Accidental Saviors Read online

  Niska was literally a very seaworthy man. He had been on boats of one kind or another since at least 1908, not one, in other words, prone to nausea. But now he felt a bitter, abrasive fluid rise into the base of his throat. Niska had to concentrate on not letting the vomit erupt from his mouth onto the others beside him in the crowd on the sidewalk.

  Niska ground his teeth tightly together in fury at the youthful violence and wanton celebration. The ferocity of his rage was fueled further when he noticed several middle-aged men in civilian clothes standing before the youth, like directors of an orchestra, urging them on. His stomach turned when he saw a woman of about forty, her face contorted into a thoroughly ugly, almost inhuman, Edvard Münch-like scowl as she yelled out to the destroyers, “Kill them! Kill them all! Bloody Christ murderers!”

  As if at her beckoning, a rock flew through the air over the street from the direction of the indignant mob. It struck a young woman holding her small daughter by the hand. As she bent over to shield her daughter, she crumpled in a screaming mass onto the pavement. The orphaned child turned in circles on the one spot desperately seeking her mother. When she saw her body on the pavement, she covered her face with her hands.

  Several vans with blue lights flashing and ear-splitting sirens blaring made their way onto the street. One by one firemen and police emerged from the back of the van. Niska began to hope that order would now be restored. Instead, the police laid into the defenseless Jews with their truncheons while, exempt from the attention of the police, the rampaging mob chased and wrestled to the ground any Jews who tried to escape down the street, and beat them. Niska felt the blow of the truncheons, as though on his own skull, his own flesh.

  He hadn’t been particularly enamored by Jewish contacts with whom he carried on transactions in the past. If anything, they had struck him as rather shrewd and difficult to please, often imperious. But surely no one deserved such unbridled hostility and savagery as he was witnessing. As a Finn living and working in self-imposed exile in Germany for several years now, Niska felt an instinctive racial affinity to Germans, their blue eyes, their fair hair, their tireless work ethic, so familiar in that regard to his own countrymen. But he hadn’t learned to understand their visceral hatred of the Jews.

  As he stood helplessly on the sidewalk, he felt an unexpected and peculiar compassion for the rabbi and his wife. So, too, for the startled men and women struck by the police, the little orphan girl left screaming on the street, and the would-be escapees wrestled to the pavement and beaten to a pulp.

  Some of the Hitlerjugend joined hands and formed a circle and started to dance in the light of the flames emanating from the destroyed synagogue. To what music, Niska wondered. The music of madness and hatred, he supposed, that they, but not he, could hear, but an echo of which he was beginning to discern within the chambers of his own heart toward the perpetrators.

  It was a grisly, macabre, godless dance of death, Niska thought. The German youth sang a mocking tune, an off-key charade of the Jewish folk song, starting slowly:

  Hava nagila, hava nagila,

  Hava nagila venishmeja.

  Then speeding up and bringing their hands together, they inserted their own obscene German lyrics and cheered lustily at their own cleverness.

  Let’s burn a Jew boy, let’s burn a Jew girl,

  Let’s burn every last one of them, yay!

  Niska had not lived what one could describe as a sheltered life, not even in childhood. But he had never before experienced chaos and violence like this, not even when brother fought brother to the death in the bloodletting of the Finnish civil war after independence in 1917.

  Such peach-faced, middle-class youth born with silver spoons in their mouths. Just schoolboys, really. Shouldn’t they be out on the soccer pitch, or in their homes playing chess with their grandfathers? Aren’t they too young, too childlike, to be chanting such hate-filled verses sated with superstition and ignorance learned from their fathers and uncles?

