by Therese Down
“But why, if I may ask, Officer Muller, are you taking her from the security and specialist care we can provide here? How will you ensure she does not relapse or deteriorate? Your wife is still a suicide risk, you know.”
Karl had contemplated Greta sleeping open-mouthed in her armchair. He had been unable to rouse her. “I don’t think Greta will kill herself, Dr Kaufman.”
“How can you be sure? How will you monitor her medication?”
“What medication are you giving her? She seems almost comatose.”
“Hardly.” Kaufman frowned in irritation, then smiled at Karl just as quickly. “She is sedated. And she doesn’t sleep so well at night. It is normal she should be tired.”
“When I was here last week, she could talk. She recognized me.”
“What are you saying, Officer Muller? That Greta is being progressively drugged?” Kaufman’s tone was more assured as Karl seemed less confident.
“I don’t know.” Karl decided to challenge this psychiatrist who was so unwilling to release his wife into his care. He allowed his eyes to show some of the mounting hostility he was trying to stem, and he held Kaufman’s gaze just a little longer than politeness allowed.
“I assure you, Officer Muller, Greta is being well cared for. I am most reluctant to hand over my patient to you without knowing how her medical and care regime will be monitored. You can understand that?”
Karl looked for the gypsy girl who had been so vociferous and fully ambulant on the occasion of his last visit. His eyes scanned the room and found her eventually. She was curled up on her side in a large armchair near a window. Her face was buried in the crook of one arm. Her other arm hung loosely from her shoulder towards the floor; its attitude of limpness was such that she could not be conscious. No one stood or walked.
“I am taking her home,” he had pronounced with finality when he turned back to Kaufman. Get me her notes, if you please. And her coat. It is cold outside.”
“Obersturmführer Muller, are you quite well?” Brandt was looking directly at Karl, an expression of quizzical concern on his face.
“Forgive me, Director.” Karl coughed and straightened himself in his seat. “The excesses of the season – still recovering.” There was good-natured laughter.
“Indeed! They must have been most absorbing. I am sorry to tax you with work, but I would value your opinion on the logistical side of all this. We are going to need your expertise to coordinate delivery of the suppositories and also the Luminal. You will need to create new storage facilities and it will be your job to distribute the supplies to the various wards and liaise with T4 staff regarding their administration and further orders. We shall be relying on you to make us effective, Officer Muller. Do you think you will soon be operational again?” More good-natured laughter.
Karl smiled and nodded. “Of course. Forgive me, Director. I already have ideas for storage and distribution. We have an idle warehouse on Lutzow Ufer – number three – and also a couple of spare offices on floor two, following IV Office’s transfer to Voss Strasse. Some dedicated admin staff can work from there – receive consignments, etc. PO Box, er –” here Karl consulted his papers – “PO Box 120, Lutzow Ufer will be the correspondence address.”
Karl looked briefly at Ernst Schroeder, who nodded peremptorily and wrote it down. “We have two trucks already, in the warehouse, awaiting conversion to gas-mobiles. If you think the drug distribution is a priority, we can recommission these trucks immediately. It is not a problem.”
“Excellent. Then I shall leave you, gentlemen. I am quite certain that the remaining details can be addressed without me. Good work and Heil Hitler!” And the handsome Dr Brandt gathered his papers, placed them in his elegant calfskin briefcase, smoothed his tie and rose from his chair before shaking Gutt’s and Heinze’s hands and leaving.
When he had gone, Heinze seemed to carry on from something he had been saying while Karl had been inattentive. “Neurologically, scopolamine in overdose is highly anticholinergic, depressing the central nervous system – lethal to an adult at 0.6 milligrams and at 0.3 causing extreme drowsiness and tachycardia. The combination with morphine makes the administration most humane and effective. The analgesic properties of morphine reduce pain caused by tachycardia while in overdose, inducing infarction, so speeding up death. It is more costly initially, but death is practically instantaneous – useful for older children and those more resistant to barbiturate poisoning. And of course, there will be a considerable saving in the mid to long term, as maintenance costs are eliminated.”
