Vermont Holocaust scholar shares history lesson, cautionary tale with library audience

September 25, 2020 |  By Annika Ringen  |  Community News Service 

Author, Middlebury pediatrician and Holocaust scholar Dr. Jack Mayer. Courtesy photo.

A Vermont doctor, author and Holocaust academic warns that today’s politics in the U.S. are increasingly similar to Germany’s short-lived pre-Nazi democracy, and he implores people to get involved in the “civil opposition.”    

Dr. Jack Mayer, a Middlebury pediatrician and author, spoke this week during an online presentation co-sponsored by the Waterbury Public Library and the Vermont Humanities Council. “We hear an echo of Weimar today in our political discourse,” Mayer said, setting the tone for the Zoom meeting attended by just under 30 people Monday evening. 

Mayer works as a primary care pediatrician, an instructor at the University of Vermont and pre-medical adviser at Middlebury College. Introducing himseslf as a German Jew, Mayer told of growing up in the Washington Heights section of New York City, the son and granson of Holocaust survivors. 

“My parents narrowly escaped the Holocaust and others in my family did not,” he told the online group. Yet, despite his family history and the community where he was raised, the Holocaust remained in the background of Mayer’s childhood. He called it “frightening and mysterious” and “the unacknowledged elephant in the living room.” 

Mayer said he didn’t begin to understand the role the Holocaust played in his family history until he was in his 20s and his mother was interviewed for Stephen Spielberg’s early 1990s Shoah project that collected firsthand testimony from Holocaust survivors. She pulled out identification papers stamped “Jew” and her certificate from nursing school in Germany that bore swastikas, Mayer said. 

The author described his writing as being “compelled by rescuers.” His first book was non-fiction published in 2011. “Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project,” is a Holocaust rescue story based on true events about Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker who organized a network to save 2,500 Jewish children from Warsaw ghetto during World War II. He writes of how in 1999 three Kansas teenage girls researching a history project discovered the story. 

Interviewing Sendler and the young women who “rescued her forgotten story” gave Mayer his focus. “I found my mission with regards to the Holocaust, tasked with telling this story,” he said. 

Mayer’s talk revolved mainly around the story of his second book, “Before the Court of Heaven” published in 2015. This work of historical fiction ultimately tells a story of “forgiveness, atonement and redemption,” Mayer said, but along the way illustrates the dangers of complacency with injustice against the backdrop of Weimar Germany as it descended into the Third Reich. He describes the book as one small effort to keep that dark history alive as a cautionary tale for today.

“My fiction explores the capacity inherent in each of us for unspeakable horror and remarkable goodness,” Mayer said. 

A fascist-assassin protagonist 

Mayer's book "Before the Court of Heaven" is historical fiction based on the true story of a young fascist assassin in Weimar Germany between World Wars I and II. Cover photo. 

Set in Germany between World Wars I and II, “Before the Court of Heaven” tells the story of Ernst Werner Techow, the son of a magistrate, who joins the violent right-wing response to Germany’s defeat in World War I. “He’s a fascist assassin,” Mayer said of his protagonist. Techow participates in the 1922 murder of German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, the highest-ranking Jew in the Weimar Republic.

In researching the book, Mayer relied on microfilmed original records including police interviews and transcripts from the court trial of Techow and his accomplices. A turning point in the trial and Mayer’s book is the reading of a letter from Rathenau’s mother to Techow’s mother where she extends forgiveness to those who murdered her son if they sought it. 

During the talk, Mayer said he depicts the events leading to the rise of the Third Reich in “Before the Court of Heaven” in order to warn against their resurgence in today’s political society. “My hope is that by animating this history, readers will understand it in a visceral way so we don’t have to repeat it,” he said.

Mayer drew parallels to today’s politics, noting that the Weimar democracy was similar to many modern democracies as a constitutional government with free elections. “Today, democracy and all its manifestations is under assault and in retreat around the world. Authoritarian rule is increasingly prevalent and disturbingly increasingly acceptable,” Mayer said. “Healthy democracies such as our 244-year-old experiment are not immune to catastrophe.”

