14
Friday, August 10, 1984
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
HEALING
THE HOLOCAUST'S
WOUN
As medical examiner for survivors' restitution
claims throughout the Midwest, Detroiter Dr. Arthur
Feuer has spent the last 25 years witnessing the
horrors which the concentration camps wrought.
BY ALAN ABRAMS
Special to The Jewish News
Vr ∎
•
1 1{1:0,114$• •
0,1
11.1 Il hi :.1 .)170
,7.ici
i s
. 1 1'm t ‘s
"It's a miracle that I never had
an ulcer, although sometimes I cer-
tainly had a lot of heartburn," recalls
Dr. Arthur Feuer. Now semi-retired,
Dr. Feuer has served for more than
,25 years as medical counsel in the
office of Detroit's German Consulate
General.
Because he acted as medical
examiner for all claims for restitu-
tion monies made by Jewish victims
of the Nazi concentration camps, Dr.
Feuer has borne official witness to
litany of unspeakable horrors that
many of us today can still not fathom.
"There were days when I
thought this is the worst I have ever
heard," remembers Dr. Feuer. "I am
thinking about one story told to me
by a woman who was standing in a
camp and holding her little boy who
must have been about two years old.
Suddenly a Nazi came up and
grabbed the little boy out of her arms.
There was a rain puddle there — it
had just stopped raining — and the
Nazi put the little boy's face into the
puddle and held him there until the
child stopped struggling. And all this
time the boy's mother could do noth-
ing but stand there and watch her son
be killed.
"But that same week," continues
Dr. Feuer, "a woman came in for her
examination and told me how she
had been in a selection made jziy Dr.
(Josef) Mengele. You know, one of
those where the Nazis would arbi-
trarily send some people to the left
and others to the right — some to life,
and others to death.
"When it was this woman's turn
to stand before Dr. Mengele, she held
her baby in her arms. She had been
made to take off all her clothes, as
well as those of her child, and they
both stood there naked awaiting
judgment. Suddenly, Mengele tore
the baby out of the arms of its mother
and smashed it against the wall. The
mother's face and body were plas-
tered with the brain substance of the
child."
A lesser man than Dr. Feuer
may not have been able to mentally
survive a quarter-century of listen-
ing to tales such as these on a regular
basis. But the doctor himself, had he
not emigrated to the United States
from Nazi Gerniany in 1936, may
have been among the six million
Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
"I was born in Austria," says Dr.
Feuer, "and I spent my early child-
hood in Vienna. When I was ten we
moved to Berlin, and I really always
regarded Berlin as my home. From
the time I was 12, I have been affil-
iated with Zionist organizations —
always with worker's groups. Per-
sonally, until Hitler came to power, I
only once experienced an anti-
Semitic act directed against me, and
that was while I was still in high
school around 1929. Even during the
first three years under Hitler, I never
;q3V.
s-