Jay Neugeboren: Hitler's Doctor is Living in the Bronx: How 1940 Came to Be

Ten years ago, while reading Ron Rosenbaum's Explaining Hitler, I came across a fact that was, to me, a revelation: Hitler's doctor, it seemed -- a man named Eduard Bloch -- was Jewish, and had lived in the Bronx all through World War II. So grateful was Hitler to his childhood physician that in 1940 he intervened to provide Dr. Bloch and his family with visas that enabled them to escape Austria and the Holocaust. Rosenbaum devoted only a half dozen pages to Bloch, but what I read took up residence in a small room of my mind, and I tried to find out more. Other than some basic facts of Bloch's life, however, these derived largely from articles Dr. Bloch wrote for Scribner's ("My Patient, Hitler"), and from U. S. intelligence agency (O.S.S.) interviews, the man himself remained a mystery. And so I began conceiving a story in... [read full story]