Parshas Ki Savo 5785
- Torah Tavlin
- Sep 12
- 3 min read
יתנך ה' נגף לפני איביך בדרך אחד תצא אליו ובשבעה דרכים תנוס לפניו ... (כח-כה)
Sigmund Freud, the Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who is widely considered the father of psychoanalysis and a founding figure in psychology, is best known for developing a therapeutic technique that explores unconscious thoughts and feelings to treat mental health issues. Freud was 82 years old and suffering from cancer of the jaw when he fled to London from Vienna in 1938. Freedom gave him a final burst of creative energy and in the last 18 months of his life he finished a book which he had hesitated over for years and compiled a summary of his life’s work, An Outline of Psychoanalysis.
When asked about his productivity at the time, he was known to give a rather curious response: “Thank the Fuhrer.”
After Hitler came to power, many Jews saw the writing on the wall and left Germany. Einstein, for example, did so almost at once. But Freud steadfastly refused, even though many friends warned him that the Nazis were bound to take over Austria. When they finally did in March 1938, Freud still would not consider leaving. He only changed his mind on March 22nd when the Gestapo arrested his beloved daughter Anna. Gripped with fear, Freud frantically paced up and down his apartment and he did not even know of the pills she had taken with her so that she could commit suicide in case she was tortured.
In the end, Anna was allowed to return home as a result of intense pressure from two close friends of Freud, Princess Marie Bonaparte, Napoleon’s great grandniece and William Bullitt, the American ambassador to France. These connections, however, would not have been enough to persuade the Nazis to let Freud leave. Here, he had an improbable stroke of luck. The Nazis imposed a Komissar to run every Jewish business in Austria just as they had done in Germany. The Komissar’s job was to fleece Jews of as much money as they could. By sheer fluke, the Nazis appointed as Freud’s Komissar Dr. Anton Sauerwald, a forty-four year-old chemist whose hobbies included bomb-making and gardening. It was Freud’s good fortune that Sauerwald’s professor had been one of Freud’s friends. As an academic, Sauerwald felt he had to read Freud’s books so that he could perform his duties properly. Recognizing Freud’s brilliance, slowly the Nazi chemist became convinced that he should help Freud, even though he was a Jew. He hid damning evidence that the analyst had secret bank accounts in a number of European countries. Then he helped Freud and sixteen members of his family get exit visas. These cost a great deal of money which Freud did not have, but his Komissar arranged for the sale of some of Freud’s antiquities to foot the bill. Even more remarkable, Sauerwald got the Gestapo to pay for transporting Freud’s books and the famous analytic couch to London.
On the day of his escape, the Gestapo would not let Freud board the train for Paris until he provided a statement that absolved them of blame. “I can heartily recommend the Gestapo to anyone,” Freud wrote. The Nazis did not see the irony.
Freud told his friends he thanked Hitler for making it necessary for him to leave. Sauerwald stayed in touch and then came to London himself to see the old man; Freud promptly complained about English doctors and asked him to get his Vienna doctor to come to treat him. As the doctor was a Nazi he didn’t need an exit visa, and Sauerwald offered to drive him to London. The doctor operated on Freud the day after he arrived, an operation Freud believed gave him another year of life.
One might have expected the Freud family to be very grateful to Sauerwald, but sadly they were not. After the war, one of Freud’s nephews, Harry, who was an American officer tracked Sauerwald down and had him arrested. Sauerwald was charged with war crimes, specifically of robbing the Freud family of its assets. Sauerwald’s trial lasted longer than those at Nuremberg. He spent months sick in jail before he ever set foot in the court. From his cell Sauerwald appealed to the Freud family for help and eventually Anna wrote a letter detailing how Sauerwald had saved her father. But even then, she did not actually sign it.
When the dust settled, it was determined that Dr. Anton Sauerwald had saved 16 Jews in all. He failed to obtain exit visas for four of Freud’s sisters, and they all died in concentration camps. Although he was prosecuted, many historians feel he deserved far better than he received. Perhaps when Freud was thanking the Fuhrer, he had another Nazi in mind. (Escape of Sigmund Freud)