A Man Without Breath

Coincidentally, it was the same day the authorities told the Jews still held in the welfare office that they could go home too. I couldn’t believe it when I heard, and I imagine that the men and women who were released could believe it even less than me. The authorities had gone so far as to track down some Jews who’d already been deported and had them sent back to Berlin and released, like the others.

What was happening here? What was in the minds of the government? Was it possible that after the huge defeat at Stalingrad the Nazis were losing their grip? Or had they really listened to the protests of a thousand determined German women? It was hard to tell, but it seemed the only possible conclusion. There were ten thousand Jews who had been arrested on February 27th, and of these, less than two thousand had gone to Rosenstrasse. Some had been remanded to the Clou concert hall on Mauerstrasse, others to the stables of a barracks on Rathenower Strasse, and still more to a synagogue on Levetzowstrasse in Moabit. But it was only at the Rosenstrasse, where Jews married to Germans were detained, that a protest had taken place, and it was only there that any Jews were released. The way I heard it later, all of the Jews from the other sites were deported to the East. But if the protest really had worked, it begged the question, what might have been achieved if mass protests had taken place before? It was a sobering thought that the first organized opposition to the Nazis in ten years had probably succeeded.

That was one sobering thought. Another was that if I hadn’t helped Franz Meyer he would certainly have stayed in the welfare office in Rosenstrasse and his wife and sisters would probably have remained with the rest of the women outside, in which case all of them would still live. Homeless, perhaps. But alive, yes, that was quite conceivable. There’s no amount of aspirin you can swallow that will take away that kind of toothache.

I left the state hospital but I didn’t go home. At least not right away. I took a Ringbahn train north-west, to Gesundbrunnen. To begin work again.

The Jewish Hospital in Wedding was about six or seven modern buildings on the corner of Schulstrasse and Exerzierstrasse, and next to St George’s Hospital. As surprising as the fact that such a thing as a Jewish hospital even existed in Berlin was the discovery that the place was modern, relatively well equipped, and full of doctors, nurses and patients. Since all of them were Jews, the place was also guarded by a small detachment of SS. Almost as soon as I identified myself at the front desk I discovered that the hospital even had its own branch of Gestapo, one of whose officers was summoned at the same time as the hospital director, Dr Walter Lustig.

Lustig arrived first, and it turned out we’d met several times before: a hard-arsed Silesian – they always make the most unpleasant Prussians – Lustig had been head of the medical department in the Police Praesidium at the Alex, and we’d always disliked each other. I disliked him because I don’t much care for pompous men with the bearing if not the height of a senior Prussian officer; he probably thought I disliked him because he was a Jew. But in truth, seeing him at the hospital was the first time I realized he was Jewish – the yellow star on his white coat left me in no doubt about that. He disliked me because he was the type who seemed to dislike nearly everyone who was in a subordinate position to him or ill-educated by his elevated academic standards. At the Alex we’d called him Doctor Doctor because he had university degrees in both philosophy and medicine, and never failed to remind people of this distinction.

Now, he clicked his heels and bowed stiffly as if he’d just marched off the parade ground at the Prussian military academy.

‘Herr Gunther,’ he said. ‘After all these long years we meet again. To what do we owe this dubious pleasure?’

It certainly didn’t seem as if his new lower status as a member of a pariah race had affected his attitude in any way. I could almost see the wax on the eagle with which he’d decorated his top lip. I hadn’t forgotten his pomposity, but it seemed I had forgotten his breath, which required a good half-metre at least for a man with a heavy cold to feel properly safe in his company.

‘Good to see you, too, Doctor Lustig. So this is where you’ve been keeping yourself. I always wondered what happened to you.’

‘I can’t imagine it kept you awake at night.’

‘No. Not in the least. These days I sleep like a dog without dreams. All the same I’m pleased to see you well.’ I glanced around. There were some Hebraic-looking design details on the wall but no sign of the kind of angular, astronomical artwork the Nazis were fond of adding to anything owned or used by Jews. ‘Nice place you’ve got here, Doc.’

Lustig bowed again, and then glanced ostentatiously at his pocket watch. ‘Yes, yes, but you know, tempis fugit.’