by William Kerr
“It was correct for me to fear the death’s head insignia. Totenkopfverbände. Death’s Head Unit, and that is what those men were. That is what Mengele was. Disciples of the devil and angels of death.”
CHAPTER 27
Matt and Hannah walked arm-in-arm along the railed embankment above the Mosel’s steady flow, the grayness of Hannah’s hair glistening in the October sun. Dried tear lines ran like crystallized rivulets along the paleness of her cheeks. The sound of passing automobiles, chugging tugs, and other river-going vessels echoed in the background as Hannah brushed the shiny particles from her face and released the memories she’d tried to hide from herself and the rest of the world for so many years.
“I soon learned that where we got off the train was called the selection ramp. It was there the various doctors of the camp, but mostly Mengele, made the selection who would live and who would die. Although, in various ways, most would die before the passing of many months.”
“What happened to you and your brother?”
Hannah stopped and leaned on the railing above the river, her mind pulling bits and pieces from the past. “We lived better than most for a while. Many of the children he had first chosen on the selection ramp did not meet the line on the wall he had drawn. One hundred fifty centimeters, I think. About five feet high. If they were not that tall, he sent them to the gas chambers. The smell of death was always in the air.”
Matt could smell, almost taste, the putrid stench of death as he closed his eyes against the mental picture, but Hannah’s words refused him escape.
“But I was his favorite. ‘Uncle Pepi,’ he had me call him. We all called him that or ‘Uncle Mengele’—those he let live. Even after the little experiments he used us for. He became our mother and father, but most important, our only hope to live.
“Some days he took me with him to the selection ramp. As the winter passed into the following spring and summer, nineteen forty-four, it was mostly Jews. Except for a few Gypsies and some Russian soldiers, I think they had run out of Poles by then.
“There was one time after the selection, he took me to the gas chambers. The people were led to the chambers by what the Germans called Sonderkommandos, squads of prisoners, mostly Jewish.”
“Like what they called Judenrat in the cities,” Matt said. “Jewish leaders who helped round up their own people for deportation to the camps and to their death. Wonder whose skin they were trying to save?”
Hannah grunted bitterly, “No need to wonder. Ja, like the Judenrat, the Sonderkommandos lied to their own people, calling the chambers showers, ‘disinfectants.’ Men, women, children, all stripped naked. Uncle Pepi…” Hannah spat the words from her mouth like so much venom. “Uncle Pepi held me up to one of the windows. He said, ‘The reason I brought you here, they are Jews, Hannah. Except for the Gypsies, the lowest of all life. We must rid the world of them so you and I can live in a world free of such filth.’
“The gas would rise from vents in the floor, and those closest would die almost immediately. The rest, they screamed and struggled. Clawed at the doors. Hundreds of them. I could hear them.” Hannah’s voice cracked for a moment, but she pressed on.
“A woman’s face appeared at the window, for only a moment, her eyes pleading. I cried, but Mengele made me watch.
“Afterwards, once they’d pumped out the gas and the doors were open, he made me watch the Sonderkommandos cut the hair from the women, take jewelry from the fingers, and pull out the gold teeth. They tossed these things into special numbered crates. Gold into one crate, teeth into a separate crate marked Zahnstation, dental station, to later remove the gold from the teeth.
“The shoes and glasses and some of the better clothing were taken to special storage rooms for return to Germany. The women’s hair was dried in the heat of the crematoria attic, but I never knew what it was for.”
“And then the incinerators?” Matt asked.
“Ja. They were taken by elevator and laid in front of the ovens by the stokers, other Jewish prisoners like the Sonderkommandos who thought cooperation would save their lives. The stokers would shove the bodies according to some formula into the ovens. Near the end, when the ovens could no longer handle so many bodies, they would dig pits with troughs at one end to drain off the grease. The stokers would pour oil, alcohol, and the boiling human fat over the bodies to make them burn faster.”
Anguish etched Hannah’s face. Matt quietly asked, “The gold. Jewelry, crowns from teeth. What happened to that?”
