Yitzel

The sixteen-year-old Yitzel was getting restless in the long queue at the entrance to the Portuguese embassy in Berlin. It was so very hot and crowded in the noonday sun, and she felt a great thirst, a sweaty forehead, and an intense need to defecate.  She and her mother Yolande had been waiting in line for over five hours, and Yitzel couldn’t understand why her mother was so bent on getting what she called a “visa” to Portugal or to any of its colonies.  Yolande had explained that a “visa” was a special permission to travel to any part of the Portuguese empire, including colonies in both Africa and Asia, but Yitzel didn’t quite understand what the words “empire” or “colony” meant. Nor did Yitzel understand why it was imperative that they leave Germany and move to the Portuguese empire as soon as possible, but Yolande was emphatic on the subject. “Now make sure you’re on your best behavior,” said Yolande to her daughter as she combed her hair to pretty her up. “We don’t want to give the authorities any excuse to deny our visas.”

“Why do we need a visa to the Portuguese empire? Is an empire just a bunch of countries ruled by a bigger country? Is that what you mean by the word “colony?”

“The Portuguese empire is ruled by Portugal and is made up of many colonies such as Angola and Mozambique in Africa and Macau in Asia. I have decided it’s time for us to leave Germany and go to any corner of the Portuguese empire where we might find refuge. We’re in line in front of some special offices of the country called Portugal – it’s called an embassy – where we can hopefully get a visa into Portugal itself or to one of its colonies.  We need a special permission to move to any part of the Portuguese empire as soon as possible. We may soon be living in Africa or Asia.”

“Africa?” responded Yitzel. “Isn’t that where the black men live? And the lions and the tigers? We had a book in school with pictures of all the animals and the black people. Why are you thinking of moving there? Aren’t the tigers and the lions dangerous?”

“There are far greater dangers in Germany,” Yolande told her daughter and immediately regretted having said it. How could she possibly explain the perils they were facing to her disabled daughter?

“What dangers are there in Germany, Mamaleh?” Despite her condition, Yitzel spoke Yiddish as well as German and English, also a little French. At the Jewish Lyceum for special children, she had been far better in foreign languages than in mathematics.

“Don’t worry about it, Yitzel. I promise you if we move to Angola or Mozambique, we’ll be safe from all the animals.”

 “Are we going to become hunters? In the book we had in school all the men in Africa who were not black were hunters. Is Africa what you call a colony or is it a great big zoo?”

“Yes, Mozambique and Angola are both Portuguese colonies, but we won’t have to live as hunters. There are European communities in both those colonies so I could find work in any number of jobs. I can work as an accountant anywhere. The trick is getting there.”

“Are all the people in the line also trying to get a visa? Is it hard to get a permission to travel to the Portuguese empire?”

“It might be,” answered Yolande in a pensive voice. “For now maybe you should say a prayer. Ask the Almighty to protect us and watch over us.”

“Protect us from the animals?” asked Yitzel.

“From the Fuhrer!” replied Yolande peremptorily.

“I’ve seen his pictures,” said Yitzel. “They’re everywhere, huge banners of his stern face above a swastika. Frau Grossman at our special school said that the Fuhrer is like a king. But he doesn’t wear a crown in any of his pictures so I don’t really think so. Why do we need protection from the Fuhrer? Is that why you want to go to a foreign country? Do you want to get away from him?”

“It’s complicated,” answered Yolande. “Yes, I want to get us away from the Fuhrer. Let’s say he’s doing a lot of bad things that could hurt us. And we’ll be safe if we depart to Portugal or one of its colonies as soon as possible.”

“Like what?” asked Yitzel. “What can the Fuhrer do to us?  Why ask the Almighty for protection from that man?”

Yolande looked at her daughter fixedly in the eyes, not knowing whether to reveal the truth to her. Would it serve any purpose for Yolande to disclose the T-4 program to her daughter? Why tell a special girl that Hitler was exterminating all the disabled people of Germany and that the only option was to escape? They needed a visa to Argentina, Portugal, the United States, Ireland, Sweden, any neutral country that would take them. Otherwise, Yitzel would be ripped from her home and murdered by lethal injection or by gassing. But Yitzel was such a cheerful adolescent that her mother didn’t think she should pollute her mind with such dark fears.

“Let’s say that the Fuhrer doesn’t like Jews like us,” Yolande finally responded. “He’s making it harder and harder for Jews to live in peace in Germany. After the night of crystal glass, thousands upon thousands of Jews decided to leave the country.”

Yolande said nothing to her daughter about the fate of kids with Down Syndrome in Hitler’s Reich. She didn’t tell her daughter about the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. She didn’t want to tell her about the T-4 euthanasia program which was killing the mentally impaired by the thousands. In a word, she didn’t want her daughter to be frightened beyond her wits.

“Does the Fuhrer have it out for kids who are special?” asked Yitzel to her mother’s great surprise. “When they shut down the Jewish Lyceum for kids with special needs, Frau Grossman told us Hitler hated children like us. She told us that was why the school was being closed.”

“Yes, the Fuhrer’s feels an intense hatred for those with special needs. I guess it’s now an open secret. Everyone knows about it. But I didn’t want to mention it to you so you won’t be scared.”

“Should I be scared, Mamaleh? Will the Fuhrer do bad things to us?”

“No, you shouldn’t be afraid. Never cower before one who is evil. This fright will pass. Things will get better – they always do. Just pray to the Almighty and ask Him to help us in all our needs and to help all disabled people. Soon we’ll be in Portugal or one of its colonies, far from the Fuhrer’s reach.”

“That’s why you desperately want to get a visa, right? That’s why you want to move us even if it is to a land of wild animals. But you haven’t told me what you’re so afraid of. I’m a big girl, Mamaleh. I can take the truth.”

“Hitler wants to take all the kids with Down Syndrome from their parents,” Yolande reluctantly responded. “Parents have gone to pick up their special children from school only to find that they have disappeared. But I won’t allow it in your case, even if it means we have to travel to darkest Africa or distant Shanghai.”

“I’ve seen other special kids in the line as well as many men with yarmulkes on their heads. Do they also want to go to – what did you call them? – Angola or Mozambique? And what about my dearest Roland? He’s special too even though in his own way he’s very clever. Shouldn’t he be seeking a visa as well?”

“Like us, the men and women in line want to go to any country that will take them. And yes, it would be a good idea for Roland to escape from Germany as well.”

“I love him so, Mamaleh. I wouldn’t want to go to Portugal or Africa if Roland didn’t go with us. You know we have every intention to get married. Frau Grossman said it wasn’t a good idea because we’re both special, but you were the one who told me I could do whatever the ‘normal’ people do. There is nothing I love as much as walking along the Rhone River, hand in hand with my handsome Roland, my darling, my betrothed!”

***

Yitzel and her mother reached the front of the queue and a woman in cat eye glasses asked them to follow her to a room inside the Portuguese embassy.

“Be on your best behavior,” Yolande said to her daughter. “The less you speak, the better.”

“I’ll make you proud,” responded Yitzel.

Even from a distance, everyone could recognize that Yitzel lived with Down syndrome. She had the distinctive features of those with the condition – the stocky build, the round and flattened face, the thick short neck, the small stature, the tiny hands and mouth, the upward slanting eyes… So almost as soon as they entered the room for visa interviews, the Portuguese official raised the subject with Yolande.

“You are trying to get a visa both for you and your daughter, right?” asked the woman.

“Yes, for me and my Yitzel.”

“And your daughter suffers from mongolism, doesn’t she?”

“She lives with Down syndrome,” replied Yolande with a pained face, as if she had just swallowed some bitter purgative, “but she is high-functioning and can even read and write. She can also participate in conversations, although her vocabulary may be somewhat limited. You have to understand that there are different levels within the Down syndrome community. Yitzel is at the highest level of cognition. Don’t be misled by the way she looks. The range of abilities is wide for those who live with Down syndrome and the way they look tells you nothing. Yitzel has a very high IQ for a person with her condition.”

Meanwhile Yitzel nervously fidgeted in her chair, realizing they were talking about her, understanding most of what they said except her mother’s reference to ‘cognition.’ Yitzel felt a strong urge to go to the bathroom but didn’t dare to interrupt.

“Can I ask her a few questions?” queried the Portuguese woman. She had salt and pepper hair, with a matron’s figure.

