Authors: Leon Uris
Sir Robert Highsmith winced at the words,
TERRIBLE OPERATIONS
. Bannister had certainly set up something in the judge’s mind and perhaps in everyone else’s.
“I have expressed my view and I am satisfied with the discretion of the press from my past knowledge.”
“My Lord,” O’Conner said, “my instructing solicitors have just passed me a note saying that all representatives of the press have signed a pledge not to publish names or photographs.”
“That is what I expected. Thank you, gentlemen.”
“My witness will testify in Hebrew,” Bannister said.
There was a knock on the consultation room door. Dr. Leiberman and Sheila Lamb led Yolan Shoret over the hallway. Sheila squeezed her hand as she moved away to the solicitor’s table to begin her notes. A hundred pairs of eyes turned to the door. Adam Kelno stared without emotion, as she and Dr. Leiberman mounted the steps into the witness box. Her dignity plunged the room into a hush as they were sworn in on the Old Testament and the judge offered them seats. She preferred to stand.
Gilray issued a few instructions to Dr. Leiberman on his translations. He nodded and said he spoke fluent Hebrew and English and that German was his mother tongue. He would have no trouble, as he had known Mrs. Shoret for several years.
“What is your name?” Thomas Bannister asked.
“Yolan Shoret.”
She gave her address in Jerusalem, her maiden name of Lovino, and her birthplace as Trieste in 1927. Bannister watched her closely.
“When were you sent to Jadwiga?”
“In the spring of 1943.”
“And were you tattooed with a number? “
“Yes.”
“Do you recall that number?”
She unbuttoned her sleeve and slowly rolled it back to her elbow and a blow fell on the courtroom. She held out her arm with a blue tattoo. Someone in the rear of the court cried aloud and the jury showed its first reaction. “Seven zero four three two and a triangle to denote a Jew.”
“You may roll your sleeve down,” the judge whispered.
The number was covered.
“Mrs. Shoret,” Bannister continued. “Do you have any children?”
“None of my own. My husband and I adopted two.”
“What did you do in Jadwiga?”
“For four months I worked in a factory. We made parts for field radios.”
“Very hard work?”
“Yes, sixteen hours a day.”
“Did you have enough to eat?”
“No, my weight fell to ninety pounds.”
“Were you beaten?”
“Yes, by Kapos.”
“And what was your barrack like?”
“It was like a normal concentration camp barrack. We were stacked up in layers of six. Some three to four hundred to a barrack with a single stove in the center, a sink, two toilets and two showers. We ate from tin plates in the barracks.”
“After four months what happened?”
“The Germans came looking for twins. They found my sister and me and the Cardozo sisters with whom we grew up in Trieste and who were deported with us. We were taken by truck into the main camp to Barrack III of the medical compound.”
“Did you know what Barrack III was all about?”
“We soon found out.”
“What did you find out?”
“It held men and women who were used in experiments.”
“Who told you that?”
“We were put with another set of twins, the Blanc-Imber sisters of Belgium, who had been X-rayed and operated on. It did not take long to learn from everyone why we were there.”
“Would you describe Barrack III to my Lord and the jury?”
“The women were kept on the ground floor and the men on the upper floor. All windows facing Barrack II were boarded because there was an execution wall outside, but we could hear everything. The opposite windows were kept shut most of the time so we were always in darkness except for a few small light bulbs. The far end of the barrack was caged off and held about forty girls who were being experimented on by Dr. Flensberg. Most of them had been driven insane so they were mumbling and screaming all the time. Many of the other girls like the Blanc-Imber sisters were recovering from operations of Voss’s experiments.
“Did you have knowledge of any prostitutes or women receiving abortions?”
“No.”
“Did you know a Dr. Mark Tesslar?”
“Yes, he was with the men upstairs and from time to time helped treat us.”
“But so far as you knew, he did not operate on any women?”
“I never heard of it.”
“Who watched you in Barrack III?”
