Authors: Leon Uris
“Were there any other killings, official or otherwise?”
“I mentioned earlier that in the medical compound Barrack I to V was the experimental center. Between Barrack II and III there was a wall made of concrete. When the Jadwiga West facilities were overworked, a firing squad would execute dozens to hundreds.”
“Were there any other methods?”
“By a phenol injection in the heart. It caused death in seconds.”
“You saw the results of this?”
“Yes.”
“Were you ever ordered to give a phenol injection?”
“Yes, by an SS Dr. Sigmund Rudolf, assistant to Colonel Flensberg. He told me to administer injections of glucose to several patients, but I smelled carbolic and I refused. The patients became alarmed and SS guards beat them to submission and they were tied to chairs, and he gave them a dosage of about 100 cc. They died almost instantly.”
“As a result, were you punished?”
“Yes, Sigmund Rudolf denounced me as a coward and my teeth were smashed.”
“Let us go back for a moment, Dr. Kelno, to the experimental Barracks I to V. I believe it’s been established that Colonel Voss and his assistant, Sigmund Rudolf, were the two primary doctors. Would you tell my Lord and the jury of your relationship with these two?”
“I had very little to do with Flensberg. Voss was experimenting on sterilization. One of the methods was through heavy exposure to X-ray of the female ovaries and the male testicles. He had working with him a Jewish doctor, a Boris Dimshits. Dimshits must have known too much for he was sent to the gas chamber. Shortly afterwards Voss summoned me and another Polish doctor, Konstanty Lotaki, and informed us we would be called upon to operate from time to time in Barrack V.”
At last, the door to Barrack V was opening with its awesome secrets. Bannister and O’Conner made swift notes of every word. Gilray concentrated to cover an obvious strange emotion sweeping through him.
“Continue please, Sir Adam.”
“I asked Voss what kind of operations and he answered that I was to remove dead organs.”
“What was your reaction to all of this?”
“Lotaki and I were very upset. Voss made it clear that we would meet the same fate as Dr. Dimshits if we did not cooperate.”
“You would be sent to the gas chamber for refusal?”
“Yes.”
“Having earlier refused to inject phenol, did it occur to you to refuse?”
“This was an entirely different matter. Voss said that SS orderlies would perform the operations if we refused. We decided to discuss it with all the other prisoner/doctors. We all concluded together that it would mean certain death to all of Voss’s victims and as skilled surgeons it was mandatory that Lotaki and I save these people.”
“You say you spoke to
all
the other prisoner/doctors?”
“All except Mark Tesslar. There was his personal hatred of me from the time we were students in Warsaw. Later at Jadwiga he worked with Voss in the experiments.”
“Just a moment,” Thomas Bannister said, rising.
Adam Kelno sprung off his chair, gripped the rail, and shouted. “I will not be silenced! It is Tesslar and his lies who drove me from Poland! It is all a conspiracy of the Communists to hound me to my grave!”
“Obviously,” Thomas Bannister said coolly, “this situation calls for an objection; however, I don’t think I’ll make one at the present time.”
“Well, if you’re not going to ask me to make a ruling,” Gilray said, “then I won’t make one. It seems that emotions are running rather high. I believe this will be a good time to recess for the day.”
3
I
T WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT
when Terry arrived at the Kelno home. “Where have you been?” Angela asked.
“Walking, just walking.”
“Have you eaten?”
“I’m not hungry. Is Dr. Kelno still awake?”
“Yes, he’s in his study.”
Adam Kelno was in a fixed, waxen position. He did not hear the knock or see the boy enter.
“Doctor—”
Adam looked up slowly, then turned away.
“Doctor, I’ve been walking. I mean, I’ve been thinking about what I heard today or trying to understand it I guess none of us really knew what that place was like. It’s rather different than reading about it. I just didn’t know.”
“A little hard for your stomach, Terry? What you heard today may be the only nice parts of it.”
“Oh God, Doctor.” He slumped down and put his head in his hands. “If I had only realized what I was doing. I’m so damned ashamed of myself.”
“You ought to be. Maybe it’s too much for you to hear. Maybe you shouldn’t come into the court again.”
