by Kulin, Ayse
“When they didn’t, you should have waited.”
“It’s me they’re after. They won’t arrest women and children.”
“That’s what you think!”
“Gertrude, please!” Gerhard’s father-in-law admonished.
She shot him a look, then stormed out of the kitchen.
When the men were alone, Paul, Gerhard’s father-in-law, said, “You’ve been traveling all day, so I suppose you don’t know what’s happened.”
“Something happened?”
“The German parliament has passed that constitutional amendment they’ve been drafting since the Reichstag fire.”
“Oh no!”
“Yes. The Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich is in force. As of today, Hitler has the power to make laws without passing them through Parliament. March 24 will go down in history as the day German democracy died.”
“But how could that happen? Didn’t anyone oppose it?”
“They changed the rules of procedure. And there was intimidation. The Communists were all either in jail or in hiding. Opponents were prevented from taking the floor.”
“But even after the latest elections, the Nazi party still doesn’t have a majority. Doesn’t it take two-thirds of Parliament to pass a measure like that?”
“You’re right. But the Social Democrats were the only party to vote against the act.”
“What!” Gerhard nearly choked on his coffee, splattering it on his shirt. “That makes no sense. Why would the other parties go along with it?”
“Because of that Reichstag Fire Decree. You know Hitler’s been using it to imprison his enemies, unleash his storm troopers, suspend civil liberties. He’s beaten the other parties into submission. And today they gave up, the cowards.”
“I don’t know why I’m so surprised,” Gerhard said. “Two weeks ago, they forced the mayor of Frankfurt to resign. Just like that, after ten years. Landmann completely transformed Frankfurt. To see a progressive like him, the first Jew ever to hold that office, replaced by a filthy Nazi!”
Gerhard’s stomach churned, the toast threatening to come back, just as his breakfast had.
“Son, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he lied. He’d left his wife and children behind, in a fascist country with a sham parliament at the mercy of a dictator. Paul handed him a napkin, and he dabbed at the stain on his shirt.
“If you’ve had enough coffee, let’s go to the sitting room.”
Gertrude had pulled her armchair over to the window and was peering out at the street. “Go to bed,” she said to Gerhard. “We’ll wake you when they come.”
“I’ll wait up with you.”
Gerhard huddled on the edge of the sofa, his chin in his hands. The images that had tormented him on the train began running through his mind again, more vivid than before. Elsa being interrogated about her husband’s whereabouts. An officer holding a pistol to Peter’s head. Elsa, defiant and in tears, as another officer dangled their baby girl from the window.
“NO!”
Was that his voice? Had he really shouted like that? His in-laws were staring in horror.
“If only . . . oh, how I wish I hadn’t . . .”
Too proud to gratify his mother-in-law with a show of remorse, he stopped himself from saying more. If only that train would arrive! The journey normally took ten hours, but with the connection, the endless starting and stopping, and the repeated checking of papers, it would probably be much longer than that.
“Paul, I’m going to our room,” Gertrude announced.
“Okay, dear. Try to get some sleep,” her husband said. “I’ll wake you up when they get here.”
“Sleep! At a time like this?”
She can’t bear to look at me, Gerhard thought. And I don’t blame her. The morning’s fear of arrest was nothing compared to these pangs of conscience. But it was too late. He’d allowed cowardice to get the best of him and jumped on the first train, abandoning his family. What if they were still at home? Perhaps he should call the apartment?
He crossed to the phone. No, he mustn’t. A neighbor might hear it ringing and realize they’d fled. For the hundredth time, he told himself to remain calm. By panicking, he might endanger his family. They must be on the train right now. Otherwise, Elsa would have called to ask if her husband had arrived. He sprang to his feet and began pacing the room.
“Gerhard, you’re making me dizzy,” Paul said.
Gerhard sat back down on the sofa.
“How are you getting on with your research? I took a look at those articles you sent. I’ve got a few questions for you.”
“Fire away,” Gerhard said.
