My friend Max

My friend Max was born in 1914 in Germany. Heidelberg, I believe. He came from a middle-class Jewish family. Totally ‘integrated’. German was his mother tongue. I don’t think he ever spoke a word of Yiddish. Your ‘typical’ German Jew who thought he was German, and didn’t think twice about it.

He started studying Law in Heidelberg around 1932. He might have crossed path with Hannah Arendt, though she was older, born in 1906. Arendt studied her undergraduate in Marburg under Heidegger, then did her PhD in Heidelberg under Karl Japers. Did Max take a class with Jaspers as a requisite for a Law degree? I don’t know. Never asked.

Hitler was democratically elected in 1933. One must remember that the Nazi party had been founded in the early 20’s, immediately after WWI, and that Hitler had actually done jail time for an aborted coup in München in 1923. Chavez in Venezuela was elected after an aborted coup too. “History never repeats itself?” Don’t make me laugh.

In 1933, Max was still studying Law in Heidelberg. He understood that things would not go well for Jews. Though only a few German Jews actually did. Max thought:

“Oh, oh. Not good. I’m out of here.”

*

So, like Hannah Arendt, Stefan Zweig, Walter Benjamin, and others, Max left Germany. He tried to convince his family. To no avail. Most of his family was killed during the war, but strangely – happily – enough, his mother survived. I understand she was not sent to concentration camps. She might have hidden under a false identity…

Max left Germany for Italy, where he managed to ‘validate’ his two years of German Law into Medical school. He laughed when he told the story. “Only in Italy”, he would say. (No offence to our Italian friends.) He already spoke German. Spoke perfect French and English. Learned Italian along with medicine…

He finished Medical school in Italy early- or mid-1939. Or did he really get all his credits? My parents would laughingly say that many papers or degrees vanished during the war.

By that time Max knew that Italy might not be safer on Jewish issues. The Crystal night in Germany happened in November 1938. Mussolini had been in power in Italy since 1922 and was already hand in hand with Hitler. He had indeed sided with Hitler in the shameful Munich agreement of 1938. (When the French and the English abandoned Czechoslovakia…)

Mussolini’s first racial laws were promulgated in November 1938, restricting civil rights of Italian Jews, access to public office, and access to higher education, banning books from Jewish authors.

Max was no fool. Indeed, he was one of the cleverest men I’ve ever known. So, he bought a ticket on a ship to the farthest destination he could think of.

“Shanghai?” he once told me. “That sounded far enough, didn’t it?”

*

Off and away Max went. He must have been 25. An Italian medical degree in one pocket, a German passport in the other. Sailing away on the slow ships of these days. Travelling took weeks then. Across the Mediterranean. Through the Suez Canal. Past Ismaïlia in Egypt, where my father had been raised, little did they know they would later become friends for life. Ismaïlia, where my grandfather had worked for the Suez Canal; retired in 1939, to Casablanca. My cousins claim my grandfather was an Intelligence officer. Not clear whether for the French or the English. My grandmother was English. But that, ‘Best beloved’, is another story… Though I always find it interesting how some people cross path unknowingly. I have crossed path with many of you readers.

From the Suez Canal, the ship sailed on to the Red Sea, probably stopped at Aden, then to the Indian ocean. Landed in Bombay, where Gandhi had lived from 1917 to 1934.

The ship then sailed south to Ceylon. They call it ‘Sri Lanka’ now. Just like ‘Mumbai’ in lieu of Bombay. Why do they keep changing the names? Then the ship sailed up to the Northeast, towards Calcutta. (I know, I know, they say ‘Kolkata’ now… Tsss)

When the ship landed in Calcutta, a pair of English officers came on board. Examined the passenger manifest, and passports. Max was called and told:

“Ever so sorry Sir. There is a small issue with your passport.” (‘Issue’ would be pronounced ‘ee-sew’ not ‘ee-shew’) You must imagine Eton-, Oxbridge-, Sandhurst-bred officers in shorts and knee-high socks, a pith helmet on the right arm (indoors aboard the ship), a riding stick under the left arm. Also imagine the poshest accent:

“Ever so sorry, Sir, but I’m afraid war has been declared. Very unfortunate, if I may say so. England is now at war with Germany. You have a German passport. You must come with us. Even though you’re a civilian you shall be confined until the end of the war.”

