The blighted son, p.8
The Blighted Son, page 8
*
Searching for nuggets of information either through the Internet, library archives or direct contact with individuals, was for Edwin the journalistic equivalent of digging for gold. His inquisitiveness was boundless and he never lost the thrill of discovering or unearthing hidden treasure – tracking down the facts that could convert the mundane into a page one story.
He had never heard of Eugen Fischer, but couldn’t wait to find out who he was and if he did play such a crucial and influential role in implanting the concept of the Aryan Master Race in the mind of Adolf Hitler. Quite apart from his innate journalistic curiosity, Edwin had his own personal interest in the persecution of the Jews throughout history, primarily because many of his late father’s Jewish ancestors had fled their native Poland during the pogroms of the late 19th century, and also because he had a few years earlier ghost-written a Holocaust memoir about a man who had witnessed the extermination of thirty-seven members of his family at the hands of the Nazis.
Neither Edwin nor his late father, a former single-handed family doctor, were practising Jews, but as he grew older, Edwin became increasingly interested in tracing his Eastern European roots and the origins of anti-Semitism, and why it was possible for one man to brainwash his fellow countrymen into believing that Jews were somehow sub-human beings who should be wiped off the face of the earth.
As he trawled through the Internet, it did not take him long to discover that Fisher’s ex-wife was right. Prof. Eugen Fischer – a tall, thin-faced man with cold staring eyes – was, indeed, the university academic who formulated the blueprint for the implementation of Hitler’s Master Race. He was the undisputed father of Nazi eugenics – the misguided, scientifically-flawed theory that the human race could be improved through selective, planned breeding of populations.
Eugen Fischer, Edwin established, was a German professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics and a highly-influential member of the Nazi Party. Edwin’s first thought was that he had given his name to the theory of eugenics but, as he delved deeper, it became clear that the concept had its origins in the very early 1800s, some seventy or more years before Fischer was born in July 1874 in Karlsruhe, Germany. Possibly his parents had given him the name Eugen because they were blinkered followers of the principles of eugenics – or it could simply have been an uncanny coincidence.
In 1908, when he was only thirty-four years old, Fischer founded the Society for Race Hygiene in Freiburg im Breisgau and served as a judge for Berlin’s Hereditary Court , where he worked with an American eugenicist, Charles Davenport, on what were disturbingly known as “bastard studies” at the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations.
But Edwin was especially fascinated and intrigued to learn that it was Fischer’s textbook – Principles of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene – that was read by Adolf Hitler when he was in Landsberg prison and, more importantly, informed his later theories and policies on the creation of a “pure” Aryan Master Race. Fischer’s principles of racial hygiene found fertile territory in Hitler’s mind, who believed that the German nation had become weak and corrupted by the infusion of “degenerate elements not in its bloodstream”.
Fischer’s academic treatise became what, in effect, was the blueprint for the Holocaust – perhaps the greatest stain on the history of mankind but one which James Karl Fisher denied ever happened. Ironically, after the war, when Eugen Fischer completed his memoirs, he played down his role in the genocidal programme of Nazi Germany, probably to save his own skin. He died in Freiburg im Breisgau, in July 1967, aged ninety-three.
As Edwin continued to research Fischer’s cancerous legacy, it became abundantly clear why James Karl Fisher had also been brainwashed by his father – and probably grandfather, too – to hate Jews, Blacks and other minority groups whom Fischer claimed corrupted the purity of German blood. Fischer, he learned, was also infamous for authoring a study of mixed-race children, mostly the offspring of Hottentot women and Dutchmen who came from German-run African states. In his 1913 study of the “Mischlinge”, Fischer predicted that these mixed-race children would “bring about the demise of European culture”.
Under the leadership of Hitler, Eugen Fischer’s insane selective breeding ideology was even more widely interpreted to include anyone whom the Nazis identified as Lebensunwertes Leben – people regarded as “life unworthy of life”. They included prisoners, degenerates, dissidents, those with congenital and physical disabilities and even those considered to be Schwachsinn – the term used at the time for the feebleminded.
Edwin could not bring himself to forgive Fisher for his decade or more of anti-Semitic and racist crimes, but knowing that he had been schooled since childhood in the teachings of the Nazi professor, he understood why he held such radical views and had behaved so violently in the past to those he hated.
According to Karen Passoa, Fisher’s father, Herman Fischer, and his father before him were German patriots who slavishly believed that if the professor’s policies on racial hygiene – Russenhygiene – were being implemented by the Fuehrer, then they were clearly in the best interests of the nation and should not be challenged.
As such, Herman Fischer accepted without question that Jews, Negroes and other minority groups were racially inferior and that inter-breeding with people of Aryan stock would destroy European culture.
It was clear to Edwin that the young brain of James Karl Fisher, or Karl Fischer as he would have been when he was born in Baden-Württemberg, would have been indoctrinated with these philosophies and he would have been too young to question them – to decide for himself whether they were right or wrong.
