Accidental Saviors

by Jack A Saarela

  Kersten knew the map of Himmler’s abdomen like the proverbial back of his hand. He knew what areas of Himmler’s abdomen to manipulate more gingerly than others because of the proximity of the nerves to the surface of the skin. But on this day, it seemed that Kersten had handled those sensitive areas with a particularly rough touch. Several times, Himmler shrieked in pain.

  “Doctor, you’re hurting me more than usual today. Can I request that you soften your touch a little?”

  Kersten hadn’t been aware of his manner.

  “I apologize, Herr Reichsführer. I must focus more on what I am doing.”

  Kersten’s overly firm manipulating of Himmler’s flesh wasn’t entirely congruent with his apology, however.

  “Indeed, you should...Your mind is somewhere else, Doctor?”

  Kersten did not answer at first. He was in turmoil, he acknowledged to himself. But he wondered if it was safe or prudent to voice to Himmler what was roiling in his mind. He was angry enough, however, to risk it. He couldn’t remain silent any longer.

  “These camps the Führer chose you to have built: Gusen, Neuengamme, Gross-Rosen, Auschwitz.”

  “What about them?”

  “Is it true? I mean, that in your labor camps men and women are systematically tortured or worked to death?”

  Himmler laughed nervously. By now, Kersten was able to distinguish Himmler’s unfeigned laughter at something genuinely funny, and a forced laugh he used on some occasions to try to mask another feeling. This was one of those occasions.

  “Come now, my dear Kersten. You are falling for the falsehoods of the enemy’s propaganda. The Allies are spreading nasty rumors. These camps are for the reeducation of those not yet convinced of the National Socialist philosophy, and for building the armaments we need for the war effort. You know that, Kersten.”

  Himmler’s remark only served to irritate Kersten further. Lest he express his irritation with his massaging hands, he pulled them back from Himmler’s torso.

  “No, I am thinking of facts that I have heard from a reliable source.”

  “Facts? What source? If your source is the BBC, those facts are undeniably false ones. Besides, you know you’re not allowed to listen to the BBC.”

  “You forget again, Herr Reichsführer, that your prohibition against listening to Feindsender doesn’t apply to me, a Finnish citizen.”

  “As an adjunct to my staff, I explicitly forbid you to do so.”

  Kersten bristled at the idea that he was considered an adjunct to Himmler’s staff. He thought of himself as an independent medical contractor.

  “In any case, my source is not the BBC, or Radio Suomi from Finland. When I was at the Finnish legation recently I met two Swedish photojournalists on their way back to Sweden from an assignment.”

  “So?”

  “These journalists were carrying a file of photographs. The photographs show terrible torture. Emaciated bodies. Men and women hardly recognizable as human. These were photos of inmates at your camps.”

  “Someone failed to inform them that the taking of photographs in the camps is strictly forbidden.”

  “Oh, they didn’t take the photographs. They purchased them from several SS guards at these camps,” Kersten said with a tone of irony.

  Himmler started up from the divan in a poorly disguised panic. At that moment, Kersten realized that the incredible rumors were true.

  “Are these journalists still in Germany?” Himmler asked urgently.

  “No, they are back home in Sweden now.”

  “Do you know how I could buy back those photographs? At any price?”

  “I don’t.” Kersten shook his head reproachfully and continued. “You seem very desirous of buying them back, suspiciously so. Wouldn’t it be better if you spoke to me openly? Don’t you think I deserve the truth?”

  “You saw the photographs yourself, Kersten?”

  “Yes, I did. I was repulsed.”

  Himmler remained silent. After a while, he covered his face with both of his hands. Kersten was surprised, never having seen his patient in this pose.

  Himmler lowered his hands from his face, but looked away from Kersten. Kersten could see nonetheless that there was guilt and anguish in Himmler’s eyes.