  The mocking voices mixed with the acrid crackling of flames and the unforgettable shattering of glass. It reminded Niska of descriptions of hell he had heard from his pious Finnish Lutheran grandmother. Though he wanted in the worst way to go to his hotel room and not have to see the violence or hear the screams, he stood motionless as though the soles of his shoes were nailed to the sidewalk. His face was lit in the deviant light of the surrounding madness. His eyes were wet and hazy from the heat and smoke…Or were they tears evoked by the lurid spectacle that kept repeating over and over in his mind, of the rabbi and his wife, crushed under the huge window frame and burning to ash to the cheers of the mob, while the youth danced? Was this a portent of a malicious future?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Berlin: March 20, 1940

  Once Rohrbach and the two SS privates were out the door leading out of his flat, Kersten retreated to his bedroom. When he took off the silk dressing gown he was surprised to find enormous, dark splotches of perspiration underneath the two armpits of his pajamas.

  It’s a damn good thing I put on the dressing gown at the last second before answering the knocking at the door. I am relieved that the SS men could not see the fact that I was perspiring so copiously during the interrogation. If Rohrbach had detected any fear or anxiety in me, he would have turned the screws more tightly.

  In the stillness and privacy of his bedroom he was able finally to exhale deeply. He had been in control of his breathing during the interrogation itself, a skill he had learned in his surgical training days in Helsinki. Uneven breathing by a surgeon could cause the hand on the scalpel to move ever so slightly, just enough to cut a nerve or capillary inadvertently. It could be fatal.

  He plunked his rear end down on the bed. He was exhausted from the effort to maintain an unanxious affect in front of his SS interrogators.

  Kersten picked up the glass of water on the night table beside his bed. He noticed the hand holding the glass was starting to tremble almost uncontrollably. Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead and pooled in his armpits. The close-call nature of the encounter in his living room just moments earlier was beginning to register in his brain.

  What was this all about, anyway? Surely, the SS would have done their homework before sending these men? It’s not a classified secret that I am a Finnish citizen. What was this, then? A warning of some sort? An exercise in intimidation?

  How could they have initiated their mission without my patient himself knowing about it? Very little occurs in the SS without my patient’s knowledge or permission.

  Or…is that it? Did my patient himself actually order this early-morning social call? For what reason? He’s never given me any indication of mistrust in me. Is he going back on his assurance to me that I will enjoy immunity from the usual spying and intimidation tactics of his organization?

  When I started out in this profession years ago, I could not have imagined in my wildest fantasies that I’d end up in the private service of a man such as he. My God!

  Kersten began to feel the familiar, ancient aching in the pit of his stomach. He began to rub it in an effort to chase away the discomfort.

  It’s so ironic now, don’t you think, Felix, that your expertise in ridding your patient of his fierce stomach spasms is now causing you pains in your own gut?

  He thought wistfully of his beloved Irmgaard back in The Hague, and their comfortable flat near the royal palace where he was employed. It wasn’t apt to be invaded by the SS like this. He could still remember the sweet aroma of streets in The Hague. It was not just the aroma of the tulips, but of freedom.

  I’m nothing but a captive here in Berlin. How did I ever allow myself to get into this damnable situation? Whatever caused me to leave behind that cheery life and exchange it for this surreal, insane existence in the midst of all this folly and madness? What were you possibly thinking, Felix?

  Auguste Diehn, as much as I love you, old friend, damn you all the same for your appointment almost two years ago!

 
CHAPTER FOUR

  Berlin: November 21, 1938

  Even though Auguste Diehn was a captain of German industry, of advanced years, and one of the therapist’s oldest patients and dearest friends, he had to wait at least two months for an appointment with Dr. Felix Kersten, just like everybody else. Kersten’s physio-neuro therapy practice had experienced explosive growth. It was split between two countries now, Germany and the Netherlands. And there were the occasional trips to Vienna, Brussels, and Rome to see patients.

  The fortyish, beefy Kersten greeted Diehn, the president of the German Potassium Syndicate, in his customary warm and expansive manner. The doctor noticed at once, however, that his old friend was nervous and ill at ease.

  “Auguste, take a seat, please. Are you working too much again? Ignoring my advice to get some rest? You’ve come for another treatment?”

  “No, I am not here for myself,” replied Diehn, avoiding Kersten’s eyes for some reason.

  “No?”

