Holocaust (4 page)

Peter’s reaction disturbs me. I do not conceive of myself as man whose own children run from him.

In the three years, between 1935 and 1938, the slow strangling of Jewish life in Germany continued. We did not leave. My mother kept insisting things would “get better;” my father gave in to her.

Anna had been forced to leave school, and now attended a private Jewish school. She was a superb student, much smarter (I felt) than either Karl or myself. Karl kept painting, struggling to make a living, shut out from almost all commercial work. Inga, ever devoted to him, worked as a secretary and was the main support of their marriage. Myself? I helped around the house, played soccer in a semi-pro league. We barely managed to get by.

My father’s patients, it was now evident, were those who, like us, had not had the foresight to leave.

Berlin
November 1938

Some routine files, reports from neighborhood informants, came across my desk today and I saw a familiar name—Dr. Josef Weiss.

Frankly, it was a break in the rather boring jobs I’ve been given. I do get to attend meetings with Heydrich now and then, but I’m rarely privy to top-level decisions. I try not to complain, though, I’m efficient, well-organized, and Heydrich knows he can depend on me to follow up on his orders. “Give it to Dorf,” he often says when he wants a memorandum simplified, or made readable, or properly worded.

I really have no complaints. Marta’s heart condition seems to have stabilized. The children are healthy. We eat well.

The sight of Dr. Weiss’ name today, November 6, was what made me think of Marta’s improved health, and that visit we made to his office three years ago. I read the notation, a report from a minor official who lived across the street from the Weiss clinic.

This is trivial stuff. Normally I would have bucked it to a local official of the RSHA, the department that deals with the Jewish question.

I mulled over the report for a while. Was it any of
my business? Oh, I am committed to our program, and I accept Heydrich’s views on the Jewish problem. I have reread
Mein Kampf
and digested it again, accepting in the main its arguments against the Jews’ eternal threat to Germany, and I suppose I should not have let an old loyalty to a doctor interfere. So I’m not sure why I did what I did today. Perhaps, I told myself, as I changed from my uniform to a plain gray suit, I owe Dr. Weiss a favor.

His waiting room looked dingier than I remembered. Paint flaked from the ceiling and walls. An old Orthodox Jew was sitting there, and a young couple. I knocked on the frosted glass door. Dr. Weiss opened it. He had on his white coat. He looked older, his face lined, and he had turned quite gray. He asked me to wait a moment. He was examining someone.

Then he recognized me. “My goodness,” he said. “It’s Mr. Dorf. Do come in.” He told the patient to wait outside.

Again I glanced at the photographs on the wall—his wife, his children, the wedding picture. I studied the younger children. The boy looked rugged, tough. He wore a soccer shirt.

“My younger boy, Rudi,” the physician said. “Played center for Tempelhof. A great athlete. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

I shook my head, and tried to suppress a certain sorrow. The doctor was bragging about his son, his ruggedness, his athletic skills, something we Germans respect—almost as if pleading to be accepted for something other than what he is.

He asked how Marta was, if I had come to talk about her, and I had to cut him short. I could not let past associations intrude. I showed him my badge, identifying me as a lieutenant in the SS, Berlin headquarters.

His face turned grayish, his smile left, and he asked if he had done anything wrong. A momentary guilt washed over me. Why should anyone persecute this man? As far as I know, he is the essence of decency. (Heydrich would answer that one can never tell with
Jews; they hide their evil plans behind a facade of good works and charity.)

I told him of the report that he was treating an Aryan woman. He admitted it. She was a former maid, Fraulein Gutmann, and he treated her
gratis
. It made no difference, I said, he had to stop. Dr. Weiss said he would. Then, trying to disarm me, he reminded me that he had once treated many Christians, including my family.

I realized at that moment what Heydrich means by steeling oneself to certain deeds. Times have changed, I said. Old customs are gone. For his good as much as ours. I impressed on him that I didn’t normally run such errands, warning Jews, that I was an administrator.

He forced a smile. “I see. You’re a specialist. You don’t make house calls.”

I got up. “Don’t treat the woman again. Restrict your practice to Jews.”

He followed me to the glass doors. Before opening it, he said, “All this is beyond my comprehension. I was your family doctor. I was concerned about your wife’s health.”

