Authors: Leon Uris
“Yes.”
“And the female ovaries are probably five to seven inches apart.”
“Yes.”
“In the case of a testicle exposed to an extremely heavy dosage of irradiation by a semiskilled technician I suggest that the partner testicle would also be damaged. You testified they were badly burned and that was your concern.”
“Yes.”
“Well, if you feared cancer, why didn’t you remove both testicles? Wasn’t it in the interest of the patient to amputate both testicles?”
“I don’t know. I mean, Voss told me what to do.”
“I suggest Dr. Kelno, you first thought of this so-called cancer danger when you were being detained in Brixton Prison awaiting extradition to Poland.”
“That’s not true.”
“I suggest you had no interest whatsoever in the welfare of the patients, or you would not have left in a cancerous testicle or ovary. I suggest you made it all up later.”
“I didn’t.”
“Then why didn’t you remove everything damaged?”
“Because Voss was standing over me.
“Isn’t it a fact that Voss told you and Dr. Lotaki on several occasions that if you did these operations for him you would be taken away from Jadwiga.”
“Of course not.”
“I suggest it is improper and dangerous to operate on a person suffering from severe irradiation burns. What about that?”
“In London, perhaps, but not in Jadwiga.”
“Without morphia?’
“I tell you I administered morphia.”
“When did you first meet Dr. Mark Tesslar?” Bannister said, switching the subject suddenly.
The mention of Tesslar caused a physical flushing and crawling of flesh over Kelno and his palms became wet. One shorthand writer relieved the other. The clock ticked.
“I think this may be an appropriate time for a recess,” the judge said.
Adam Kelno left the witness stand with the first tarnish stain. He would never again take Thomas Bannister lightly.
7
A
ROUTINE WAS FORMING
. Sir Adam Kelno was able to skip across the river to take lunch at home while his counsel dashed off to a ready booth in a private club.
The Three Tuns Tavern on Chancery Lane at the alleyway of Chichester Rents had a small upstairs private room where Abe and Shawcross retired with whomever had joined them in court. The bill of fare at the Three Tuns consisted of the usual London Pub selection of cold cuts, cold salad, and Scotch egg, a concoction of egg, meat and breadcrumbs. After teaching the bartender how to make a dry, cold martini things were not so bad as they may have been. On the floor below, the bar was two and three deep with young solicitors, legal secretaries, students, and businessmen, all of whom knew Abraham Cady was upstairs but too British in their manners to annoy him.
And so it went each day. Court convened at ten-thirty in the morning until a one o’clock recess and in the afternoon from two until four-thirty.
After the first taste of Bannister, Adam Kelno felt that with all the insinuation he had not scored heavily and the others too felt that no real damage had been done.
“Now, Dr. Kelno,” Bannister continued after the recess, with a cadence in his voice becoming easier to follow. In the beginning it sounded dull but one could gather the rhythm of it and intonations within intonations. “You told us before the recess you met Dr. Tesslar as a student.”
“Yes.”
“How many people lived in Poland before the war?”
“Over thirty million.”
“And how many Jews?”
“About three and a half million.”
“Some of whom had been in Poland for generations ... centuries.”
“Yes.”
“Was there a student’s association for medical trainees at the University of Warsaw?”
“Yes.”
“As a matter of fact, because of the anti-Semitic views of the Polish officers clique, the aristocracy, intelligentsia, and the upper class, no Jewish students were allowed to be members of the association.”
“The Jews formed their own association.”
“I suggest that is because they were barred from the other one.”
“It may be.”
“Isn’t it also a fact that the Jewish students were placed in separate parts of the rear of the class and otherwise segregated socially, as students and as fellow Poles. And isn’t it a fact that the student’s association had Jewless days and activated riots against Jewish shops and otherwise indulged in their persecution?”
“These were conditions I did not make.”
“But Poland did. Poland was anti-Semitic in nature, substance, and action, was it not?”
“There was anti-Semitism in Poland.”
“And you joined in it actively as a student?”
“I had to join the association. I was not responsible for its actions.”
“I suggest you were extremely active. Now, after the German invasion of Poland you knew, of course, of the ghettoes in Warsaw and all over Poland.”