“Why do you want to interview Yitzel?” asked Yolande.

The woman’s response was cutting like a knife and delivered with a touch of cruelty.

“Because we don’t allow idiots into Portugal or any of its colonies,” she said, as if it went without saying. “We have enough expenses with our own.”

Then she turned to Yitzel.

“Why do you want to move to Portugal or its colonies? How would you support yourself?”

Yitzel sat ramrod straight on her swivel chair and glanced at her mother nervously before responding.

“I don’t know much about Portugal,” Yitzel answered, “but I would like to go to Angola or Mozambique because I want to hunt wild elephants and sell their tusks.”

As she spoke, Yitzel beamed a smile as she glanced at her mother. Was that the right response? Would a normal girl have given a different answer? Then she turned to the Portuguese woman once again and continued her explanation.

“Frau Grossman told us elephant tusks could sell for a good deal of money because they’re made of ivory. Maybe we’ll be rich as hunters once we move to one of Portugal’s colonies in Africa.”

“So, you want to be a hunter?” queried the Portuguese woman. “Shouldn’t you be in school instead?”

“If they have schools for special kids in Portugal or Africa, then I will go to school. Frau Grossman told us they were shutting down all the special schools in Germany, but I’m not sure if they have the same rule in – what did you call it? – in the Portuguese empire. The Lyceum I attended was full of special kids but as I said it was shut down.”

“When you say special kids, what do you mean?”

Yitzel was flummoxed and wasn’t sure how to answer. She looked at her mother, hoping for an intervention, but Yolande said nothing and allowed her daughter to respond. Yitzel was eager to please but wasn’t sure how to do so.

“I guess I mean kids who are a little slower than the rest. And some special kids don’t look like all the other children. I guess you could say that about me. But you should know Frau Grossman said I was the smartest of all the kids in my whole class because I try the hardest and am very eager to learn especially the drawing and the writing. I am very low grade – are those the right words, Mamaleh? – when it comes to my condition and can speak like everybody else. Rosa Stein thought she was the brightest, but she’s just good at Ping-Pong and she’s been held back three times. Then there’s Roland, my betrothed, who is so bright he can write love poems like the best of them.”

“How much is a thousand divided by five?” probed the Portuguese woman.

“Well, let’s see,” said Yitzel as she looked at her mother with a perplexed expression, knowing that math wasn’t exactly her forte. “Let’s see,” she said. “A thousand divided by five. I would say about three hundred – or something like that. I find numbers a little confusing, especially fractions. You can say I’m no good with figures but I’m good with language.”

“And once you’re out of school, what work could you perform?”

Before Yitzel answered, the woman turned to Yolande and said, “We won’t issue visas to anyone who would be a burden on the public treasury.”

“Yitzel would be a burden to no one,” Yolande responded indignantly. “I’ve brought copies of my bank accounts. I have a great deal of money. My husband’s business somehow survived Kristallnacht, and I was able to liquidate it for a hefty sum. And I’m trained as an accountant. If anything, we would be a benefit to colonial Portuguese society. I know Portugal’s colonies in Africa and Asia are interested in importing Europeans with my background in order to ‘whiten’ the colonies. Whether we move to Asian Macau or African Angola, we’ll fit right in with all the other colonists. And there’s no reason Yitzel can’t engage in a variety of duties such as work as a cashier or as a filing clerk. You should know my daughter knows how to type, knows how to speak four different languages and can even paint. She has special needs, that is all. I beg you, in the name of God, in the name of everything holy, not to refuse her a visa because she happens to have an extra chromosome.”

“Let your daughter answer. It’s not your background that I’m worried about but hers. My impression is that your daughter wouldn’t even be able to keep a ledger.”

“I would make my living hunting white elephants,” intervened Yitzel with a broad smile, her spittle running down her chin as happened when she got excited, her chest puffing up like a peacock’s. “I’ve already told you that. I could be the best of hunters. Or I could prepare little writings and sell them for money. You should know that I’m a writer. I produce little books for children.”

The Portuguese woman rose from her desk.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Yolande, “but Portugal has strict rules about who is allowed into the empire. And we don’t issue visas to the mentally deficient or anyone who is an invalid of any type. That’s a longstanding policy, especially enforced today given all that is happening in Germany.”

Yolande exploded in pain and fury, momentarily forgetting she was in the presence of her daughter.

“Don’t you realize what you’re doing?” she insisted in a frantic voice. “You’re sentencing Yitzel to death. Have you heard about the T-4 program? All the kids with special needs – all the ‘idiots’ as you call them – are being systematically killed by lethal injection or by gassing on a massive scale. If Yitzel doesn’t leave the country, her fate is sealed. I beg you – I plead with you in the name of God and all humanity – not to send my lovely daughter to a monstrous end. She has many gifts even if she’s poor at math. Despite her Down syndrome she’s a thriving, well-adjusted adolescent.”

“We’ve heard rumors about the program. Whether they’re true or not is not for me to say. But your daughter is not the first mentally deficient person to seek a visa for Portugal and its colonies. The ‘mongoloids’ are coming in droves as well as the Jews and all manner of disabled. We’ve received direct orders from Lisbon to allow some Jews into our lands but not the ‘cretins’ or the ‘cripples.’ We can’t allow thousands of mentally deficient persons into Portugal and its colonies lest they become a drain on the public treasury and pollute the gene pool. It’s really out of my hands. And I hate to have to tell you this, but most other neutral countries have the same policy as Portugal when it comes to granting visas to the mentally disabled – not only those with Down syndrome but also schizophrenics and the autistic, all who are mentally ill in one form or another.”

“What if I were to give you a little something?” asked the desperate Yolande pleadingly. “I brought this just in case I needed it. Here, look. It’s an emerald necklace worth a fortune. Would you accept it and save my Yitzel? You should know that she was sterilized years ago at Hitler’s orders so she won’t affect the Portuguese gene pool in any way.”

“You’re trying to bribe me?” said the woman in the cat-eye glasses with an offended expression on her face. “Know that even if I were willing to accept it, it would not help your mentally retarded daughter. She would have to go through customs in Lisbon and would be detected. If it was only your daughter, I’d look the other way. But every disabled person in Germany – physically as well as mentally – is seeking entry into our lands. We’re talking about thousands of people.”

“All the ones destined for Hitler’s ovens,” said Yolande with pent-up rage. “And no one in the whole world gives a damn!”

Yitzel looked at her mother with a stupefied look. She hadn’t understood everything but she had understood enough.

Yitzel suddenly realized the Fuhrer meant to have her killed, Roland too, and she burst into tears. Although Roland was older and more intellectually advanced, Yitzel knew that he was still a “cretin” in the eyes of the all-powerful Fuhrer and in the eyes of those who issued the precious visas which would allow him to escape.

And from that day forward, Yitzel wept nightly for herself and for her Roland. Her prayers to the Almighty never ceased.

Before they left the embassy, Yitzel confessed that she had soiled her undergarments to her mother. She couldn’t hold it in for so many hours and hadn’t wanted to cross the Portuguese woman by excusing herself from the interview to go to the bathroom.

***

The following day, Yolande woke up Yitzel at four in the morning, so they could make it to the Argentine consulate by six and get in line to seek their visas. As they were eating breakfast, Yolande gave her daughter some words of advice. She told Yitzel to speak as little as possible, to say she would be going to school in Argentina for a couple of years and then would work as a typist. She advised Yitzel to tell the authorities she knew how to write in shorthand, which was not a complete lie as she had been taking some correspondence courses. Finally, she made the impossible demand that Yitzel conceal her Down syndrome from the Argentines as she wasn’t sure the South American country gave visas to the mentally disabled.

”Fine,” said Yitzel. “I’ll be quiet as a tomb, although I don’t know that I can hide my condition from the Argentines. All they have to do is look at my face, Mamaleh.” Then she asked, a propos of nothing, “At what time will we be picking up my Roland?”

“Roland isn’t going with us,” Yolande responded.

“What do you mean? We discussed it yesterday. I won’t move to Argentina without my Roland.”

“I’m sorry, Yitzel, but first I have to discuss it with his mother. Let’s see how things go today and then we’ll worry about Roland.”

