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“Ah, the surgeon,” Katz said, smiling. “King of doctors, or at least the surgeons think so.” He pulled one
of the green books from the shelf. “Atlas of General Surgery. Have you read it?”
I said nothing as he pushed the book toward me. It seemed some Jews shared.
“Once you learn everything in here, bring it back, and I’ll give you another,” he said.
I did not touch it. What would people say, me taking the book of a Jew?
“You are too generous, Herr Doktor,” Father said.
“I insist,” Katz said, still holding the book out.
It looked heavy, the leather cover soft, embossed in gold. Could I borrow such a thing? I wanted it. Not so
much to read it. I had textbooks. Ugly and secondhand, other people’s notes scratched in their margins,
breadcrumbs in their gutters. This book was a beautiful thing. It would be nice to be seen with it, to walk
into class and drop it casually on my desk. Mutti would rage at Father for allowing me to take it, but that
alone was worth it.
I took the book from Katz and turned away.
“She’s speechless,” Father said. “And a fast reader. She’ll return it soon.”
—
IT WAS A USEFUL BOOK, in some ways more detailed than our medical school textbooks. In less than one
week, I read from “Inflammation and Repair of Tissue” through “Cancer of the Lymphatic System.” The
text and color plates provided additional insight into my father’s condition. Epithelioma. Sarcoma. Radium
treatments.
Once I made it through the last chapter of Katz’s book, “Amputations and Prosthesis,” and practiced two
new surgical knots described there, I walked to the Jew’s house to return it, hoping for another.
When I arrived, the front doors were wide open, and the SS were carrying cardboard boxes of books,
Katz’s black medical bag, and a white wicker baby carriage, its wheels spinning in midair, to the curb.
Someone was plunking out a German folk tune on Katz’s piano.
I held the book tight to my chest and left for home. Katz would not be coming back for it. Everyone
knew of these arrests. Most of the time they happened in the night. It was sad to see someone’s possessions
taken in such a way, but the Jews had been warned. They knew the Führer’s requirements. This was
unfortunate, but not new, and it was for the good of Germany.
Less than a week later I spied a new family with five sons and a daughter carrying suitcases and a
birdcage into that house.
—
MY MOTHER WAS HAPPY to work in her brother Heinz’s meat market, across the bridge in Oberkassel, a
wealthy part of town, and she had gotten me a job there too. It was a small shop, but Heinz filled every inch
with meat. He hung hams and long ribs of pork outside along the front of the store like socks on a
clothesline and displayed whole hogs spread-eagled, bellies slit wide, glistening entrails scooped and saved.
At first I blanched at the sight, but as a medical student interested in surgery, I gradually grew to see
beauty in the most unlikely places. The startling ivory of a splayed rib cage. A calf’s severed head, peaceful
as if asleep, a fringe of lashes black against the damp fur.