Two hours later, the men were so engrossed in genetics, blood types, and miracle cures that they failed to notice Gertrude standing over them with two steaming cups of linden tea.
“What are you talking about? Politics?”
“No. Something far more consequential!” Paul said. “The latest advances in our field of medicine.”
“Ah, I see. I hope you haven’t talked our son-in-law’s ears off.”
Gerhard was deeply grateful that his father-in-law had distracted him with a subject for which they shared a common passion.
“Were you able to get some sleep?” Paul asked his wife.
“Certainly not. I’ve been in the kitchen baking a cake for the children. They’ll enjoy it when they finally get here.”
“If it’s ready, we wouldn’t mind a slice,” Paul said.
“I’m making it for them, not you. And anyway, it’s still in the oven.” Gertrude set the cups of tea on the coffee table. “What on earth is taking that train so long?”
Gerhard was muttering something about delays and connections when his father-in-law silenced him with a wave of his hand.
“We’ll wait. Calmly and patiently.”
The two men sipped their tea in silence as the room filled with the vanilla scent of rising cake. Gertrude’s arrival had broken the conversational thread, and neither man had the energy to retrieve it. Gerhard rested his weary head against the back of the sofa, but fought to stay awake, afraid of his in-laws’ judgment. He closed his eyes for a moment to soothe their burning.
In his dream, he was wriggling like a fish deep in a dark-blue sea, unable to decide which shore to swim toward. He struck out to his left and then to his right. Then, a fish with shimmering scales floated into view. It had the face of his baby girl, her mouth coming closer to kiss his cheek. He closed his eyes tight to make the dream last. Then he heard Elsa’s voice. She sounded so close.
“Aren’t you going to welcome us, Gerhard?”
His eyes flew open.
He jumped to his feet, nearly dropping Susy, who’d climbed on his lap to kiss him. He threw his arms around his wife and his son, kissing them again and again. Then he sank back onto the sofa, buried his face in his hands, and allowed himself to sob like a little boy. Susy grabbed at his knee to pull herself up to standing. She tried to take a step, but fell.
“Oh, Elsa! Did you see that?”
“She’s been pulling herself up on the crib bars for months but managed to stand up all the way only about two weeks ago.”
Gerhard picked up his daughter, feeling sheepish to have missed such a big milestone.
“Come to the kitchen, everyone,” Gertrude called. “Breakfast is ready.”
Stumbling to the kitchen with Susy in his arms, Gerhard felt, for the first time in his life, that the reins had completely slipped from his hands. He didn’t know where he would find work, how he would live, or what tomorrow would hold. All he knew was that the simple, ordered existence that had been his until yesterday was gone forever.
Poised to begin a new life whose course he couldn’t begin to envision, he felt like a baby taking its first steps: timid and anxious, but full of excitement.
Time in Zurich
Over the next few weeks, Gerhard and his family settled into life in Zurich. Elsa, who kept busy with
housework and the children, didn’t seem to mind being a refugee in her parents’ home. Peter, who was enrolled in a primary school two blocks away, also seemed perfectly content. As for little Susy, she was happy to bask in her grandparents’ endless adoration. Everyone adapted quickly, except Gerhard.
Although he hadn’t expected to find a position at one of Zurich’s university hospitals this close to the end of the academic year, he’d been confident that one of the city’s many hospitals and laboratories would want him. When nothing came through, he had applied to employers throughout Switzerland, and even to medical colleges elsewhere in Europe and in America. Those who deigned to respond sent tersely worded letters stating in no uncertain terms that, alas, there were no positions available for an eminent pathologist such as himself.
Gerhard cursed his lack of foresight. He’d grown so accustomed to professional acclaim that he’d foolishly imagined himself to be untouchable, despite knowing full well that discrimination against Jews was increasing daily. He should have brought his family to Zurich long ago. Now, he was competing with thousands of other German émigrés.