“No!” screamed out Yitzel. “If my betrothed isn’t going to the Argentine consuelate with us, then I won’t go either. I won’t be able to live happily in Argentina knowing that Roland will be put in jail and murdered in Germany. Either he goes with us or nobody goes.”

“You’re being unreasonable, Yitzel. If the Argentines give you a visa, they’ll certainly give one to Roland. His Down syndrome is much less severe than yours. Most people can’t recognize his condition just by looking at his face.”

“No!” cried out Yitzel in a desperate voice. “You don’t care about Roland’s fate but I do.”

Then she took her breakfast plate and smashed it against the ground.

“Other parents might give you a hiding for your insolence,” said Yolande as she picked up the shards from the broken dish, “but I understand your outburst is a product of your repressed rage. I know why you lash out. Sometimes I also think of smashing things to smithereens. Sometimes I’m also in a furious mood, cannot avoid the fear, despair and horror of Hitler’s Reich. You have every right to vent given everything we’re going through. But I promise you I won’t forget Roland.”

“He’s such a beautiful person, Mamaleh. I love him so! There’s nothing I dream about as much as our wedding night.”

“Aha!” giggled Yolande.” Don’t tell me you’ve already been intimate with Roland, you little scamp!”

“What do you mean?” asked Yitzel.

“I was just joshing you. How far have you gone with the man you call your betrothed?”

“Do you mean sex?” asked Yitzel. “Frau Grossman spent a whole week explaining it to us. But she confused me. She said sex was only allowable in marriage and then told us we could never marry. Then what was the point of the whole lesson? She also told us about condoms and then admitted that most boys with the Down disease can’t get a woman pregnant any way. So, again, what was the point of telling us? But no, I’ve never been ‘intimate’ with Roland as you say. You know how he likes to use big words. He’s such a show-off, always reciting his little poems. He said women are to be praised and admired for their beauty, not to be ‘debauched.’ I had to look up the word in the dictionary right away. I guess I won’t be debauched until I’m married. We haven’t even kissed, although I long for his embrace – that’s a word I’ve learned from one of Roland’s poems. Frau Grossman told us it was the girl who had to set the rules, but I’ve never had to do so with him.”

”He’s such the gentleman,” pronounced Yolande, giggling as if she was an adolescent listening to the confessions of a schoolmate.

“And a goofball,” responded Yitzel with a laugh, “always telling the same corny jokes. Like when Frau Grossman told him he was so much smarter than the rest of us that he should go to a normal school. Roland joked as he refused the offer, ‘It’s better to be the smartest kid in a class full of dummies than the dumbest kid in a school full of geniuses.’ I think he gets his jokes from his older brother who’s not special. Don’t you think so, Mamaleh?”

“He might,” responded Yolande. “But I suppose that with all that’s happening, he will stop telling so many jokes. There’s nothing funny about the current situation. If you want, we can delay our visit to the Argentine embassy so that Roland can join us. But let me tell you we don’t have much time to wait. For now, the Nazis are rounding up all the disabled people found in hospitals, clinics and sanatoriums. Soon they’ll be knocking on people’s doors in search of those they deem ‘unworthy of life.’”

“Do you swear we won’t leave Germany even if we get a visa to Argentina unless Roland goes with us?”

“You have that as my solemn pledge.”

“You mean you promise, right? In that case, let’s go to the Argentine offices right away. But do get in touch with Mrs. Rosenfeld so that Roland can go with us when we visit – what’s the word? – other ‘consuelates’  tomorrow. And how could we be unworthy of life if it is God who has given life to us and every other good?”

Sometimes Yolande was surprised by her daughter’s statements which seemed to come out of the blue and apparently were beyond her limited intellectual capacity. How much could she understand about God and His creation, after all? But Yolande was forced to conclude that sometimes her “feeble-minded” daughter understood things better than the healthy. Like when Yitzel told her mother her intention upon reaching adulthood was to be a writer. An impossible dream surely, but perhaps a recognition of the superiority of the artist’s life… Yitzel didn’t know the difference between a novel and a fairy tale but knew that one way or another her mission in life was to produce art. She was like a child who draws her depictions of the sun and moon knowing they would be enjoyed by no one other than her parents. And so Yitzel stapled together pages with her drawings of herself and her mother, sometimes of Roland and her other friends, below a sentence or two of text, and called them her little “books.” By the time of the T-4 scare, she had assembled a tiny library which she intended to take with her to Argentina or whatever country took them.

As Yitzel and Yolande were in the queue to enter the Argentine consulate, Yitzel brought up the subject of her writing.

“If they ask me what I plan to do in Argentina, can I tell them that I mean to become a famous writer?  I know it wasn’t a good idea for me to tell the Portuguese woman that I wanted to become an elephant hunter. I don’t mean to screw things up again. Can I tell them I want to write fairy tales for children and for all the special kids? I know you want me to say I plan to work in an office, but I really don’t. I want to continue to write my little books. Isn’t it bad to lie?”

Yolande realized Yitzel wanted to produce art as instinctively as a six-year-old.

“Don’t worry about it overmuch,” said Yolande. “You are who you are. If the Argentine authorities don’t issue visas to folks with special needs, there’s little we can do about it. I don’t want you to think of these sessions as a test. Go ahead and tell them you intend to become an author. There are more than a dozen neutral embassies in Berlin. I have every intention to visit each and every one of them. I refuse to believe that children with Down syndrome are barred from entering every country on the planet.”

After waiting in line for approximately four hours outside the Argentine embassy in the sweltering sun, Yitzel and her mother were finally allowed into the room where their interrogation would be conducted. Yitzel crossed her fingers and told her mother, “We can do this!” as she sat down on a swivel chair. When she saw the attendant – he introduced himself as Hugo Vecchini – she felt he couldn’t have been more welcoming or cheerful, so unlike the woman at the Portuguese embassy.

“So, you both want visas to Argentina?” the slight blonde-haired man asked as he looked over the financial records brought by Yolande to prove they would not be a financial burden to the state. Yitzel looked at the floor, not wanting to lock her eyes with his, for she knew if he looked closely at her face he would discover she lived with Down syndrome.

“Yes, we want to emigrate to Argentina,” replied Yolande.” We’d also like to ask for a visa for a gentleman named Roland Rosenfeld who could not come to the embassy today.”

Yitzel turned to her mother and gently smiled.

“And you want to move to Argentina,” asked Vecchini abruptly, “to escape the Fuhrer’s persecution of the disabled and the so-called ‘feeble-minded’ throughout the Third Reich? Or am I wrong?”

Yolande was taken by surprise.

“How did you know?”

“All I need to do is look at your Yitzel’s beautiful face. I know other countries might not allow a girl with your daughter’s condition to move to their lands, but persons like me have also been targeted by the Fuhrer and I cannot abide his brutality. I am also officially a leper in the Third Reich. Enough said!”

“Do you mean you intend to issue a visa for Yitzel?”

“That’s what I’m saying. Is Mister Rosenfeld disabled as well?”

“Only slightly,” Yitzel volunteered.

“Well, then, all three of you come next week for your visas, and we’ll have you on the road to Buenos Aires.”

As they were leaving, Yitzel smiled broadly, as if she were a cat that had just swallowed a mouse.

“Wasn’t he a nice man?” she asked.

“A very nice man,” replied Yolande.

“There was one thing I couldn’t understand,” answered Yitzel, “when he said persons like him were being hurt by the Fuhrer. Does that mean he’s considered ‘feeble-minded’ too?”

“I think he’s a Schwule. Hitler has gone after the queers too, just like the disabled kids. There have always been laws against homosexuals, but the Fuhrer is enforcing them relentlessly. The government has shut down all the gay bars and social clubs, so the Schwulen have resorted to meeting in beaches, parks and even the homes of wealthy friends. Not surprisingly, Hitler blames everything on the Jews, accusing the Juden of corrupting Aryan youths even when the acts between Jew and Gentile are undoubtedly consensual.”

“Yes, Frau Grossman taught us about that too. But she also mentioned a very long word – Sexualstratfaters – warning the boys to be wary of advances by such men. Aren’t all the Schwulen sexual predators?  Is Mr. Vecchini one as well?”

“Lord, no!” exclaimed Yolande. “The Schwulen are merely men who are attracted to other men. The various branches of Judaism see homosexuality in different ways. Some see it as sinful, others don’t. But there’s no reason to incarcerate them, let alone send them to be gassed. Some sexual predators are homosexual, some are heterosexual, but the vast majority of Schwulen would never harm a child or a disabled person.”

