Freud the Sleuth, Investigates Who Killed Moses?
Sigmund Freud’s article ‘Moses an Egyptian’ caused an outcry as he was taking the radical view that Moses was not a Jew and ascribing an Egyptian ancestry to the prophet, amid a time when Nazi’s were pursuing Jews, including Freud himself. In his controversial investigation, Freud opened the question: “Who Killed Moses?” that authors Rand and Rose Flem-Ath seek to answer in their book.
Michelangelo's Moses in San Pietro (Luca Volpi / CC BY-SA 3.0)
Freud’s Nightmare
March 22, 1938 was the worst day of Sigmund Freud’s life. All the loving father’s prestige could not help his daughter now. His beloved Anna was with the Gestapo. In view of the desperate circumstances, the family doctor had slipped Anna a supply of the barbiturate Veronal. If there was no rescue from the Nazis, the drug would provide the girl with the ultimate escape of suicide. Puffing constantly at a cigar, the father waited, pacing the floor like a caged animal. But Anna Freud had inherited a cool intelligence and a stoic self-discipline that would save her life. Inside a cold corridor at Gestapo Headquarters she gambled everything by pushing forward to the head of the line of detainees waiting to be interrogated. The method behind her madness was driven by the terrifying certainty that if she hesitated until the day’s end the Nazi bureaucrats would sweep up those remaining in the queue like litter and dispatch them to a concentration camp. There would be no returning the next day to take care of unfinished business.