The latest letter from his sister described the Nazi-led boycott of Jewish businesses launched soon after his family’s flight from Frankfurt. The newspapers, too, were full of reports of Brownshirts harassing any customers who dared patronize Jewish-owned shops.
Even worse was the Aryan paragraph passed in mid-April. Doctors, teachers, lawyers, and other professionals with a Jewish parent or grandparent were barred from civil service across Germany.
The stuff of nightmares was becoming reality.
Since Gerhard couldn’t camp out in his in-laws’ home forever, he would have to take whatever he could find. He could work as a salesclerk, a remedial tutor for medical students, even a taxi driver . . . there was nothing dishonorable about honest work. But for this to have happened just as he was about to be named department chair! Desperate, he spent his days scouring the help wanted ads in the local papers. One day, his father-in-law interrupted this demoralizing search with a proposal.
“Gerhard, what would you think of helping me out while you’re waiting for a reply to your job applications?”
“Of course. What do you need?”
“I’ve decided to set up an office.”
“An office?”
“An employment agency, but with a twist. I’m going to compile a list of the names and specializations of Jewish scientists and academics who’ve lost their jobs in Germany, and try to place them elsewhere in Europe.”
You might find me a job first, old man, Gerhard thought as he calmly asked, “Are you planning to rent space somewhere?”
“I’m going to use the downstairs bedroom.”
Gerhard stared at him in bafflement, thinking of how crowded the house already was since his family’s arrival.
“And what would you like me to do in this office of yours?”
“You can assist me with the filing.”
“What about expenses? I mean, you’ll need a phone, supplies . . .”
“I’ll request a small fee from our applicants, just enough to cover operating costs.”
Gerhard was silent for a long moment. “Are you trying to create work for me, sir?”
“No, Gerhard, it’s not about you. I have academic contacts all over Europe, and by God, I’m going to use them to help people. I get done lecturing by four in the afternoon, and I intend to spend the rest of my day on this. Seeing as you have some free time at the moment, I would appreciate your help. That’s all!”
“I understand, sir. I wonder if you would mind adding my name to your list of job-seekers?”
“You’re at the top of the list. Now, shall we go downstairs and start organizing our new office? Then you can begin creating files by professional grouping, and we’ll review our applicants.”
“How will people find out about your agency?”
“I’ve prepared an ad to put in the newspaper. But whatever you do, don’t tell Gertrude. We were saving up for a new oven, but I’ve already spent it all on the ad.”
Gerhard’s mother-in-law might not have noticed the inconspicuous ad that appeared a week later in the inner pages of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, but purged academics of all backgrounds learned that the Association to Assist German Scientists Abroad was now operating out of Zurich. Applications began pouring in. Gerhard filed each, including his own, by career group. He arranged rows of binders on the office shelves and then stood back to survey his work. His heart sank. Those hundreds of scientists—some of them Jewish, some of them Communist, all of them unfairly dismissed—seemed to be staring back at him with pleading eyes.
Would they really be able find employment for them all?
In the following days, Paul and Gerhard rarely discussed Hitler’s regime. Even when several heinous decrees were passed in a single day, Gerhard and his father-in-law would avoid mentioning it, almost as though they had entered an unspoken pact. Perhaps it was simply more than they could bear, or perhaps they hoped morning would soon come and bring an end to this night of torment.
But one morning in late April, Paul waved a newspaper in his son-in-law’s face and finally let loose.
“Have you seen this? They’ve essentially outlawed kosher ritual slaughter!”
“Let’s hope this mania for harassing Jews doesn’t spread to Switzerland,” Gerhard said, not letting on that he himself had never been particularly observant.
“Switzerland is a neutral country! They would never allow Hitler to mess with the world’s safety deposit box.”
Gerhard sighed and hoped the old man was right.
Just a few days later, they read that the Law Against the Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities would limit Jewish enrollment to 1.5 percent of the total student body, including at the university level.