“Stop it please. I feel like the most loathsome kind of bastard. Funny how someone like me who has been given every advantage gets so caught up in his own problems, his own world, his own selfishness, that he loses sight of other people’s needs or feelings or suffering.”
“All young people are selfish,” Adam said, “but your generation takes the prize.”
“Doctor, are you ever going to forgive me?”
“Forgive you? Well, you really didn’t bring the Germans to Poland.”
“I’ll make it up to you someday.”
“Just do your studies and become a good doctor. That’s all your father wants. It’s all the making up I want.”
“I had a long talk with Mary today after court. We reached an understanding. I’d like to live here at home during the trial.”
“Of course. I’m glad, Terrence. Mary?”
“I don’t know. It would not be good to add to the tension by having her here. We’ll just have to see how we feel afterwards.”
Angela entered. “Come on both of you, you’ve got to have something to eat.”
Terrence held the door open. As Adam passed he touched the doctor’s shoulder, then went into his arms and cried as he hadn’t cried since he was a little boy.
Lady Sarah Wydman’s plane landed at Heathrow Airport at two in the morning. The weary customs official yawned at her ten pieces of luggage and waved her through.
Morgan, the chauffeur, helped a porter load his cart as Jacob Alexander bussed her on the cheek. “Jacob, you didn’t have to come out here this time of the morning.”
“How was your flight?”
“Routine.”
The Bentley pulled away followed by a taxi carrying the excess baggage. They cleared the tunnel and cloverleaf and sped down the dual carriageway for London.
“How is it going?”
“Well, the opening round goes to Sir Robert, of course. Was your trip successful?”
“Yes. Any word about Sobotnik?”
“Not a trace of him. Aroni doesn’t give us much hope, either.”
Then Abe is simply going to have to allow Pieter Van Damm to testify.”
“We can’t budge Abraham on that. I came to meet you tonight because I have to unload on someone, Sarah. I’m worried about Mark Tesslar. We went up to Oxford to take a new statement and we’ve discovered he is a very sick man. He’s only recently recovered from a severe heart attack. At any rate, we’ve taken a gamble on this Lotaki chap, the one who did some of the operations with Kelno. He’s in Lublin, Poland, surgeon at a hospital. Lotaki is a fair-haired Communist now, who has never had any action taken against him. We are going on the theory that if he helps us in London it may help him in Poland so on that basis he may come to testify.”
“On the other hand he may decide to testify for Kelno as the easier alternative of keeping his name clear.”
“We are aware of that risk, but we have to make some desperation moves.”
They pressed on into London to Berkeley Square.
“Jacob, I won’t be in condition to show up in court tomorrow. Be a dear and tell Abe I’ll phone him after court.”
“Sarah.”
“Yes?”
“Why won’t you let me tell him about the money you’ve contributed and raised?”
“No. You see, he’s taken so much on himself I want him to feel he has unseen friends behind him all over the world. Anyhow, he has a thing about Jewish fund raisers.”
4
“B
EFORE
I
CONTINUE WITH
my examination, my Lord, Sir Adam would like to address the court.”
“I wish to apologize for my outburst yesterday, my Lord,” he said shakily.
“These things are apt to happen now and again,” Mr. Justice Gilray said. “I am certain that Mr. Smiddy and Sir Robert advised you on the severity of this sort of thing in a British courtroom. With all due respect to our friends in America, we shall not permit an English courtroom to be turned into a circus. The court accepts your apology and admonishes you that any repetition will be dealt with severely.”
“Thank you, my Lord.”
“You may continue your examination, Sir Robert.”
Sir Robert popped off the balls of his toes, rubbed his hands together, and otherwise warmed himself up. “Yesterday at recess, Sir Adam, you testified that after Colonel Voss informed you and Dr. Lotaki that you would be operating to remove dead organs, you said you spoke to all the other prisoner/doctors save Dr. Tesslar. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Precisely, what kind of an opinion, or decision, or understanding was reached?”
