The Fires of Lilliput

by Michael Martin

  Hehl read the assignment in bed next to a low light that evening.

  Support me, Almighty God, in these great labors that they may benefit humankind… Inspire me with love for my art…Do not allow thirst for profit, ambition for renown and admiration, to interfere with my profession...

  Hehl thought about Maimonides at the gates of Melinka, in the shadow of a guard tower, where he stood with a small brown suitcase and a plastic bag with two pairs of shoes. Low clouds nestled overhead, suffocating and cottony.

  Illumine my mind that it recognize what presents itself and that it may comprehend what is absent or hidden. Let it not fail to see what is visible…Should those who are wiser than I wish to improve and instruct me, let my soul gratefully follow their guidance; for vast is the extent of our art.

  “Herr Doktor Hehl.” Major Petersdorf extended both his hands. “I’ve arranged a rather hasty orientation and I do have a book for you.”

  The Practice of Medicine in the Resettlement Facility. Hehl lay the manual on his thin mattress in the officers quarters. “The physician in service to the Reich remembers his first duty,” the book began. “To the Reich. And in that duty, to the public good.”

  Grant that my patients have confidence in me and my art and follow my directions and my counsel. Remove from their midst all charlatans and...cruel people who arrogantly frustrate the wisest purposes of our art and often lead Thy creatures to their death.

  Hehl's orientation began over brandy and talk of the “groundbreaking” work of Dr. Josef Mengele on twins and genetics. The other camp doctor, Fiddler, bragged about retiring and how his approach to “patient care” required alcohol.

  Should conceited fools, however, censure me, then let love for my profession steel me against them...because surrender would bring to Thy creatures sickness and death...Imbue my soul with gentleness and calmness when older colleagues, proud of their age, wish to displace me or to scorn me or disdainfully to teach me.

  “Thrust it in—thrust it right in.” Dr. Fiddler stepped back and waved a syringe like a fencer with a foil. “In God We Thrust. Then—drink!” Which he did, from a silver pocket flask. “You’ll never be able to do this shit sober.”

  Hehl read up on wound management and emergency medicine. He assumed he would handle gunshot wounds and other battlefield accidents. He also assumed he would not be here long, but would move to the front. One look at Fiddler told him this was where burnouts ended, here was where they sent medicine’s sorry cases: the quacks, the incompetents, and in his own case, the young and poorly connected.

  Dr. Fiddler saw the triage textbook in Hehl’s hands. “Don’t be fucking naive,” Fiddler said.

  The night before he took selections duty for the first time, Hehl reread Maimonides Prayer and parts of Triage Procedures in War. The ramps, he thought, would be a first line of triage, a place where the sick were separated for treatment, the healthy assigned to work details, and the acutely ill provided emergency care. The manual emphasized special treatment, giving Herr Doktor Hehl, twenty-seven years old, a measure of Hippocratic comfort. The Prayer provided guidance, though here he kept it hidden.

  Almighty God! Thou hast chosen me in Thy mercy to watch over the life and death of Thy creatures. Support me in this great task...

  The skies were blue and warm the day Hehl walked onto the ramp for the first time, after the train had stopped and the new arrivals gathered in a stretched, confluent mass. He looked over heads and heard Sergeant Schmidt give the welcome over the loudspeaker.

  “For those who need treatment, we have doctors,” Schmidt said.

  I am now about to apply myself to the duties of my profession.

  And the selections began.

  Forty Five

  Strauss ordered Jakub to saddle his wife’s horse. He had the house kapos prepare a picnic—wine, cheese, caviar, chocolates, and two kinds of bread. He took a book and Gretty. They went out the rear gates toward the Dolina Koscieliska. Jakub carried food and blankets a few paces behind the horse. Strauss did not wear his uniform. They walked about two miles, to an open area near a stand of pines.

  “This is good?” Strauss asked.

  “Sehr gut,” Gretty said. “This was a nice idea.”

