“It’s a girl!” she said. “A tiny, beautiful girl. She has all her fingers and all her toes.”
No response from Susan. Rebecca cut the umbilical cord with the scalpel. She held the baby up until she whimpered and Rebecca knew she was breathing on her own. She needed to get to an incubator. Rebecca wrapped up the bundle in a clean towel.
She placed the baby beside Susan, who shook her head and closed her eyes, a tear squeezing through. “Watch her while I finish.”
She tied off Susan’s end of the cord and cleaned her up with more towels. Through the dark night a siren approached. It wasn’t until the doorbell rang that she allowed herself a deep breath and finally acknowledged the pounding of her heart.
chapter six
April 1, 1933
The first day of April should excite Frieda with the prospect of spring. Despite the chill, the morning air feels milder on her skin, the cold edge gone, as she leaves her family’s apartment on Sächsische Strasse. But she cannot rejoice in the buds forming on the branches of the linden trees, or the sparrows flitting around the muddy lawns. Today, all the Jews in Germany, her family included, are in a kind of limbo. All week newspapers and radio broadcasts have announced the imposition of a boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1. The uncertainty of what will happen gnaws at her. Since Hitler became chancellor, the world has become a dangerous place. A Dutch Communist was accused of setting fire to the Reichstag in February. He was barely intelligible in court, a halfwit not competent enough to burn down an outhouse, never mind the parliament building. Nevertheless, the Nazis convicted and decapitated him. Then, using an emergency decree, they jailed opposition leaders, forced writers, scientists, and physicians into exile, and beat up anyone who spoke out.
Vati says things have gone badly for Jews before, that it is a phase that will pass and they must make the best of it. He is still privileged, with his Iron Cross, and can get on a first-class train car with only a second-class ticket. He gets a pension from the government as a war veteran. It will all pass.
Vati has already left for the store, three blocks away from their apartment. Saturday is their busiest day. Frieda walks with dread toward the fashionable stores of the Kurfürstendamm, the elegant street that runs perpendicular to Meinekestrasse, where Eisenbaum’s is located. She will pass it on her way to the U-Bahn.
The only thing that keeps her going is the prospect of her medical studies. Yesterday at the hospital she delivered a baby on her own for the first time. No assistance, only a doctor’s supervision. She felt elated for the first time in months. A healthy baby boy yowling at his sudden entry into the world. She smiles, remembering.
The smile dies on her face when she turns east onto the Kurfürstendamm. Brown-shirted ruffians stand guard in front of stores along the street. Only stores owned by Jews. She almost stops breathing as she passes them in their full uniforms, guns prominently displayed in their holsters, high polished leather boots up to the knee, arrogant legs spread apart.
The first Jewish store she passes, Schmidt’s, where they sell sewing supplies, thread, imported trims, and buttons, is closed, the metal gates up. When she reads the sign posted on the gate, she understands why a business would keep closed on their busiest day.
“Achtung Deutsche! Attention, Germans! Kauft nicht bei Juden. Don’t buy from Jews. These Jewish parasites are the gravediggers of German craftsmen. They pay German workers hunger wages. Hungerlohne. The proprietor is the Jew Herman Schmidt.” The word Jew is printed in larger letters than the rest.
Frieda keeps walking, unable to help staring into the faces of the young brutes, searching for their eyes, which retreat into shadow beneath the peaks of their pillbox caps. They look like normal boys, some with pimpled cheeks, all with chins set in unquestioning resolve. She cannot fathom it. Is this the city she was born in, has lived in all her life?
Another sign, this time posted on a store whose owner has dared to open shop. “Deutsches Volk! Defend yourselves! Do not buy from Jews. The Jews of the whole world want to destroy Germany!”
An elderly woman tries to enter the store, which sells gloves and stockings.
The uniformed hooligan posted by the door jeers at her. “Go buy from real Germans, Gnädige Frau. Down the street, you’ll find a store where the Jews don’t steal your money.”
“You have no right to tell me where to buy,” the old woman says.
“Jewish cow!”