I stopped him. “Why haven’t you left Germany? You’re no pauper. Get out.”

He opened the door slightly, and I could see the people in his waiting room. “Jews get ill and need medical care,” he said. “If all the doctors left, what then? It’s the poor and the old who have lingered here.”

“Things will not get easier for you.”

“How much worse can they get? We are no longer citizens. We have no legal rights. Our property is confiscated. We are at the mercy of street bullies. I can’t belong to a hospital. I can’t get drugs. In the name of humanity, what else can you do to us?”

Heydrich is right about the dangers of getting too close to Jews. They have that habit of appealing, whining, ingratiating themselves. Although I must admit that Dr. Weiss bore himself with dignity.

“You must not come to me for help,” I said.

“Not even on the basis of an old doctor-patient relationship?
I considered your parents decent people. I have reason to believe they respected me.”

I shook my head. “I bear you no personal malice. Take my advice and get out.”

As I left I heard a piano playing somewhere in the house. I think my father once mentioned that the doctor’s wife is an accomplished pianist. She was playing Mozart.

November 1938, and we were still in Berlin. Looking back, I find it hard to blame my mother. Or anyone in our family. We stayed. We suffered for it. Who—except a few—understood the horrors that awaited us?

I remember the endless discussions. Stay. Leave. It will get better. We have a friend here. Some influence there.

My mother and my sister Anna were playing a Mozart duet one day when my father came trudging upstairs. I knew his tread. Not a big man, but a strong one. He let my mother and Anna finish the piece on the Bechstein, then applauded. Anna made believe she was angry. The piece was a new one they’d learned; it was supposed to be a surprise for my father’s birthday.

I was sitting in the corner of the living room reading the sports pages. Ever since my childhood it had been the only part of the paper that interested me. My parents, annoyed with my poor schoolwork, often said I had learned to read only so I could know the soccer scores, who won the prize fights.

“It was beautiful,” my father said. He kissed Anna. “I will love it even more on my birthday. Anna, you’ll be a better pianist than Mama some day.” He patted her hair. “Sweetheart, Mama and I must talk. Can you leave us, please?”

Anna pouted. “I bet I know what about.” In a singsong, she said, “Are we leaving or are we staying?”

Somehow I was allowed to remain. Perhaps they felt I was old enough to listen. My father stoked his pipe, sat down across from the Bechstein. “Remember the Dorf family?” he asked my mother.

“The baker. The ones who owed you all that money, then moved without ever paying their bills.”

“Their son was just here.”

“To pay old debts?”

“Hardly. Young Dorf is an officer in the Security Service. He warned me not to treat Aryans, and said I should get out of the country.”

I made believe I was riveted to the sports page, but I listened. My father seemed perplexed, more worried than I had ever seen him.

“We should have left three years ago,” he said. “Right after Karl was married. When we had a chance.”

My mother brushed back her hair. “Are you saying that we stayed because of me, Josef?”

“No, my dear. We … both made the decision.”

“I convinced you. Didn’t I? I said it was my country as much as theirs. I still believe it. We’ll outlast these barbarians.”

My father tried to shoulder some of the blame. The Jews who had stayed behind needed medical care; he had a job to do. But Mama—and I—knew he was acting, and not very well. It was her iron will that had kept us there.

“Maybe there’s time,” my father said. “Inga says there’s that chap in the railway department who might arrange something.”

My mother smiled. “Yes, perhaps we can ask again. But last time he wanted a fortune in a bribe.”

“If not us, then the children—Karl, Rudi, Anna. Let them get a fresh start somewhere. That Dorf fellow upset me.”

My mother rose from the piano bench. She stroked the polished surface of the Bechstein. Hers. Her family’s. “We’ll survive, Josef,” she said. “After all, this
is the country of Beethoven, Mozart and Schiller.”

My father sighed. “Unfortunately none of them are in office now.”

I left, saying nothing. My father was right. I had the feeling we had waited too long.

That afternoon I was sure of it.