  “My dear Kersten. I must concede that some unplanned and unfortunate things happen in the camps sometimes. War is messy, after all. A few of the Kommandants, one or two, are overly zealous in enforcing the rules. They are merely trying to impress me, thinking that I will reward them by moving them up the ladder of command or transferring them to a camp closer to their home. Or every now and then, one of the guards―usually a Pole or a Ukrainian―gets carried away in punishing an inmate who isn’t working hard enough. But once I hear of such exceptions to our usual good order and discipline, I make sure that the perpetrators are duly punished.”

  Himmler saw the look of disappointment in Kersten’s eyes. “I am terribly distressed, my dear Kersten. I cannot say more.”

  “All that bothers you bothers me, Herr Reichsführer.”

  “It’s not a question of me, Doctor.”

  “What is the matter, then? Perhaps if you unburden yourself of what is making you anxious, I may be able to help you.”

  “No one can help me with this, Kersten.”

  He looked up at the round, florid, reassuring face of his doctor, the good and wise eyes, and said, “I will tell you what I can. You are the only person I can talk to about this. I can’t even tell my wife.”

  Whatever anger Kersten had brought with him when he had entered Himmler’s office was replaced now by professional forbearance and consideration for his suffering patient. “I’m all ears, Herr Reichsführer.”

  He wondered if Himmler actually knew how to push this button in.

  “After France collapsed,” Himmler began, “the Führer made several offers of peace to England. But the Jews who control Churchill and run that country rejected his kind offers. ‘Nothing short of unconditional surrender,’ they said. The idiots don’t understand that nothing worse could happen to the world than a protracted war between Germany and England. The Führer knows that there will be no peace on earth as long as the Jews are in power...as long as the Jews continue to exist.”

  Kersten noted that this time, Himmler’s railings against the Jews were not uttered with the same dogmatic certainty and vitriol as usual. Himmler’s voice seemed to quaver slightly.

  Hitler is beginning to see that he may lose this war. But his madness cannot accept it. He needs a reason for his losses in the east, something that will explain and excuse everything. As usual, pin them on the Jews.

  “And so?” Kersten asked.

  “So...the Führer has ordered me to ensure that the Jews are destroyed. Eliminated from Europe. Entirely. No exceptions.”

  “But you cannot,” Kersten cried, almost involuntarily. “Think of the horror, the suffering. What will the world think of Germany?”

  Usually, Himmler was lively, even intense, in his treatment conversations with Kersten. But on this day, his face remained impassive and his voice was dull, flat, resigned.

  Kersten wondered if this was the moment to broach a medical theory he’d been mulling over in his mind for quite a while.

  “You don’t think that horrendous orders such as this from your Führer have something to do with your abdominal miseries, Herr Reichsführer?”

  “What in the world are you talking about, Kersten?”

  “What I mean is that your body may be expressing your deep, profound ambivalence of your mind about your Führer, at least about his strategies, particularly this unspeakable one.”

  “My ambivalence? I think if you ask any of my colleagues or my subordinates, they would disagree wholeheartedly and unanimously. They would testify to my decisiveness…Kersten, I could have you shot for suggesting that I am in any way disloyal to the Führer.”

  Kersten ignored the implied threat. “Do you remember that you told me once that you felt Gobbles’ and G�
�ring’s solution to the existence of Jews in the Reich was more drastic and unnecessarily severe than the one you favored? Your idea of Madagascar?”

  “Of course, I remember. What is all this about?”

  “Well, Herr Reichsführer, I have observed that whenever your Führer seems to side with them, or even take the solution of the matter of the Jews to a more violent extreme, you experience the most violent bouts of pain. I can’t help but suspect that there’s a connection.”

  Himmler began to squirm in his chair.

  “Doctor, I have the greatest respect for your abilities, as you know. But perhaps you have been working too hard. I’ve noticed that lately you see distracted, more distant. You’re wandering into areas of sheer speculation and conjecture. You said yourself that you have very little interest in politics.”

  Then, abruptly and decisively, he added, “This part of our conversation is over, Kersten.”

  Kersten decided that to pursue the matter further would not yield results. Instead, he ventured back into the territory of the liquidation.

  “Herr Reichsführer, though I have had my suspicions and heard rumors, this is really the first confirmation I have heard of the possibility of mass extermination. I...I have no words...”

