by Jana Petken
Paul gulped his wine, banging the glass on the table when it was empty. He detested Krüger. Because of him, the hospital wards were now nothing more than rooms with beds where the only treatments were the doctors’ voices giving encouragement to their patients. Under dire circumstances, and in the face of isolation, helplessness, and hopelessness, they had become the medicine.
Krüger had also removed the hospital’s only X-ray machine. It had been based in Medical Centre Number 4 but shared with the other three hospitals. No bandages, linens, or disinfectants had been delivered since June. The pharmacy’s shelves housed little more than a few hidden boxes of aspirin, some gauze, and a crate of potatoes; the hospital had started months earlier to give potato peelings to patients on prescription for they were found to contain some essential vitamins, minerals, and fibre content. Paul, desperate for any type of medicine, had given the skins to the Jews to treat burns, warts, stings, infections, heartburn, stomach pain, and indigestion; however, he’d freely admitted to fellow doctors that the specifics and quantities of this potato treatment were pure conjecture. That was how bad things had become.
Anatol and Hubert had also been dismissed from Hospital Number 4. Both men had transferred to the Lodz Christian hospital after Krüger had hardened the Gestapo’s stance against Christian civilian doctors treating Jews. One week later, the Christian hospital shut down and the two men were out of work.
As his comrades sang yet another song about the Fatherland with drooling, discordant voices, Paul slid his favourite photograph from his wallet sleeve. It was tattered at the edges and smudged in the centre where his fingers continually brushed the image. He held it between his index finger and thumb, a whimsical smile playing on his lips…
“Is she yours, Paul?” The man sitting next to him at the table jolted Paul from his thoughts as he tapped the photograph with his finger.
“Yes,” Paul smiled at the Gestapo assistant. “She’s my daughter, Erika. I can’t believe she’s almost three months old. You’ll have to excuse me … I never get tired of gazing at her.”
“She’s beautiful. She must resemble her mother, ja?” the man laughed.
“I also got a letter from your father-in-law today, Paul,” Krüger shouted from two chairs away, just as the singing died in the middle of the third verse. “His health continues to improve, and he’s even taking on more work. Aren’t you due leave? You must be eager to meet your daughter in person?”
Paul caught Gert out of the corner of his eye. He looked drunk, swaying on his feet at the bar as though he were in a rowing boat in rough seas.
“Herr Oberarzt, are you bored with our company that you have to sit there looking at photographs of home?” Gert slurred. “Are we not entertaining enough to hold your attention?”
“I could look at my daughter all day, Untersturmführer. It’s better than looking at these drunken louts,” Paul retorted with a laugh.
“All you … medical types are far too serious for your own good,” a man shouted down the length of the table. “C’mon, Herr Doctor, get another drink down you!”
“You never know, it might give you back the good humour you lost somewhere between Germany and Poland,” Krüger goaded, and everyone else at the table laughed or hooted their agreement.
Gert staggered towards Paul, knocking into an empty chair on the way. Of the four SS officers who had attended, he was the last of them to leave. “I’m going to my bed. I could do with a helping hand. How about you, Doctor? Like the Kriminalinspektor said … you’re as boring as Methuselah’s farts…”
Krüger butted in, “I didn’t say that. I said he was … ach, who cares!”
As the laughter continued, Paul replaced the precious photograph in his wallet and then stood up with an exaggerated yawn. “Ja. I think you might need help getting home, Untersturmführer. I’ll take you,” he told Gert, as he buttoned his jacket.
When the two men reached the door, Paul turned to face the long table. Chuckling, he wagged his index finger at the partygoers and shouted, “Don’t any of you here think you can come to me tomorrow for hangover remedies. Thanks to the Inspektor, who’s as drunk as a fly in a wine vat, I have no medicines to give you.” He refused to thank Krüger for the invitation since he had hated every minute of his bloody party.
Next to the exit, Gert was fumbling in his pockets while the young hostess looked bored. “Damn coat check ticket … here somewhere.”
