filled with weariness. “I’ve furnished it to others who’ve received the summons, God help me. Faced with the choice to go against my oath as a doctor and provide the means for suicide, or go against my humanity … I made the only choice I could. Now, it seemed, I must make that choice for my children, and that was impossible. Do you see how I would have done anything—anything—but that?”
“Of course,” I said. “Of course I do. So you came to Father.”
“Yes. I didn’t want to endanger him. I’d heard a rumor that—” He stopped.
