The Elixir of Immortality

by Gabi Gleichmann

  “First, there’s me—I’m Luiza. There’s my very rheumatic mother, Erzsi, who is terribly afraid of losing all her hair and is always wailing about that. Most of the rest of the time she sits in that broken-down old armchair for days on end, thinking about the past, sighing, and waiting to be fed from what little we have. Sometimes she tries to tell my five children how things were in Transylvania when she was young. But they’re too little for that and don’t have the patience to listen to old folks.”

  Luiza’s heart filled with joy as she told the story of her life. It was obvious that unlike Miriam she was never at a loss for words. She assured Miriam that she had become inured to the unremitting injustices of life and was endowed with a vitality that triumphed over everything. The only thing she could not stand was self-pity. “One shouldn’t whine,” she declared. “One must bear up to one’s circumstances instead and fulfill one’s destiny before finally giving up and disappearing forever.”

  Luiza said that she didn’t believe in God but even so, every day she thanked her Maker for her good memory. It was the only thing about her that had always worked well and had never failed her once in her forty years on this earth. She was of the opinion that certain people are born with a special ability to remember things. She herself had memories of things that had happened long before her parents had first met, and of course she could recall everything, even the tiniest and most ridiculous details of the lives of every person she had ever encountered. As a demonstration of this unique gift she told stories about people, mostly those living in the same building. She freely acknowledged that she loved sad stories—the more tear-stained, the better. Sad stories thrilled her heart.

  She told how folks in the building had been afflicted by heat and cold, deformities and hunger, poverty and sickness, in fact by all the plagues of the human condition. They were worn down and tired out. Some had given up hope, and some had fallen into despair over the pointlessness of existence. But there was still something nearly noble about them, something worthy of respect. They were good people.

  “Nothing is really either black or white,” Luiza said. “The truth is that the white often enough has some black in it, and the black is just something white that went wrong somehow.”

  Miriam listened to her and tried to come up with something intelligent to say. She compared the stories that Luiza told her about the neighbors’ desperation and poverty with her own experiences. She was embarrassed. She felt that she had no right to bother Luiza with her own trivial life story from Chertnow. So she said nothing.

  THE AFTERNOON had given way to dusk. Luiza asked no questions of her. Miriam was relieved not to have to explain why she had left her village. Luiza’s mere presence had a calming effect upon her. Not a single time since that evening when she’d met Jasja had her spirit been so serene. She felt appreciated, for no one had ever afforded her so much time and attention. Suddenly Miriam felt enormously comforted, and she shivered with release and a sense of freedom after her great adventure.

  EVEN THOUGH she never said so, Miriam believed that she had been graced with a great favor when fate brought her together with Luiza. She had traveled to Budapest in quest of her sister, a home, and a family. She never did find Rachel. But with Luiza she found everything else she was seeking.

  Luiza had partitioned off the bed in which Miriam was lying from the rest of the apartment with a length of dark cloth tacked to the ceiling. There, in that space of scarcely twenty square feet, Miriam would live with her daughter, Sara (my future grandmother), for more than a quarter of her life.

  I’LL HAVE MORE to say about Miriam and her daughter, Sara. Just now, however, something else has come to mind and a different story insists on being told.

  ADI WAS ABOUT to turn fifty. All Germany was preparing to celebrate the Führer’s birthday. They were planning for it to be the celebration of the century, even bigger than the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. The week before the actual day—April 20, 1939—he made a lightning visit to Frankfurt and had an indication of what to expect from the German people, who idolized him. The swastika reigned supreme over the city. The fifty thousand party faithful crammed into Wald stadium eagerly watched the airplanes circling above and scattering banners with swastikas. Cries of Heil! thundered out when the leader appeared upon the stage of honor. His fifteen-minute speech was a concentrated harangue. He praised the German Volk, those courageous men and women who feared nothing and were ready to offer their lives for the fatherland. That was all there was to it. The uproarious jubilation seemed never-ending. The sea of people wept for joy. Then the Führer left the stadium for several other meetings with the German people.

  The idea came from Mathäus Frombichler. The two friends were staying at Berghof, the Führer’s private residence in southern Bavaria, not far from the regions the Third Reich’s battle-ready storm troops would plunge into a new world war only four months later. On that uneventful morning with clear skies one could look out the broad windows and see all the way to Salzburg in the north. An almost palpable melancholy lay over the kitchen. Frombichler was chopping onions for a salad niçoise for the day’s lunch. Adi was scowling and cleaning his fingernails with a kitchen knife. He was appalled by the thought of his birthday, he said, because he hated the idea of getting older. He lay down the knife and grasped his genitals. His dissatisfied expression suggested that the object of his interest was tiny and flaccid. He commented sourly that he’d almost forgotten how to use the thing, because Eva was completely uninterested and as dried up as a hole in the desert. He no longer got anything from her except a good-night kiss on the forehead. Frombichler was quick to reassure him that this didn’t mean that her affection for him had cooled. Adi heaved a sigh of resignation.

