Ms. Nora Miller and Mr. Victor Cohen first met each other behind the barbed wire in the Auschwitz Death Camps. She was rounded up in Budapest, Hungary, he in Warsaw, Poland. Both came out from box-cars on the same platform at the end of the train track that snaked throughout the camp-area. Victor arrived in a morning. Being young, he was selected by the Nazi general to work in an area known as “Canada” inside the camp. The guards at the rail-station would collect luggage of arriving prisoners (they’re promised new job opportunities during arrest) and bring to “Canada”. Victor joined fellow prisoners there to pillage through suitcases for valuables. That same evening, Nora disembarked from a different box-car and was selected by Dr. Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death” to assist a female Nazi nurse helping the doctor carrying out macabre medical experiments on prisoners.
Amidst all the mayhem around them, Nora and Victor found each other, fell in love at first sight, and continued their romance even under the watchful eyes of the Nazis. Both were optimistic in nature. They believed that their fates were testing them, especially the nature of jobs they’re forced to perform and soon this nightmare would be over. It would be another two years when the allied soldiers would liberate them at the end of the World War II. They moved to New York City, resettled, got married, and became the parents to the baby boy Peter.
Growing up, Peter would notice the blue prisoner number etched on his father’s arm in death camps. During his teenage years, both parents would describe to him their experience in the Auschwitz. They would remind him the lesson that kept them sane and alive through humanity’s worst crime: “Never give up even in life’s darkest moments.”
Two score years later, Dr. Peter Cohen, now a renowned psychiatrist was lying on a sofa inside his medical office with front-door locked. A moral crisis was slowly engulfing him. One of the multinational pharmaceutical companies had convinced him that their newly marketed migraine drug could be beneficial, at higher doses, for alleviating suffering in depressed patients too. However, they only had animal-data but no human-data. Based on incentives he received from the company for such an off-label use, he prescribed the medicine to his recent patients. In an unpredictable side-effect, two of them became more depressed, entered into so-called “dark tunnels of hopelessness”, and committed suicide. Remaining three had been admitted to hospitals under “suicide watch”.
Gradually, Dr. Cohen started descending into his own dark mental abyss. He loosened the knot of his tie, raised it up to his neck, and refastened as tight as he could. Just before taking final breath, he remembered his deceased parents’ lesson to him in childhood. He unfastened the tie, got up, and composed a long letter of guilt to submit to his professional society taking full responsibility for his moral darkness.
Amidst all the mayhem around them, Nora and Victor found each other, fell in love at first sight, and continued their romance even under the watchful eyes of the Nazis. Both were optimistic in nature. They believed that their fates were testing them, especially the nature of jobs they’re forced to perform and soon this nightmare would be over. It would be another two years when the allied soldiers would liberate them at the end of the World War II. They moved to New York City, resettled, got married, and became the parents to the baby boy Peter.
Growing up, Peter would notice the blue prisoner number etched on his father’s arm in death camps. During his teenage years, both parents would describe to him their experience in the Auschwitz. They would remind him the lesson that kept them sane and alive through humanity’s worst crime: “Never give up even in life’s darkest moments.”
Two score years later, Dr. Peter Cohen, now a renowned psychiatrist was lying on a sofa inside his medical office with front-door locked. A moral crisis was slowly engulfing him. One of the multinational pharmaceutical companies had convinced him that their newly marketed migraine drug could be beneficial, at higher doses, for alleviating suffering in depressed patients too. However, they only had animal-data but no human-data. Based on incentives he received from the company for such an off-label use, he prescribed the medicine to his recent patients. In an unpredictable side-effect, two of them became more depressed, entered into so-called “dark tunnels of hopelessness”, and committed suicide. Remaining three had been admitted to hospitals under “suicide watch”.
Gradually, Dr. Cohen started descending into his own dark mental abyss. He loosened the knot of his tie, raised it up to his neck, and refastened as tight as he could. Just before taking final breath, he remembered his deceased parents’ lesson to him in childhood. He unfastened the tie, got up, and composed a long letter of guilt to submit to his professional society taking full responsibility for his moral darkness.