The following week, Yolande, Yitzel and Roland arrived at the Argentine embassy at nine o’clock on the dot for their scheduled meeting with Hugo Vecchini, but their expectations were confounded. Instead of Vecchini, a burly man named Scatturchio ushered them into the room where interrogations were conducted. From his very first words, spoken in an acid voice, Yolande knew their hopes would soon be dashed.

“Mister Vecchini has been relieved of his duties,” announced the Argentine embassy official ominously. “Unbeknown to us, that maricón was issuing visas to all the undesirables of Germany –epileptics, schizophrenics, the feebleminded, even the transvestites. Well, we don’t desire to take in all the Fuhrer rejects and make a home for them in Argentina. Let Hitler pay for the cost of his own cretins.”

Yolande tried to argue with him, but it was in vain. Surely a girl like Yitzel would not be granted a visa by the Argentine embassy authority.

“Have you heard of the T-4 program?” she asked plaintively.

“It’s for the German people to oppose it,” he responded viciously. “It’s out of my hands.”

And he picked up his hat and left the room. All three of them – Yolande, Yitzel and Roland – began to mourn. There was nothing else Hugo Vecchini could do for them.

***

Yitzel, Yolande and Roland made their way to over twelve neutral embassies as the Nazis’ T-4 euthanasia program galloped ahead. The response was always the same, even that of the Americans whom Yolande thought would be particularly solicitous to the disabled as their own President Roosevelt was among their number. Everyone said the Fuhrer was trying to export all of Germany’s “genetic defectives” to other countries and the foreign ambassadors would have none of it. Some embassy officials were seemingly compassionate, others were blunt and cruel, saying there was no room in their nations for “incurable idiots.” When Yolande protested that Hitler was exterminating the so-called “idiots” by the thousands, the response was also always the same. It was up to the German people to change the laws regarding the treatment of patients with Down syndrome, not to burden the economies of foreign countries with their useless “cretins.” Yolande thought of a mass demonstration, all the mothers of disabled children and adolescents sent to the six T-4 extermination centers gathering en masse to protest the disappearance of their offspring. She knew she could find allies in the Catholic and Lutheran churches which were already violently protesting. In fact, she had consulted Bishop Clement August Graf von Galen directly about a massive demonstration. But before Yolande could do anything, she received a letter from the officials enforcing the Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases advising her that she had to appear at their offices with Yitzel in tow the following Wednesday. Apparently, the Nazi authorities had gone over the list of those sterilized in prior years and found the name and address of Yitzel Klausner. If they did not appear on Wednesday for the “interview,” warned the letter, Yitzel would be apprehended and sent to a concentration camp forthwith.

Yolande was not about to turn over her daughter to the Nazi doctors and psychiatrists who orchestrated the T-4 mass killing program. By the time Yitzel was called by the competent authorities, it was no longer a secret that the Nazis were engaging in hundreds of so-called “mercy killings” every day. Although at first the murderous doctors, nurses and psychiatrists had kept their macabre deeds hidden from the people, it soon became clear that it was impossible to do so. Black buses arrived daily at the euthanasia centers with crowds of disabled folks, never to be seen again. Abundant smoke was constantly emitted by the chimneys of the centers, unassailable proof that corpses were being incinerated in the crematoria there. Even the children in the neighborhoods surrounding the killing centers had figured it all out. “You’re an idiot,” they taunted each other as they played. “Soon you’ll be gassed at the killing center at Grafeneck.”

Yolande had no time to waste. If she could not obtain a visa to any other foreign country, perhaps she could find refuge in Switzerland. There was a rumor that many people escaping the depredations of their Nazi overlords had found safe haven there, although Yolande wasn’t sure if that applied to disabled persons or only to Jewish refugees. Still, she saw no alternative. She couldn’t possibly contemplate the idea of her Yitzel in a euthanasia center where she would not only be killed but also subjected to the most brutal of experiments. The disabled were treated worse than the dogs in Germany for Hitler had passed Animal Protection Laws meant to protect all canines from vivisection, but no such laws applied to the mentally retarded, the subhumans called untermenschen by the Nazis. They were an economic burden, promiscuous idiots, life “unworthy of life,” and had to be eliminated lest they pollute the master race and prevent the improvement of the German people.

Yolande called up Roland’s mother on the phone and told her of her plans to immediately escape to Basel. Mrs. Rosenfeld agreed that it was now imperative to flee and agreed to join them on the trip. Traveling by train was impossible, for they would be detected, so Yolande hired one of her cousins – a man she trusted – to drive them to the Swiss border for a relatively modest sum of money. For her part, Yitzel was excited by the plan. She had heard her mother explain the horrors of the euthanasia program to the consular officials at numerous embassies and understood what she would face unless she fled. But she had a question for her mother: Couldn’t she and Roland marry before they left? When her mother explained that it was forbidden for disabled people to get married in Germany, Yitzel demanded to know whether their wedding might be celebrated in Switzerland. Her mother lied to her and told her that was a possibility. She already knew that the Swiss had their own views on racial hygiene and that marriage between the “feeble-minded” was absolutely verboten in the Alpine nation. What Yolande didn’t realize was that the Swiss had sent hundreds of their own “cretins” for “eugenic care” in Germany’s euthanasia centers, and they had never returned.

Berlin is nine-hundred kilometers from Basel, and it took the group fifteen hours to arrive at the border crossing. On one side of the station Swiss guards awaited, on the other Germans. One of the Swiss guards lazily rose from his seat and asked to see the group’s entry visas. Yolande nervously objected that Switzerland had always taken in refugees without requiring visas and the guard peremptorily responded that the laws had changed. When the guard saw Yitzel, he added that entry into the country was forbidden for all with congenital mental deficiencies. Apparently, he didn’t realize that Roland lived with Down syndrome too, but the Germans at the other side of the station surely did. Once the group was denied entry to Switzerland, they were turned over to the Germans on the other side. Yitzel was banned to Grafeneck castle while Roland was conscripted into the military. Thus did Yitzel begin to experience the horrors of captivity at the hands of the German master race.

And Yolande was shattered, thinking she would never see her lovely daughter again.

***

At nine o’clock in the morning, Yitzel arrived at the euthanasia center at Grafeneck, an old chateau with pink walls and crystal chandeliers that had been retrofitted into a place to kill mental defectives in massive numbers, complete with gas chambers and crematoria. The first person she encountered was a middle-aged nurse named Frau Lauterbach who looked Yitzel over as if she were a horse or an insect and mockingly welcomed her into the castle. There was a hatred in Nurse Lauterbach’s expression which Yitzel had never seen before, and the woman did nothing to conceal it. The sixtyish woman with her gray hair in a bun had taken care of mentally ill patients for over twenty-five years but had turned to her new duties with enthusiasm, as if she truly believed the “mercy deaths” of the disabled would somehow redound to the benefit of the German master race.

When fifty-seven patients from an asylum for the mentally ill run by the Catholic Church arrived – despite the vociferous protests of the priest in charge – Nurse Lauterbach did not attempt to make their quick extermination a secret from Yitzel or anybody else. On the contrary, the nurse derived a sadistic pleasure from allowing the young girl to witness the gassing of the fifty-seven “lunatics” through a small window to the death chamber.  Among their number were those affected by conditions such as autism, epilepsy, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, schizophrenia and even deafness. Yitzel was terrified, for in all her years she had not even imagined the possibility of such horror or seen a single death, let alone the gassing of over fifty people in one fell swoop. Then the orderlies started to take the corpses from the gas chambers to the crematoria where they would be incinerated. Yitzel felt herself swooning, fainting, dying… In her first few hours at Grafeneck, Yitzel learned she should expect the worst from her fellow human beings and that she was witnessing the worst of the human condition. Nurse Lauterbach icily told her to expect the same torment she had witnessed.