“We had the example of Dr. Dimshits being sent to the gas chamber, and we had no reason to believe Voss was fooling when he threatened to send us, too. We had his threat that the patients would be mutilated by unskilled SS orderlies. We decided to save as many lives as possible and at the same time try to induce Voss to cut down on his experiments.”
“Yes. And then you were summoned to Barrack V with Dr. Lotaki from time to time to perform the removal of dead testicles and ovaries.”
“Yes.”
“How many times would you say this happened?”
“Eight or ten times. Surely under a dozen. I don’t know about Dr. Lotaki. More than likely the same.”
“Did you also assist him?”
“On occasion.”
“Approximately how many operations were performed on each of these eight or ten visits you made to Barrack V?”
“Oh, one or two.”
“But not a dozen?”
“No, of course not.”
“Or hundreds?”
“No.”
“And did you succeed in getting these experiments stopped?”
“Not entirely, but we continued to make our reluctance known so that Voss carried on only enough experiments to justify continuation of the center to Berlin.”
“Did Tesslar ever come into Barrack V while you were performing surgery?”
“No, never.”
“Never, never once? Never once did he see you operate?”
“Mark Tesslar never saw me operate.”
Highsmith mumbled long under his breath to give the jury time to digest the point “Never once,” he repeated to himself and played with the papers on the rostrum.
“So then, with the full understanding of your colleagues, you performed at very most two dozen of these necessary operations in the course of twenty thousand other operations.”
“Yes. We only removed organs destroyed by X-ray. If we didn’t remove them we feared they could cause tumor and cancer. In every single case I insisted the operation be entered into the surgical register.”
“Unfortunately,” Sir Robert said, “the register is lost forever. We shan’t go into that. Will you tell my Lord and the jury the manner in which these operations were performed?”
“Well, the victims were in a wretched emotional state so I took exceptional care to comfort them and advise them that what I was doing was for their own good. I was going to save their lives. I used the best of my surgical skill and the best anesthetics available.”
“On the matter of anesthetics. This of course you know is part of the defamatory statement by the defendant that you did not use anesthetics.”
“That is entirely false.”
“Would you explain what kind of anesthetics were administered and how it was done?”
“Yes. For operations below the navel I felt a spinal preferable to an inhalant.”
“Did you also have that opinion in Warsaw, London, and Sarawak?”
“Yes, very much so. A spinal relaxes the muscles much better and usually causes less bleeding.”
“Did you have someone administer these spinals in Jadwiga?”
“I did them myself because of the shortage of trained people. First I gave a pre-injection of morphia to deaden the general area and then the spinal.”
“Does this cause the patient severe pain?”
“No, only a prick when done by a specialist.”
“Where did you give this anesthetic?”
“In the operating room.”
“Now, what about post-operative care?”
“I told Voss that I must treat these patients until they made a full recovery and he agreed.”
“And you continued to visit them.”
“Yes, daily.”
“Do you recall any complications?”
“Only the normal post-operative conditions plus the poor facilities of Jadwiga. It was somewhat worse in these cases because of the trauma of losing a sex gland, but they were so happy to be alive I was warmly greeted and found them cheerful.”
“But they all survived, did they not?”
“No one died of these few necessary operations.”
“Because of your care and skill and post-operative attention.”
Thomas Bannister came up slowly. “Aren’t you leading your witness, Sir Robert?”
“I apologize to my learned friend. Let me rephrase the question. Did you do anything else special for these twenty or so patients?”
“I brought them extra rations.”
“Let us move on to another area for a moment. Dr. Kelno, were you a member of the underground?”
“Yes, I was in the Nationalist underground, not the Communist underground. I am a Polish Nationalist.”
“Then there were two undergrounds.”
“Yes. From the moment we entered Jadwiga the Nationalists organized. We arranged escapes. We kept contact with the Nationalist underground in Warsaw and all over Poland. We worked into key positions such as the hospital, the radio factory, in clerical positions to get more rations and medicine. We manufactured our own radio.”
“Was there cooperation with the Communist underground?”
“We knew the Communists planned to take over Poland after the war and many times they turned in our members to the SS. We had to be very careful of them. Tesslar was in the Communist underground.”