CHAPTER 16

The Dresden Sanatorium

Huberman had met the singer Elsa Galafrés . . . but it was a chance meeting at the Weisser Hirsch sanatorium in Dresden that led to their romance. The sanatorium promoted healthy living, with cold showers, brisk walks, and food that consisted mainly of salads and fruit. Perhaps, if the food had been better, Elsa and Huberman would have spent less time together?

Patrick Harris¹

Several weeks later, Elsa Galafrés checks into the Weisser Hirsch sanatorium in Dresden, Germany, resting from a busy theater season. As she laughs and lunches with friends on the warm summer day, she is surprised to see Bronislaw Huberman approaching her table.

“Do I interrupt?” he says. “I learned only today that you were here.”

She smiles. “If I had known you were to be here, I would have waited before beginning my lunch,” she says. “Now my friends and I have finished. But, please, Mr. Huberman, sit down and join us.”

The couple sits at the table, talking long after the others leave. He is so warm, attentive, and talkative, Elsa can hardly believe he is the same man she met only weeks before.

After a while, he stops talking. “I’ve been far too egotistical,” he says. “I have talked only of myself. Please, Elsa, tell me about you.”

Elsa speaks freely about her life, career, family, and about European politics in general. When she finally stops, Bronislaw takes her hand and looks deep into her eyes.

“You, too, are lonely, Elsa. I can hear it in your voice,” he says. “You, too, are searching.”

She pauses, wondering how he could so accurately sense her innermost feelings.

“Yes,” she says. “I am.”

Becoming lovers, Elsa and Bronislaw leave the Weisser Hirsch sanatorium. At his invitation, she moves into his rented two-story villa on the outskirts of Vienna, and they fill their hours with passionate lovemaking and long walks in flowered parks, and attend theaters and concerts around the world. Elsa thrills in the excitement of new romance, dreaming and hinting, early in the relationship, about becoming Mrs. Bronislaw Huberman.

“We should become engaged, Broni,” she says. “People are asking me when we plan to announce our engagement.”

“I am not the marrying type, Elsa,” he says.

When Elsa tells her mother about her romance and growing relationship with Huberman, her mother stares at her with wide eyes.

“I love him, Mother,” Elsa says. “And . . . we . . . we are . . . living together . . . in his villa in Vienna.”

“Elsa!” her mother cries. “It cannot be! You must not associate with this . . . this Huberman—he is a Jew from Poland! If your father was still alive, he would most definitely forbid it!”

“But I told you, Mother, I love him! And nothing else matters! I will not give him up!”

“Don’t be stupid, Elsa!” her mother shouts. “Your attachment to him will damage your career. Please, Elsa, think about what you are doing—to yourself and to me!”

When Elsa returns home, she tells Bronislaw about her mother’s reaction to the news of their affair.

“If your mother is concerned about us doing something stupid—like getting married—she has nothing to worry about, Elsa,” he says. “I do not want the obligation of marriage, not now and not ever.”