Symphony of Six Million 1932

Felix ‘“Felixel” Klauber’ Ricardo Cortez is a brilliant young man from a close-knit Jewish family living in New York City’s Lower East Side ghetto, and he has long aspired to become a physician. He climbs from a neighborhood clinic to establish himself as a Park Avenue doctor catering to the wealthy, a rise encouraged by an older brother who uses Felix’s love for their mother to press him to improve his standing for the family’s sake.

As Felix attains success, he grows estranged from both his family and the community that raised him, including his childhood friend Jessica Irene Dunne, who has lived with a spine malady since girlhood and becomes a teacher of blind children. Felix begins to neglect the clinic he built in the old neighborhood and ignores those who supported him, a distance that deepens when a blind child, one of Jessica’s students, dies because Felix is tardy in offering help.

Felix later performs surgery on his beloved father, who has a brain tumor, and is horrified when his father dies on the operating table. The tragedy shatters his confidence in his calling, and he withdraws from surgery and from the healing gift that defined him, turning his attention instead to serving well-heeled hypochondriacs. Then Jessica—who has loved him all her life—needs a spine operation. The question now is whether Felix can conquer his fears and insecurities long enough to save the life of the woman who has always stood by him.