“Quite so. Production problems, Herr Schroeder?” Gutt seemed to have assumed Brandt’s role as chair.
Ernst just shook his head slowly and emphatically, closed his eyes and pursed his lips as a way of conveying just how problem-free the manufacture of scopolamine-morphine suppositories in 0.6 milligram doses could be.
“Splendid,” concluded Gutt. “Dr Heinze and I shall estimate the required consignments of both drug types and get an order to Officer Muller by the end of tomorrow. Obersturmführer Muller, you then will liaise with Herr Schroeder to get them delivered, stored, distributed. A most useful meeting, gentlemen. Heil Hitler.”
Karl practically had to carry Greta to the waiting taxi from the Leipzig asylum. Unable to get her coat on, even with a nurse’s help, he put it around her shoulders and secured it as best he could. Then he heaved her to her feet and half dragged her to the car. She was not heavy. It was the first time he had held his wife in his arms in months. She smelled of chemicals and cheap soap, and he could feel her ribs quite clearly, even through her coat. Once in the back seat of the taxi, Greta slumped forward, her head lolling heavily, so that Karl had to prop her up against the back of the seat and gently lift her head by placing his hand beneath her chin. Her eyes flickered, and he glimpsed their whites, but she could not open them. That swine, Kaufman! What has he been giving her? he thought to himself, fighting tears of rage and love. Out loud he said tenderly, “Soon have you home, my darling. Soon have you home.” And he sat close beside her in the back seat, pulling her head onto his shoulder and stroking her hair.
When they arrived at the Erlachs’ house, Hans came out in his slippers, trying not to fall over on the icy garden path. Karl asked the taxi driver to wait once more, then lifted his wife out of the back seat and carried her into the warm house. He lay Greta on a sofa, and Clara, talking to her daughter and crying the whole time, removed her coat and covered her with a blanket.
“I do not know why she is so drowsy,” Karl announced with difficulty to his anxious parents-in-law, “but you must find another physician as soon as you can. Kaufman will not release her notes to me. He will have to give them to another doctor – another psychiatrist perhaps. You must keep her hydrated – that’s very important.”
Karl could not go on. He bent and kissed his wife tenderly, took a large amount of money from an inside jacket pocket, and handed it to Hans. Then he wrote a blank cheque and made it payable to his father-in-law; gave him that also. Finally, he said simply, “Look after her. I’ll come when I can,” and he had left.
Ever since, Karl had been in a state of near reverie; a weird semi-aware state in which he was no longer sure what was real and what was not. With effort, he could rouse himself to full consciousness in order to function, but he was increasingly reluctant to do so. Somewhere deep within him, a small voice was warning him to wake up.
Walter was bored. By the end of January 1941 Germany was again bullish in her fighting confidence. German troops had been mobilized for Italy, to bolster Mussolini’s flagging effort, and legions of Spanish soldiers, tokens of Franco’s alliance with Hitler’s National Socialist ideals, were arriving in Germany for training. They were going to be deployed in the planned offensive against Russia.
How Walter would have loved to be assigned a fighting commission! But it was so difficult to know how to play the political game. If he wrote to Goering asking for such an assignment, his actions could be
seen as disobedience to the Reich Office. There was no shortage of military SS and commissioned army officers. Fewer on the ground were senior SS men with the right credentials for advancing the ideological war front of pan-European hegemony. How sick he was of hearing T4 officials and Reich officers expound the virtues and equal value of T4 in the accomplishment of the Führer’s grand design for Aryan dominance. While Walter had no argument against such lofty ideological aims, he was positively vicious when he contemplated how ignoble it was for the son of generations of warriors to be reduced to gassing cripples. He wanted to serve under Rommel, be a hero. The desire was an obsession; the frustration of it a cause of savagery.
Walter felt love for no one. He was permanently angry, resentful or disgusted. If he allowed any softer sentiment to colour his thoughts it was self-pity. As for Hedda, he loathed her. Loathed her tired, permanently sad, mooning face; loathed the insolent reproach of her sidelong glances as he passed her in rooms they couldn’t bear to share. He no longer dined with her, preferring to eat in his study or at some seedy club in the city. Sex was therapeutic and he easily found it, usually free of charge. There was any number of willing women on Bellevuestrasse or Potsdamer. He never engaged with them on any other level than the carnal; made little attempt at conversation. A few drinks, a few knowing glances and the occasional smile were enough. His teutonic good looks and uniform did the rest. It was all too easy. Too easy and too boring, like everything else.