A young schizophrenic woman named Margot then approached the weeping girl and told her not to worry, for death by gassing only caused a few minutes of pain. The schizophrenic woman was lovely, with jet black hair and a shapely silhouette, also the most melancholy blue eyes Yitzel had ever seen. Yitzel knew the murderers killed those they considered madmen, but she also knew – despite her condition – that the real madmen were those committing such atrocities. Although Yitzel didn’t understand the exact meaning of the words used by the executioners – Nurse Lauterbach referred to the executed prisoners as “retrogrades” – she soon came to realize that the real “retrogrades” were those who killed the disabled in untold numbers with the Germans’ vaunted bureaucratic efficiency. It didn’t take her long to conclude that those who murdered defenseless babies in their cribs in order to “purify” the German race were the ones who were demented.

Three days after her arrival at Grafeneck, Yitzel was told by Nurse Lauterbach that she had to be examined by a doctor to determine the seriousness of her condition. The physician, a certain Doctor Gunther Studer, was in his early thirties and two years out of medical school. When Yitzel entered the examination room, the first thing he did was direct her to undress. The young girl balked at his request, but he insisted.

“I have two pencils in my hands,” he told her. “One is blue and one is red. I also have a copy of your dossier. If I mark your papers with a blue checkmark, I’ll be declaring you fit to work. If I place a red cross on your papers, I’ll be sending you to your death. I’m one of three doctors at Grafeneck castle who have such authority. Other doctors work directly at mental asylums, making the life-or-death decisions then and there.”

“I will not be debauched,” Yitzel exclaimed peremptorily. “The only man who will debauch me is my betrothed Roland Rosenfeld.”

“I have no intention to debauch you,” said Doctor Studer with a gentle smile, “although you should be wary of any advances from Doctor Hermann Pfannmuller. I should tell you that my initial thoughts are that you should not be put in the gas chambers nor killed by an injection. To put a spin on an old Nazi catchphrase, you are a life “worthy of life.” There is no reason you can’t work and have your life spared.”

“Can’t we do this with my clothes on?” asked Yitzel skittishly. “Frau Grossman told us to beware of Sexualstratfaters.” As she spoke, Yitzel became painfully aware of her own sexuality, the fact she inhabited the body of a woman no matter what its defects.

“I am not a sexual predator. I am a physician. You have no reason to fear. I want what’s best for you.”

“If you’re so good, why do you work in this castle? I’ve only been here for three days and I’ve already seen such ugly things.  You are – what’s the word? – you’re part of the ‘organization’ of this place. You have already admitted that you send certain persons to be gassed – all because they’re special.”

“That is a very tough question, young lady, and I’m not sure I have an adequate explanation. Let’s say that when I started working at Grafeneck, I had no idea what I was getting into. I had heard that euthanasia was conducted on the premises but thought it was for incurably ill patients living in great pain who wished to put an end to their suffering themselves. Doctor Victor Brack – the man who hired me – referred to them as ‘mercy killings.’ Then I discovered that at Grafeneck they were killing the disabled en masse, on the assumption that their lives were not worth living. How can I abide that as a Catholic? After all, Saint Margaret of Castello was a blind misshapen dwarf with a hunchback and a withered leg, and yet she became a saint due to her charity, faith and virtue. By now, more than one hundred thousand mutants like Saint Margaret have been ‘cleansed’ by the Nazi physicians, guided by the Darwinian notion that only the fittest should survive. Sometimes I think I should have quit my job immediately as an act of protest. But then so many other men and women would have been lost. I must tell you that I’ve saved countless lives with my little blue pencil during the last two years.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” responded Yitzel, deeply confused. “It seems you are doing bad things to do good.”

“You don’t need to undress, Yitzel. I’ve already decided you are fit to work. Your life is spared. Pray that the Good Lord will have mercy on my soul.”

Margot Hoffman was a recovering schizophrenic – she had lived for three years without any symptoms of the disease – and yet the Nazi psychiatrists considered her a “life unworthy of life” for they had found her in a sanatorium screaming in a corner. She had been saved from the crematoria by the ministrations of Doctor Studer, just like Yitzel, just like many others. By contrast, Nurse Lauterbach treated Margot with a particular animus, perhaps because Margot was a beautiful woman and Nurse Lauterbach was not, or perhaps because the nurse felt none of the mentally ill in her “care” should be spared from the crematoria. Unlike many of the other nurses at Grafeneck, she felt no shame for killing its sick patients and even boasted about all the infants she had sent to their deaths in the pediatric ward. She was fiercely pro-Hitler and felt the man could do no wrong, even to the point that she nonchalantly collaborated in allowing babies to die slowly through a painful starvation.

Of course, Margot was also saved due to the intervention of Doctor Hermann Pfannmuller, but that came at a heavy price. It was not exactly a rape, she told Yitzel, since no violence was involved, but their sexual relationship was clearly nonconsensual. Margot wasn’t sure how Doctor Studer would vote – a blue mark or a red one in her file – so she accepted Doctor Pfannmuller’s advancements without complaint or grievance in exchange for the gift of life, in exchange for the little checkmark in blue in her dossier. But Margot was neither the first nor the last of his victims, and Margot never ceased worrying about the fates of the other women at the Grafeneck killing center. Every time a beautiful woman came to Grafeneck, Doctor Pfanmuller was sure to insinuate himself, particularly to those whose faces had not been marred by their disease. Margot used the same word to describe Doctor Pfanmuller that Yitzel had heard from Frau Grossman at the Jewish Lyceum. Doctor Pfannmuller was a “Sexualstratfater,” a sexual predator, and Yitzel should avoid him at all costs. Margot reminded the sterilized Yitzel that just as a man could be emasculated, a woman could be defeminized. She concluded by saying there is nothing as demeaning as being taken against one’s will.

Unfortunately, Doctor Pfanmuller was not averse to having sexual relations with the prisoners at the Grafeneck castle. When the doctor called Yitzel to his office on the excuse that she had a survey to fill out, she entered with trepidation for she remembered Margot’s warning about Pfanmuller’s sexual proclivities. “You must be a virgin,” he said with an avid face as he peered into her eyes with unbridled lust.  “Let me show you how to be a woman.”  Then he pulled at her by the arm in a violent attempt to kiss her. “Leave me alone!” Yitzel cried out contemptuously. “My body belongs to Roland Rosenfeld and no one else! And it belongs to me!” When he didn’t let go, she ripped his thick spectacles from his face and furiously tried to scratch out his eyes with her long fingernails. She wasn’t too frightened to defend herself nor too paralyzed to respond. And then she screamed a Heaven-rending cry which startled the nefarious doctor beyond words. Doctor Pfanmuller was at a loss as to what he would do next. No other patient had protested as fiercely at his advances or coercion. “I wasn’t even attracted to you,” he harrumphed before she left as he wiped his bleeding eyes with a silk handkerchief. Once she departed – immediately! – he put on his thick glasses once again and swore he would exact his small revenge. He prepared to complain that her condition had worsened, and she should be sent to the gas chambers as she had acted violently against a physician who was merely trying to help her. Yitzel searched for Margot – her only ally – and told her of the attempted rape as she wept bitterly. Despite her Down syndrome, she knew exactly what Doctor Pfanmuller planned to do and shuddered at the thought of being incinerated in the crematoria.

“I tried to tear out his eyes, left the sockets bleeding – or something like that – wanted to forever disable him from leering at me – from staring at me – at my cretin’s rotund face, at my cretin’s stocky body – through his beer bottle glasses and those two squinting eyes.”

“You’re a beautiful woman. Never forget that, Yitzel. I think we both need to escape. Pfanmuller can throw his weight around to punish you. The man has absolutely no scruples, keeps the brains of murdered infants in his office as macabre specimens. And that bloodsucking Nurse Lauterbach has lately been putting forth the outrageous theory that I should be lobotomized, all because I’ve had some headaches lately and am suffering from insomnia. How can one sleep in peace in this God-forsaken castle where one intolerable outrage follows another? If it weren’t for Doctor Studer, who kindly suggested I take some medications with strange scientific names, this whole place would be even worse than it already is. It is already an abbatoir for us defectives, except that social misfits like us are treated much worse than cattle. But nobody – not even Doctor Studer – will be able to intervene if the cruel Nurse Lauterbach or the rapacious Doctor Pfanmuller pounce upon us before we act.”