“Four women Kapos, Polish women armed with truncheons, who had a small room for themselves, and a woman doctor named Gabriela Radnicki, who had a little cell at the end of the barrack.”
“A prisoner?”
“Yes.”
“Jewish?”
“No, a Roman Catholic”
“Did she treat you badly?”
“Quite contrary. She was very sympathetic. She worked very hard to save those who had been operated on, and she went alone into the cage holding the insane. She would calm them when they became hysterical.”
“What became of Dr. Radnicki?”
“She committed suicide. She left a note saying she could no longer bear to watch the agony and not be able to alleviate the suffering. We all felt we had lost our mother.”
Angela felt Terrence’s hand grip hers so tightly she almost cried out. Adam continued to stare up at the witness box almost removed from what was being said.
“Was Dr. Radnicki replaced?”
“Yes, by Dr. Maria Viskova.”
“And how did she treat you?”
“Also like a mother.”
“How long were you kept in Barrack III?”
“A few weeks.”
“Tell us what happened then.”
“SS guards came and got us, the three sets of twins. We were taken to Barrack V to a room with an X-ray machine. An SS orderly spoke to us in German, which we did not understand clearly. Two other orderlies took off our clothing and one at a time a plate was fastened to our abdomen and our back. He took my number from my arm and recorded it and I was X-rayed for five or ten minutes.”
“What was the result of that?”
“A dark-colored spot formed on my abdomen and I vomited very much afterwards.”
“All of you?”
“Yes.”
“Was the spot painful at all?”
“Yes, and it soon formed pus.”
“Then what happened?”
“We remained in Barrack III a few weeks to a month. Time was hard to keep track of. But I remember it growing colder so it must have been towards November. The SS came for us, the three sets of twins, and several men were brought down from upstairs and we were all marched over to Barrack V again and put into a sort of waiting room. I remember we were very embarrassed because we were undressed ...”
“In one room?”
“There was a curtain separating us but soon we were all mixed together in confusion.”
“Naked?”
“Yes.”
“How old were you, Mrs. Shoret?”
“Sixteen.”
“From a religious family?”
“Yes.”
“With little experience with life?”
“With no experience. Until then I had not been seen naked by a man, or seen a man’s organ.”
“And your heads were shaved.”
“Yes, because of the lice and typhus.”
“And there you were all mixed together. Were you mortified?”
“We were being degraded like animals and we were terrified.”
“And then?”
“Orderlies held us down on some wooden tables and shaved our intimate parts.”
“And then?”
“Two men shoved me on a stool and held my head down between my legs and another man put a needle into my spine. I screamed for pain.”
“Screamed for pain? A moment please. Are you quite certain you weren’t already in the operating room?”
“I am quite certain I was in the waiting room.”
“Do you know what an injection is? A small injection?”
“I have had many.”
“Well, didn’t you have a small injection prior to the spinal?”
“No, only the one.”
“Go on.”
“In several minutes my lower body went dead. I was thrown on a wagon and rolled out of the room. All around the men and women were screaming and struggling and more guards arrived with clubs and were beating them.”
“And you were the first taken out of the room?”
“No, I am sure a man was first. I was rolled into the surgery and strapped on the table. I remember the lamp over my head.”
“You were totally conscious?”
“Yes. Three men with masks stood over me. One wore the uniform of an SS officer. Suddenly, the door burst open and another man came in and began to argue with the surgeons. I could not understand too much of it because they were speaking mostly in Polish, but I knew the new man was protesting the treatment. At last he came to my side and sat near me and stroked my forehead and spoke to me in French, which I understood better.”
“What did this person say to you?”
“Courage, my little dove, the pain will soon pass. Courage, I will take care of you.”
“Do you know who this person was?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Mark Tesslar.”
13
S
IMA
H
ALEVY WAS A
striking contrast to her twin sister, Yolan Shoret. She appeared many years older, ill, and without the vigor or command of her sister. She spoke listlessly as she read her tattoo number to the court and told them she also lived in Jerusalem with two adopted children, orphaned immigrants from Morocco. She repeated the scene of the waiting room and the operation and the presence of Dr. Tesslar.