I had put on my green-and-white soccer uniform and my cleats and had gone out to the local soccer field for a game against a team from another neighborhood, the Wanderers. We were called the Vikings. I was one of the youngest players on our team, and one of the best. I played inside left or center and I had led the league in scoring the year before. There had been a few other Jewish players in the league, but they’d quit. I’d been allowed to stay on, I guess, because I was too good to let go. Besides, I never took any crap from anyone. They only called me “kike” or “Jewboy” once. Not only could I move a ball the length of the field, through half the defense, but I could use my fists when I had to. And my teammates would stick up for me. Most of the time.

That day some big guy on the Wanderers, a back named Ulrich, deliberately tripped me while I was passing off. I had jolted him a few times, and he didn’t like the idea. When I got to my feet, he punched me. Soon they had to pull us apart, but I had belted him hard in the stomach, and I’d hurt him.

My sister-in-law Inga’s younger brother, Hans Helms, was playing for the Wanderers, an outside right. He tried to tell Ulrich to lay off and play ball. But I could see there’d be more trouble.

There was a throw-in. Ulrich and Helms started kicking the ball downfield. I stole the ball, and started the other way, when Ulrich hit me from behind. This time I got up swinging and we had to be separated again.

“He tripped me,” I shouted at the referee. “Why didn’t you call it?”

Ulrich’s nose was bleeding. I’d landed a right this time before they separated us. “Lousy kike,” he sneered. “Leave it to a kike to fight dirty.”

I tried to tear away from them. Hans Helms was one of the gang holding me back.

“Weiss, maybe you better get out of the game,” the referee said.

I looked at my teammates, waiting for one of them—at least
one!
—to stick up for me. But they were silent. Our captain kicked at the dirt. He couldn’t look me in the eye.

“I’ve started every game this year,” I said. “Why should I quit?”

“We don’t need Jews,” Ulrich said. “We don’t play against them.”

“Come in the alley and say that,” I said. “Just the two of us, Ulrich.” I was raging inside, furious. Why didn’t my own team stick up for me? Why was I being left alone?

The referee stepped in front of me. I was struggling to break loose. “Weiss, you’re suspended for fighting. Go on home.”

Once more I tried to appeal to my teammates, fellows I had played with for two seasons. They respected me. They knew I was a good player, one of the best. A sportswriter had once said I’d be a professional someday. But not a word.

Hans Helms tried to be kind, but he made it worse. “Rudi, the league wanted them to dump you last year—they made an exception.”

“To hell with them,” I said. I walked away.

I heard the whistle blow, the shouts, the bodies thudding, as the game resumed without me. I knew I’d never play again.

There was a bruise under my right eye, a cut under my right ear, from the fight I’d just had.

“What happened?” my father asked. He was washing up in his office. The last patient had left. He smelled of medical alcohol.

“Some guy started a fight with me,” I said. I didn’t tell him about being kicked off the team, how I had bloodied Ulrich’s nose. I certainly didn’t tell him that his daughter-in-law’s brother was on the opposing
team. There was a blind rage in me. My father, everyone else in my family, was incapable of it. Strangely, I was almost as angry with them for bowing, bending, refusing to fight.

“You know your mother doesn’t like you fighting,” he said.

“I know she doesn’t. But if anyone swings at me, I’ll swing back.”

He shook his head. Papa had always been a handsome man—tall, straight-featured. Now he seemed to bend a little every day, his face growing lines. “Well, you’d better wash up. Inga and Karl are coming for dinner.”

“I can bet what we’ll talk about.”

He took my arm. The medical odor was stronger. When I was injured, he’d tape my ankle, patch my wounds. We used to joke that if he ever failed as a doctor he’d make a great trainer for a soccer team. “Do you want me to put some iodine on that?” He pointed to the cut.

“No. I’ve had enough of them so I know how. Thanks, Papa.”

Dinner that night was one of the saddest I remember.

The same talk, the same discussions. Why hadn’t we left in 1933? Or at least after Karl was married? My poor father. He was in awe of my mother. She was beautiful, a born lady.
Hoch-deutsch
, he used to call her. A family whose ancestors had been “court Jews”—friends of princes and cardinals. And Josef Weiss of Warsaw? His father owned a little pharmacy that my Uncle Moses now ran. They’d saved every penny, and borrowed, to send my father to medical school. It was my mother’s parents, the Palitzes, who, in spite of their objections to their daughter marrying a Polish Jew, had helped him open his practice.