“I’m not Jewish! I don’t have to be Jewish to go into a Jewish store.”
The man smirks at her. Other women hang back and turn around.
Frieda’s heart sinks as she approaches Eisenbaum’s. A blank-faced ruffian stands guard by the door, ignoring Vati as he rages. There’s a sign posted over the window that names him as the proprietor, “the Jew Ernst Eisenbaum.”
“This is an affront, you understand. Not only is it an insult, but you’ve got the wrong place. Check your orders and you’ll see there’s been a mistake.”
“You are not the Jew Eisenbaum?” The brute’s voice drips with sarcasm. Frieda recognizes a nasal country accent.
“You have no idea who you’re dealing with. Maybe this will clear things up.”
Vati reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a leather box. Frieda can hardly watch, though she cannot turn her eyes away. The thug turns his head slightly, glancing down. Vati opens the box and holds the Iron Cross, the country’s highest medal, in front of the man’s face. The lips tense up, the eyes unknowable in shadow.
“I was fighting for this country while you were still wetting your bed.”
A small crowd has formed around them, though Frieda hangs back.
“He has the Iron Cross. Leave him alone,” one woman bystander says.
“Show some respect,” another woman chimes in. “Get out of here.”
The Brown Shirt lifts his face enough to bring his eyes out of the shadow. They flit around the group, assessing the situation. Frieda realizes he’s younger than she, not more than eighteen. Less sure of himself, now; confused. He nods curtly and, nostrils flaring, stalks away.
Vati looks up and spots her, the pain in his eyes unbearable. Her throat fills with bile.
The whole ride on the U-Bahn, Frieda sits shaking. The rage and loathing she feels frightens her. She walks toward the hospital with a purpose she doesn’t feel. It’s her habit to walk briskly as if she knows where she is going. The self-assurance of her gait has encouraged younger students at the university to ask her for directions. But she feels no such confidence today.
Once inside the hospital with its clean white walls, its instruments to measure blood pressure and heartbeat, she is relieved. She is in her element and can immerse herself in the study of the human body, the only thing she understands anymore.
At least she can look forward to rounds with Herr Doktor Rosenzweig, her favourite professor. He has agreed to supervise her thesis, which all medical students must submit in order to earn the title of Doktor. Her topic is puerperal fever, the infection caused by streptococcus that still kills women after childbirth, sometimes taking their infants with them. These are the most heartbreaking deaths she has witnessed in the hospital. She can see the roundish cells of streptococcus pyogenes on slides of tissues under the microscope. The bacteria can live without oxygen but can also tolerate it, an admirable adaptive mechanism. Something to teach mankind. Normal individuals can harbour the bacteria without getting ill. But when organisms are introduced to vulnerable tissues, like tears in the vagina after childbirth, festering infection occurs.
Herr Doktor Rosenzweig gathers his group of medical students around a woman who just had her gallbladder removed. Frieda implicitly trusts his medical acumen; his bushy brown eyebrows are paternal and make him a comforting presence. His posture has a tentative quality today. Not the tall, straight-backed picture of confidence that is usual.
He has just started presenting the case when Ilse Remke marches up to him followed by Herr Doktor Kuhn, a junior physician with
thick blond hair. Ilse proclaims in a loud voice, “We have a message for you from the faculty. You are no longer wanted in this hospital. You are to leave today.”
His mouth falls open during a second of stunned silence. “How dare you!” he cries, his face turning red. “You are not allowed to speak to me like that. I’m a senior physician.”
“Herr Doktor Kuhn is taking over.” She turns to Kuhn, waiting.
Kuhn clears his throat. Rosenzweig was his advisor. “I regret ... Your services are no longer required,” he mumbles.
Ilse, barely containing herself, shouts, “You are to leave at once!”
The paper in his hand starts to shake. “I take my orders from Herr Doktor Taubman,” he says, teeth clenched.
Ilse’s mouth tenses into a line. “We’ll see about that.” She turns on one foot and stomps away, Kuhn following.