  Two young soldiers stood watch at the door of his kitchen. They couldn’t avoid overhearing the Führer, and they became as pale as the baguette the cook was chopping into the bread basket. Disconcerted, they fixed their eyes on the floor.

  Fritz, Eva Braun’s favorite German shepherd, was dozing beneath the kitchen table. He cut a tremendous fart that made Frombichler and Adi grin like schoolboys.

  Adi dropped the subject of his love life and complained about the unexpectedly strong reactions worldwide to his annexation of Czechoslovakia. He was vexed that the only statesman who understood him was that clown Mussolini.

  Frombichler lifted an eyebrow. “Adi, maybe you should release some of the better-known prisoners from Dachau. Many people abroad are unhappy that authors and celebrities are prisoners there. Let a few of them out on humanitarian grounds for your birthday celebration. That should quiet the criticism of you out there in the world.”

  “That is unacceptable,” Adi replied. “We can’t set such criminal scum loose just because a few liberal MPs in London are whining. That would be a mistake, a very big mistake.”

  “But a necessary one. Adi, just think about it. I don’t need to explain to you that Dachau is no ordinary prison. No one there has been tried or sentenced for anything. That’s a stain on your reputation and on Germany. The London liberals can’t stand the thought of cultural figures in jail, wearing stripes. They want them in somber, perfectly tailored suits. Put dark suits on them, let a photographer take a few pictures as they leave Dachau, and ship them off to England. That’ll make everyone happy.”

  “You’re talking like a moron, Mathäus! They’re Germany’s worst enemies. Jews, communists, homosexuals, Gypsys, trade unionists—”

  “So release fifty of them. It’ll be a symbolic act, and you won’t miss any of them,” Frombichler insisted. “We have plenty of prisoners in German jails.”

  After lunch Adi instructed Hermann Göring, his favorite, to draw up a list of the prisoners in Dachau.

  Two volumes arrived the next morning with more than seventeen thousand names. Adi had gotten up on the wrong side of bed, and now he threw a real tantrum. He screamed that nitpicking bureaucrats were drowning Germany in a flood of paperwork. Frombichler calmed him down. Picki
ng out fifty names would take no time at all, he said. He handed the first volume to Adi and took the other one himself. They began to page through them at random.

  “Bruno Bettelheim, psychologist and author … Hermann Broch, author … Alfred Cohen, dentist … Surely no one in London is weeping for a dentist. That’s one Jew who’ll have to stay in Dachau,” Adi decided.

  Hermann Göring carefully noted down the names of those to be released, regarding Hitler with almost religious reverence.

  Frombichler’s eyes fell upon a familiar name. His pulse accelerated. This can’t be true, he thought. He cleared his throat. “Franz Scharf, cabaret artist,” he said.

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING a guard came to the barracks to fetch my great-uncle. The soldier was a short man, not in the prime of life, but he was carrying a heavy rifle. Scharf was to report to Sturmbannführer August Behrendsdorff. “For special treatment, or something,” he added darkly. My great-uncle panicked. His hands began to tremble and his mouth suddenly became dry. Behrendsdorff, an Austrian, enjoyed whipping specially chosen prisoners until their backs and rears were bloody; then he violently jammed blunt objects up their rectums and raped them. Everyone knew it. None of his victims had lodged any complaints, however, for the Behrendsdorff special treatment always concluded with a pistol shot to the nape of the neck.

  Rain had fallen overnight, and the morning sky was dark and cloudy. My great-uncle knew his last hour on earth had arrived. His heart raced. He walked as slowly as he could. The soldier ambled along behind him and said nothing. The muddy path led through a gate topped with barbed wire into the area where the commandant’s office was located.

  The Sturmbannführer smiled pleasantly, rubbed his hands together, and offered him coffee. It was ersatz—not the real thing—and disgusting. But Behrendsdorff seemed not to be bothered by the taste of it.

  “Do you know why you’re here, Herr Scharf?” he inquired.

  Without waiting for an answer, he explained that the Führer in all his generosity had pardoned him. He was to take a shower, shave, and receive an issue of new clothing. He and various other prisoners would be driven to the railway station in Munich. The first train to Budapest left at six o’clock that evening.

  “Are you terribly disappointed, Herr Scharf, that we’re sending you home to your family?” Behrendsdorff gave a dry chuckle and sipped coffee. “We expect the gentleman to stop speaking ill of our leader. Tell people instead about German hospitality here in Dachau. Herr Scharf has received room and board from the authorities for a whole year, and we have asked nothing from him in exchange.”