*

I knew bits and pieces of the story, but this complete version, Max told me the last time I saw him, in his terraced house in Islington, London. A nice occasion for him and Yvonne to meet my wife and my youngest daughter.

That must have been in 2003, Max was pushing 90, in somewhat delicate health, though he was still as sharp as ever. At this point of the story, he laughed out loud.

“I left Germany because I was Jewish. And there I was, in Calcutta, put in a prisoners’ camp because I was German. Ironic, wasn’t it?”

That was the end of his story that evening. I knew the rest by my parents: after a few weeks, the English realized that they were slightly short on doctors, having told most of their own doctors to put on a uniform and go to war. There they had a doctor at hand, who was possibly a bit green,  but not  a very likely threat.

‘Ever so slowly’, the English authorities in Calcutta started giving Max daily leave to go and work at the hospital and return to the camp at night. Then, after a while, he was free to roam about and practice medicine. How Max later got his British passport I don’t know. Those were other times…

Eventually, he went across India all the way West, from Calcutta to Karachi. After the war, the Partition came into effect in 1947, Hindus left ‘en masse’ the newly created Pakistan to go south to India. Moslems left India to go North to Pakistan. (See ‘Train to Pakistan’ by Kushwan Singh). As they passed each other along the way, Hindus and Moslems would fight, killing is so easy is it not? Such is the power of religion.

My friend Max? He would rush to the riots, the ambulance driver shouting in Hindustani: “Tabiib Sahib! Doctor Sahib! Don’t shoot!” Max would tend the wounded. Afterwards he established a practice in Karachi.

When my parents came to Pakistan in 1949, they immediately became great friends. Max was only a few years older than my father. As our ‘family doctor’, He made sure to recommend the best obstetrician and clinic when my little sister and I were born. Max saw us grow a bit until we left for Cambodia… (Yes, ‘Best beloved’, that is yet another story)

In the late 50’s, Max left Pakistan and went to the UK, managed to ‘validate’ his burnt, disappeared, lost, whatever, Italian medical credentials with NHS. Worked there until he retired in the late 70’s. In the interval, he’d married Yvonne, an English woman much younger than he was. They had three kids. Lovely ones.

I’d re-connected with Max and Yvonne when I visited them in London in the early 70’s while I was in College in France. We became grown-up friends. I saw their kids grow, as he had seen my little sister and I grow. In the 80’s I used to work for a Brit company which implied many a meeting in London. I visited Max and his lovely family on almost every London visit. To chat away the night.

He was one of the most humane persons I ever met.

*

Author’s note. This is a true story. Why do I choose to tell it now? Because Jews are being killed again. Savagely. Bear in mind that I always choose my words with care. ‘Savagely’ is the correct word. In France, and probably many other places, Jewish schools and synagogues are currently being guarded by the police or the military. The military, for Pete’s sake! Part of the French left still refuses to acknowledge the massacre of October 7th in Israel. There are protests in France, and probably elsewhere, where the words ‘death to Jews’ can be heard, whispered, or disguised. The Israeli Ambassador to the UN has just chosen to wear a yellow six point star, as Jews in Europe were forced to wear during WWII.

2023 is coming to an end. War is raging again in the middle east. Ukraine is still under attack. Taïwan is bracing itself against a possible Chinese attack… We might possibly be at the beginning of yet another World War.

Eighty-four years ago, in the summer of 1939, Max sailed away to Shanghaï. Never made it to China but he saved his life, led a good, honest life, raised a family. And made me proud to be his friend.

Karachi, Pakistan, early 50’s. Sitting on the left, my friend Max talking to the Begum Aga Khan. Standing behind and between them, in a dark suit, my father, Cyril.

Karachi, Pakistan, 1956. My parents’ farewell cocktail, introducing my parents’ successor and his wife. Forgot her name, she is the first on the left, shaking hands with Max, centre in a dark tux. My mother is second from left. My father in his ‘Bogart Casablanca’ white tux is first from the right.

There was – relative – peace then. Must we always have war to have peace?