  “There’s more, my dear Kersten.”

  Kersten’s heart plummeted. Himmler seemed ready to pick up where he had left off when Kersten had inserted his theoretical suspicions.

  “The Führer has demanded... demanded, that crematoria be built in many of the camps for which I have ultimate oversight...Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz, others. Any new camp will not be built without crematoria.”

  Kersten’s heart was too sickened to hear more. He was beginning to feel nauseous.

  “I didn’t want this horrible assignment, Kersten,” Himmler continued, almost pleading for Kersten to believe in his innocence. “‘Mein Führer,’ I begged him. ‘I and the SS are ready to die for you…but please do not give me this mission.’

  “Then, the Führer erupted into one of his awful, awful tantrums. He literally jumped on me, seized me by the neck, and shouted, ‘You spineless mouse! I’ve made you into everything you are. And now you dare refuse to obey me? You are behaving like a traitor.’

  “After that, I had no choice but to ask for his forgiveness and to reiterate my utmost loyalty and full agreement to follow his orders.”

  “Follow his orders...even when they are crazy?”

  “The Führer’s orders are not crazy. His is the greatest mind in all of Europe...if not the world.”

  “And if the greatest mind on earth ordered you to kill your own wife and son and daughter?”

  “I would do it without thinking,” Himmler answered. “Because the Führer would have a good reason unknown by us to give such an order.”

  Kersten wanted to hear no more. The acrid taste of nausea began to burn his esophagus. Never had the sickening feeling that he was living among madmen been so strong. He had to take several deep breaths.

  “Then, you will burn Jews in these crematoria?” Kersten could hardly get the words out.

  “Not alive, of course. Only after they have died in the camps.”

  Kersten’s mind was feverish—hijacked by repetitive flashes of the nauseating photographs he had been shown of dog-tired Jews in the camps being struck and kicked mercilessly, of bodies shrunken and shriveled by starvation, of faces horrifically gaunt and withered until barely recognizable as faces of human beings. Now the implausible image of Jewish bodies incinerated. It was difficult to breathe.

  “Or killed somehow by your men.” Kersten had reached his limit. Turning away and heading for the door, he bellowed to Himmler, “This treatment session is over.” He slammed the door shut and stepped into the corridor, feeling faint and nauseous, his heart beating rapidly.

  ~~~

  Kersten leaned all his weight on his right hand against the wall of the corridor outside Himmler’s office. With his left, he rubbed his forehead furiously. His mind replayed an old but vivid film of another face...in Finland...twenty years ago...the skin charred and foully pungent…two black vacant spheres where the eyes should have been...the rest of the body scorched like a log on the floor of a forest after a fire...the skin putrefying...the young man’s mouth agape but emitting no sound...beyond the strength to give voice to his intolerable pain...the charred face and body brought into emergency ward at Meilahti Hospital in Helsinki on that damned, damning night in 1921...gang-beaten and set aflame by brutish White militiamen for being a socialist...for being born a Jew...the physician on call listed as Felix Kersten, M.D...the undisguised fright on Kersten’s own face as he entered the ward and beheld the patient...the putrescent odor in the room...the rancid smell of burned flesh...Kersten’s feet immobile as though nailed firmly to the floor...the sacred charge to approach and treat the seared body and try to alleviate the patient’s suffering...but his inability, sheer inability, to move...the volcanic, acidic discharge beginning to erupt from his stomach to his throat...Kersten’s hand pushed tightly against his mouth...his turning and running from the room...his retching in a patient’s commode in a neighboring ward...splashes of greenish vomit on his white doctor tunic to remind him of his cowardice...the anxious glances back over his shoulder to verify he wasn’t seen...the furtive, hasty exit along the corridor and down the stairs...the shameful slithering through an empty lobby...the palpable sense, nonetheless, that his spineless retreat from duty was being observed from an invisible gallery by his laughing supervisors and instructors...the pangs of shame in the pit of his stomach...the utter piercing shame of his failure...the disgraceful bankruptcy of his fidelity to Hippocratic pledge...that he did not “apply for the benefit of this suffering Jew all measures that are required”...that he abandoned the man on his sickbed...his deathbed...that he lacked the courage to see and touch the wounds...his misgivings since that at heart he might have an ancient inherent vestige of anti-Semitism...his disgracing of his liberal, tolerant upbringing and education...the shame he has borne over the years and across the distances...even to this day.

