Memoir

I grew up in Denmark, a nation that had been under “friendly” German occupation during World War II. The war ended 3 years before I was born. When my fourth grade history teacher asked the class to vote on whether a captured war criminal should be prosecuted, I argued, perhaps from my Christian background, that he should be freed and forgiven the sins belonging to a distant past.

During medical training in the Bronx, I examined an elderly patient who had a number tattooed on her forearm. That first encounter with a Holocaust survivor disturbed my sense of a period in history presumably completed and best forgotten. Years later, I became intensively involved with Holocaust patients, and my understanding of history changed.

Wiedergutmachung, a German reparations program initiated soon after the war, reimburses Holocaust survivors whom German consulate doctors have diagnosed with disabilities arising from persecution during the National Socialist regime. Neurologists usually did the early evaluations; apparently, they were considered appropriate experts for conditions that today are recognized as primarily psychiatric. As a neurologist in the New York area who could speak German, I was approached to evaluate survivors.

In 1995, I started seeing two or three such patients every month. I read voluminous medical records, all in German, dating from the 1950s to the present. Review boards in Germany had made “final” decisions regarding level of compensation. My role was to look for weaknesses in the original arguments, identify any overlooked, related diagnosis or exacerbation of the original condition, and submit my conclusions for re-review.

I found an ally in time lapsed. There appeared to be a new compassion, a “new morality.” New assistance programs had been created. The definition of a survivor had been revised. Diagnoses, too, had changed with time.

It is absurd to believe …