A Perfect Madness Read online

FOUR

  Back in his small, two-room apartment, three streets past the German university, Erich pulled off his wet clothes, tossed them in a corner, lit up a cigarette, and sat down naked behind a makeshift desk stacked with medical textbooks. He was clearly shattered by the article coauthored by his father, essentially condemning the Jews to death. Politically, the Jewish race might be thought to be expendable by the virulent voices within the Nazi party, but surely not from physicians, Hippocrates’s heirs. Compassionate euthanasia might be seen as ethical to some, he believed, but not when it’s based on race. Erich tried to shut his eyes to the truth that was clearly spread out before him in the article. His father had always been a paragon of the compassionate German physician, but that was before he had become totally obsessed with the eugenics movement. All sense of the sacred line carefully drawn over two thousand years ago between a duty to treat the sick and helpless and duty to the state had been cast aside by him like so much rubbish.

  “I will never forgive him for shaming me this way. God can forgive him—that’s His job, isn’t it?” Erich yelled out, a slamming his fist against the wall, breaking the plaster.

  After his trip to America, he had carefully avoided another confrontation with his father and had dismissed the entire field of eugenics as a medical fairyland, not what doctors should be about. He would become, instead, a compassionate psychiatrist and heal the crippled minds of the world. In doing so, he would purposely shut out the frightening nightmares spawning across all of Germany by Hitler’s National Socialist Party and its calling for the eradication of the Jewish race. This veil of ignorance had served him well, keeping his feet dry from the bloody flood of terror now washing away the last pockets of resistance offered by reason and goodness. Only a few faint voices in medicine and the churches remained to denounce the spreading evil, and they, too, would become silent. Where had his father been in all of this? Erich kept asking himself. Sleep would come hard to him tonight, as it would for the rest of his life.

  The next morning as he entered the long hall leading to the pathology lab, a group of student members of the volatile German Sudeten party were gathered around the door leading into the lab, leaving only a narrow entrance and exit aisle. After he stepped into the large room, the students began chanting loudly, “Germany Forever! Germany Forever! Throw out the Jews! Throw out the Jews!”

  Erich turned around in time to see Julia with two other Jewish medical students struggling to make their way through the aroused students, who had now linked their arms together, completely blocking the doorway. Stunned by the students’ hostility, he froze for a brief second before moving to Julia’s aid. Placing his hands on the shoulders of two male students nearest the doorway, he said in a loud voice coated with a threatening authority inherited from his father, “What are you imbeciles doing?”

  “They are Jews, they no longer belong here,” a tall, blond student shouted back at Erich.

  “They may be Jews but they are Czechs just like many of you. Now let them pass.” His voice boomed louder as he pushed the two students away from the doorway, opening a path for Julia and her friends.

  Once inside, Julia followed Erich to their lab station, which they had purposely chosen so they could work together. She immediately began trying to calm her friends, presenting a steeliness Erich had never seen before in her. It seemed so antithetical to her gentle nature and grace that it rattled him for a short moment. She showed no tears, no fright. Only the grim fierceness of a cornered animal prepared to fight for its existence glistened in her eyes.

  “I should thank you, and I do, but they are nothing but bully-cowards. Nothing more. And yet we had been friends, all of us,” Julia said, turning away from Erich for a moment to stare down the tall, blond student now standing alone by the door, glaring at her.

  Erich knew this day had long been coming. The large German minority in the Sudetenland had been seething with undiminished hate against the Czechs and Jews and everyone else, from the very moment they were literally given to Czechoslovakia by the Versailles Treaty at the end of World War I. Hitler had promised they would soon be free, and they believed him.

  “We must be vigilant, Erich. They have begun to hate their Jewish friends now, and anyone who stands with them,” Julia said.

  “I know, Julia, and it’s hard for me to accept, since I’m German, too.”

  “Father says that it’s the beginning of the end of all that is good in Prague and the rest of the nation.”

  Before Erich could respond, Dr. Neumann, a distinguished professor of anatomy and a Jew, entered the lab. The class chatter stilled, but not completely. Stomping of feet began softly at the rear of the classroom, then grew bolder, causing the glass vials and beakers on the lab tables to shake violently, some tipping over. Horrified at the scene unfolding before him, Dr. Neumann raised his hand for silence, only to be met with an outburst of derisive jeers.

  “Out with the dirty Jews!” one yelled, then another.

  His face red with embarrassment and rage, Dr. Neumann retreated from the room as single voices quickly became a taunting chorus chanting, “No more Jews! No more Jews!”

  As if on a signal, the chanting stopped as quickly as it began. The tall, blond student had moved to the door, where he turned and raised his hand to silence the rebellious students in one motion. Then, looking straight at Julia and her fellow students, he screamed, “You Jewish vermin, you pollute the air we breathe. Leave and crawl back in your holes. This is your only warning.”