  Strauss signaled Jakub. He spread the blanket on the grass. He set out the food and Strauss opened the wine. He gave some bread and cheese to Jakub.

  “Eat,” Strauss said in uncertain Polish. “Over there.”

  Strauss and Gretty sat together on the blanket. Jakub went a ways off, to a fallen log where he sat and ate and drank water from a canteen he shared with the horse. He watched the Commandant and his wife and thought about killing them and running. But soldiers would follow. They would come to his house and burn it. They would kill his mother and brother. And if he killed the Commandant and his wife, would he be saving anyone? They would only be replaced. But he would still feel better if he killed them.

  “This reminds me of Green Park,” Greta said to her husband. “Do you remember?”

  “In the spring,” Strauss said.

  Greta sidled up to her husband’s ear. “You fucked me there, in the grass,” she said.

  Strauss choked and smiled.

  Greta leaned back and sipped her wine. She looked at the sky. “How did we end up here?” she asked.

  “We couldn’t stay in London,” Strauss said.

  “Look at you—out of uniform,” she said. “Couldn’t they shoot you for that?”

  “You said they don’t care what we do.”

  Greta looked in the direction of Jakub. “What’s this I hear about him?” she said. “Saint or something.”

  “A saint here?”

  “He’s not a Jew?”

  “No,” Strauss said.

  Greta thought. “How many have you killed?”

  Her husband looked at her. “None,” Strauss said. He chewed his food. “Dessert?” he asked.

  “Ja. Danke. Why not?”

  Strauss cut a small piece of sweet bread and handed it to his wife with a chocolate on a silver plate.

  “Why haven’t you killed anyone?”

  “Because I can’t,” Strauss said. “It’s not in me.”

  “Yes it is.” She ate the chocolate. “Speaking of dessert, why don’t we?”

  “That’s funny,” Strauss said.

  “Why stay?” his wife asked. “Why don’t we keep on walking?”

  “We’d have to run,” Strauss said. “That’s not in me, either.”

  “Well—it’s in me.” Greta sipped her wine again. “How did we end up in this god awful place? You never answered me.”

  “I want more than this,” Strauss said. “You know that. When it’s over, we’ll get back our life.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  THE FIRST DAY AFTER GRETA STRAUSS EXPECTED her period, she didn’t think about missing it. She was always regular, but with all the commotion and stress, a day or two late might be normal. But after a week, an anxious knot tied in her stomach. She tried not to think about it, but when she did, it was in little dire bursts: “God—a child here!” Prancing on her horse in a makeshift equestrian yard outside the camp gates, she did not seem a woman for children.

  “Dr. Hehl.” She whispered his name loudly as he walked in the front door of his office.

  Hehl turned. “Frau Strauss?”

  She never spoke to the men. If she had something to say, even to Petersdorf who was second in command, she told her husband. She never looked at the prisoners. When Jakub escorted her horse, he had prior instructions. She never had to ask or order anything. She came up to the doctor.

  “Keep going please,” she said. “I need you to look at me.”

  Hehl stopped but she prodded him through the door. Inside, she shut the window curtains.

  “I need you to look at me,” she said.

  “Are you sick?”

  “I think I’m pregnant.”

  “Have you—?”

  “Told the Komma
ndant? No.”

  “Well—come in here.” He led her to a side room set up as a clinic for officers and their families. He took a stethoscope from a drawer. “Sit on that table,” he said. He fumbled with the stethoscope and placed its cup on her chest. He moved it around uncertainly.

  “It doesn’t seem like you use that very much,” she said.

  “Shh,” he said. “I can’t hear if you talk.”

  He went around her with the scope—chest, stomach, back. “Deep breath.”

  She took several deep breaths.

  “Any nausea?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Unless you mean the nausea that comes with being here.”

  “Anything else?” Hehl said.

  “I missed my period.”

  “Are you tired much?”

  “No more than usual,” she said.

  Hehl looked at her. “I don’t see pregnant women,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m the right person for this.”