  ~~~

  Kersten didn’t appear at Himmler’s office for the two days after fleeing in a panic in the middle of a treatment session. Himmler’s adjutant, Brandt, and eventually Himmler himself, telephoned Kersten, demanding that he come immediately to minister to Himmler’s excruciating abdominal pain. When Kersten told a white lie that he himself was under the weather, Himmler softened and revealed a more compassionate side, which never failed to disarm Kersten, even though he knew Himmler could change faster than the fickle sky at sea.

  “Oh, better than anyone, I understand how debilitating illness can be, Kersten. I will get through my pain somehow. Take the rest of the day to pay attention to your own health. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  Kersten wasn’t sure he would be over the hangover and shame from his panic by tomorrow. “I will see how I feel, Herr Reichsführer. I assure you I will be there as soon as I feel better.”

  The panic attack in Himmler’s office had seemed to arise out of nowhere. He hadn’t consciously thought about the incident with the Jewish patient in the Meilahti Hospital for many years. He was convinced the trauma he experienced had been hermetically sealed in the past. The supervising doctor had been shocked and disappointed in Kersten’s abject difficulty in facing the burned patient, much less treating him. Their next scheduled mentor-mentee consultation was when he recommended that Kersten no longer pursue the track of becoming a surgeon and consider massage instead. At the time, the bubble of Kersten’s manly pride had been punctured. But he recalled also how relieved he was to be given an alternative track to pursue, and thus save face.

  Had he not been advised to investigate massage, he would not have met Dr. Ko. Consequently, he would not have discovered the priceless gift for healing in his hands.

  If I had become a surgeon and not a masseur, I would not have been put into this unforeseen and unforeseeable position where I am the private doctor
and therapist for the commander of the SS. I would not have been able to prevent Auguste Diehn’s foreman from dying in Dachau. I would not have been able to manipulate Himmler so that he ordered the release of other Jews. Would I have been in a position to save Jiri Hudak?

  But now, after the revelation by Himmler of Hitler’s unspeakable intention to liquidate all of the Jews in the Third Reich—all of Europe, for that matter―the rescue of a few individual Jews seemed to Kersten utterly inconsequential. Were Himmler to succeed in carrying out Hitler’s bizarre, downright satanic command, Kersten’s securing the life of one Jew here, another one there, was so negligible. In the face of the annihilation of thousands upon thousands, perhaps millions, his efforts amounted to a spit in the ocean, a mere candle held up in a dark universe.

  No, I feel the same as Hitler. One Jew at a time is too slow, too inefficient, such a poor stewardship of opportunity. I must find some means to speed up the process of rescue, to match Hitler’s pace of annihilation with the pace of liberation, to save as many as my advantageous and strategic position enables me to do and for as long as I have the opportunity.

  He remembered his bold intervention with Himmler to delay Hitler’s forced march of the “irreconcilables” of Holland to Poland, probably to be murdered there if they hadn’t died on the journey. Himmler had told him that up to three million could be relocated in the first wave, with five to six million awaiting a similar forced removal after them. That was a number his mind could not comprehend. Suddenly, Kersten didn’t feel so insignificant. His mind began to focus resolutely and energetically on possibilities rather than on limitations.

  By some accident of history or twist of fate, some writing in the stars, or the machinations of some such other force beyond his own power to control or comprehend, he had been placed in this fortuitous, if originally unwanted, position where he could push back against the forces of death that were blitzing across all of Europe. He vowed in that moment of sudden clarity to push the envelope because many lives depended on it, to test the limits of possibility because the stakes had been raised much higher now, to tempt fate, and to the limit of what is possible, to defy the devil incarnate himself.