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1939
At midnight, Father and I walked six blocks from our basement apartment to a nicer part of Düsseldorf,
to the white stone townhomes where servants swept the streets and pinched back geraniums in window
boxes. It was late September, but the air was warm still, “Führer-weather” they called it, since it permitted
Hitler success in his campaigns. It had certainly worked with Poland.
I climbed the steps to the double doors, inset with filigreed, white-painted ironwork over frosted glass. I
pressed the silver button. Was Katz even home? There was a faint glow behind the frosted glass, but the gas
lanterns to either side of the door were not lit. Father waited on the street in the darkness, arms hugging his
midsection.
I was twenty-five that year when Father’s symptoms grew bad enough for him to seek out his favorite old
Jewish treater of the sick, a man named Katz. We were not allowed to call Jews doctors. The term “treaters
of the sick” was preferred. Nor were Aryans allowed to frequent non-Aryan doctors, but my father seldom
followed the rules.
The doorbell chimed somewhere deep in the house. I’d never set foot in a Jew’s house before and was in
no hurry to do so, but Father insisted I accompany him. I wanted to spend as little time there as possible.
A brighter light appeared behind the frosted glass, and a dark shape moved toward me. The door to my
right opened a crack to reveal a former medical school classmate of mine, one of the many Jewish students
no longer welcome at the university. He was fully dressed, tucking his shirt into his pants.
“What do you want this time of night?” he said.
Behind him Katz descended the stairs, steps soundless on thick carpet, the train of his midnight-blue
dressing gown fanned out behind him. He hesitated, hunched like a crone, eyes wide. Expecting the
Gestapo?
Father hobbled up the front steps and stood next to me. “Excuse me, Herr Doktor,” he said, one hand on
the doorjamb. “I am sorry to bother you, but the pain is unbearable.”
Once Katz recognized Father, he smiled and ushered us in. As we passed, the former medical student
looked at me with narrowed eyes.
Katz led us into his paneled study, three times the size of our apartment, the walls lined with shelves of
leather-bound books. It had a spiral staircase, which led up to the second level, to a railed balcony lined with