“What happened after the operation?”
“I was carried by stretcher back to Barrack III.”
“And what was your condition?”
“I was very sick for a long time. Two months, maybe longer.”
“Were you in pain?”
“In pain that I feel to this day.”
“What about the extreme pain?”
“For a week we all just lay in bed and cried.”
“Who looked after you?”
“Dr. Maria Viskova and often Dr. Tesslar would come from upstairs to see us. There was another doctor who came often, a French woman. I do not remember her name. She was very kind.”
“Did any other doctor come to see you?”
“I vaguely recall one time when I was running a high fever that Dr. Tesslar and Dr. Viskova were arguing with a male doctor about more food and medicine. Only that once, and I am not so sure who it was.”
“Do you know what was wrong with you?”
“The wound had opened. We had only paper bandages. The smell from us was so horrible no one could stand near us.”
“But after a time you recovered and returned to work in the factory?”
“No, I never recovered. My sister was sent back to the factory, but I was unable to. Maria Viskova pretended to keep me as her assistant so they would not send me to the gas chamber. I stayed with her until I was strong enough to do very light work in a book binding barrack which repaired old books to send to the German soldiers. It was a place where we were not treated too harshly.”
“Mrs. Halevy, would you tell us the circumstances of your marriage?”
She relayed the story of a sweetheart in Trieste when she was fourteen and he was seventeen. Before her sixteenth birthday she was deported and lost track of him completely.
After the war in the staging and relocation centers in Vienna and elsewhere it was customary for the survivors passing through to leave notes on a bulletin board in hopes that a friend or relative might find it. By some sort of miracle her note was found by her sweetheart, who had managed to survive Auschwitz and Dachau. After a two year search he found her in Palestine and they were married.
“What effect has this operation had on your life till now?”
“I am a vegetable. I spend most of my time in bed.”
Sir Robert Highsmith stood before his rostrum with a page of notes of the discrepancies between the testimony of the two sisters. There was no question that Bannister had made inroads and these victims were making a telling effect. Nonetheless, they had not been able conclusively to pin the operations on Dr. Kelno and he himself believed it was not Kelno. He realized the girls had sympathy. He had to handle them carefully.
“Madame Halevy,” he said in a manner that contrasted the flair of his earlier examinations. “My learned friend has suggested that it was Dr. Kelno who performed the operations you and your sister described. But you don’t know that to be a fact, do you?”
“No.”
“When did you first hear of Dr. Kelno?”
“When we were brought from the factory to Barrack III.”
“And you remained there for some time after your operation?”
“Yes.”
“But you never saw him or at least you could not identify him?”
“No.”
“And you know that the gentleman sitting between us is Dr. Kelno.”
“Yes.”
“And you still cannot identify him.”
“They were wearing masks in the surgery, but I don’t know this man.”
“How do you know you were taken to Barrack V for your operation?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Did you see a sign that read Barrack V over an entry?”
“No, I don’t believe so.”
“Could it have been Barrack I?”
“It’s possible.”
“Are you aware that Dr. Flensberg and his assistant were carrying out experiments in Block I and had their own surgeons?”
“I did not know that.”
“I suggest it is all in his indictment as a war criminal. I also suggest that you only recently recalled that you went to Barrack V. Is that not so, Madame Halevy?”
She looked in confusion to Dr. Leiberman.
“Please answer the question,” the judge said.
“I spoke to lawyers here.”
“In fact you are not able to identify anyone at all, Voss, Flensberg, Lotaki, or Kelno.”
“No, I cannot.”
“In fact, it might have been a Dr. Boris Dimshits who performed the operation.”
“I do not know.”
“But you do know that Dr. Kelno has testified that he visited his patients after the operation. If this testimony were true then you would be able to identify him.”
“I was very sick.”
“Dr. Kelno also testified that he gave the spinal and anesthetic himself in the operating room.”
“I am not certain I was in the operating room then.”