  There was a silence. Kersten was curious why.

  “Doctor, I have a favor to ask of you...a personal one.”

  “We’ve known each other long enough, haven’t we, that you don’t need to feel ashamed to ask for one?”

  “Well, I’m not sure how to put it...Would you be willing to examine Himmler?”

  “What? Who?”

  “Himmler . . . Heinrich Himmler.”

  “The Heinrich Himmler? The head of the feared SS? The man with no apparent conscience? Do you realize what you are asking, Auguste?”

  Kersten shook his head in disbelief. Diehn hoped earnestly that his doctor wasn’t refusing.

  “Let me ask again just to be sure. Am I hearing you correctly, Auguste? Heinrich Himmler? Me, be his doctor? I should be grateful, I suppose, that you didn’t ask me to treat Adolf Hitler. Are you playing some kind of joke? If you are, it’s not funny in the least, Auguste.”

  “Yes, you heard right, Doctor. And no, this is not a joke.”

  Diehn bowed his head. Kersten said nothing, not knowing what to say. Silently, he studied the man’s familiar gray-haired profile.

  Diehn continued. “You see, Himmler has orders from Hitler himself to nationalize the potash industry. The Führer needs the potash so that German farmers have ample fertilizer to grow the crops to feed the Wehrmacht that multiplies every day, it seems.”

  “I don’t see the connection, Auguste. What does that have to do with me? I don’t know the first thing about potash.”

  “Doctor, if your miraculous hands work the same wonders on Himmler as they have on me, in no time he’ll be very beholden to you.”

  “Yes? And...?”

  Diehn could see that the famed doctor-therapist either wasn’t catching his drift, or was deliberately not understanding something that he was finding unpleasant. Probably the latter.

  “I’m asking you to speak a few well-chosen words while treating him. I am confident that you are the only man in Germany right now who can make a dent in Himmler’s excruciating pain, which he is keeping a secret, by the way. Your conversing casually with Himmler on behalf of the potash producers of Germany just might convince him to go back to his Führer with an alternate plan to nationalizing the entire industry. Surely you see what I am getting at?”

  Truth be told, Kersten, indeed, could see. But wasn’t this an abuse of the doctor-patient relationship?

  “You say, he’s keeping his condition a secret? Then, Auguste, how it is that it’s not a secret to you?”

  “Certainly, Felix, you know that industrialists like me have, how shall I put it, information inroads within the Nazi hierarchy.”

  Kersten rubbed his double-chin and seemed to consider Diehn’s request. Diehn knew him well enough not to rush him to a decision.

  Finally, Kersten said, “Ah, no! Thank you very much. This doesn’t sound like my cup of tea.” The black rings that surrounded his eyes seemed to turn even darker.

  “I’ve been able to avoid having anything to do with that insane element up to now, and I have no intention of starting with the very worst of the bunch. I hate politicians and the games they play, hate them with a passion. I just want to be left in peace to be a doctor.”

  There was another silence, a much longer one. Diehn took up the conversation with a visible effort to suppress his disappointment.

  “I understand your hesitation, Doctor. I am sure you will agree, however, when I say that I have never asked you to do anything but treat my condition. In ordinary times, that would suffice. But alas, these are not ordinary times. On the contrary, these are very extraordinary ones. Which is why I come before you with this extraordinary request.”

  Kersten maintained a reflective silence. He recalled the complete confidence that Diehn had had in him at the start of his career, how Diehn had referred friends and associates to his practice, men and women who could reimburse him generously. He recalled also how Diehn had been instrumental in helping Kersten, an Ausländer, get the loan under the table from one of his colleagues to purchase the one blessed place on this earth where he could recharge his batteries, his delightful country estate a little north of Berlin, Hartzwalde.

