Chapter 16 No More Privilege #2
“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, that surely 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-degree Mischlinge—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.
“That he’d been involved somehow with the von Stauffenburg plot,” I said.
“You know that?” His voice was startled.
“I learned it tonight. So you came to him, and he hid you and the children here, in the cellar.”
“He’s done it before, I think,” Dr. Becker said.
“Sheltered people, and helped them move on. There’s a privy in the other room, and we aren’t the first to have used it.
Also the cistern, and pallets for beds. He came down in the wee hours to bring us food.
I don’t know more than that. I didn’t ask your father, because what one hears, one can be forced to tell. But I think there have been others.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Who knows? Other Jews, perhaps, downed Allied aviators—their lives aren’t worth much, from what I’ve heard—those few who have resisted the regime …”
“So you’ll be here for—” I stopped. I didn’t know how to ask this. “Is there a … some plan? To get you out?”
“There may have been,” Dr. Becker said. “I think your father was working on it. Now, though? I don’t know what the plan is now, if we are to be as consistently bombed here as other German cities have been.
Will there be enough food? An escape route?
And when will the Russians come? Who can say? We will have to be resourceful.”
When I finished the story, Alix said, “Talk about having to grow up fast.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I was a sheltered child, at least as much as money and position and age can shelter anybody living in such a time. And then I wasn’t.”
“So, obviously,” Alix said, “that’s enough proof, right? I mean, here my grandmother is, with all her documentation and all her knowledge of the palace. Could we look for the tiara now, please?”
Dr. Eltschig didn’t answer her. He looked at me instead and said, “Your documentation and information are significant. Unfortunately, however, there could be at least two other explanations, and I don’t believe we can move forward without more proof than this.”