In telling Techow’s story, Mayer said he got to know his protagonist in order to trace his evolution.  "One of the questions that came to me was how did Ernst become a fascist assassin? He was born to a wealthy family, the son of a magistrate. People are not born murderers. They're not born Nazis. They are taught," Mayer said.

Using one historical figure as a focus allowed Mayer to include Techow’s family, friends, associates in a way “to try to understand how ordinary people become complicit in extraordinary crimes.”

Author, Middlebury pediatrician and Holocaust scholar Dr. Jack Mayer discussses his book 'Before the Court of Heaven' during an online presentation through the Waterbury Public Library last week. Photo by Annika Ringen.

Connecting the dots of history 

About an hour of Mayer’s talk was a detailed history from the 1918 Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I to Adolph Hitler’s rise to power by 1933. Mayer details the forces at work in post-war and then Great Depression Germany -- economic collapse, polarized government, the rise of nationalism and xenophobia -- that doomed the fledgling Weimar democracy. 

Without mentioning names of current leaders, Mayer connected dots across a century. “Germans hoped and Hitler promised -- this is a quote from one of his speeches in 1926: ‘to return Germany to its national greatness.’”

He described how Hitler’s rhetoric relied on fear, distorted accounts of history, outright lies along with scapegoating and populism to capture public attention. “One of the things he did was to employ these cheap radios -- radio was a new technology at the time, similar to Twitter in some ways -- and was able to skillfully exploit this as a means of spreading propaganda,” Mayer said. 

Looking back, Mayer said he believes the flaw in the Weimar democracy that led to the rise of the Third Reich was not stopping injustice before it began. “It was civil passivity that allowed the Nazis to flourish,” he said. 

Mayer also underscored weaknesses in the government structure that allowed for the burgeoning fascist movement to use legitimate means to ultimately crush democracy. Before long, civil liberties were suspended, camps were built, and thousands of political prisoners were detained without trial, Mayer said. 

Mayer did not reveal how it happened but he said Techow ultimately became a rescuer himself aiding anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees to flee occupied France. “Rescue for him is much more complex because he first must turn from the evil that he has embraced,” Mayer said. 

He ended his presentation to the library group with a call to civil duty. “Each one of us can do something no matter how small to promote decency and respect for all people, to be the civil opposition when tyranny once again raises its ugly head,” Mayer said. “I urge you … to challenge hatred, intolerance, neglect, aggression, bullying; to advocate for decency.” 

Much of the history of the Holocaust, Mayer said, focuses on the time after Hitler came to power. “That was too late,” he said. 

For the discussion portion, some attendees submitted questions, but the majority praised the event and expressed their gratitude for Mayer’s presentation.

“Very thought-provoking and disturbing,” said one attendee, utilizing the Zoom chat feature. 

“Super interesting. It helped me understand the rise of the Nazis,” said another.

Judi Byron, the library’s adult program director, said she booked Mayer through the Vermont Humanities Council speakers program with the hope of having an enlightening exchange. 

“I like that we can have someone come that might have a provocative talk and even make people uncomfortable, if it causes them to think about what ifs or where we are presently,” she said. 

Mayer’s presentation was recorded and is on the Waterbury Public Library’s YouTube channel “I’m very grateful that we’ll be able to get this video up for those that may not have been able to be with us,” Byron said.

Mayer’s books have received numerous accolades. “Before the Court of Heaven” has more than a dozen to its credit including the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award for fiction, 2017 Independent Press Awards for historical and general fiction and the 2016 IndieReader Discovery Award first place for fiction.

In November, Mayer also has a collection of poems titled “Poems from the Wilderness,” being released. He said it’s a series of poems he composed while solo hiking and backcountry ski touring the Vermont and New Hampshire wilderness.

Community News Service is a collaboration with the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.