“You don’t have a coat. Come on, Gert. Let’s get you back to barracks,” Paul said, finally leading Gert outside as he put his cap on.
When the two men cleared the street, they took a quiet road that led to the city’s park. It was a shortcut to the barracks, which was situated approximately halfway between the club and ghetto. They reached a clump of trees where Gert halted. He swept the deserted area, then dropped his drunken charade.
“We don’t have much time before the others catch up to us,” Gert said, looking behind himself again.
“What’s going on?”
“In about six hours, the Gestapo and SS will close the remaining ghetto hospitals. Everything in them is being tossed out. Your patients are being deported to Chelmno. I’m sorry, Paul.”
Paul felt the sting of bitterness hit him. “Damn them. No one has said a word about this to me. Are you sure about this, Gert?”
Gert nodded. “I’ve already received my orders. We’re going in at 0500 to round up every patient. Whatever equipment and medicines remain are being transferred to the Gestapo’s offices in Alexanderhoffstrasse.”
“This is insane.”
“You had to know it was coming?”
“Of course, I did, but I thought the Gestapo would do me the courtesy of telling me beforehand.”
“When have they ever been courteous?”
Paul shoved his hands into his pockets. “I should have guessed. One of Krüger’s men asked me tonight why I didn’t give up on my job. The bastard said, ‘Do you now sing your patients better?’ He got a good laugh, as though it were a standing joke.”
Paul’s eyes smarted. He’d always known this day might come, but now that it had, he found it inconceivable. “It’s all been for nothing. My job is a joke. All my patients are going to die.”
Gert started walking. “We’d better get back.”
“I should go to the hospital,” Paul said, hesitating.
“There’s no point going there. You won’t be allowed inside the building unless the Gestapo or SS order you to go in. Paul, there’s nothing you can do to stop this or slow it down. You must not interfere on the Jews’ behalf. I can’t stress this enough to you.”
Paul checked his wristwatch; it was just after 2330. His throat closed as he imagined his sick, terrified Jews being dragged from their beds. Incensed, he croaked, “There are one hundred and seventy doctors, nurses, and hospital staff in those four hospitals. Almost all of them are Jews. Are they safe?”
Gert cast his eyes around the area. “C’mon, Paul, we can’t stand here discussing this. Those drunks we left at the party will be coming this way any minute.”
Paul reluctantly obeyed, striding at a good pace beside Gert. “Tell me, Gert, are my staff on the deportation lists?”
“Yes, but I don’t know their names or how many are being expelled.”
“Dear God.” Paul angrily pulled the peak of his cap down. “Fuck them … fuck the Gestapo and SS. I’m going to my office now before they start blocking the entrances. They can’t keep me out if I’m already inside, can they?”
Gert’s eyes widened. He staggered and slurred, “Ach, I do … I miss my Germany … had enough of this bloody country.”
Caught off guard, Paul glanced behind himself then called out, “Help me get him to his bed, will you?”
Three genuinely drunk Gestapo officers staggered towards Paul and Gert. “What are you two up to?” one of the men slurred.
“I can’t manage the heavy lump alone. I’ve picked him up off the ground twice already,” Paul e
xplained when the men had reached him. “Do me a favour, will you? I need to pick something up at the medical centre, and it can’t wait until morning. Will you take him the rest of the way?”
Paul left the three men to deal with Gert and hurried across the park towards the hospital. He had no idea what he was going to do when he got there, or what he’d say to his nightshift staff. This is it, he thought. This was going to be the last time he’d treat patients in Łódź. He’d be transferred before the end of September; a failure as a doctor and human being. His redemption now would be for him to serve on a battlefield. Saving the lives of German soldiers thrown into battle alongside him would make him feel human again.
Another ghetto posting would finish him off.
