A Perfect Madness (13 page)

He had been too occupied to hear the
small police KdF-Wagen pull up beside him in the street but turned
immediately when the car door slammed shut. Still clad in a Prague
police uniform, the officer nodded to Erich and walked slowly over
to where he was standing, looking first at Erich’s bloody pants and
then the two lifeless bodies.

“
Pretty bad sight, huh?”
Erich said nervously to the officer in German.

“
You did this?”

“
No, no, some wild men did
who ran away. I was trying to see if they might still be alive,
that’s all.”

“
What is your name?” the
officer asked brusquely.

“
Erich Schmidt,
and—”

“
From Prague?”

“
No, Dresden. I am a
medical student at the German university here.”

“
Dresden, you say?” the
officer asked, noticeably changing the rough tone of his voice to a
more pleasant manner.

“
Yes, my father is Dr.
Schmidt at Berlin University.”

“
You have papers, I
assume?”

“
At my apartment. We can
go there—”

“
That won’t be necessary,”
said the officer, returning the small notebook to his breast
pocket. Then, after slowly circling the bodies, he stopped and
squatted down, looking intently at the old woman’s face and the
eyeball resting on her lips.

“
You don’t see that kind
of mess every day, do you,” he said, pointing to the poor woman’s
bloody, caved-in face.

“
I guess not, but we see a
lot of bad things over at the hospital,” Erich responded, feeling
more at ease now with the change in the officer’s
demeanor.

“
Do you know who they are,
anything about them?”

“
No, nothing.”

“
Jews, would be my guess,”
the officer said, abruptly turning away from Erich and walking back
to his car. “We’ve seen a lot of this today.”

“
Are you just going to
leave them here?”

“
Why not? Let the German
patrols deal with the old man and woman. They’re running the show
now.”

“
German
patrols?”

“
Yes, curfew checks. The
Gestapo put them in this afternoon. They’ll run from ten at night
to seven in the morning. I’d forget about the dead Jews and get
home,” were the last words Erich heard as the officer sped
away.

Staring for a second more at the
mangled bodies, Erich wondered if they might be kin to Julia. They
would be gone in the morning, taken to the morgue for claiming. But
what if they had no kin, no one to wish them well into the next
world? He was disturbed at the thought. A pauper’s grave, or a
cadaver for the medical students to fish out of a tank to carve
on—this was all that was left for them. No one, except maybe God,
would ever know they were here, or even existed. They had become a
statistic for future historians to fool with, that’s
all.

Before leaving, Erich stood looking at
the deserted streets facing him. Faint sounds of mechanized
vehicles moving somewhere over distant roads could still be heard,
but that was all. Quickening his pace, he crossed an empty roadway
through downtown Prague and turned up the street leading to his
small apartment at the end of a side alley. Once inside, he lit up
a half-smoked cigarette, sat down on his bed and cried, much like
when frightened as a child. But no one was there to hold him as his
mother would do. Shaken by the horrors of the evening and the
unrelenting fear he felt, he lay back on the bed, staring at the
ceiling, trying to work through all that had happened. Even though
he was only a German student in Prague, his relationship with Julia
had been too open for the world to see. Besides, he had been
warned. At this time in history, a Jew and a German were like
opposite poles of a magnet, never to embrace. But he had tried to,
and that was his sin before the authorities. With the Nazis in
control of Prague, the Nürnberg laws would soon hang heavy over the
city, turning many of its people against all Jews and those that
befriended them. Erich sighed. Returning to his studies at the
medical school here in Prague was no longer an option. Instead, he
would assume the much-copied role of the prodigal son of old and go
to his father in Berlin to seek reconciliation with him. There the
prestigious wings of his father would carry him far in finishing
the final semesters of his medical studies at the great Berlin
University. Then, in time, he would find a way to escape Germany as
others had, and go to Julia in England where his world would be
right again.

***

NINE

Berlin, 1939

T
raveling 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.