***

Yitzel was very confused by the brave new world which she inhabited. The purpose of mental hospitals was to save men from insanity while the purpose of the Grafeneck castle was its exact opposite, to drive men to insanity – relentlessly – until there was an excuse to kill them under the guidelines provided by the Reich. The purpose was to break them, but Yitzel refused to be broken. With Yolande missing, she had lost all possible mooring in the tumultuous seas she braved, but still she persisted, and she turned to Margot for guidance as she once had turned to her mother. When Margot said they should flee the castle, Yitzel agreed without asking any questions or raising any objections. She already knew that the punishment for an escape attempt would be a summary execution and that the long arm of the Gestapo could reach her in Berlin. But she didn’t care about the risks. She just wanted to put the horror behind her – the so-called “imbeciles” gassed in ovens, the babies starved in their swaddling clothes, the hungry hands of Doctor Pfanmuller. Despite her mental deficiencies, she fully realized that if she stayed at the Grafeneck castle, under the control of the perfidious Nurse Lauterbach and the degenerate Doctor Pfanmuller, her fate would be worse than death. They would say her murder was just an act of mercy, that it was a krakenmorde, that they were putting her out of her misery.

By that time, both Yitzel and Margot worked daily at a factory producing carbines not too far from the euthanasia center. Hitler had decreed that if certain patients at the facility were not gassed, neither should they be “useless eaters.” Margot, dressed in a simple floral dress playing down her beauty, instructed Yitzel that they should disappear during the noonday break and make their way to a nearby forest. After walking for three hours, they would find a railway station and board a train taking them to Berlin. They wouldn’t pay for a ticket but would hide underneath the seats for the duration of the journey lest anybody see them. Once they arrived in Berlin, they would use money which Margot kept hidden in a satchel to make their way to the home of Yitzel’s mother. Once there, they would tell her to immediately depart before the Gestapo arrived at her door seeking Yitzel.

“How is it that you still have money left?” asked Yitzel.  She knew that the guards at the Grafeneck castle had taken all of Margot’s valuables upon her arrival at the facility.

“Courtesy of Doctor Pfanmuller,” the schizophrenic Margot said ironically. “He enjoyed the pretense that we were lovers when in truth our relationship was little more than an ongoing rape. But nothing bad ever happens without a good result. Thanks to the money and jewelry he gave me, we’ll be able to get around Berlin with ease.”

It didn’t take too long for the extreme stress of orchestrating the escape to trigger a psychotic episode in Margot. She had survived for years without symptoms given her knowledge that despite everything she witnessed, she was being protected by the all-powerful Pfanmuller and the gentle Studer. But now it was different. She was on her own and defying her Nazi masters whom she feared with a feverish intensity. In her frayed and troubled mind, legitimate fears merged with the most outlandish of delusions, and she began to ramble incoherently as soon as they arrived in Berlin. Margot remembered an old obsession from her days in the insane asylum and told Yitzel that they were being trailed by the Gestapo. “Didn’t you realize,” she asked Yitzel darkly, “that the couple sitting above us as we hid under the seats were Nazi collaborators? Didn’t you hear them plotting our demise? I have brought this knife to protect us just in case we are faced with sudden peril. I will not allow myself to be raped again.”

Yitzel was confused, imagining Margot felling Gestapo officers right and left with her little awl.

As far as Yitzel could tell, the couple had no idea that Yitzel and Margot were hiding beneath the seats and gave no indication that they were Nazis. But she trusted blindly in Margot and chalked up Margot’s fears to her superior intelligence. If Margot said they were Nazis, then they must have been Nazis. After all, it was well-known that the SS had a hundred eyes and ears. If Yitzel didn’t understand, she concluded, it must be because of her own psychiatric deficiencies. She well knew that persons with Down syndrome couldn’t understand everything. Perhaps Margot’s fears were justified.

But soon after they arrived at the train station in Berlin, Margot’s condition markedly got worse to such an extent that Yitzel determined that something was deeply wrong. Margot claimed that she could see the Nazis everywhere: a man reading a newspaper as he was waiting for a bus, a redheaded woman walking her cocker spaniel, a man selling fruit juice at a corner stand.  Even though Yitzel lived with Down syndrome, she was not unable to detect madness in other people. And Margot gave every indication that she was crazy. Not only was she reluctant to take a taxi to the home of Yitzel’s mother, saying it was an open secret that taxi drivers were Nazis too, but she warned Yitzel that the taxi drivers would return them to the Grafeneck extermination headquarters if they were given the opportunity. All the while, Yitzel was at a loss, especially after the anguished Margot started sobbing uncontrollably and muttering nonsensical phrases while trembling convulsively. “They’re going to lobotomize me!” she cried out in pain as she looked morosely at a train leaving in the distance. “They will hunt me down – hunt me down – and vivisect my brain! Nurse Lauterbach – that vile harridan – Nurse Lauterbach will literally split my head in half. That’s the meaning of ‘schizophrenic,’ don’t you know? Haven’t you seen her following us in her impeccable navy-blue uniform and her carefully coiffed hair, with her cruel and omnivorous eyes? She waits for us at every corner with her lighted surgical instruments and intends to subject us to a painful radiation treatment, worse than being gassed.” Yitzel had seen nothing of the kind and squinted her eyes at Margot with curiosity. How could a seventeen-year-old girl with Down syndrome possibly handle such a situation? What to make of Margot’s claim that the lobotomy would render her a vegetable or an automaton, that she would not even remember her identity? Yitzel didn’t even know the cause of Margot’s condition, knew nothing of schizophrenia, had no idea Margot was going through a psychotic episode. Nor did she know what lobotomy and vivisection meant. All Yitzel could do was try to comfort her, telling Margot that all the people in the crowds were not Nazi sympathizers ready to return them to Grafeneck castle and that Nurse Lauterbach was nowhere to be seen. On the other hand, thought Yitzel, perhaps Margot was right. Perhaps the Fuhrer’s henchmen were everywhere.  Perhaps Yitzel didn’t realize it because her mentality was that of a child. It made a certain sense, didn’t it? After all, like Margot, Yitzel saw everything through the prism of her own condition. Oh, how Yitzel wished she could ask her mother for advice! But Yolande’s home was too far for the two of them to walk there, and Margot had made it clear she refused to take a taxi.

Finally, after waiting patiently for hours, Yitzel made her decision, instinctively, as when she had left the castle. She would go to Yolande’s house without Margot. All she needed were a few reichsmarks which Margot willingly turned over to her. She pleaded with Margot to go with her, telling her otherwise she might be caught, especially given that she was crying copiously and would attract the curiosity of passersby. The Berlin train station was not the best place to hide from the Gestapo – even a girl with Down syndrome could tell her that.  But the aching Margot was immoveable and told Yitzel there was nothing that she could do to avoid capture no matter where she hid, that she was forever in the crosshairs of the treacherous Nurse Lauterbach and the ravenous Doctor Pfanmuller.

“It doesn’t have to be,” replied Yitzel in a frantic voice. “We’ve managed to escape. I don’t understand all the words you’ve used but nobody is going to do anything to your brain. You just have to go with me to the home of Mamaleh – my Mamaleh – and she’ll tell you how to save yourself. Please take the next taxi with me. You can trust my mother.”

“I’ll wait for you,” said Margot as she kept crying in despair. “You’ll know where to find me if I’m still here.”

“I’ll be back in two hours in my mother’s car,” Yitzel promised. “Just sit tight.”

“Godspeed my friend,” replied Margot as she clenched her fists in muted impuissance.

When Yitzel and her mother arrived at the empty train station, Margot was nowhere to be found. They walked up and down its corridors, crying out her name, but the response was a deafening silence. Finally, they happened upon a cleaning man who told them about Margot’s fate but emphasized that it was only hearsay. Yolande implored him to tell her everything he knew about the young woman with jet black hair and piercing blue eyes crying in the station.

“Yes, ma’am, I surely saw her. She couldn’t stop the crying, shrieking even, and we all concluded that either she was raving mad or had just experienced something frightful.”

“Probably both,” intervened Yitzel forlornly as she perked her ears and prepared herself to receive the worst news she had ever heard.

“Well, the Gestapo arrived and moved to quickly apprehend her,” said the cleaning man. “I didn’t see it happen so you should take this with a grain of salt. But what I heard is that when they approached her in order to arrest her, she slit her wrists.”

Before he could continue, Yitzel started weeping. At first, she was just silently crying, letting the tears run down her face, but then it was as if a dam had broken as she sobbed uncontrollably and muttered disconnected phrases.