As for his children, Walter was objective, in the main. He had grieved a little for Agnette when she was injured, but he could not afford to luxuriate in such an emotion if he was to eliminate effectively other people’s children. And when she did not recover after some weeks, he consigned her to death and preferred to remember her as she was. The shaven-headed, skinny little thing under a hospital sheet reminded him too much of the dead “unworthies” piling up daily at the Brandenburg institution that Wirth ran with unfailing enthusiasm. Walter stopped visiting Agnette at the hospital. It was futile.
Anselm had never really occupied his thoughts for long. The way the child sat on his mother’s knee and sucked his thumb, pushed his head into his mother’s breast and watched Walter with those big “Hedda eyes” irritated him. Everything, actually, was pretty irritating. Now, as he prepared to inspect Sachsenhausen camp in his impeccable uniform, SS-issue pure wool greatcoat and shiny leather boots, Walter’s lip curled in renewed disgust. The place stank. How he hated the furtive attempts by the inmates to go unnoticed as he passed them. Useless, terrified scum.
The male prisoners at Sachsenhausen were divided into hierarchical categories by coloured triangles sewn on their camp overalls. At the apex of the pyramid were the criminals: rapists and murderers mainly, but some political insurgents. No triangles for them. Secondly came Communists, denoted by their red triangles. Then came the homosexuals, with their pretty pink triangles, and lastly, the lowest of the lowly scum on whom all others legitimately trampled for survival, the Jews, with their yellow triangles.
One of the “services” performed by Sachsenhausen inmates was the testing of the durability of shoes and boots produced by certain East German manufacturers, often for soldiers on the frontline. Today, another consignment of test footwear had arrived and just for fun, the consignment included women’s shoes. When Walter arrived at the roll call area he found three camp guards in high spirits, their laughter could be heard well before Walter requested access through the main gates.
The semi-circular yard was crammed with hunched and desperately skinny men in ragged, dark overalls, and in a space in the middle, the guards had assembled some twenty homosexual prisoners and were making them put on women’s shoes. It was several degrees below freezing. As Walter surveyed the scene ahead, he clapped his gloved hands together to encourage increased circulation to his fingers, and considered returning to his warm office on Tiergarten Strasse. There would be hot coffee and those little sugar cakes his secretary always brought in. But there was also a mountain of paperwork waiting to be signed, and the coffee and cakes would be there whatever time he walked into the office, so what the hell. He could do with a little entertainment.
When they saw him, the SS camp guards became instantly quiet and saluted him. The prisoners, shaking uncontrollably from cold, many of them too weak to stand up for long, tried desperately to stand to attention also. This was less easy for the two who had been forced to squeeze their feet into women’s high-heeled shoes two sizes too small for them. The two men wobbled and stumbled, wavered and tottered, tried to help each other remain upright, and fell over again. One of the camp guards could no longer suppress a snigger and his face was red from the effort. This set off another, whose shoulders began to quiver, and he giggled uncontrollably like a nervous schoolgirl. Walter could not help but grin. He made a dismissive gesture with a gloved hand and the men relaxed and laughed at will.
“What is the matter… gentlemen?” The last word was deliberately delayed and stressed to signal their sexuality. Walter directed his words at the two men who now clung to each other in hopeless support. “Don’t you like your nice new shoes?” The camp guards were doubled over in helpless laughter. “I should have thought they were right up… your street?” More ribald laughter. Walter came closer to the men. They tried again to separate; one remained upright, wobbling. The other was weaker, and in fear as much as anything else, his legs buckled and he fell to his knees. Tears fell silently down his face.