“Mengele told me, once melted and formed into small ingots, it was sent away, mostly to Berlin, but some to banks in Switzerland. It was used to buy bombs and guns for the Reich to fight the hated Bolsheviks, he said. But that wasn’t what always happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“A man, a judge, Mengele said, came one time from Berlin and found one of the barracks known by the code name ‘Canada.’”
“Canada? Why Canada?”
“For where those who had hidden the jewelry planned to go after the war. It was stacked high with jewelry and other things taken from the prisoners.”
“What happened when this judge found all the goodies?”
“Mengele said it was the camp commandant and two lesser officers involved. For the commandant only a reprimand, but the other two were returned to Berlin. I don’t know after that. Mengele said they would be shot.”
Matt paused, then said, “It’s evident Mengele liked you, but Aleksander, your brother, what happened to him?”
“We, the chosen children, most of us twins, lived in what was called…The Zoo. It was not long after we arrived, a month, maybe two. Christmas was not far away. Mengele sent for Aleksander and me. To celebrate a birthday party.”
“Yours?”
Hannah shook her head. “Nein.”
“His?”
“He didn’t say.”
The night was blustery as wind whipped around the corners of the barracks, beneath the stilted sentry posts, and through the barbwire fence lines. A flurry of snowflakes since midday had coated the bare earth, taking away some of the camp’s austere harshness. Hannah smiled at the sight of snow, its white cleanliness, its beauty. The smile was her first in days; actually, in weeks of seeing and hearing the whimper of children, those inoculated with strange substances, cut on and sewn up without anesthetics, beaten for crying or for begging to make the pain go away. She wondered why she and Aleksander had not received the same treatment.
No, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled before now, as she and Aleksander moved through the thin crust of snow, their feet in a slip-and-slide skiing motion, the SS camp guard following a short distance behind.
Most wonderful of all, the smoke stacks to the crematoria were still. No smoke, no odor of burning flesh, no wisps of hair floating in the air. For the first time since she had arrived, Hannah breathed in the clean, sharp air of the coming winter. Then she stopped suddenly. “Aleksander, look!”
Through the window to Mengele’s quarters shone the lights of a small Christmas tree. “It’s Christmas, Aleksander. The birthday party—it’s for the Christ child.”
Aleksander only grunted, his thoughts and words kept to himself, a near silence he had maintained since their arrival at the Auschwitz camp.
Pointing toward the tree in the window, Hannah turned to the guard. “A Yule tree. See?”
“Ja, ein Weihnachtsbaum,” the guard answered, immediately ordering, “Bewegen! Move, move!” The muzzle of his rifle jabbed against Hannah’s buttocks. “I’ve other things to do besides play nursemaid to the likes of two Polish piglets.”
Almost on cue, the door to Mengele’s quarters was thrown open and SS-Major Dr. Josef Mengele stood in the doorway in civilian shirt and trousers. Hannah had never seen him dressed that way. Always he wore a dress uniform or a white, full-length surgical gown. “Ah, meine lieben, lieben Kinder, my dear, dear children, so beautiful in the snow. Eh, Jürgen?” Mengele asked over his shoulder
.
A second man—Hannah hadn’t seen him since the day on the selection ramp, the man Mengele had called Colonel—stepped to the door and looked over Mengele’s shoulder. “I agree, Josef. Like two angels in the snow. Let them in so the party can begin.”
Without a word to the guard, Mengele ushered the two children into the room and the warmth of an open fireplace. Other than a picture of Adolph Hitler over the mantle, the room looked like any other living room to Hannah. A dining table with food she thought no longer existed, and gifts wrapped in old newspapers, but tied with red and green ribbon. A gramophone, the sound somewhat scratchy, filled the room with music. Other than marches played on the camp loudspeaker or Viennese waltzes played by Jewish violinists as accompaniment to the march of their fellow Jews to the “showers,” it was the first Hannah had heard since torn from her home. Christmas music, only two songs of which she recognized—Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht and O Tannenbaum—both sung by a heavy baritone voice with a string orchestra in the background.