  Erich could restrain himself no longer and rushed towards the sneering student. Before he could reach him, several students grabbed and wrestled Erich to the floor while others pummeled him with their fists and books. As Erich lay on the floor unable to protect himself, the students began kicking him, but stopped immediately as several shrill whistles sounded from a cadre of Czech uniformed police running down the hall to the classroom, followed by Dr. Mann, the rector of the university. With order quickly restored, Julia rushed to Erich’s side and began wiping the blood oozing from his mouth and nose with a lab towel. She had never felt closer to him than now, nor surer of her love for him.

  As the police escorted the tall, blond student along with several of his colleagues from the laboratory room, he looked back at Erich and Julia shouting, “You Jewish lover, you have betrayed your homeland. The authorities will hear of it because I will tell them.”

  Erich said nothing and turned away to join the few remaining students in the room who were huddled around Dr. Mann answering his questions about the incident. Erich was the only German in the crowd and Dr. Mann took note of that fact. The rest were either Jews or Czechs, or both, all citizens of Czechoslovakia. What became shockingly clear to everyone was the unexpected volume of gathered hate showered in the room by a rather small group of Sudeten German students. It was clearly not what the other students wanted to face, nor the university. In time this hate would become a monster frightening everyone in sight and closing down the university. For now the university would continue its mission of liberal education. All the students that participated in the assault on Erich were summarily dismissed from the university, and the cold Prague winter became spring.

  Spring and young love have always been equals. When one, they soar apart from the world as the poets have long written. And so it was with Erich and Julia. Their days and evenings together became more intense, each grasping for the last seconds of the day entwined in the arms of the other. However, any thoughts of marriage between a German and a Jew at that moment in history were mired in the hidden terror of uncertainties about what the future could become for both of them. This terrible fact became more apparent to them than ever during the traditional convocation at the university.

  Dr. Arthur Guett, a prominent physician and high-ranking Nazi health officer, delivered the prestigious lecture to the graduating seniors. Striding to the podium as if carrying a new commandment tablet from God for the young graduating doctors eagerly looking on, he began in
a strong voice. “Listen carefully to my words today for I am giving you two new maxims that all German physicians must follow. One, the ill-conceived love of neighbor that you harbor must disappear forever. This is an absolute if you are to understand the second one, that it is the supreme duty of the state, and no one else’s, to grant life and livelihood only to the healthy. The life of the individual has meaning only in the light of that ultimate aim.”

  Erich glanced quickly around the crowded auditorium; no one stirred. The silence was deafening. Then Dr. Guett added a stern admonition for all to hear, one that seemed to bother no one but Erich and Julia.

  “As physicians, it is not your job, and never will be, to determine whether something is true, but rather, whether it is in the spirit of the National Socialist revolution.”

  With the word “revolution,” as if on cue, the tall, blond student who had been expelled from the university jumped to his feet wildly applauding and shouting his support. Immediately, row after row of other German Sudeten students mixed with Czechs leaped to their feet to join the growing cheers. At first, Dr. Guett did nothing but smile, secretly satisfied with the outburst of support for his radical remarks. After a few minutes, he raised his hand and the demonstration and shouting grew silent. Continuing for the next forty minutes, he meticulously demonstrated the staggering growth in the ranks of the mentally insane and disabled and those suffering from incurable diseases in all of Europe and the threat this carried to every country’s wellbeing, not just Germany’s.

  Dr. Guett stopped talking then and, inhaling the drama of the moment, looked slowly around the crowded room, taking on the aura of a great thespian preparing to deliver the most compelling lines of the play. “My fellow physicians, at this very moment in history we must embark together on a journey that will bring a spiritual reawakening of our sacred profession. To accomplish this, every doctor, when put to the test, is expected to embrace the ice-cold logic of the necessary—nothing less will do. It is the health of the country we should be concerned with, more so than individual disease.”

  Then he paused, clasped his hands together in front of his chest and looked upwards towards the ceiling as if awaiting the final divine words from God before shattering the silence with his concluding remarks. “Fellow physicians, we must prevent the bastardization of the population through the propagation of the unworthy racial alien elements. We, you and I, are the sacred guardians in keeping our blood pure.”

  Dr. Guett had barely finished his closing words, when the tall, blond student rose to his feet again, and in mob-like fashion led the resounding cheers of the growing number leaping to their feet. The restless crowd now included many of the German professors at the university. Dr. Guett’s words had sounded the ancient trumpet of the Goths calling to arms all who would listen, and the students and young doctors were thrilled. A holy cause now beckoned them that gave greater meaning to the word doctor. The medical profession was to be recast in the service of a larger healing—the “protector” of the future life of the German people.