They all stand there in shock, watching her back recede. The students turn back to Rosenzweig, who is pretending to study the patient’s chart but who Frieda can see is staring rather than reading. The patient looks bewildered and engages one of the students in a discussion of how to relieve her pain.
In a few minutes Ilse returns with another senior physician, Herr Doktor Ledeker, a balding man with a round face and wire-rimmed glasses. He is shorter than Herr Doktor Rosenzweig and seems to be addressing his neck.
“Apparently you did not understand Fräulein Remke, who was relaying our message. Let me make it perfectly plain. Herr Doktor Rosenzweig, you are no longer welcome here. You must leave now. You have five minutes to gather your things and get out!”
The doctor’s face has turned purple. “I’ve been at this hospital for nearly twenty years. You don’t have the authority to dismiss me! I’m going to Herr Doktor Taubman to see about this!”
A wicked smile plays around the edges of his lips. “Herr Doktor Taubman is no longer the head of the hospital. He has been dismissed. Along with all the other Jewish doctors who have taken the place of true Germans. Now we will finally have a real hospital.”
Rosenzweig’s head quivers, his jaw set. He is controlling himself, but Frieda sees the pulse beating in his neck, senses the disgust, the rage. He stares down at the shorter man, his mouth slightly open, as if he will say something. Instead, he turns to Frieda, avoiding her eyes.
“Don’t forget the patient,” he says to her hair. He turns and walks away. Two Jewish students look at each other, wordlessly follow him out of the room and down the hall.
Frieda cannot move. She wishes she could sink into the floor and disappear. Ilse Remke is glaring at her, but Herr Doktor Ledeker has moved toward the gallbladder patient and is beginning to present the case. Another Jewish student, Wurzburg, has also stayed. Frieda cannot hear the doctor through the buzz in her head. His outline has become fuzzy, the whole room waves and shimmers. Where is she? Surely not the familiar, sensible hospital she used to feel safe in. Who are these people? She cannot remember their names, though she knows she should. The man beside her (what is his name?) moves an elbow into her arm and brings her back. But is she back? Is this the same place? Everything looks different to her. The paint on the walls is a duller white and shines on a peculiar angle that sets shadows beneath everyone’s eyes. She tries to focus on the patient, tries to remember why she is here. Her mind is in turmoil for days after the dismissal of the Jewish doctors, who made up at least one-quarter of the total physicians in the hospital. How can she go on? How long will they let her? Her immediate concern is her thesis — how will she finish it without a supervisor?
By the end of the week she has decided to approach another professor, Herr Doktor Rausch, to supervise her thesis. He teaches her class laboratory techniques and is a down-to-earth, pleasant fellow.
One afternoon she knocks on his office door and is shown in. He sits down behind his desk, a chubby little man with curly brown hair framing a bald crown.
“What can I do for you, Fräulein Eisenbaum?”
He is not smiling now as he usually does in class, and her confidence fails. But she will not leave without trying.
She begins to speak quietly. “I have a problem since the dismissal of Herr Doktor Rosenzweig.” Rausch begins to blink, and she looks away from his face before proceeding. “He was the supervisor for my medical thesis and now ... I am well into it and would like to be able to finish it. I was wondering if you ... if you would consider being my supervisor.” She looks at him finally for his reaction.
It’s his turn to stare into space. Finally he says, “I understand your position, Fräulein Eisenbaum, but you must understand mine. The atmosphere in the hospital ... It’s very strict now ...” He finally looks into her eyes again and his resolve seems to go flat. “I will ask the administrator and let you know tomorrow in class.”
For the first time she feels some hope.
The next day, they are seated on their benches in the lab when an unfamiliar man walks in wearing a white coat. “I am Herr Doktor Gebhardt,” he says. “Your new laboratory instructor.”
Some of the students exchange glances. Since Frieda’s position in the class is precarious, she has stopped speaking out. But she is not the only one concerned. One of the other students asks, “Is Herr Doktor Rausch coming back?” Frieda suspects Rausch was his thesis supervisor.
“I understand he has retired from the hospital,” says the new instructor.