Chapter Nine
Paul went through the floors, wards, and offices, praying his Jewish doctors had heard about the deportations and had already gone into hiding. In the staffroom, he tried to telephone Leszek Lewandowski, the hospital administrator, to warn him not to come in. Lewandowski often arrived early to sleep on the staffroom couch, which was, according to him, more comfortable than the bed he shared with three other people in his ghetto tenement apartment. Paul had no fondness for the man but didn’t want to see him murdered at the hands of the SS.
“Damn it!”
Paul threw the telephone across the staffroom and watched it smash against the wall. No operator had come on; the lines had already been cut.
He sat for a moment, his mind reeling with dismay. Ninety patients were in the wards. Most were expected to die, and soon, but they should pass away with the comforting presence of a doctor or nurse by their bedside, not while being tossed into a truck, train, and gas van in their final hours.
Paul wept; his tears ran down his cheeks, and squeaky sobs escaped his tight lips even as he opened the door to the corridor.
In the pharmacy, he pushed aside his emotions and set to work. He emptied the boxes of aspirin that had been hidden and put the pills into brown paper bags. He removed his jacket and shirt, then taped the bags to his chest using ribbon gauze bandages. After re-dressing, he filled his trouser and jacket pockets with leftover pills until they bulged. He wanted to take the last of the syringes, petroleum jelly ointment, and suture kits, too, but if he tried to conceal too much on his person, he’d appear oddly shaped.
Krüger and the higher ranks of the SS and Gestapo had deliberately kept the details of this operation to themselves. Had it not been for Gert warning him, Paul would have reported for duty two hours after the deportations had begun. Both he and Gert made a point of not being seen together except when in the company of a larger group of men. Krüger had spies everywhere. They followed Paul every time he left the ghetto, and he was certain they were watching him in the officers’ barracks as well, which was why he hadn’t been able to speak to Gert for over a week.
Whether he was in the hospital now would not change the lethal outcome for his patients, he acknowledged, as he continued searching for anything that might be useful in the future. But he could try to guide his staff to safety and calm the situation.
The staff nurse was at her desk in the centre of the third-floor ward. Paul’s first instinct was to ask her to hide the Jewish patients or tell them to run for their lives, but he reconsidered. If they could run, they wouldn’t be in the damn hospital in the first place, would they?
Twenty patients were either sleeping, weeping, or groaning; the familiar, pitiful sounds that filtered through every ward during the night when everything was bleaker. Their legs, affected as they were by peripheral oedema, were unable to support their skeletal frames. Jaundiced, with bellies swollen from starvation, each patient was moments or days from death; there would be no miracle of modern technology that could save even one of them.
Paul halted at the bedside of a young woman who had suffered a miscarriage due to malnutrition. Since he’d been in Poland, he had recorded four live births. He had concluded during his first weeks in Poland that the Jewish women in the ghetto were too unhealthy to conceive or carry babies to term.
The woman smiled at Paul.
“Hello, Doctor.”
Paul held her hand. “How are you tonight, Margarit?” he murmured.
“I feel better. Can I go home soon? My little boy misses me terribly.”
Paul’s grim expression mirrored his thoughts. One wrong word or move and he’d be charged with aiding and abetting Jews. No word or move and his soul would be damned.
The staff nurse looked up from her paperwork. “Doctor, can I help you?” she asked, a worried frown creasing her young forehead. No more than twenty-five years old, she was skinny, and her once-pretty face was gaunt. Like most of the staff, she appeared to have aged ten years in the last few months.
“Why are you here, Doctor Vogel?” she asked again.
“Come with me, Nurse Wiśniewski,” Paul said quietly.
In the corridor, Paul explained the situation. “At five o’clock, the Gestapo and SS will come here to remove everyone in this building. The hospitals are being closed, and patients and staff are being deported.” He paused to swallow the hard ball of cowardice at the back of his throat. “I can’t stop this, Zusanna,” he said using her first name. “I must follow orders, and you must help yourselves.”
Her chalk-white face crumpled. “What can we do? What shall I tell the patients? You’ve heard the rumours, Doctor. You know what people are saying. They’re going to kill us!”