A raft of discriminatory acts followed, one after another: Jewish doctors were no longer allowed in German hospitals, Jewish pharmacists couldn’t operate drugstores, Jews were banned from taking the bar exam, and Jews couldn’t participate in sports.
At the dinner table, Paul remarked to Gerhard, “It’s a good thing you came here when you did. Not only would you be unemployed, you wouldn’t be getting any exercise, either.”
“Father, I’m afraid I fail to see the humor in it,” Elsa said. “They’ve taken over everything.”
“They’re even going after the police now. Göring has founded a special Nazi force—they call it the Gestapo,” Gerhard added.
And in fact, that same week, the newspapers reported that Frankfurt’s chief of police, a full-blooded Aryan, had been fired simply for speaking in defense of union leaders, Social Democrats, and professors arrested on trumped-up charges.
Meanwhile, the Action against the Un-German Spirit campaign led by the German Student Union began organizing mass book burnings. On the tenth day of May, bonfires were lit in eighteen different university towns. Rudolf wrote to Gerhard the following day:
I am so relieved that you heeded my warning and were not there to witness, as I was, the shameful events of last night.
An enthusiastic crowd gathered at nine o’clock in Römerberg Square, the site of the Fountain of Justice in Goethe’s Poetry and Truth. They built an enormous pyre out of brushwood and scraps of lumber. A metal container of gasoline was produced, and the pyre burst into flames. There are no words to describe the vile and disgraceful scene. A villager’s cart had been rented for the occasion. A pair of oxen drew the rickety vehicle, which was heaped with books, up to the pyre. Marching behind the cart were students, professors, deans . . . It mortifies me to write this, Gerhard, but you would have recognized many of them—men and women who, like me, live in fear of losing their jobs. And then, who do I see but Father Otto, the very man who baptized my children, clambering into the oxcart to deliver a speech. And it was he who threw the first book into the flames. Can you imagine? Even the clergy has crossed over to the other side!
Paul, too, received a le
tter, his from Professor Hammen, a colleague in Berlin. He read a section of it aloud to his son-in-law:
Certain events defy description, but I will do my best. Thousands flocked to Opera Square last night. Books plundered from the nearby university library were conveyed to the square in wheelbarrows. Many hundreds of books were also brought from the far ends of the city in delivery vans. Those very same university students to whom we have dedicated our lives, the ones whose moral characters we seek to elevate and whose intellectual horizons we strive to broaden, began tossing books, one by one, onto the bonfire. Many of them wore the brown shirts favored by members of the SA and SS.
I watched through binoculars from a nearby building. It was an unbearable sight, but I, as a scientist, considered it my duty to witness and record each detail of the depravity unfolding below, that moment humanity lost its collective mind.
Dr. Goebbels addressed the crowd in a speech that was also broadcast live on the radio. “No to decadence and moral corruption!” he told the students, exhorting them to rid Germany of “the intellectual garbage of the past.” The students continued to cast those works deemed “un-German” into the flames, chanting, “Against class warfare and materialism, for the community of the people and an idealistic way of life! I deliver to the flames the writings of Marx and Kautsky!” and “Against decadence and moral degeneracy, for decency and customs in family and government, I deliver to the flames the works of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser, and Erich Kästner!”
One after another, on it went. Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Emile Zola, Maxim Gorky, Marcel Proust, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, and our own Nobel Laureate, Thomas Mann . . . all were consigned to the flames. Thousands of books reduced to ashes because their authors are Jews, or Communist, or nihilists, but in truth because the power of ideas poses a threat to Hitler. The bonfire rose to the skies, and the students we are educating—ah, Paul! The students we have failed to educate—chanted and danced. That sea of fire shooting sparks and spewing ash . . . my heart, too, was reduced to cinders that night. Do you remember what Heinrich Heine wrote a century ago in that scene where Christians burn the Koran? One of Heine’s characters, a Moor, says, “This is but the prologue. Where books are burnt, people in the end are burnt, too.” How prescient! I shall save my tears, for I fear the worst is yet to come.