  My great-uncle sat there in silence, plunged in thought. He didn’t believe a word of this Austrian’s farce. He thought this was part of Behrendsdorff’s despicable routine of torture, beguiling his victim into believing he was about to go home. But a few hours later and with an immeasurable sense of relief, he took his seat on the train to Budapest, completely baffled by the pardon granted to him with no indication of who had secured it.

  MAREK HALTER, the French author who grew up in the Warsaw ghetto, made a documentary film not too long ago—I seem to recall that it was titled something like Rescuers in Dark Times—about individuals who had saved Jews from the Nazi extermination machine. It included an interview with Mathäus Frombichler, who had been awarded Israel’s highest honor, a proclamation recognizing him as Righteous Among the People. The elderly cook described how he had gotten the idea for his rescue operation, one of the most remarkable of the Second World War, when he came across the name of his old friend Franz Scharf on the list of prisoners at Dachau.

  Frombichler was notorious, for he was Hitler’s half-Jewish cook. After the fall of Berlin the Russians arrested him in the Führer’s bunker and held him prisoner. During the interrogation led by Captain Lev Kopelev he confirmed that Hitler was dead and the charred remains in the office were indeed the leader’s. He gave an account of the last hours of the Führer, describing how Hitler had raged when he heard that the Red Army was less than a quarter of a mile from the bunker. Not even Hitler could believe any longer in a final victory. He waved a pistol wildly, his hair fell across his forehead, and he screamed that it was all the fault of Jews who had undermined the German nation. Frombichler was convinced that Adi was about to shoot someone. Others with them expected to see a nervous collapse. But then Adi mastered his emotions and asked for his favorite meal, salad niçoise, to be served in his office. When Frombichler brought it to him, Hitler invited him to stay and share his last meal. The three of them had lunch together. A couple of flies settled on Eva Braun’s plate, and she waved them away with a grimace. They seemed to make her lose her appetite; she didn’t touch her salad. She sat silent while the two men ate. The friends recalled the times of their apprenticeship in Linz many years earlier. Hitler rambled. He wondered how many of their Jewish classmates were still alive. The only name he could remember was that of Ludwig Wittgenstein. He could still see him very clearly, that rich little Jew who was two years younger than they were but who was permitted to attend the same class because everyone thought he was superintelligent. But he was no fighter. Hitler told how a couple of times after his father beat him, he turned around and took revenge by attacking other boys at school. Ludwig Wittgenstein was the one who usually got the worst of it, he recalled, because he was a puny little whelp who never defended himself. What had become of that Jewish wunderkind? They got up from the table after they’d finished the meal. Hitler shook Frombichler’s hand and thanked him for their long friendship. Eva Braun kissed her husband’s forehead and then swallowed poison. She died almost instantly. Hitler tried to commit suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule, but the poison wasn’t strong enough to finish him off. He writhed in torment. The pains in his belly were unbearable. He begged his friend to help him end his life. Frombichler picked up the pistol that lay on the table and aimed it with a trembling hand at Hitler’s temple. He placed his finger on the trigger. “Shoot!” screamed Hitler. But the pistol was not loaded. Frombichler spat on the floor and swore. Increasingly pale, Hitler howled in pain and pleaded to die. Frombichler rushed out to the kitchen and grabbed a heavy cast-iron frying pan. With two decisive blows he crushed Hitler’s skull. He stared at the body, then took several minutes to recite Kaddish for his friend. He went to the kitchen for kerosene. He emptied two full bottles over his friend and set the body alight. He stood by the flames, tears in his eyes. As he was leaving Hitler’s bunker, he was seized by the Russians.

  Eighteen months later Frombichler and twenty-three physicians were put on trial in Nuremberg for crimes against humanity. The physicians had carried out experiments in various concentration camps—lowering body temperatures to less than eighty degrees Fahrenheit, throwing women out of airplanes high in the sky, excising vital body parts without anesthetic, sterilizing adults, carving the embryos from the bellies of pregnant women, injecting black dye into children’s eyes, spraying chloroform into the hearts of twins, disjointing dwarfs, murdering, injuring, and handicapping countless prisoners. A couple of the physicians were pardoned, several received long prison sentences, and eight were sentenced to death and executed.

  Of course, there was no reason to put Frombichler in that group. He was no physician. But as a mere cook he could hardly be tried with senior military officers and politicians.

  The trial went on for eight months. Hundreds of documents were introduced into evidence. Nothing established any guilt on Frombichler’s part. His only crime—if it could in fact be counted as such—was that he had kept Hitler strong and healthy by providing him sustenance with tasty food.