“I was already an inmate in Jadwiga, but I heard.”
Highsmith relaxed and jotted a note to Richard Smiddy.
THIS LINE OF QUESTIONING WILL GET HIM NOWHERE. HE MAY HAVE EMPTIED HIS GUN.
“Jadwiga,” Bannister said, “could accurately be described as an indescribable hell.”
“No hell could be worse.”
“And millions were tortured and murdered. You knew that because you saw some of it firsthand and because the underground gave you information.”
“Yes, we knew what was going on.”
“How many labor camps surrounded Jadwiga?”
“About fifty, holding up to a half million slave laborers for armament factories, a chemical factory, many other kinds of war plants.”
“Mostly Jews were used in this forced labor?”
“Yes.”
“From everywhere in occupied Europe.”
“Yes.”
What in the name of God is he getting at, Kelno wondered. Is he trying to build sympathy for me?
“You knew that the arrivals went to a selection shed and those over forty and all children were sent directly to the gas chambers of Jadwiga West.”
“Yes.”
“Thousands? Millions?”
“I have heard many figures. Some say over two million people were put to death in Jadwiga West.”
“And others were tattooed and wore various types of badges sewn on their clothing to divide them into various classes.”
“We were all prisoners. I don’t understand what classes.”
“Well, what kind of different badges were there?”
“There were Jews, gypsies, German criminals, Communists, resistance fighters. Some Russian prisoners of war. I have testified to my own badge, a badge by nationality.”
“Do you remember another badge worn by Kapos?”
“Yes.”
“Would you tell my Lord and the jury who the Kapos were.”
“They were prisoners who watched over other prisoners.”
“Very tough?”
“Yes.”
“And for their cooperation with the SS they were quite privileged?”
“Yes ... but the Jews even had Kapos.”
“I suggest there were extremely few Jewish Kapos in proportion to the number of Jewish prisoners. Would you agree to that?”
“Yes.”
“Most of the Kapos were Polish, were they not?”
Adam balked for a moment, tempted to argue. The point had been slow in coming but it was quite clear. “Yes,” he answered.
“Inside the main stammlager of Jadwiga some twenty thousand prisoners built the camp itself and manned the crematoriums of Jadwiga West. Later the number of prisoners increased to forty thousand.”
“I will trust your figures.”
“And those Jews arriving would carry their few valuables and family heirlooms. Some gold rings and diamonds and so forth among their little bits of luggage.”
“Yes.”
“And when they were sent to the gas chambers naked, their belongings were systematically looted. You knew all that?”
“Yes, it was horrible.”
“And you knew the hair was used to stuff mattresses in Germany and to seal submarine periscopes and that gold teeth were pulled from corpses and before the corpses were burned their stomachs were cut open to see if they had swallowed any valuables. You knew that.”
“Yes.”
Abe felt queasy. He covered his face with his hands wishing this kind of questioning were over with. Terrence Campbell was also chalky and the entire room stunned to silence even though it was a story they had heard before.
“At first there were German doctors but later on the prisoners took over. How many personnel did you have?”
“A total of five hundred. Sixty or seventy of these were medical doctors.”
“How many of them were Jews?”
“Perhaps a dozen.”
“But with lower ranking. Orderlies, scrubbers, that sort of thing.”
“If they were qualified physicians, I used them as such.”
“But the Germans didn’t, is that not so?”
“No, the Germans didn’t.”
“And their number was completely out of proportion to the number of inmates.”
“I used qualified doctors as doctors.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Dr. Kelno.”
“Yes, the number of Jewish doctors was small by proportion.”
“And you know of some of the other things Voss and Flensberg were doing. Cancer experiments of the cervix, induction of sterilization through injection of caustic fluid into the Fallopian tubes. Other experiments to find the mental breaking point of victims.”
“I don’t know exactly. I only went to Barrack V to operate and to Barrack III to see the patients afterward.”
“Well, did you discuss this matter with a French woman doctor. A Dr. Susanne Parmentier?”
“I recall no such person.”
“A French Protestant prisoner/doctor. A psychiatrist by the name of Parmentier.”