“Ah, don’t cry,” continued Walter mock soothingly, lifting the man’s face by his chin. “I’m going to teach you how to walk in your nice shoes. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” The camp guards’ laughter had subsided to the occasional guffaw. One rubbed a tear from his eye. Walter’s tone changed suddenly and he struck the kneeling man hard on the side of his face. “I am talking to you, you pathetic pansy! I said, would you like to learn how to walk in your nice… new… shoes?” With each of the final three monosyllables, Walter kicked or hit the man while walking around him, once in his lower back, once hard against his upturned soles, and finally he slapped him hard around the head. The man sprawled on the freezing ground, sobbing and shaking, tears and snot all over his face. He tried to wipe them away with his sleeve as he pushed himself up to the kneeling position again. His friend, still wobbling and swaying on his heels, also shaking violently with terror and cold, could take no more.
“Please, Herr Commandant,” he began in a small, piteous voice. “Please, sir – the shoes are too small. If we could have larger…”
The camp guards glared at him. One made an exaggerated “ooh” shape with his lips and his eyes grew wide in surprised amusement at the prisoner’s audacity.
Walter rounded on him. “What did you say?” This was precisely the outlet his pent-up frustration and rage needed. “Did you speak to me?”
Walter punched the man twice very hard in his gut and then delivered a bone-breaking upper cut to his jaw, which sent the prisoner flying across the yard. The man lay still, moaning a little but barely conscious. Walter removed his right glove, unbuttoned his coat and took his Parabellum from its holster in a smooth series of swift movements and shot the man in the forehead. One of the huddled homosexual prisoners cried aloud in horror. The one on the floor hung his head and seemed to wait for his bullet. Instead, Walter paced over to him, pulled him to his feet and pushed him roughly away from him. “Walk!” he commanded. “Walk, you degenerate scum!” The man fell and pushed himself up, and stumbled and fell and cried, then pushed himself up with his hands again, like a toddler learning to walk. At last, Walter was excruciatingly bored with the spectacle.
The camp guards were no longer tempted to laugh. Walter’s fury had banished humour and made it dangerous, even for them. The other inmates shivered and bowed their heads, huddled closer together. Walter shot the stumbling man and signalled to the camp guards to remove the bodies. A guard in turn motioned to two prisoners to see to the bodies, and they ran forward, dragged the dead men out of
the way by their feet, their ridiculous shoes still on and the blood from their wounds leaving smears in their wake on the frosty ground.
“Now listen to me, you pathetic queers,” shouted Walter at the remaining homosexuals. “You are going to wear your new shoes on a nice long walk. And you –” he raised his voice even more, addressed a section in front of him of other prisoners, mainly Jews – “you are going to walk with them. That should warm you up!”
Walking towards one of the camp guards, a huge man whose belly was barely contained by his jacket, Walter said, “Make the queers and Jews walk till they drop – the full twenty-five kilometres. Kill any who survive. Choose at least sixty more by the end of the day and get rid of them too. We’re behind on quota.”
The guard saluted, clicked his heels together and began rounding up prisoners, herding them into the perimeter trench, shouting and delivering glancing blows all the while. The other two supervised, steely-eyed and taciturn now. The last thing they had needed was for a bit of fun to turn into an all-day supervised death march. They could have delivered his quota on time and also spent most of the freezing, miserable day indoors, drinking schnapps and eating liverwurst. They hated Walter almost as much as the condemned men who staggered and stumbled across glass, rocks, gravel and an assortment of other surfaces designed to test shoes. They were setting out on the first lap of what would be the most gruelling and the last twenty-five kilometres of their lives. Walter, his inspection over, left the camp and drove home to Oranienburg.
“The crematorium at Sachsenhausen is not working.” Walter was speaking to Karl Muller by telephone. It was nine p.m. A jolly fire roared and danced in his office hearth, and his belly was full of pork and saurkraut. As he spoke, he fingered the stem of a crystal glass in which glinted and winked a crisp Rhenish wine. The last thing he had needed was some hesitant, simpering camp guard on the phone telling him the crematorium had packed up. He had been very sorry to disturb the Oberführer, but they had tried everything they could to get it going again. There seemed to be some sort of problem with the fuel feed. What should they do? They still had about fifty bodies to dispose of.