Two soldiers in waiter’s uniforms served the meal, which tantalized Hannah’s taste buds. Her mouth had grown used to the stale bread and near tasteless soup of meager chunks of potato skin and stringy pieces of meat from the bottom of the soup pot. Kapos serving the soup had teased that the meat had been cut from the thighs of Jews, but whether it was true or not, hunger had forced her to ignore and eat.
At this meal, though, there was no water, only wine—heavy red wine—and toward the end of the meal, her head felt lighter and lighter. Her parents had only ever allowed Aleksander and her one glass at dinnertime, but here Mengele and the colonel kept the children’s glasses full. The talk between the two men was in German. She could make out only a few of the words between the laughter, which often turned to chuckles and awkward grunts. They almost sounded like two silly children. Looks in her direction and the words das Mädchen, the girl; and der Knabe, the boy, words she’d learned, let her know she and Aleksander were the subject of the men’s conversation.
Finally, Mengele rose from the table and motioned to Hannah. “Come, my little Hannah, come sit with me, and we will open your present.” He took a small package from beneath the lighted tree and held it up. “Come sit with Uncle Pepi, here, on my lap. But finish your wine.”
“I don’t think I feel so good.”
“It will pass. Drink up, then come to Uncle Pepi and we will open your present.”
“And you, Aleksander,” the colonel said as he stood and took a second package from beneath the tree. Pointing at a sofa across the room, he continued, “Over here with me. We open your present, and you will be very happy. You will see.”
Aleksander stood, his legs unsteady, his eyelids blinking as though trying to focus through the dizziness he felt from the wine. “I think I’d like to go back to the zoo. I—”
“Nein, nein, over here. Come, boy,” the colonel ordered. “Your present. You are the only boy in the camp who will receive a present, so be grateful to your Uncle Jürgen, who wants to be your friend.”
“See, Aleksander?” Mengele urged the boy, “See your sister? Already on my lap, she unwraps her present.”
Hannah felt Mengele’s leg move up and down, the way her father’s leg used to do when she sat on his lap. Slowly, she pulled the ribbon from the package and unfolded the paper from a small white box. At the same time, she felt Mengele’s legs part, her legs drawn between them, her body pulled closer to Mengele’s, his fingers tickling her ribs.
“That tickles,” she said, her words bouncing on the giggle that jumped involuntarily from her mouth as she removed the cover from the box.
“How beautiful,” she said, looking at the tiny gold medallion resting on a bed of cotton.
“Made especially for you, my little one. Do you like?”
“Oh, yes,” Hannah said as she took it from the box and held it to the light. Etched into its surface was the phrase Arbeit und Freiheit.
“Do you know what that means, Hannah?” Mengele asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
“It means work and freedom. That is what you shall have if you stay with Uncle Pepi. A little work, much freedom. Would you like that? Here, drink some more wine.”
Hannah took the glass from Mengele and drank, this time emptying the glass in hopes it would make Uncle Pepi happy. “Yes, Uncle Pepi, I would like that, but what of my mother and father?”
“They have gone far away to another place, but I will take care of you. Now give Uncle Pepi a big kiss for such a nice present.”
Hannah kissed Mengele on the cheek as she would her father.
“No, no, Hannah, here.” He touched his lips with his index and middle fingers. “On the lips. Like two people who will make each other happy.”
Hannah felt Mengele’s right hand work past her ribs to her nipple, his fingers moving slowly over her chest, from right to left, caressing. She knew it wasn’t right. She tried to move his hand away without dropping the medallion, but she wasn’t strong enough. Her head was so dizzy, everything going round and round. She looked toward Aleksander for help, but all she saw were tears in the boy’s eyes as his head was forced down between the colonel’s legs.
“Aleksander, please—”
“Quiet, little one,” Mengele said. His free hand tilted her head back and he pressed his lips against hers, his tongue working its way inside. At the same time, his right hand clutched her thighs. He rubbed gently at first, then pushed beneath her dress, fingers probing.