“No, no and then again no!” cried out Yitzel miserably. “This can’t be happening. She was so close – so close – to liberty!”

“Well, some say it wasn’t suicide,” said the cleaning man. “That it was the Gestapo who slit her wrists to cover up their perfidy. Why would such a lovely young woman die by her own hand? It’s simply beggars the imagination.”

“Perhaps,” replied Yolande, “because she couldn’t contemplate the idea of returning to Grafeneck castle. Perhaps because living under the constant control of the homicidal Nazi doctors and their nurses was something she could no longer accept, not even for a day, certainly not for a lifetime. Perhaps she was a woman haunted by dark memories she had repressed for years. She may have been like a bottle of champagne that finally exploded – or a fugitive from her own delusions. Perhaps her death was a mercy killing after all.”

“But she was free!” Yitzel protested as she began to drool as she did every time she was excited. “Why couldn’t she – I don’t know – why didn’t she just leave the train station with me in the taxi?”

“Well, it is now the two of us who must make our escape,” said Yolande. “But time is of the essence. The Nazis have your address, and it won’t take too long for them to find you unless we move.”

“Where will we be going?” asked Yitzel. She was glad that Yolande was once again in complete control of everything.

“We’ll go to the rectory of Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen. I’ve already been in contact with him. But we have to get to Munster first.  He’s known for fearlessly organizing public demonstrations against the Nazis, like when he led a massive march to protest the removal of crucifixes from German schools and the order was rescinded as a result. Now he is delivering powerful sermons criticizing the Nazis’ euthanasia program, encouraging widespread opposition, but he needs a witness to the carnage. Enter Yitzel Klausner, the teenage ‘mongoloid’ who has seen everything.”

“Mamaleh, there’s a question I’m afraid to ask you,” said Yitzel.

“Yes?”

“Whatever happened to Roland Rosenfeld? Has my betrothed survived – what’s the word? – has he survived the T-4 killing program?”

“As far as I heard, he’s still alive. The Nazis determined he was not so ‘feebleminded’ that he could not participate in war and he’s fighting at the front for the German army.”

Yitzel’s pale round face shone like a full moon. Despite everything, there was still reason to hope.

***

By the time of Yitzel’s escape from the Grafeneck killing center, approximately one hundred thousand lives “unworthy of life” had been eliminated by the Nazis. The crime was obvious as thousands of parents received the same form letters advising them “with great regret” that their disabled children had died of typhus or meningitis while undergoing “care” at the hands of Nazi physicians.  It was simply impossible to believe that such great numbers of disabled children would die of the same affliction at the same time. Early on, Bishop von Galen had made his voice be heard against the T-4 program, denouncing the killing of the harmless kids with Down syndrome from his pulpit weekly even before the massacre of the “useless idiots” reached alarming proportions. Just as the Nazi authorities ramped up their killings, Bishop von Galen ramped up his protests, pooh-poohing the warnings that he was inciting the Fuhrer’s wrath and would be punished with incarceration or death. “Woe to us German people if we not only license this heinous offense,” he cried out week after week, “but allow it to be committed with impunity!”

Bishop von Galen intended to deliver three great sermons on the thirteenth and twentieth days of July and August third of 1941. Yitzel was to stand at his side in a gesture of solidarity at each of the three homilies bearing witness to her truth. Both Bishop von Galen and Yolande had made it clear to Yitzel that she was under no obligation to participate in the Masses given that by doing so she was placing herself in a great danger. But Yitzel was not one to be cowed and decided to join the Masses with the bishop despite her legitimate fears.

Bishop von Galen intended to deliver a full-throated attack against the Nazis’ program of “mercy killing” and knew that those in power would chafe at his remarks. The bishop himself was in mortal peril of assassination but felt a righteous indignation which overrode his fears when he thought about the senseless martyrdom of the disabled in contemporary Germany. Instead of caring for the “least of these” as Christ had directed, the Nazis were making sport of destroying them. Enough is enough! thought the gray-haired prelate as he penned his homily. “Jesus sees how sinful, how terrible, how criminal, how disastrous this conduct is! The right to life, to inviolability, to freedom is an inescapable part of any moral order of society!” He intended to mass produce copies of his sermons so that they would be heard in every church of the Greater Reich as well as by thousands of soldiers at the front, all of which incited the fury of the Fuhrer and his Nazi stalwarts. Suggestions were made that the bishop be shot in church as he was delivering one of his homilies or taken to the street and hanged. Ultimately it was the Fuhrer who decided whether or not to do so.

During the first two sermons in Saint Lambert’s Cathedral, Yitzel stood silently at the bishop’s side as he lambasted the T-4 killing program and pointed his finger at the perpetrators: all the doctors and nurses, chemists and psychiatrists who had been complicit in the massacre and had deeply offended the One True God. “If it is admitted,” proclaimed the bishop, “that men have the right to kill their ‘unproductive’ fellow men as if they were rats, the way is open to the murder of us all. Who dares to level any charge against our ‘feebleminded’ brothers and sisters? What court has held them liable? They have done nothing meriting punishment and our evil actions against them will only lead to destruction and ruin for our country. Remember the words of the Christ: if they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”

Throughout his sermons, the bishop was immensely pleased to have Yitzel standing at the altar with him for doing so put a face on the victims of the pogrom against the mentally challenged. It is one thing to read the list of those murdered – Bishop von Galen intended to do that and more – but it is quite another to hear the testimony directly from one of the victims. Filling the church with mothers wearing white handkerchiefs about their heads and bearing pictures of their martyred children creates a powerful image but not as much as a single retarded girl violently protesting that her life is worth living.

During the third of the bishop’s Masses inveighing against the forced euthanasia program, Bishop von Galen encouraged Yitzel to deliver a few remarks. She put her notes on a lectern and began to speak.

“I’m afraid I don’t have a written speech for you, only a few notes about the things I saw while I was at the Grafeneck killing center. I don’t remember everything but I remember the ugliest things even if I try to forget them. I remember the mean things people did, things too horrible to be made up. My mother helped me prepare this for you as I find it difficult to organize my thoughts since I live with Down syndrome.

“And that is the first point I want to make, that I live with Down syndrome. It is a life we’re talking about here. I greatly enjoy life despite the Down disease. And that is also true of all the ones who were killed at Grafeneck, all the mental and physical cripples disposed of as so much chaff. That word, chaff, comes from my mother too. It was my mother who taught me that my life should not be limited by my disabilities. She reminded me that people with Down syndrome had been artists, musicians, playwrights, parents, actors, even the queen of France. Even the slowest person with Down syndrome can work as an elevator operator, thus earning her keep.”

Then Yitzel briefly paused before continuing, wiped her sweaty forehead with a handkerchief.

“I should point out the people at Grafeneck also had moms and dads who loved them dearly and yet they were told they were ‘unworthy of life.’ They – I’m sorry – I’m getting stuck. I forgot the point I wanted to make. They – where was I going? – the disabled victims did not consider their murders an act of mercy, what the Nazis call a gnadentod. It was the opposite of mercy. It was the opposite of love and kindness and faith in God and all the beauty of life, an arbitrary decision to kill innocent patients on the flimsiest of excuses.  Those are my mother’s words again but they are true. And I must take a sip of water now as it is getting hard to go on.”

Then she arranged her papers and pressed on.

“My thoughts are a jumble as I speak of the gassing. But no matter what anyone says, they cannot deny the gassing. I saw it with my own eyes and learned the meaning of a new word seeing the gassing, day after day, week after week, month after month, hearing the never-ending screams of those who realized they were being herded into gas chambers to be killed. The word I learned was ‘evil.’  To use the words of Bishop von Galen, Grafeneck was a ‘macabre school’ and it taught me many things – many horrible things. The gassing of the doomed sick persons was sheer evil, demonic even, again the words of my mother.

