Kersten left the embassy feeling doubly trapped. He wanted to scream his utter vexation at the top of his lungs.
~~~
Auguste Diehn came to the clinic once again. Kersten was immediately guarded.
“I am going to ask you again for a favor that only you, Doctor, can do,” Diehn began.
Kersten remained his usual gracious self on the outside. But internally he was irritated. The last time Diehn had asked for a favor, it led to a serous interruption to his agreeable life. Now, another request?
“I had working for me in the kitchen at the potash mine a fine old foreman, honest, conscientious, loyal, and peace-loving. But alas, a Jew. And a Social Democrat.”
Kersten didn’t want to think where this was leading.
“For this, my old friend has been sent to Dachau. I am afraid that he may never come out alive.”
Kersten tried to hide his frustration in his voice as he spoke.
“That is a shame. But what can I do about it?”
“Come now, Doctor. I think you know what I am getting at. You have Himmler’s trust and confidence as even his closest associates do not have. I am confident that you can persuade Himmler to have this man freed, just as you convinced him once not to nationalize our potash mines.”
Kersten felt a tightening in his stomach. All he had ever wanted was to be a doctor, a healer, a husband who enjoys the company of his wife and enjoys watching his children grow up.
But he had learned that the stomach sends signals to his brain to pay attention and listen. Instead of ruling the request totally out of hand as he might have wished, he remained silent for a time and listened internally.
This would be raising the stakes much higher, too high. To persuade the head of the SS to have a Jewish member of the Social Democratic Party released in the current insane climate? Preposterous! The request might just awaken the monster within Himmler that goes to sleep during the treatments. The idea of intervening frightens the shit out of me.
Kersten didn’t share his fear and doubt with Diehn, however. Before he spoke again, something inexplicable nagged at him, objected to his rational thinking, and moved him to turn his thoughts about the request upside-down and regard them from a different perspective.
Hmm. This idea has never occurred to me in the times I’ve been with Himmler. Is perhaps Himmler not the only one here who has power over a man’s life and death? Do I really want such power? But if it’s given to me to save a human life...Isn’t that what a doctor dedicates his life to do?
Diehn was persistent.
“Think about it, Doctor, and if you are a praying sort of man, pray about it. In any case, here is a memorandum with all the facts in the case.”
~~~
A few days later, Himmler had an excruciating attack of abdominal cramps. Kersten rushed to the Chancellery, and as usual, quickly relieved the Reichsführer of his agony. But this time, instead of getting up briskly, Himmler remained lying down on the divan, half naked, basking in the relief.
“Dr. Kersten,” Himmler said, “what in the world would I do without you? I think I would die of pain.”
Kersten nodded humbly, accepting the gratitude.
“It’s what doctors do.”
“The other ones who have come to see me don’t seem to be able to,” Himmler countered. “I will never be able to repay you commensurately. I have a very guilty conscience about you, Doctor.”
“Guilty conscience? But why?” Kersten asked in astonishment.
“You take such good care of me. But I still have not compensated you a single pfennig for your invaluable service.”
“But you know, Herr Reichsführer that I do not charge by the session, but only after the cure is complete. It’s not time for that yet.”
“Yes, you told me that at the outset. But that doesn’t keep me from feeling guilty. You still have to live. You now have a wife to support as well. You must tell me how much I owe you.”
This man is a man of surprisingly modest means. He doesn’t even pilfer a single Reichsmark of the secret slush fund he established for special SS campaigns. His single-minded fanaticism for Hitler is irritating, to say the least. But he’s the only honest man in the Nazi command. Queen Wilhelmina and other European aristocratic patients have made me a much richer man than Himmler. I don’t want to take his money. Perhaps while he seems to be in a giving mood, I should ask him for my freedom instead.
Suddenly, Kersten had one of those serendipitous, spontaneous flashes of intuition that turn out to be momentous and determine the course of the rest of one’s life.
The image of the stooped, elderly Diehn appeared in Kersten’s mind. He recalled Diehn’s request. Like a man inspired, he intuited that the time was now or never; this was the moment to take the risk.
If this goes badly, it could pose a threat to Diehn. I must not mention that the Jew in Dachau is in any way connected to him. Diehn is a rare gentile these days who has compassion for a former employee who happens to be a Jew. He has stuck out his own neck by confiding in me and naming his request to me explicitly. If what I may be about to do arouses Himmler’s ire, he can have Diehn arrested, or worse. Nonetheless, Diehn took a risk, and now I must also.
Kersten felt the moisture of perspiration in the palms of his hands. Taking his portfolio, he slowly pulled out the memorandum that Diehn had given him.
Kersten looked at the cover of the memorandum as though he were undecided about what to do with it now that it was in his hands.
I can stop myself right now. But if I let him see it, there’s no turning back.
A resolved smile grew on his face. He closed his eyes as he paused one more time for moral fortification. Then he handed the memorandum to Himmler.
“Here is my bill, Herr Reichsführer.”
Himmler took the memorandum and began perusing it. Himmler’s slack skin and muscles under his chin quavered slightly.
