Two Brothers

that?’

The woman was embarrassed but neither was she to be cowed. She held the newspaper in her hands as evidence.

‘I know you have not done these things, Frau Doktor, but many of your race have and if you yourselves can’t stop them then Herr Hitler must. Surely you see that. He has been very patient. I know it isn’t you, Frau Doktor, but those others, they must be stopped. They have been slandering Germany abroad and our Jews must be punished so that those Jews will not do it again. We are victims too you know. We have also suffered!’

The victims. Of course. That was how Hitler couched it every time. He and his followers were the injured party. Even as they set up their private concentration camps and torture chambers, they were victims. Acting with heavy heart and in self-defence, having been ‘provoked beyond endurance’.

Frieda wanted to reply but no words came. What could she possibly say? That was the dreadful thing about these incredible lies that were now spouted daily in the national press. Even to deny them gave them credence. To deny to this woman, who had known her for ten years and whom she had seen through six pregnancies, that she was somehow part of a global conspiracy to destroy Frau Schmidt’s ‘race’ and rule the world? What was there to say?

What would there ever again be to say?

Frau Schmidt took up her bag, red faced and unhappy but determined none the less.

‘Herr Doktor Meyer,’ she said, ‘I shall be pleased to be seen by another doctor on my next appointment. As regrettably Frau Doktor Stengel is no longer allowed to treat me.’

Meyer took the newspaper from the woman and pointed to a paragraph buried deep in the article.

‘In fact, Frau Schmidt,’ he said, ‘as you can see, for the time being this boycott is voluntary. It is true that the government has made it clear that it will shortly introduce a law banning Doctor Stengel from practising, but for the time being it remains your decision if she treats you.’

Frieda almost smiled. Funny old Meyer, still the pedantic committee room politician debating subclauses. As if ‘voluntary’ meant anything any more.

It was clear from Frau Schmidt’s face that it did not mean anything to her. She took her leave and waddled from the room as quickly as she could.

After she had left Frieda slumped further into the chair behind the desk that she no longer had any right to use.

‘So it’s really true? I’m to be banned from practising?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Meyer said, his lip quivering with anger. ‘In fact it seems you’re not to be allowed to do anything at all. From tomorrow there is to be a boycott of all Jewish businesses.’

Frieda looked once more at the paper: ‘massed popular demonstrations announced’.

She almost laughed. ‘Funny, eh? How can you announce a popular demonstration? They have to order their protestors to demonstrate spontaneously.’

‘Well, Dr Stengel,’ Meyer began, unable even now to resist the temptation to score a political point, ‘perhaps now you can see why we Communists have always—’

‘You Communists!’ Frieda interrupted furiously. ‘Yes, what about you Communists! Where are you now? A month ago you had millions of members. A hundred deputies in the Reichstag. You had a bloody thug army just like they do. You weren’t much smaller than they are. What happened? Where are they? Where are you? Isn’t anybody going to fight?’

Meyer looked at her coldly. ‘Our leaders have—’ he began.

‘Your leaders have run away to Moscow, looking after themselves while their followers are murdered! Why don’t they “announce” a “popular” demonstration? Why don’t the Social Democrats? The Church? The Army? Why doesn’t anybody! Those fucking Nazi bastards don’t even have a majority.’

Frieda never swore. And even on this desperate morning she felt wrong in doing so. After all, the one thing Hitler should not be able to take away from her was her own personal standards. Only she could give those up.

And in any case her passion served no point. Battering as it did at the deaf ears of a closed mind.

‘I cannot speak for the Capitalist lackeys of the so-called Democratic Socialists, Frau Doktor,’ Meyer replied primly, ‘however, in the case of the KPD, the theoretical position of the Soviet International proscribes that…’

But for once Frieda was to be spared the endless, dry, dialectical parroting of her earnest colleague. The pompous excuses for the Communist Party’s craven inactivity and its blind commitment to the whims of Stalin.

For just then there was a commotion in the outer office.

There were bangs, angry voices. A guttural cry of fear. Then the door burst open and quite suddenly they were there. The unthinkable, the unimaginable. In her surgery.

That sanctuary of care in which Frieda had toiled daily for ten years was in a single moment corrupted and polluted.

Invaded. Violated.

Three men stood before her. Three men in black boots and brown uniforms.

The SA.

Frieda had seen them so many times on street corners, rattling their collection tins. Snarling at those who did not give. Their faces angry, bullying and stupid, playing the poor victim and the superman all at once. She had long since learnt to avoid their gaze and scurry past.

Now the impossible had happened.

They were in her surgery, standing before her desk, faces flushed and triumphant, thumbs stuck in leather belts. Boots spread far apart on the carpet, bellies pushed out in a manner so strutting and so brutish as to be almost a pantomime.

And yet, curiously, for all their swagger, for a moment at least they seemed hesitant, as if they too were aware of the newness of the situation. Aware of how incongruous their huge and brutal presence was in the small room with its various delicate scales and instruments, its anatomical wall charts and posters encouraging women to consider condoms for birth control and also as a barrier to disease. A small, female doctor sitting behind a desk, an open file before her, a pen still in her hand.

They were so terribly out of place. Like a tank in a small garden.

‘This is a doctors’ surgery,’ Dr Meyer protested. ‘A place of healing!’

Frieda admired him for finding his voice although it was clear to her that he was trying to keep from it the terror he felt.

‘The boycott doesn’t commence till tomorrow. What’s more, it’s voluntary. You have no business here. I shall call the police.’ He had broken the spell, but not in the manner in which he would have liked. The SA men openly laughed, it was just what they needed, a good joke to overcome their embarrassment.

‘Herr Doktor,’ the leading trooper said, ‘we are the police.’ Frieda got to her feet. ‘What are you going to do with me?’ she enquired. ‘Am I to be killed?’

‘We aren’t going to do anything with you at the moment,’ the lead man said. ‘You have permission to leave.’

‘Permission to leave my own office?’

‘That’s right, you can get yourself home. It’s him we want.’

The three men turned suddenly towards Meyer.

His face an instant mask of abject terror. He had been so certain they’d come for Frieda.

‘You are the Communist Party Member Meyer.’

‘No! I mean, well yes, I was…’ Meyer stuttered, ‘but the party is banned, therefore of course I am no longer a—’

He got no further. The truncheon smashed across his face and he fell unconscious to the floor.

‘Stick him in the truck,’ the lead SA man ordered.

The other two men each took an arm of the unconscious ex-Communist and began dragging him from the