Withdrawing from her mouth, Mengele whispered, “Make Uncle Pepi happy, my beautiful little Hannah, and someday you shall have freedom. I know you can taste the freedom, little Hannah. All you have to do is make Uncle Pepi happy.”
Matt dabbed his handkerchief at the tears running along Hannah’s cheeks. “You don’t have to go on, Hannah.”
“Oh, but I must if you are to learn.”
“Learn what?”
“The colonel.”
“What about him?”
“Mengele told me his name was SS-Colonel Jürgen Krueger.”
“J. K.” Matt said in a near whisper. “The initials in the hat with the death’s head insignia.”
Hannah nodded. “J. K. He was charged with maintaining the gas chambers and crematoria and overseeing the gold and jewelry after the other officers were caught. He became second only to the camp commandant in power. And he was very good at what he did. You should ask Aleksander, if you could, just how good.”
“What happened to Aleksander?”
“Like I had done with Mengele, he went everywhere with the colonel, watching those led to their deaths, seeing them burned, seeing the firing squads when the gas was not available, the burning pits. But the spring of the next year, the colonel found another boy…and then I never saw Aleksander again.”
“And you?”
“I was Mengele’s toy. That spring, I became pregnant. I had just become twelve years old. Pregnant, not enough to eat for myself, and a child growing in my belly. That would have been the end of Mengele’s play toy.”
“Abortion?”
“Mengele took me to a Dr. Clauberg who scraped me clean. No anesthesia. I fainted many times, but then this Clauberg, an ugly, ugly man with ugly hands, told Mengele he could fix it so I would never get pregnant again.”
“And Mengele said yes, I’m sure.”
“While I’m still on the table from the abortion and nothing done to keep away the pain, this man shot acid into what I’ve since learned is my uterus. I felt like I was on fire. Like my stomach would burst. I screamed and screamed until, again, I must have fainted.
“One of the Jewish nurses said later, ‘Thank God, you lost consciousness.’ I told her after what I’d seen and felt, there could be no God. If there was a God, why did he let any of it happen? I still ask that question, but I’ve found no answer.”
Matt watched the passing flow of debris along the river, churned up by a tug on its way to the Rhine. “But you and Eddy still had c
hildren.”
Hannah shook her head. “All adopted when they were small. Two from Poland and one from the German Democratic Republic—East Germany, when it was separate. He was Eduard’s brother’s son. He closely resembles Eduard, don’t you think? Otherwise, they all would have died for lack of care at the hands of the Communists.”
Matt thought he could tell her some good had come from what the doctor did to her, but it would really be a stupid thing to say in light of the pain she went through Instead, he simply said, “But you made it out. How?”
“With Mengele, in the middle of winter. January nineteen forty-five. So cold. As the Russians approached, thousands were marched toward Germany, but the day before the Russians arrived, Mengele took me in a car and we escaped to the west with two other officers, Colonel Jürgen Krueger one of them. A large covered truck followed. We went through Dresden, such destruction you’ve never seen, and onto Leipzig. Mengele and I took the car and went south to a place called Günzburg. We stayed there until he was captured by the United States Army that summer. I was sent to live with a family named Richter in Munich, and here I now live in Koblenz, Eduard Richter’s widow.”
“But Mengele escaped, didn’t he?” Matt asked.
“Not so much escaped, but he was never identified as a war criminal until sometime in the nineteen fifties. We now know that’s when he went to Argentina and later died in Brazil. Drowned, I believe they said.”
“What about Colonel Krueger?”
“He and the other officer left us in Leipzig. They went north in the truck. They were going to Berlin, then to Hamburg, he told us.”
“Hamburg,” Matt said, thinking out loud. “That’s where the submarine was built. Do you know what was in the truck?”
“Nein, but I’ve always suspected it was something valuable.”
“Like gold?”
“Perhaps. I overheard the colonel tell Mengele he had been chosen to take a special mission for Reichsführer-SS Himmler. A paper, very important for possible rebirth of the Reich in another time. He didn’t like the part about the submarine, but—”