An embarrassed silence descends on the room. Rausch was a well-liked teacher. Not only Jews, it seems, are “retiring.”
While the class goes on, Frieda’s heart sinks. The slide under the microscope is blurred and will not focus. It is all her fault. Because Rausch didn’t have the heart to turn her down. Because he didn’t toe the party line. He went to the administrator on her behalf and it cost him his job. Maybe all he did was ask if he could supervise a Jewish student’s thesis. Maybe that was enough in this new system in the hospital, in the country, that did not acknowledge even the possibility of treating a Jew on an equal footing.
In the next few weeks the configuration of the classroom shifts. The first few rows are reserved for students wearing Nazi armbands who salute each other with “Heil Hitler!” on entering the room. Frieda finds herself sitting further and further away till she is in the last row along with the few other Jewish students whose fathers are decorated veterans of the war. Her face burns with shame and anger. If Jewish doctors are not “true” Germans, what are they? What is she?
The new rector of the university, a staunch Nazi, has introduced twenty-five new courses in racial science. Medical students must now learn about the ascendancy of the Aryan race in all facets of life, both physical and moral. One of her new texts is devoted to skull types.
One day Ilse Remke passes her on the way into a class and whispers in her ear, “The only reason you’re still here is that your father bribed someone to give him the Iron Cross.”
Frieda is reading an anatomy book while she waits for Leopold at a table in the corner of the hospital cafeteria. She no longer feels comfortable in the centre of the large hall. She tries to be as inconspicuous as possible, as one of the few remaining Jews still allowed to practise in the hospital. People watch her with resentment. Some with curiosity. Where is Leopold?
She wishes she could melt into the furniture. She ignores all of them studiously. Especially Hans Brenner, a medical intern a few years ahead of her, who sits at a table across the hall, speaking to a dark-complected man she has seen him with before. A foreign student stands out in the sea of pale faces and is not befriended by everyone. Brenner avoids eye contact with her, but every time she looks up, he’s watching her. He’s not unattractive, his brown hair thick and his eyes dark, but those eyes frighten her with their overweening ambition.
She keeps her face doggedly in her book, so that she doesn’t see Leopold until he is standing in front of her.
“Sorry if I kept you waiting,” he says, “but there was a bit of a family emergency.”
He steps aside to reveal behi
nd him a slender adolescent girl, her hair arranged in two pigtails.
“This is my sister, Hannelore,” he says. “I’m looking after her today.”
The girl is plain, with heavy black eyebrows and wide cheekbones. Nothing like Leopold, except that her dark eyes are intelligent and she smiles unsurely.
“Is today a school holiday?”
Hannelore lowers her head so that all Frieda can see is the white part down the mi`dle of her crown dividing the thick hair.
Leopold glances around nervously but the tables near them are empty. He doesn’t notice Hans Brenner across the hall. “Hanni’s school no longer accepts Jews,” he says quietly.
“Bastards!” Frieda mutters under her breath. The girl’s eyes widen at this, then a shadow of a smile.
“Tomorrow she starts at a Jewish school,” he says. “She has to go a little further, but it’s a good school. A very good school. Today she has a holiday.” He pats her head with affection.
Frieda wonders how many other Jewish children are having holidays in Berlin.
“What’s your favourite subject?” Frieda asks her.
Hanni looks up and gives a half-hearted smile. “Sports.”
Leopold smirks. “Hanni is an excellent athlete. Not so good in math or history. But she jumps very nicely.”
Hanni blushes and glances at Frieda to see if she’s listening. Frieda looks attentively into her eyes to encourage her. Hanni blurts out, “At my sports club, I’m the best high jumper.”
“She’s a rabbit,” Leopold says, skirting the top of her head with his hand.
“Don’t do that,” she says. “I’m not a baby.”
“How old are you?” Frieda asks. “I’m fourteen. I’m going to train for the Olympics.”
“The Olympics! Really!” She glances at Leopold, who nods distractedly.
“That’s very ambitious. Good for you.”
“I’ll be seventeen when the Olympics come to Berlin. I’m going to be the best high jumper in girls.”
Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle Page 63
