So it happened, Doctor Gurevitch, that all at once I became a candidate for a doctorate in psychology, a wife, an American, and a registered enemy alien.
The doctor paused.
Our neighbors would not speak to us, she went on. Only our colleagues at the Analytic Institute would befriend us.
She paused.
Mostly Jews.
And paused again.
We were imprisoned as enemy aliens. Perhaps you do not know this: Many Germans were imprisoned throughout the war, not on the scale of the Japanese concentration camps, but imprisoned nonetheless. We went to … Never mind. The point is that we might have remained imprisoned for the duration of the war had not our colleagues at the Analytic Institute worked so hard to see us freed. Then we did our best to stop being Germans. We dropped the E from our names. We became the SHOE-slurs. Helmut changed his name to Harold. Can one cut off one’s inheritance so easily? Perhaps not. We never managed to lose our accents.
The doctor breathed haltingly, as one about to cry, then said:
I worried about the welfare of my family, naturlich, as would anyone whose loved ones—mother, sisters, brother, cousins, aunts—lived in a war zone. And I was anxious to hear from them. In the beginning, said the doctor, sighing and arranging herself in her chair, before the Americans entered the war, my brother and sisters sent letters in which they bragged: about Hitler, about how Germany would conquer all of Europe. And, most of all, about our father’s successes. Such praise for Vater, his life in Paris among rich, powerful men whom he now could dominate. To this very day they believe in all that claptrap; they defend him. They say, He saved us from “those anti-German elements.”
Dear Vater. He was the one who soothed the tiny consciences of the French. It did not take much, I should say, to convince that nation they should surrender their Jews. Father only had to assist in the maintenance of a little fiction. Send us only “foreign Jews,” he said, not “French Jews.” Such a small crumb to throw them: only the riffraff of Belgium or Poland, Czechoslovakia or Russia. Foreigners. Not decent French men and women such as yourselves. He helped to spread this nationalist strategy, which would come to be so useful everywhere.
And then my father asked for more Jews and more. The French resisted only briefly: They tried to shield the Jews who had lived in France for generations, the aristocrats, the “French Israelites,” as they preferred to call them. And the decorated heroes who had served France during the Great War. And the war widows. But their resistance was nothing, a tissue. As Vater knew, it was but a balm to soothe what little was left of their better natures. Soon the French sent everyone: the veterans, the war widows, the “French” Jews of old families; the bearers of l’Insigne des Blessés Militaires, la Médaille d’Honneur, la Croix de la Valeur, la Croix de Guerre, la Croix du Combattant—all those Jews with all those crosses, even grandfathers clutching les Médailles Militaires—their service to la France meant nothing. Their medals went into the flames along with them.
The threaded tape flapped on as Dr. Schussler paused.
Meanwhile, the doctor continued, what elegant dinner parties Vater attended. Parties arranged by a fool named Louis Darquier de Pellepoix—that idiot with his monocle and the ridiculous “de Pellepoix” he insisted upon appending to his name, as if he were something more than a scheming boulevardier. There Vater was, drinking champagne with Pierre Taittinger, who contributed his wealth to the cause. And with Eugène Schueller, owner of L’Oréal, another grand contributor. I can never again drink champagne, Dr. Gurevitch. I will never wear products from L’Oréal or indeed—
Forgive me … I am ranting. All I meant to say is that the family letters came, and then they came more rarely, and then not at all. Yet I knew what was happening. And here I remained as the death machine rolled on.
I am tired now. It is—what time? One? Two in the morning? I have been Christmas shopping—the packages are all around me on the floor—and I thought, while I was downtown, I might record my thoughts. I am glad I did, despite the hour. I see I must return to my own therapy if I am to do decent work for patient three. I cannot simply turn her away—as you said, Dr. Gurevitch, such a move would be experienced by her as a casting out, yet another