Mila 18 - Leon Uris [5]
He was happy today. He even made an attempt to whistle. The end of a long, long journey was at hand.
Like most of the million ethnic Germans, Franz Koenig had been born in western Poland in a territory formerly German-occupied, then freed to Poland after the World War. In his youth his family moved to Danzig, which was located in a geographical freak known as the “Polish Corridor.” It was a finger of land which split East Prussia away from the German mainland in order to give Poland access to the sea. It was an abnormal division. Danzig and the Polish Corridor filled with ethnic Germans and Poles became a thorn in German pride and the object of bickering and threats from the beginning.
Frank Koenig came from a good merchant family. He had received a classical education in medicine in Heidelberg and in Switzerland. He was a man of total moderation. Although raised in the furor of Danzig, he considered himself neither German nor Polish nor much of anything but a good doctor and teacher; a profession, he felt, that crossed the bounds of nationalism.
Franz Koenig was an adequate man. His appointment to the University of Warsaw was adequate. The Polish girl he had married was adequate. He lived his life in a mild and inoffensive manner, delighting most in the privacy of his study with good music and good books. The early marriage ambitions of his Polish wife failed to stir him. She gave up in disgust and grew obese.
When the Nazis came to power, Franz Koenig was embarrassed by their behavior. In an outburst, rare for him, he referred to the SA Brown Shirts as “thick-necked, pinheaded bullies.” He thought himself fortunate to be in Warsaw and clear of the havoc in Germany.
All that changed.
There was a month, a week, a day, and a moment.
The office of dean of the College of Medicine was open. By seniority, competence, and devotion, the position was his. In anticipation of the appointment which should have been routine, he constructed a dull but adequate speech to accept the chair. He never delivered the speech. Paul Bronski, fifteen years his junior, was appointed.
He remembered Kurt Liedendorf, the leader of Warsaw’s ethnics, snorting in his ear.
“It’s a blow to us—all us Germans, Doktor Koenig. It is a terrible insult.”
“Nonsense ... nonsense ...”
“Now maybe you understand how the Versailles Treaty has made the German people anonymous. Look, you ... Heidelberg ... Geneva. A man of culture. You have been made anonymous too. You are a victim of Jewish cunning. All us Germans are victims of Jewish cunning, Herr Doktor. ... Hitler says ...”
Jewish cunning ... Bronski ... Jewish cunning ...
All that Franz Koenig ever wanted for a world he served well was to be the dean of medicine at the University of Warsaw.
“Come and spend the afternoon with us, Herr Doktor.
Be with your own people,” Kurt Liedendorf said. “We have a special guest from Berlin who will give us a talk.”
And the guest from Berlin told them, “Perhaps the methods of the Nazis are harsh, but to rectify the injustices heaped upon the German people takes men of strong will and vigor. Everything we do is justified because the goal to restore the German people to their rightful way of life is justified.”
“Ah, Herr Doktor,” Liedendorf said, “Good to see you here. Sit here, sit up front.”
“Hitler has seen to it that the German people are not anonymous any more. If you declare yourself as a German, you will not be anonymous!”
He came home from the fourth meeting, and the fifth and the sixth, and he looked at his fat Polish wife and all that was around him. Feudal gentry, universal ignorance. “I am a German,” Franz Koenig said to himself. “I am a German.”
“Doktor Koenig, you should see it in Danzig. Thousands and thousands of Germans fighting for the Führer. Letting the world know that we will not be abused any more.”
How proud he was of the deliverance of the Germans from Austria and Czechoslovakia!
“I