“I don’t understand,” Himmler said, confused. “What’s going on, Kersten?”
Kersten felt his heart beating more rapidly in his chest.
He’s growing angry, I can see it. If I tell him why I showed him the memorandum, he might erupt. I would be sacrificing opportunities to extort anything else from him in the future. Felix, you’ve stuck your foot into it. Now it’s all or nothing. Think quickly, make up a story, something Himmler would accept. Anything, but fast.
“My bill is…this man’s freedom.”
“His what?” He chuckled. “Are you insane, Kersten? This man is a Jew, a Social Democrat, to boot.”
“But isn’t he a human being before he’s either of those?”
The new courage and conviction was overcoming the anxiety in Kersten’s heart. It felt so good to say what he felt.
Himmler considered the Jews to be Untermesnchen, sub-human at best, and Social Democrats enemies of the Reich. A man like Himmler could hear Kersten’s gutsy question about the Jew in Dachau as incendiary and a form of outright apostasy.
“Why the hell should you be asking for the release from Dachau of such a man?” Himmler asked in disbelief. “Who is this man to you? A relative? A friend? He’s been sent to Dachau for a reason. What concern is he for you?”
Kersten felt a tingling at the tips of his fingers. He knew from experience as well as physiology textbooks that such tingling is often followed by numbness. That he couldn’t afford. Those fingertips were the essential tools of his trade.
This is not going as well as I had hoped. Perhaps I overestimated his sense of euphoria following his treatment. Surely, I need to back-pedal somehow, take back what I’ve said so far. He’s going to accuse me of protecting someone from among the people he detests most profoundly. I should have known better. Never have I been able to have a sane conversation with Hitler about the Jews. What was I thinking? How could I have expected him to receive this request with any semblance of reason? This request could set him off. Any access I have had to him will be eradicated.
Diehn’s image
came into view again.
Nevertheless, Felix, take heart and do what you consider to be right and just. Don’t turn back now.
He answered Himmler’s question. “The man is a fellow human being to me. He’s in Dachau for no other reason than that he is of another race and a political party of whom you and the Führer disapprove. That’s a bizarre notion of justice. The man is a hard worker who tends to his own business, according to his former employer. He regrets to lose a worker of such quality and character. Aren’t such workers good for Germany, Herr Reichsführer?”
“This is most unusual, Kersten. You must understand that this causes me great turmoil of spirit. You know that if I submit to this, and if even just one of my opponents, or God forbid, the Führer himself, were to catch wind of it, it would cause me more than a little trouble. My career in the SS would be over. Look at what happened to von Blomberg and von Fritsch.”
Kersten was resigned, but not surprised. He was concerned only that Himmler remain as calm as he seemed right now and not get incensed any further.
“I must weigh my choices, carefully,” Himmler said, more thoughtfully, it seemed to Kersten, than usual. “Risk the rage of my Führer and therefore my career. Or risk losing the only doctor who has ever succeeded in alleviating my pain.”
Kersten was hopeful again that he had a foot in the door. Himmler had left a tiny sliver of light. He felt a new verve.
“But my dear Herr Reichsführer, the odds are small that the Führer would ever know. Doesn’t he give you sole authority in the realm of your responsibility? Isn’t Dachau within that realm? After all, isn’t Piorkowski a man appointed by you personally to be Kommandant of Dachau? I am certain that when he receives your order for the man’s release, like a good SS, he will have no reason or inclination to speculate about the motives of his superior’s command.”
“You should have been a barrister, Kersten. No, ignore that advice. I am grateful you became a doctor…Because it is you who asks me, for whatever reason,” Himmler continued with a resigned smile, “perhaps against my better judgment, I approve.”
Himmler shouted out toward his administrative assistant’s office. “Brandt! Come take this memorandum, and have the man named there released from Dachau.”
Then, looking at Kersten, he said, “Our good doctor wishes it.” Himmler obviously didn’t want Brandt to think that he was softening his views about the Jews. Brandt gave Kersten a very quick glance, one that Kersten interpreted to communicate approval.
When Kersten walked to his car from the Chancellery, he felt infinitely lightened. He knew he might have dodged a bullet. He wasn’t usually a smoker. But he asked his chauffeur Henrik for a cigarette, sat back in his seat and took intentionally long drags in relief and gratitude.
He instructed Henrik to wait in the car while he went for a brief celebratory walk. He was stunned by what he had accomplished. He had actually extracted a life, that of a Jew, from one of Hitler’s chief executioners. He was a healer, but in the case of this one man at least, he was the savior of a human life.
He found it utterly exhilarating. All that the other ears on the street that early evening heard was the sound of automobile wheels on the brick pavement of Prinz Albrecht Strasse and the angry honking of car horns. The ears of Kersten’s heart, though, heard an orchestra launching into a version of Eugen Malmstén’s Old Mariner’s Waltz that had been a hugely popular hit in Finland the previous year. His feet were advancing on the concrete sidewalk, but it felt as though they were dancing on air to the beat of the orchestra.