Paul, inadequately equipped to deal with the weeping woman, shook her by the shoulders until she gasped for breath. “Look at me – look at me,” he ordered.
She stared at Paul as though he were her executioner. “I’m sorry. I’m scared.”
“No … no, I’m sorry.” He let her go, ashamed of his overly harsh response. He should be giving her hope, not shaking the life out of her.
“What do you want me to do?” Zusanna asked.
“When the Gestapo and SS come through these doors, they will order everyone downstairs. Give them your full cooperation. See that every patient who can walk gets out of their beds and makes their way to the ground floor.”
Zusanna’s teeth were chattering as she nodded her understanding.
Paul had not denied the rumours of the death camp, which had been circulating for weeks in the ghetto, nor had he alleviated her fears of being killed once in German custody. His Jewish staff had finally begun to respect him. To lie would be to break the trust he had built over the past year and a half.
He swallowed painfully again. “Zusanna, if you, your colleagues, and your patients attempt to leave the hospital before the Gestapo and SS get here at 0500, I will not stop you. I will not stop Margarit over there, nor the woman in the next bed, nor any of the sick in the wards.”
The nurse, still hoping for answers, appeared confused as she stared up at Paul. “What do you mean?”
“Listen carefully,” Paul snapped in a deliberately hard tone. “I am going now to the mortuary, to open its exit doors to the street. When I arrived, the area at the back of the building was still clear, so if anyone were going to, for example, take a walk, they should do it now … now, before it’s too late. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand, Doctor. I know what to do.” She looked into the ward from the corridor, her eyes shining with tears. “I will give my patients the choice to go or stay. If I don’t see you again … goodbye. I wish you well.”
Paul’s resolve to remain neutral dissolved somewhere between Zusanna’s ward and the stairwell. Before making his way to the mortuary, he went through every floor and ward again, this time to explain to his staff about what was coming for them. To hell with the Gestapo. He and his hospital workers had made private covenants with the sick, to support them and not to abandon them under any circumstances. In the weeks since Krüger’s thugs ransacked the hospital, Paul had witnessed heroics and acts of innovation more common on battlefields.
He wasn’t sure how many of the staff would leave their patie
nts, but a young nurse put her reason for running away into perspective. “If the medical staff are taken, the weakest Jews in the ghetto will suffer even more than they do now. I have to hide because I will be needed to care for the sick tomorrow and the day after, and for however long we can survive the Germans.” She’d given Paul hope that other staff members would follow her example and try to escape.
Paul hung his head as he walked down the last few stairs to the basement. This heralded the end of the shabby, but still semi-functioning, treatment centre. Understanding and compassion were all that remained, but insubstantial as those things were, Paul was convinced they gave the human spirit hope, and that was a vital commodity when healing the sick.
“You’re doing the right thing. You’re not cowards,” Paul told his staff when they began to leave their posts. No, they weren’t cowards; he was the spineless shit amongst many brave people. Krüger was going to arrive cloaked in self-importance, and he, Paul, would bow his head, nod when appropriate, and follow orders like a good little Hitler youth boy.
The abandoned mortuary stunk of rotting flesh. For months, it had been used as a storage room for the dead. It had ceased to be a place of learning or for performing medical procedures and autopsies after the Gestapo sent a letter stating they weren’t interested in causes of death, only that a Jew had died. Strict records were kept in the ghetto of every death and birth, of which there were, respectively, many and few.
Paul studied the four corpses lying naked on the floor. According to the register, they had died between 2000 hours and 2200 hours. He recognised the youngest male. The boy, about fifteen, had been admitted the previous morning, too far gone to be saved. He’d literally starved to death. “You’re lucky. You’ve found peace,” Paul muttered.
A foot scuffed, the mortuary door opened, and four staff members, their faces tinged blue in the torchlight, entered the room.
Startled, Paul put his finger to his lips, opened the locked exit door to the street with his key, and went outside to check if the area was still deserted.