  “There’s no one in the village,” Greta said. “I have to know.”

  “I’d have to read up,” Hehl said. “It’s been a while.” He took a book down from a shelf and opened it.

  “Do you know what to look for?” Greta asked.

  “Generally,” the doctor said.

  “And where to look?”

  “Generally,” the doctor said.

  “Well?”

  Hehl took a deep breath. “Take off your shirt.”

  “Sehr gut.” Greta slipped off her shirt.

  Hehl put thin rubber gloves over his hands. “And brassiere,” he said.

  She slipped that off too. He looked at her hesitantly.

  “Be a doctor,” she said.

  Hehl walked to her and placed his trembling hand on her breast. “Is it tender?” he asked. “Does it hurt?”

  “No,” she said. He palpated. She looked at his face.

  “How do you stand it here?” she asked.

  “Frau Strauss?”

  “A doctor. How do you stand it?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Franny tells me you graduated top of your class in Vienna.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re here. You must have had such aspirations.”

  “I’m not here by choice,” he said.

  “What did you want to do with that fine education?”

  Hehl pressed the underside of Greta’s breast. “Any tenderness?” he asked.

  “No.” She looked down at his hands. “Well?” she said. “What did you dream of being?”

  “Me?” Hehl said. “A healer.”

  “Mein Beileid,” Greta said. “So?”

  Hehl looked at her.

  “How on Earth did you end up here?” she said.

  “Crazy professors,” Hehl said. “I joined the Reich looking for a compass.”

  “Hah! You joined voluntarily?”

  “Ja,” he said. “Dumm.”

  “But...you didn’t think so at the time.”

  “I never dreamed they would send me to a place like this,” he said.

  “What was it like,” Greta asked, “when you killed for the first time?”

  Hehl lowered his eyes.

  “If you don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

  “I was drunk for a week,” he said.

  “You felt terribly.”

  Hehl said nothing.

  “I understand,” she said.

  “How can you?” he said.

  “Maybe I can’t.”

  “I didn’t just kill one,” Hehl said. “I killed dozens with a needle. I killed hundreds more with a twitch of my thumb.”

  In her left breast, Hehl felt something solid. “Have you noticed this?” he asked.

  “What?”

  He took her hand. “This.”

  She felt cold the moment she touched it. “No,” she said. “What is it?”

  “It should be checked,” he said. “But I can’t do it here.”

  “You can’t tell Franny,” Greta said.

  “I have to,” Hehl said. “You need to go to a hospital with a proper setup.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Greta said. “What about the baby?”

  “For me here, it’s too early to tell.”

  TWO SS OFFICERS STOOD WITH LIEUTENANT von Kempt in Hehl’s office. On seeing their attire and demeanor, Hehl rose behind his desk.

  “Herr Doktor,” the lieutenant said. “May I present Standartenführer Sievers and Frau Doktor Oberheuser.”

  “Oberheuser is a woman!” Hehl thought. He extended his hand as he walked from around his desk. “Standartenführer, Frau Doktor.”

  “Herr Doktor Hehl,” Sievers said. Wolfram Sievers directed the Military Research Institute, under the Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation. “The office received your letter. Frau Doktor Oberheuser is an expert on wounds.”

  Herta Oberheuser was, in fact, establishing a name for herself as the Reich’s premier wound researcher. At camp Auschwitz, she simulated combat casualties by wounding prisoners and rubbing foreign objects—wood, nails, glass, dirt or sawdust—into their wounds. Rumors said she removed the limbs of younger and younger children to observe at what age the missing parts might grow back. Regeneration, after all, was a common feature of lesser animals—planaria, skinks, lizards—maybe even the creatures in these camps. Harvesting the mechanism of resurrection would be of obvious and immeasurable benefit to the Reich, so Oberheuser—a grim-faced woman with short black hair—was amply supported. Hehl knew little about her research. He was almost shaking with excitement.

  “Might we see the stigmatic?” Sievers said.

