Free Traitor's Gate by Michael Ridpath Page B

after all, and he and Anneliese had only just met.
    A peal of laughter came from the end of the table. Theo’s girlfriend, Sophie, was getting a little tipsy. She was small with a blonde bob and big blue eyes. Very pretty, which was not sur­prising, knowing Theo. ‘How do you know Sophie?’ Conrad asked, changing the subject.
    ‘We trained together,’ Anneliese replied. ‘We are both nurses.’
    ‘Oh?’ Conrad raised his eyebrows. ‘So Theo met her in a hos­pital? I didn’t realize he had been ill.’
    Anneliese laughed. ‘No, not a hospital, a nightclub. Despite the films, hospitals aren’t very romantic places. We may be angels by day, but by night we are something quite different. Or at least Sophie is.’
    ‘But not you?’
    ‘I keep her company.’ She frowned. ‘Like you, my past is a little complicated.’ Conrad realized that unlike him she didn’t want to talk about it, and so he didn’t press her. ‘I like Sophie, although we are very different. Originally, I went to medical school. I came top of my class; I was set on becoming a doctor like my father.’
    ‘What went wrong?’
    ‘I was forced to spend some time away from university. And when I wanted to return, they wouldn’t let me back.’
    ‘Why not? I thought German universities were quite flexible about that sort of thing. People are always hopping from one to another.’
    ‘Well, it turns out that I’m Jewish.’
    ‘I see...’ said Conrad. ‘Actually, I don’t quite see. Didn’t you know you were Jewish?’
    ‘I never considered myself Jewish. In fact, I used to go to church every now and then with my mother. But my father’s family are Jewish. He’s an atheist, or he would call himself a humanist. He thinks organized religion has done more harm than good in the world. He was quite upset when my mother started taking me to church – I think it went against some agreement they made when they were married. And my grandparents, who do go to synagogue every Saturday, explained to me that I can’t be Jewish because my mother isn’t.’
    She sighed. ‘But that’s not what the law says. The law says that because two of my four grandparents are non-Aryan, I am non-Aryan, and that means I can’t qualify as a doctor.’
     ‘That’s outrageous!’
    ‘Of course it is. But it wouldn’t be any more outrageous if I was one hundred per cent Jewish, would it? And the Nazis’ anti-Semitism is there for all the world to see. Hitler hardly keeps it a secret, does he?’
    ‘No. You’re right. But I suppose it’s one thing to read about anti-Semitic laws in the newspapers, it’s another thing to see them at first hand. What about your father? Is he still allowed to practise?’
    Anneliese laughed, a hollow laugh.
    Conrad felt the unease. ‘What?’
    ‘My father’s in prison. Although he tells me there is plenty of work for him to do there.’
    ‘My God! What is he in there for? Being a doctor?’
    ‘More or less. Late one evening we got a telephone call from a neighbour. There had been a car accident in front of her house and one of the drivers was seriously injured. I was living at home at the time, and I rushed out in the car with my father. The man was in a bad way; he had severed an artery in his leg and was losing a lot of blood. My father and I bound up his leg and drove him to the local hospital. He needed a blood transfusion, and the hospital was only a small one and it didn’t have any stocks of the man’s blood type. But my father’s was a match, so he donated some of his own blood to keep the patient alive until they could get some more stocks from another hospital.’
    ‘Did the driver survive?’
    ‘Yes, unfortunately.’
    ‘Unfortunately?’
    ‘He was a minor official in the local Labour Front and an ardent Nazi. When he recovered, he was shocked to discover that he had Jewish blood in his veins. So shocked that he reported my father to the authorities. Father was arrested, tried for “race defilement”