  As the years passed, Erich would be haunted by the demons revealed that April day. But for now he could only grasp a small piece of the emotional rollercoaster Julia and her father were hanging onto. He glanced quickly at the row of distinguished Jewish professors sitting to his right. No one was speaking. None had risen to challenge Dr. Guett’s remarks. Their eyes fixed on some unknown distant object. It was as if the sun had suddenly disappeared from the sky and they were hiding deep in the cold darkness of a great cave, waiting for the beast to come and devour them.

  Erich suddenly reached over and took Julia’s hand, lifted it to his mouth and kissed it, hoping the tall, blond student and everyone standing with him would see it. Kissing Julia’s hand in public was the strongest protest he could make against the filth that had spewed forth from Dr. Guett’s mouth. And it didn’t go unnoticed by several of the German students and professors, nor by Julia’s father, who smiled and nodded to Erich. Later, as they stood to leave, Dr. Kaufmann placed his hand gently on Erich’s back and whispered to him, “Please walk Julia home and stay for dinner. We have much to talk about.”

  Then he turned and walked over to the Jewish professors who were still sitting in their muted state and sat down among them.

  Walking with Julia was always a special time for Erich, but today he had no stomach for dinner or any serious dialogue with Dr. Kaufmann, who had come home early from the university. Instead, he left Julia standing alone on the front porch, greatly puzzled by his sudden silence and distance. He was disturbed by the dichotomous emotions playing out in his head between Dr. Guett’s message of hate and the mystifying logic of necessity that lay behind the message. He no longer dwelled on hate because it was everywhere, saturating the air like seawater, until it dripped from the trees, drowning the few remaining blossoms of reason. It was the logic of the necessary so deftly concealed and emboldened by the sacred white coat of medicine that Dr. Guett’s malevolent words hid behind that bothered him. He had used a medical metaphor to blend with the biomedical ideology of the Nazis, the cleansing of the race. A sick Germany can become healthier by sterilization of misfits with hereditary disorders. That is, if it stopped there. Would medical killing be next, disguised under the name of compassionate euthanasia? Yet physicians had always been the protectors of the health of a nation deeply obligated to the promotion and perfection of the health of the people. Nothing more should be expected of them by the state. No, Erich concluded, pushing logic aside, Dr. Guett’s words were ill suited for young physicians and dangerous to the mind. He would think no further about them; yet he would stay troubled by the words, recalling them many times later.

  Returning to Julia’s home, though it was quite late, Erich knocked on the front door. After a few minutes, Dr. Kaufmann turned on the porch light and opened the door just enough until he could recognize Erich as the late night caller.

  “Why are you here so late Erich? Everyone is in bed.”

  “I must see Julia.”

  “She is asleep. Please come back tomorrow.”

  “I am here, Father,” Julia whispered, standing in the hallway behind him.

  Without waiting for her father’s approval, Erich took Julia’s hand and led her out on the porch.

  “I love you, Julia,” was all he said, before turning and walking away into the darkness.

  He had spoken these words many times before during their moments of lovemaking, but this time they carried beyond the simple utterances of young lovers in passion. They sprang from his soul. He had uttered them the first time they lay together in their secret Eden along the banks of the Vlatava. Inexperienced and clumsy as he was, she had simply held him tightly to her body, ignoring her own sexual awakening, for which he was thankful, and whispered softly, “I love you, Erich. I always will. Forever.”

  Julia watched Erich disappear into the night, and then felt her father’s comforting arm around her shoulders.

  “He is a troubled young man Julia, troubled and haunted.”

  “Haunted?”

  “Yes, haunted, I’m afraid, by what he sees as the truth now.”

  “Truth should haunt no one unless it becomes mixed up with evil,” Julia said, puzzled by her father’s observation of Erich.

  “I know, but Dr. Guett’s lecture shredded Erich’s innocence into a thousand pieces. It’s difficult to see one’s reality shattered before your eyes as Erich has.”

  “His reality?”

  “Yes, his reality, not the reality you and I know and live in. I believe he understands now, for the first time, the futility of the Jews trying to stay alive in Germany, and perhaps even here in Prague. That is what Dr. Guett was telling all of the German students today.”

  “Oh Papa, how horrible,” Julia cried, using the pet name she used to call her father as a young girl.

  “We must be patient with Erich. Truth can become so fragile when one’s existence depends on it. Now go to bed. We will talk some more tomorrow when
the sun is shining and the day is bright.”

  Julia went to bed, but would not sleep. The terrible dream that she might lose Erich was there, waiting somewhere in the room for her eyes to close, and she would not let that happen.

  ***