  On the other hand, Kersten reflected, how could he have anything to do with a man like Himmler? Wouldn’t that be to take a seat in the devil’s lair, a place in the warren of the beast? For his own peace of mind and serenity he had until now forbidden himself even to think about the regime of which the head of the SS was considered the most monstrous personification. The possibility offended to the core Kersten’s innate Finnish sense of justice, his love of tolerance, decency, and moderation that had been reinforced by his time in Holland. As he even contemplated the possibility of accepting Diehn’s request, he tried to shake off the repulsion he felt in his stomach at the gross arrogance, the primitive racial superstition, the crude police-state tactics, the fanatical blind adoration of the Führer, Hitler’s promise of easy solutions to Germany’s complex problems—everything, in short, about the events and personalities in Germany of the last five years.

  “Auguste, partly thanks to you, my practice has expanded almost beyond my ability to handle it all. But you know that for a decade now, I have been retained by the royal family of Holland as Queen Wilhelmina’s personal therapist. I’m afraid I would have trouble squeezing Himmler into my normal schedule.”

  Kersten thought this would surely discourage Diehn from pursuing the ludicrous proposition any further.

  Diehn’s voice was almost a whisper as he leaned over conspiratorially to Kersten and pleaded, “It would be such a great service…to me, Doctor.”

  Then, resuming a normal conversation volume and raising his head, “Besides, is it not your professional duty to treat anyone who is sick?”

  The room became silent. Instinctively, Kersten began to massage the area of his stomach. Although he tried to camouflage it, a grimace of discomfort came over his ruddy face. He was gripped by a nascent nausea. He recognized the source of his queasiness, and he knew it wasn’t anything physical.

  Immediately, Kersten’s mind was borne back to a day in the spring of 1922 when he and his classmates were preparing to graduate from the medical school of Helsinki University. How proud he was that he had arrived at the threshold of a medical career. How far he had come from his humble Baltic agrarian roots. He could hear now, as though it were just yesterday, the eminent voice of the dean leading the class in the recital of the ancient Hippocratic Oath. “Primum non nocere. First do no harm.” He understood that within the prohibition there was an implicit command. “Secondly, share your medical expertise and knowledge when it requested or needed.”

  Kersten had noted then how mechanically and nonchalantly some of his classmates were reciting the oath. How is it that these future doctors consider this as merely an empty formality, like mindlessly reciting the Lord’s Prayer in church, when I recite it so earnestly, solemnly even? The oath isn’t a trivial string of words; it’s the code by which I am pledging to practice the healin
g arts, the guiding principle by which I will live my life.

  “Ah, very well, then, I will consider it at least,” Kersten sighed. “But with the caveat that it be only one session. Is that clear, Auguste? Just one.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Berlin: November 22, 1938

  It was almost 23:00 when Algot Niska finished a late-night dinner at the Osteria Bavaria. Given the late hour, Niska considered hailing a taxi. However, he wanted to refresh himself with a walk to his apartment hotel, even though there was still a residue of the fetid odor of the night of Nazi terror ten or so days prior. Nevertheless, the relatively brisk November air was a welcome relief from the smoke-filled restaurant.

  After some forty minutes on the streets of Berlin, Niska walked through the semi-dark lobby of the apartment hotel. He took the stairs to his apartment on the fourth floor. He put the key into the lock. But before he had fully turned it to the right to unlock it, he paused. He thought he heard above him, from the direction of the ceiling, a faint sound like that of the crinkling of paper.

  Probably a mouse scampering about in the attic.

  But Niska wasn’t fully convinced. He heard the sound again. His curiosity made him walk down the corridor to the trap door in the ceiling that led to the attic. He pulled down the wooden ladder connected to it. He climbed up two or three rungs so that he could insert his head through the opening above the level of the attic floor.

  In the dim light he could make out a tiny figure, perhaps a child’s stuffed animal. The figure was larger than his daughter’s teddy bear, but barely bigger than that of a child. He struck a match on the rough surface of the floor of the attic. He was unprepared and shocked to see the outline of a human form. Hesitantly, he climbed the rest of the way into the attic, still holding the match. He saw the stub of a candle someone had left fortuitously on top of an old crate to his right. Before he burned his fingers on the match, he blew it out and struck another one to light the candle.