“My Lord,” Sir Robert Highsmith interrupted with a tone of sarcasm. “We have all been educated as to the bestiality of Jadwiga. My learned friend is certainly trying to establish that Sir Adam was to blame for the gas chambers and other brutalities of the Germans. I cannot see the relevancy.”
“Yes, get on with it,” the judge said. “What are you driving at, Mr. Bannister.”
“I suggest that even within the horror of Jadwiga Concentration Camp there were rankings of the prisoners and certain prisoners looked upon themselves as superior. There was a definite caste system and privileges given to those who did the Germans’ work.”
“I see,” the judge said.
Highsmith slipped back, extremely wary of Bannister’s oblique way of getting at it.
“Now then,” Bannister continued, “I hold here in my hand a copy of a document, prepared by your counsel, Sir Adam, called Statement of Claim. I have true copies, which I should like to give to his Lordship and the jury.”
Highsmith examined it, nodded his approval, and the associate handed copies to the judge, the jury, and one to Sir Adam.
“You state in your claim that you were an associate of SS Colonel Dr. Adolph Voss and SS Colonel Dr. Otto Hensberg.”
“By associate I meant—”
“Yes, exactly what did you mean by associate?”
“You are distorting a perfectly natural word. They were doctors and ...”
“And you considered yourself as their associate. Now, of course you read this Statement of Claim carefully. Your solicitors did go over it with you line by line.”
“The word associate is a slip, an error.”
“But you knew what they were doing, you testified to that, and you know about the indictments against them after the war and you say in your own Statement of Claim they were your associates.” Bannister held another document up as Adam looked to the clock in hopes of a recess to organize himself. After a period of silence, Bannister spoke. “I have here a part of the indictment against Voss. Will my learned colleague accept this as a true copy?”
Highsmith looked at it and shrugged. “We have strayed afield. This indictment is again this horrendous business of trying to link together a prisoner with a Nazi war criminal.”
“One moment please,” Bannister said, and turned to O’Conner, who was shuffling through the stacks of papers on his table. He handed one to Bannister. “Here is the affidavit, which you swore to, Dr. Kelno. You swore before a Commissioner for Oaths and you state the following, paragraphs one and two list the documents relating to your case. You’re holding it in your hand. Is that your signature, Dr. Kelno?”
“I am confused.”
“Let us clarify it then. When you brought this action you disclosed a number of documents on your own behalf. Among the documents you disclosed was the indictment of Voss. You did it.”
“If my solicitors thought it necessary ...”
“When you brought this document forth to support your case you thought it to be genuine, did you not?”
“I suppose so.”
“Now then, I shall read to the jury a portion of the indictment of Voss.”
The judge looked to Highsmith, who glanced at the indictment of Voss. “No objection, my Lord,” he said between his teeth.
“ ‘Headquarters of the Fuehrer, August 1942, Secret Reich matters, single copy. On July 7, 1942, a conference was held at Jadwiga Concentration Camp between Drs. Adolph Voss and Otto Flensberg and Reichfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler on the matter of sterilization of the Jewish race. It was agreed upon that a variety of experiments would be performed on healthy, potent Jews and Jewesses.’ Now, Dr. Kelno, the second letter in your disclosure of documents is from Voss to Himmler in which Voss states he must carry out his radiation program on a minimum of a thousand persons to get conclusive results. Dr. Kelno, you have testified that between yourself and Dr. Lotaki you operated or assisted in perhaps two dozen such operations. What happened to the minimum of nine hundred and seventy-two other persons in Voss’s letter?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was the purpose of entering these letters in evidence? “
“Only to show I was a victim. The Germans did it, not me.”
“I am suggesting that in fact there were many more hundreds of these operations not accounted for.”
“Maybe the Jew, Dimshits, did most of them and that is why he was sent to the gas chamber. Maybe it was Tesslar.”
“You knew when you brought this action it would be your word against Dr. Tesslar’s because the surgical record had disappeared.”
“I must rise,” Sir Robert said, “and take the greatest exception. You cannot allude to a register that is not in existence. Mr. Bannister has asked Sir Adam how many operations he performed and Sir Adam has answered.”