Fisher had also been brought up in the belief that he was related to the “great” Professor Fischer, but his ex-wife told Edwin when they met at her home on Merseyside that he had never been able to find the familial link and he had never been able to establish if he was related or not.
Edwin, who was a member of a number of family history websites for his own purposes, decided that, whilst it was not an immediate priority, he would be interested in conducting his own research. If heart transplant recipient James Karl Fisher was, related to the father of Nazi eugenics, it would most certainly be newsworthy.
After several hours of research on the Internet, Edwin was satisfied that what he had been told by Karen Passoa was almost certainly correct. He copied and pasted all the relevant information into a single Word document which he saved to his computer under the heading “Eugen Fischer – research info”. He did not believe that Fisher was related to the mad Nazi professor, but there were still doubts that he knew only a professional genealogist would be able to resolve.
He wasn’t quite sure how or if he would make use of all the information. Without question, it would make yet another interesting follow-up article with the specific news angle that Fisher had been brainwashed into believing the “racial hygiene” lunacy of the German professor.
But, for the time being, all he wanted was a strong coffee, something to eat and a breath of fresh air.
*
When Edwin returned to his desk after an hour’s break, news editor Ross Hetherington called him over for a short briefing.
‘Did it all stack up? Did you find out anything about this Nazi professor?’ Ross asked.
‘Yes, it’s all there in black and white. Chapter and verse,’ confirmed Edwin. ‘Fisher’s wife was right, but we don’t know yet whether Fisher was related to the professor or whether his father just believed or wanted to believe that they were.
‘If, of course, we do eventually find out that he was related to Adolf’s academic pal, then that would be one hell of a story – but that may prove difficult without professional help. But to be honest, Ross, it doesn’t really matter in one sense. The fact that Fisher’s father and grandfather believed that the professor’s philosophy was right and that they brainwashed the young Fisher is all that really matters.’
‘It’s all strong stuff,’ said Ross. ‘But without some attribution – someone who’s prepared to go on record and say he was brainwashed and believed he was related or we can prove he was related – we really couldn’t run it. We need a strong news peg to hang it on and it falls just that crucial bit short of that, as it stands. Just keep everything on file for the time being. I’m sure we’ll be able to run it before too long.’
‘You’re right. I could knock out a piece claiming this and alleging that with all the colourful hard facts about Eugen Fischer and eugenics but we’d just be flying a bit of a kite.’
When he sat down at his PC, he opened the Eugen Fischer file, ran off a hard copy and consigned it to a safe place in a buff-coloured file in his top drawer. For several weeks, the story with its various twists and turns had occupied most of Edwin’s working hours – and it was frequently the last thing on his mind as he put his head on his pillow at night before falling asleep.
In the weeks ahead, Edwin planned to use his amateur genealogical skills – restricted largely to researching his own family tree – to see if he could find any conclusive familial links between James Karl Fisher and the champion of Nazi eugenics.
Journalistically, he knew it would be yet another big news story if he could establish any blood relationship with Eugen Fischer but, having met Fisher, Edwin had also developed a keen personal interest in the people who had influenced him in his early years. And he knew he would not be satisfied until he knew more.
Instinctively, whether he could unearth any startling revelations about his ancestry or not, he knew that the Fisher saga would resurface in some shape or form before long. But, for the time being, it was in the pending file.
Chapter 4
Several weeks had elapsed since Edwin and photographer Mike Wolff had witnessed first-hand surgeon Jonathan Barr-White and his team stitch the donor heart into the gaping chest cavity of transplant recipient James Karl Fisher.
As his newspaper’s health and medical correspondent, Edwin had been invited to be there because it was the 25th anniversary of the launch of the hospital’s heart transplant programme, launched not long after the late Prof. Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first at the Groote Schuur Hospital in South Africa.
Clinically, there was nothing especially significant about the operation itself, and Edwin had expected that he would simply be required to write a blow-by-blow report of the transplant and a follow-up article a week or so later based on a bedside interview with the recipient. But when it became known that James Karl Fisher was an anti-Semitic racist with a long criminal history who had received the heart of an Orthodox Jew, it was instantly elevated to a running news story that attracted international coverage.
But as the winter morphed slowly into spring and the story gradually slipped out of the headlines, Edwin found himself increasingly devoting his working hours reporting a range of sundry health and medical stories of a more mundane, run-of-the-mill nature.
News, he had learned over the years, was an ephemeral commodity. One day a story could be attracting banner national, even international, headlines, the next it could be relegated to a mere paragraph or two or even disappear altogether, with something else stepping up into the spotlight.
It meant that the life of a newspaper reporter, be it in the medical arena or any other, was almost never the same on two or more consecutive days, and certainly never boring. As a health and medical affairs reporter, Edwin could on the same day be called upon to report a breakthrough that had the potential to save countless lives, to an individual’s survival against all the odds or the tragedy of a rare and unexpected death.