“I remember the buses – big black buses – that brought them daily to their deaths, the seventy or so disabled people or not so disabled people sacrificed every day of the week. And I remember the smell as well, the stench of charred human flesh rising from the chimneys which would make me want to vomit. What had these ‘feebleminded’ people done – that is the word used by the evil ones – that they should deserve the punishment of murder? Don’t let them lie to you. None of them died from a disease – what’s the word? – none of the people died from typhus despite the Nazi doctors’ letters telling parents that their children had died of unexpected natural causes and were now out of their misery. I don’t know how many such letters were written by the Nazi doctors, but I am told by the bishop that they approached a hundred thousand. Some of you in the crowds know this better than I do – you know this well – as you have received letters – many letters – regarding your children’s mysterious deaths on the same day as many other parents received the same notices. That is not a coincidence, ladies and gentlemen. That is a mass killing. All the mentally disabled children – all the precious kids – had been in excellent physical health and yet hundreds died on the same day. You must remember that the castle at Grafeneck had only one hundred and fifty beds yet buses transporting more than about four hundred mentally deficient arrived each week. And that’s just one of six killing centers. I cannot calculate the total since I’m not good at math but in all events the numbers – what was the word my mother used? – the numbers are simply ‘staggering.’  Many of those killed were babies murdered in their cribs.

“That is my second point. I have it in my notes. Murdered babies – I saw it with my own eyes. My Mamaleh and I discussed this in detail. There was a woman named Nurse Lauterbach who killed the babies with her own hands, two dozen at a time, injecting their tiny arms with morphine and luminal. I know it because it happened every week.The doctors and psychiatrists at the beck and call of Hitler even euthanized children – that’s the right word, isn’t it? – for something as simple as wetting the bed. I’m sorry. I can’t go on. Talking about the babies killed for being a little different makes me want to cry out in despair and pull out my hair in fury. This cannot be! I plead with you in the name of every saint to whom you pray, in the name of Jesus and Mary, to change the laws so this intolerable outrage cannot continue. Those words are mine! I learned them at the castle too from a friend named Margot who died in Berlin after having been slowly killed at the Grafeneck euthanasia center.”

And then Yitzel began to cry, unable to finish her remarks.

“Let us thank Yitzel for her testimony,” intervened Bishop von Galen.  “Let us not forget that she has acted with courage and valor, that she has risked her very life to proclaim the revolting truth. Let us not forget that the Fuhrer’s henchmen have said those who publicly oppose the euthanasia massacre must be hanged. She has accused the National Socialist regime before the world public of their ungodly behavior, has uttered her Heaven-rending cry against injustice, and is now the most powerful symbol of the resistance. She has become a living witness to the wholesale murder of the mentally ill, breaching the Nazis’ code of silence for the first time. And her words will be heard along the length and breadth of Europe. It’s in the Beatitudes. ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.’ Let us hope today is the day the brutal T-4 extermination program ends forever. Let us walk arm-in-arm with Yitzel until it does. Let us not forget that if we see our disabled sons and brothers as a burden, we are missing an extraordinary opportunity for grace. Finally, if you don’t oppose the T-4 program as a matter of Christian ethics, do it as a matter of self-interest. Who is to say that you or a loved one will not fall prey to Alzheimer’s Disease or another crippling malady only to be ‘euthanized’ by a Nazi physician?”

Yitzel beamed with pride delightedly at his side, recognizing she had managed to tell her truth despite the Down disease.

Then the crowds exited the great cathedral into the streets, thousands of them, an avalanche of people, the women bearing banners of their murdered offspring, all the churchgoers in silent protest, each of them participating in a manifestation of undeniable faith and solidarity – and in front of all Yitzel! Neither Yitzel nor the bishop were assassinated, for the protest movement spearheaded by the teenage “cretin” was the strongest in the history of the Third Reich and those in power knew its violent suppression could only lead the masses to revolt. In due course, Yitzel’s smiling visage became the face of the opposition as thousands of placards with her face appeared at every protest or rally against T-4 in the Greater Reich. With the help of Yolande and Bishop von Galen, Yitzel developed a stump speech which she memorized and repeated everywhere denouncing the depravity of Hitler’s euthanasia program, At the insistence of the bold Yitzel (in consultation with her mother), thousands of Germans filed murder charges with local prosecutors and judges against those who had killed their children or other relatives. Soon the news arrived: Hitler had publicly declared the end of the T-4 program, in order to placate the Catholics and all those who took the Jewish Yitzel as their standard bearer. Although the suspension was more honored in the breach than the observance, no one could deny that but for Yitzel’s courage thousands of additional mentally deficient would have been killed.

***

Several years later, once the war was over, Yitzel found herself walking on the dusty streets of Tel Aviv. She had been able to survive the Shoah, if only for her notoriety, as she had become a sort of public figure, a living reminder that the “feebleminded” led lives worthy of living. Of course, she was also a Jew and eventually had to turn her attention to the defense of the beleaguered Juden. The mass killing of the disabled had been but a trial run for the Nazis’ wholesale destruction of European Jewry which killed millions. But Yitzel was to sadly recognize that the German Volk cared more about the fates of their own mentally retarded children than the fates of the detested Jews. Only a few people arrived at her rallies in defense of the Jews of Europe and she soon concluded that she had to leave Germany. There was nothing else to be done, other than to accept the ultimate sacrifice – death in a gas chamber in a concentration camp – so she decided to escape.

After sitting at a bar on Tel Aviv’s main thoroughfare, Dizengoff Street, she recognized a man she had not seen in years: the same red hair, the same lanky build, the same turquoise eyes… It was Roland Rosenfeld, there was no doubt about it! Yitzel didn’t know how he had done it, but he had. He was walking in freedom on the streets of Israel’s capital city with no fear of the Gestapo, no fear of Nazi gas chambers, no fear of the crematoria. He could enjoy the liberty of the streets and lead his life in peace! Peace! It had taken Yitzel years to learn the meaning of the word for only chaos had surrounded her for so many years.

When Roland saw Yitzel, his eyes lit up. He had been dreaming of this day for years, but thought it was an impossibility. He was sure that Yitzel had perished in a concentration camp just like the other six million Jews and thousands of disabled who were unable to survive despite her ministrations.

“Oh Roland! How I have missed you!” exclaimed Yitzel as she began to sob.

“I have missed you too, more than you can imagine,” responded Roland as he stifled tears himself, “but I thought I’d never see you again.”

“How did you make it out of Germany? What’s the word? How did you manage to ‘escape’? You know both our mothers were gassed in the concentration camps. I shudder in grief when I remember it.”

“I suspected as much. Even after the war ended it was impossible to find my mother.”

“You were with the German soldiers, weren’t you? Is that how you were able – is that how you were able to escape to Israel?”

“Yes,” Roland said as he sat in the shade beneath a parasol. “Hitler decided to get all the help he could. So he determined I could be a soldier for the Greater Reich despite my ‘feeblemindedness’ and eventually sent me to fight at the Eastern front against the Russians, the most dangerous duty for a German soldier.”

“Were you hurt in battle?” asked Yitzel. “Is that how you were able to survive? That’s another little word I learned during all my years in Germany. My mother told me to do whatever I could in order to ‘survive.’ She even told me I should allow myself to be debauched if I would save my life by doing so. But I never did it since I was waiting for you.”

“No, I wasn’t injured,” replied Roland. “I simply deserted and joined the Russian side. In many ways, Stalin is as evil at Hitler, but at least he freed the Jews he found in the Nazi concentration camps. I was there when we freed the prisoners at Auschwitz in 1945. Never had I seen such squalor! I found men as thin as skeletons in threadbare clothes, toothless defeated men smiling for the first time in years, saw dirty lice ridden Jewish children looking so much older than their years. But I don’t have the words to express the horror to you. I’m as ‘feebleminded’ as the next person and lack the words to describe evil on a great scale. I’m sure it’s as difficult to do so even for the normal folks.”

“Do you still love me?” Yitzel asked suddenly. She smiled because she knew what his response would be and didn’t want to talk of evil on such a wondrous day.

“I’ve thought about you all these years and I have never forgotten about you. . . When I was at the front, I wrote poems for you in the small moments of peace, when I was alone at night. I never forgot that we were engaged, that I had made a solemn pledge to you. My love for you remains unshakeable, Yitzel.”

“Well, you should know that marriage between the ‘feebleminded’ is not forbidden in Israel. I don’t know of any other place that allows it but Israel does. In fact, Israel provides money to those living with special needs. That’s how I’ve managed – what’s the word? – that’s how I managed to ‘survive.’”

Yitzel and Roland married in a simple ceremony and lived together for the next twenty-five years after having adopted an Arab girl with Down syndrome named Jasmine.