  “Certainly,” Hehl said. “Leutnant?”

  “He’s in the stable,” von Kempt said.

  “Stable?” Oberheuser asked.

  “He cares for Kommandant’s horse,” Hehl explained.

  They crossed the grounds. Sievers kept a handkerchief to his nose. His tightly-groomed mustache twitched. Von Kempt went ahead of them. He saw Jakub combing the horse and made a show of taking him roughly by the arm to the visitors, who stood at the other end of the stable.

  “Beautiful horse,” Doktor Oberheuser said. She saw Jakub. “Careful now—don’t injure him,” she told von Kempt. Oberheuser took Jakub’s hands. He stood. He was surprised how soft her hands were—softer than Shosha’s hands.

  “Where do these wounds normally appear?” Oberheuser asked.

  “Well—they’ve never appeared,” Hehl said. “But his stigmata is well-documented.”

  “By whom?” Sievers asked.

  “By the Catholic Church, by many noted experts. By Szarzynski.”

  “Ja,” Oberheuser said. “I saw that. Very impressive.”

  “I also sent pictures to your office.”

  “We got them. Doktor Oberheuser?”

  “If he bleeds,” she said, “he heals remarkably. But one can’t ascertain for certain unless one actually witnesses the event.” She looked at the horse again. “Beautiful horse,” Oberheuser repeated. “You know Buchenwald Zoo?”

  “Buchenwald has a zoo?” von Kempt said.

  “Their Kommandant loves animals.”

  “We’re building a cinema,” von Kempt said.

  “Auschwitz has a new pool,” Oberheuser said. “Heated during winter.”

  “The Reich takes this stigmata report very seriously,” Sievers interrupted. “But we have to observe the wounds. Without that, your research proposal isn’t much good.”

  “Could the wounds be induced, brought on somehow?” Oberheuser asked.

  “I don’t know,” Hehl said. He turned to Jakub and tried to ask the question in Polish. Jakub looked at him. “He’s reported to be a healer,” Hehl said. “Perhaps that would be of greater interest.”

  “We aren’t interested in healing,” Oberheuser said.

  “I would be eager to approve your proposal, but I have to see something to support my recommendation,” Sievers said. He touched his mustache in a w
ay Hehl found annoying.

  “A NEW POOL IS BULLSHIT,” VON KEMPT TOLD Hehl after Sievers and Oberheuser departed. “What about us? I’d love to swim. It’s the only exercise I can do.”

  That evening, von Kempt drank himself drunk, pouted, and shot a woman in the yard. On hearing of this wholly unnecessary act—a violation of SS protocol for the behavior of officers—Petersdorf insisted the Commandant take action.

  “That people have to die over such a trivial matter as a swimming pool,” Strauss acknowledged.

  “It’s more than that, Franz,” Petersdorf said. “It’s a breach of the highest order, typical of the low depths to which the leutnant so frequently sinks.”

  “I want to be absolutely clear,” Strauss told both men. “Absolutely, crystal clear. I will requisition a pool. But you both need to know—I can promise nothing. Is that clear?”

  Petersdorf choked. “Franz.”

  “Leutnant?”

  “Ja,” von Kempt said. He looked at Petersdorf. “Will it be heated, Herr Kommandant?”

  GRETA STRAUSS THOUGHT OF NOTHING BUT HER breast and her belly. She lay awake at night waiting for her husband to sleep, then rose and stood at the upstairs window gazing toward the valley. She lost her appetite for sex and her interest in things that previously sustained her—shopping in a town; walks in the valley; her horse. She daydreamed about the day it—and this, this awful place—would all be over.

  Strauss meanwhile confronted news from his Viennese friends that the Reich had discovered the Strauss Jewish ancestry. How much Jewish-ness was allowed? he wondered. Who, among his staff, would share the discovery? What would be its impact on morale? Would he be relieved of his command? Imprisoned? Executed? He thought about telling his wife, but while they walked together and dined together, they rarely talked of anything important anymore.