At other times – on what were recognised as quiet news days – Edwin would trawl through medical journals such as The Lancet and The British Medical Journal, as well as government and health authority reports, in the hope of finding a “hidden” gem that could be fashioned into a news story or feature article with wide public appeal. It was on such slow news days that Edwin would also spend an hour or two accessing the family history websites to see if he could establish if James Karl Fisher had anything in his genetic profile in common with the professor of Nazi eugenics.
When he had initially spent time researching the life of Eugen Fischer, he had not found anything to suggest that they could be related, even though geographically transplant recipient Fisher and his father and grandfather came from the same region of Germany. Fisher’s ex-wife, Karen Passoa, he recalled, had also told him that Fisher did not have any documentary evidence to prove any familial relationship. It was beginning to look less and less likely.
After perhaps a day or two of further searches, Edwin informed his news editor that he had not been able to establish any link and that because all the relevant information was probably buried away in German archives, coupled with the language problem, he would require the services of a professional genealogist if he was going to make any real progress.
‘Just forget it – just kick it into touch. You are probably wasting your time and I doubt very much if the editor would authorise spending any money to hire a professional to research it for us,’ said Ross.
‘It’s just that it really fascinates me,’ Edwin replied. ‘I’d really love to know if they were related.’
‘If you hear anything new from anywhere – the hospital or his ex – or anyone else and the story rears its head, then maybe I can persuade the editor that we need to spend a few quid on a professional researcher. But, for now, just leave it.’
‘OK, will do,’ said Edwin, knowing that he would nonetheless carry on researching it in his own time out of personal interest.
*
A few days later, on what promised to be an uneventful day in the office, Edwin was perusing through the agenda of a forthcoming health authority meeting, when he took a phone call that would propel James Karl Fisher back into the headlines.
‘Hello, Edwin Benn, The Informer. Can I help you?’ he said automatically.
‘I think perhaps that I can help you. It’s Anna Dickson here, the transplant coordinator. We have not spoken for a little while. How are you?’
‘Well, thanks. And you?’
‘I am well, too… now, let me tell you, Mr Fisher was in the unit yesterday for one of his routine check-ups and, having read your earlier article, I think that you really ought to know that he now has a swastika tattooed over his new heart and the words “One Jew Less” written underneath in German. We think that he must have had it done since he learned the identity of his donor some weeks ago.’
‘Anna, I do really appreciate you letting me know. I’m not sure what to say, to be honest. It’s unthinkable that anyone could do such a thing, especially knowing that you would see it at the hospital. It really is a shocking thing to do. And who would have been prepared to do it for him?’ asked Edwin.
‘The nurse noticed it right away but, of course, couldn’t really say anything to him. He is first and foremost a patient and, as such, our only interest is in the health of his heart. But, of course, privately, we have our own views, as you well know,’ she added.
‘Of course, I appreciate that.’
‘Much as we might loathe what he stands for and the man himself, it’s not our job to comment – unless, of course, it were directly to affect our staff or other patients. The surgeons, by the way, Edwin, know that I am calling you… they felt that it would be wrong to keep this from you.’
‘Thank them, will you, Anna,’ said Edwin, adding, ‘As a matter of interest, did Fisher remark about the tattoo to anyone?’
‘I gather he said to one of the nurses something like “You probably don’t approve of it but it had to be done – I want my new heart to feel that it belongs to me”. The nurse replied that she couldn’t possibly comment and just got on with her job.’
‘It must be very difficult for you not to say anything to him – to show your disgust.’
‘Yes, it is but we simply have to remain impartial and say nothing. Between ourselves, of course, we have all been saying a man like him didn’t deserve to be given a new heart but we cannot say that to his face.’
‘Could you simply refuse to see him?’ asked Edwin.
‘We could, I suppose, but if anything happened to him – if he died – we could find ourselves in serious trouble with claims for medical negligence and the like,’ she replied.
‘Difficult, I can see that.’
‘Just one important matter: I know that you could have heard this from other sources but we would prefer it if this were not published – and certainly not attributed to us – if that’s all right with you.’
Edwin paused before responding, ‘Anna, it is newsworthy, as I am sure you understand, but if we simply published a non-attributable story, I am pretty sure that Fisher would know that the information came from the hospital. I suspect there is no one else outside the hospital who knows about this tattoo except perhaps one or two of his followers and they are certainly not going to broadcast it.
‘I suspect that there could well come a time in the future when we might be able to use it without it relating back to the hospital, but for the present, I will explain to the editor that we should keep it under wraps.’
‘Thank you,’ replied Anna. ‘I appreciate that.’
*
Both Anna and Edwin had their own professional codes. For Anna, it was the sacrosanct code of medical ethics and patient confidentiality. For Edwin, it was the unwritten rules of responsible journalism coupled with press freedom and, in this particular case, the need to maintain an amicable working relationship with the hospital.
