Fraulein M. by Caroline Woods

Author:Caroline Woods
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2017-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

I hope you are safe and in good health. My offer to meet, anytime, anyplace, still stands.

Your Berni

• • •

May 12, 1933

My sister, I hope you are well and safe.

Just weeks ago, Anita learned she’d been accepted as a patient at the institute I told you about, in the Tiergarten. She’d been accepted for surgery. She might have become what she always wanted. Well, the Hitler Youths who were protesting outside have finally breached its unholy doors. The doctors have fled.

And the protestors have stripped the library of its unclean books. They have gathered them in a heap and burned them in the plaza in front of the opera. I went to see, and stood at a distance to protect myself from the flames and to keep myself from jumping into the fray. There was paper everywhere, young hands greedy to get it into flammable piles. A river of unruly paper, like nothing I’d ever seen. It slithered out of their hands and spilled down the sidewalk as if trying to escape.

I saw Rilke verses burn, Kleist’s essays. Anatomy texts. They even burned the black-red-gold flag, the flag of the Republic. They had a bust of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, founder of the institute, on a spike.

Shouts, laughter, shrieks, mania. No more words to describe it. I tasted the ash of Anita’s and so many others’ hopes.

I don’t know what else I can say that can be both intimate and public, now that everything is both. No more words. They’ve all been burned.

Take good care of yourself, my sister, always, always,

B.

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