The Journey of Anna Eichenwald

Anna Eichenwald, born in Berlin in 1901, was the first woman to attend the University of Berlin Medical School, and became a gifted surgeon on the teaching staff of the University Hospital. He father Hanz held a professorship in physics at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. WWI had come to an end with an unlimited opportunity for advancement of medicine and physics. But it was "August Days", and the Kaiser had abdicated leaving a void that was filled by an insignificant Austrian corporal of WWI. He rapidly imposed his worldview of Social Darwinism and Ethnic Cleansing on the people. Reason for 66 million German people was radically being altered from one of a moral foundation to one embracing immorality rooted in anti-Semitism. Since Anna had no interest in politics, her friends pleaded with her.... "Anna, elephants will fly before you will be safe in Germany." Soon she would come to understand; Anna was a Jew.

This book is a historical novel based in three areas of interest. Two history changing segments of time are integrated with a winsome story. First, the amazing ignominy of a German people and economy, devastated by WWI, who are willing to follow a demagogue into a second war in just 20 short years. Adolf Hitler was a man who failed at almost everything he tried, rising to the rank of corporal as a dispatch runner in WWI. Yet in 1933 he was appointed Chancellor of Germany and a year later the Fuhrer of the German Reich. He predicted a 1000 year reign for the Reich. It lasted just over 12 years. The abstruse core of his attempt of concurring the European continent was the eradication of all Jews from Europe, known as the Holocaust. Second was the inordinate rise in the understanding of elemental physics. This began in 1905 when an obscure Jewish physicist named Albert Einstein published a series of papers on what he called 'special relativity'. He followed this in ten years with the even more remarkable description of general relativity. The advance in this area of science, from the understanding of the elemental structure of the atom, to the almost bizarre quantum mechanics, involved multiple physicists including Niels Bohr, Max Plank, Leo Szilard, Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn and many others. The atomic nucleus was "split" by Otto Hahn which let to something known in atomic physics and a "chain reaction". Multiple physicists who were Jews were forced to leave Europe. Many of these brilliant Nobel Prize winners emigrated to the U. S. and became involved in an effort to develop an A-bomb (known as the Manhattan Project). Eventually this weapon was used to bring WWII to an end. The third segment of the book is the story of Anna Eichenwald. She was an academic surgeon who was respected and admired, but this did not mollify the enemies of her people. As the danger increased, she changed her identity and went 'underground'. She was befriended by the sister of the man she loved, and joined the underground resistance. Eventually she was betrayed, arrested and sent to Buchenwald Prison. In the prison she entered a covert operation that interestingly was not fiction. Because she was an admired Jewish academic, she was singled out for execution. Her survival is the apogee of the book.

Don is a retired vascular surgeon. His academic passion was not centered on chemistry and biology, but history. After retiring, he traded his scalpel for a pen and began research to produce a historical novel. He saw the five decades from 1900 to 1950 as most critical in shaping both the world of science and the fulfillment of the promise of Genesis 12:7. He and artist wife Delia live in the Texas hill country.