CHAPTER TEN
Berlin: February 17, 1939
Bruno Altmann’s young wine merchant, Jiri Hudak, did indeed call Niska from a public telephone as requested. Hudak urgently needed to get to his native Czechoslovakia to escape the tightening chokehold of the SS. With his wine shop expropriated for Aryanization shortly after Kristallnacht, he felt he had nothing to lose.
“My friend,” Niska said over the telephone, “don’t make the mistake of assuming that the tentacles of the SS don’t reach even into Czechoslovakia. They quite likely have plainclothes agents there, too. You’ll need to be observant. But I agree. You’ll probably be safer there.”
Niska gave instructions for Hudak to meet him the next day in the grand hall of the Lehrter Bahnhof where they would purchase two-way tickets on a night train to Prague. Niska told him to dress in the style of a German businessman to deflect suspicion.
In the meantime, Niska stepped into high gear to make arrangements with contacts in Finland for the supplies necessary to conduct an operation of smuggling persons out of Germany. That meant Finnish passports.
An accomplice with whom Niska had worked in his whiskey running days was a genius in creating a counterfeit of any kind of document. She agreed to supply Niska with forged Finnish passports. Only, she said, due to heightened security measures it would take some time—more time than Niska preferred—for her to get surreptitious nighttime access to the printing plant of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she worked. Once the Finnish passports were printed and embossed to look official, the Finnish contact was to mail them to Niska in care of an assumed name and a post office box.
However, the shipment of counterfeit passports from Finland had not yet arrived in Niska’s post office box when Hudak called again for further instructions. Niska went by the post office the day after Hudak had made contact the second time. The mailbox was empty. He’d have to wait longer.
Every day until the day he and Hudak had set for their departure, he returned to the post office. Every day, he was disappointed and more concerned. Each time he walked back from the post office more despondent than the day before. He had experienced many unforeseen delays and other snags in his smuggling operations before. They came with the turf. However, the consequences for presenting incomplete documentation at a border crossing for material goods like whiskey or vodka could be handled in creative ways. With the delay of a passport, however, the potential hazards were much more menacing.
In their next telephone conversation, Niska apologized for the tardy Finnish passport, and explained the practical problem that it entailed.
“You have only a German passport, Mr. Hudak?”
“Yes. But you can call me Jiri, Herr Niska.”
“Well, all right, Jiri. Is it stamped with the prominent red letter “J?”
“Like that of every other Jew in Germany now, yes.”
“Then, the passport has been rendered useless. It may pass muster with the Czechs, but the German agents on this side of the border will not permit you to exit the country. I propose we postpone the attempt.”
“No, I beg of you, Herr Niska,” Jiri exclaimed with a sense of urgency.
“The risk of apprehension is too great without a non-German passport.”
Hudak continued in a less plaintive voice. “I know you are the expert here, Herr Niska. You are better informed and more experienced to make the decision.” But the plaintive tone returned.
“Please understand, I feel the SS rope tightening around my neck. The Nazis are demanding reparation payments from us for all the damage their hooligans inflicted on November 9 and 10. The amount is so high there’s no way I can pay it. I’ve applied for insurance to repair my shop, but the insurance money went directly to the Nazis. They’re rounding up all us Jews who are unable or refuse to pay.”
Niska imagined what the Nazis did with the ones they rounded up.
“Can they possibly catch up with all of you in the next week or so?” asked Niska, hoping to hear agreement.
“Herr Niska, surely you know of the efficiency and thoroughness of the SS and Gestapo. It’s only a matter of time before they throw me onto the back of a lorry.”
Niska acknowledged to himself that Hudak was right.
“You can’t be absolutely sure of that. But if we attempt an escape and get caught at either border with our pants down, imprisonment, yours and mine, or maybe worse, is a 100% certainty.”
Yes, Hudak has nothing to lose. But what about me?
But Hudak sounded so desperate. Niska swallowed hard, and then said, against his better judgment, “We’ll manage together somehow. Full speed ahead.”
~~~
The ornate grand hall of the Lehrter Bahnhof seemed to be teeming with uniformed Wehrmacht as though war had already been declared. Niska surmised that there were plenty of plainclothes SS agents strategically placed as well. As eager as the Nazis had been to encourage Jews to emigrate before 1938, now they were as obsessed with preventing their departure out of the country.
At least a dozen uniformed Wehrmacht, rifles slung visibly over their shoulder, walked back and forth on Platform 5 where Niska and Hudak waited to board the train to Prague. One could cut the tension and suspicion in the air with a knife. Though their nerves were as taut as the E string on a violin, Niska and Hudak tried to look as natural and casual as they rose the four steep steps into the train.
Niska pulled out a cigarette and took a long drag to calm his nerves. He offered one to Hudak. “Thanks anyway, but I don’t smoke.”
Once the train was on its way, however, Hudak looked over to Niska.
“Can I take you up on that offer of a cigarette?” he asked, slightly embarrassed.
The closer the train came to the Czech border, the more frequent were the drags Hudak took on the cigarette, and the closer to his fingers he smoked it. He asked Niska for another, and then another.
“Try to calm down, Jiri. Or at least try to look calmer. You’re a dead give-away the way you are fidgeting around.”
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