  In the final phase of the trial three witnesses appeared and testified under oath that the cook had saved their lives. Somehow he had arranged for them to be released from concentration camps and permitted to leave Germany. More than four hundred people owed their lives to him.

  Frombichler was acquitted. The American judge Francis Biddle asked him to reveal to the court the details of his incredible r
escue operation, and the cook happily did so. His account sent everyone in the court into gales of laughter. Frombichler explained that after the Führer’s fiftieth birthday they’d made a pact, he and his friend Adi. Every time he concocted a dinner that aroused Eva Braun’s libido so Hitler could exercise his male member and feel like a real man, Frombichler was permitted to consult the voluminous archives of the Gestapo and to choose two names from any of the concentration camps. Those individuals were immediately released. When the judge asked whether there was any special recipe that had saved many lives, the cook answered with a grin: “Five-sixths dark chocolate, licorice for the rest, spiced with a touch of anise. It worked every time.”

  Frombichler sold his chocolate recipe to the Zurich-based enterprise Lindt & Sprüngli many years later. It made him a wealthy man. He retired to Burgenland and purchased his boyhood home close to Castle Biederhof. But his chocolate recipe, called Eva B. by the company, never reached the market. The Swiss health authorities never approved it.

  ONE MORE THING needs to be added to this story, and that concerns Captain Lev Kopelev. He volunteered for the Red Army when the war broke out, and his superiors soon noted his intelligence, decisiveness, and courage. His fluent German and sense of diplomacy were great assets in the war when Hitler’s fortunes changed and Stalin’s troops went storming toward Berlin. Kopelev was assigned to interview captured officers. Few other interrogators had such command of the German language. Many of them compensated for their linguistic shortcomings with their fists. Some applied rifle butts. A number attempted to impress their superior officers by beating to death the people they were supposed to be interrogating, especially those of lower rank. But not Kopelev. He treated the Germans with respect and was always friendly. He never used violence, either psychological or physical, and he didn’t enter into political discussions with prisoners of war. He much preferred to discuss the music of Wagner. He adored Wagner, although he found some of the scores fairly torrid and emotionally manipulative. In a quiet tone and without vaunting himself he demonstrated a profound understanding of the operas in which the master’s tone and dramatic ethos had achieved their fullest realization: Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal, and Die Meistersinger. His interrogations turned into discussions of culture. By behaving in a manner completely different from what the prisoners expected, he won the trust of even the most recalcitrant adversaries and brought them over to his side. The highest ranked officers, usually of aristocratic background, were especially susceptible. They proved unable to hold their tongues and quickly revealed the secrets of the Wehrmacht. Kopelev was highly praised by his superiors and was decorated several times for valor. Unfortunately, his successes awakened the envy of his colleagues. Strange rumors about him began to circulate. At first they were mere whispers, but the accusations rapidly became bolder and more open, then turned into direct attacks. The charges were extremely serious. His interrogation methods were criticized. His patriotic loyalty was questioned. Some held that he was all too friendly with the senior German military. Others claimed that they’d heard Kopelev, a native of Kiev, speaking about Holodomor, the mass famine in Ukraine in 1932–1933 that took the lives of between four and five million, and that he had blamed Stalin for deliberately creating that disaster. Several reported that they’d heard him say that soldiers of the Red Army had raped more than two million German women and plundered even more homes. Kopelev was summoned to Moscow shortly after his interrogation of Hitler’s cook. He was informed that the People’s Commissiariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) was going to decorate him with the Order of the Red Star, Third Class, for his accomplishments as an interrogator. He felt honored and proud. He wished his parents could see him. He traveled to the capital, never suspecting a thing. Not even when he was ushered into the presence of the generally feared Lavrenty Beria, the head of the NKVD who had sent countless men and women to their deaths, did Kopelev sense that anything was wrong. When he reached out to shake hands, Beria clapped handcuffs on him and glared at him with immense loathing. “Your disgusting fraternization with Nazis is a knife in the back to the party leadership that relied upon you,” Beria said. “You are a traitor to the motherland. It will be a pleasure to see you hanging from the gallows.” Kopelev was taken away by two guards. They went to the basement where a cluster of officials were waiting. Only then did he realize how grave his situation was. The trial took only a few minutes. A prosecutor read out the charges. His voice was so tense that Kopelev actually felt sorry for him. The allegations were manifestly ridiculous; Kopelev wanted to ask the prosecutor if he could respond and whether the man really believed that mishmash of lies he’d just presented. But he didn’t have the opportunity; the judge immediately sentenced him to ten years of exile in Siberia for spreading bourgeois humanism and showing excessive sympathy for the enemy. “You’ll have plenty of time to regret your crimes,” was the judge’s comment.