Authors: Leon Uris
“And if I refuse to defect?”
“Well, you know how that works. Transfer to a remote power station. Demotion. Your son may suddenly be dropped from the university. Perhaps the Kelno case publicity will entice Comrade Branik to open certain old files ... certain statements made against you at the end of the war.”
Tukla dropped his face in his hands and cried. Aroni hissed close to his ear. “You remember Menno Donker. He was also a member of the underground. They cut his nuts off for that. Well ... what happened when Kelno found out you were a member of the underground?”
Sobotnik shook his head.
“Kelno made you assist him, didn’t he?”
“God!” he cried, “I only did it a few times. I’ve paid! I’ve lived like a frightened rat. I’ve run. I’ve lived in fear of every footstep, every knock on the door.”
“Well, we all know your secret now, Sobotnik. Come to London. You will leave the courtroom a free man.”
“Oh my God!”
“What if your son learns this from someone other than his father. He will, you know.”
“Have mercy on me.”
“No. Get your family ready by this evening. I will meet you at your home at six o’clock.”
“I’ll kill myself first.”
“No you won’t,” Aroni said cruelly. “You would have done that years ago if you intended to. Don’t ask me to feel sorry for you. If you did those things for Kelno, then the very least you can do is do something decent for us. I’ll see you at six, ready to go.”
When Aroni had left, Tukla waited until the tranquilizer took effect. He told his secretary to cancel all appointments and phone calls and locked his office. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and stared long at the pistol, then put it on the top. The drawer had a false bottom so masterfully built the most trained eye could not detect it. His broad fingers tapped on one end and the lid gave way. Tukla slid it out. In the hidden compartment lay a book. A tattered yellowed book. He set it on the desk next to the pistol and stared. The faded lettering on the cover read,
MEDICAL REGISTER, JADWIGA CONCENTRATION CAMP—AUGUST 1943—DECEMBER 1943.
30
“T
HE NEXT WITNESS WILL
testify in French.”
Dr. Susanne Parmentier ascended to the witness box with the aid of a cane but testily refused a chair. Mr. Justice Gilray was in a certain glory being fluent in the French language and having been afforded this opportunity to display his mastery to an audience. He greeted her in her native tongue.
She gave her name and address in a strong, clear voice.
“And when were you born?”
“Must I answer that?”
Gilray stifled a smile. “No objection to passing on that question.” Highsmith said
“Your father was a Protestant pastor?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever belonged to any political party? “
“No.”
“Where did you study medicine? “
“In Paris. I was qualified in 1930 as a psychiatrist.”
“Now, Madame Parmentier. What peculiar position did you find yourself in at the time France was occupied?”
“Northern France was occupied by the Germans. My parents lived in Paris. I was working in Southern France in a clinic. I learned that my father was gravely ill and applied for a travel permit to visit him. These permits were difficult to get. It took days of investigation and red tape, and I felt a great sense of urgency. I tried to cross the demarcation line illegally and the Germans caught me and put me in prison in Bourges in late spring of 1942.”
“What happened there?”
“Well, there were hundreds of Jewish prisoners, including children, extremely maltreated. As a doctor I received permission to work in the prison clinic. Finally, things got so bad I asked to speak to the commandant.”
“Was he regular army or SS?”
“Waffen SS.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him the treatment of the Jews was a disgrace. They were human beings and French citizens, and I demanded they receive the same treatment and ration as the rest of the prisoners.”
“How did he react to that?”
“He was stunned at first. I was returned to my cell. Two days later I was taken to his office again. Two other Waffen SS officers were seated on either side of his desk I was made to stand before them and told I was standing trial there and then.”
“What happened as a result of this so-called trial?”
“I was given a badge of cloth to sew on my clothing with the words, ‘Friend of the Jews,’ and early in 1943 I was sent to Jadwiga Concentration Camp for my crime.”
“Were you tattooed?”
“Yes, number 44406.”
“And after a time you were sent to the medical compound?”
“In the late spring of 1943.”
“You worked as a subordinate to Dr. Kelno?”
“Yes.”
“And did you meet Dr. Lotaki?”
“Yes, on occasions, like anyone working together in a large medical facility.”
“You met Voss?”
“Yes.”
“And you became aware of the fact that Dr. Lotaki and Dr. Kelno were doing surgery in Barrack V for Voss.”
“It was known, certainly. Kelno did not particularly hide the fact.”
“Of course it became known when Dr. Kelno and Dr. Lotaki called all of you together and discussed the ethical problems of the operations.”
“If there was any such meeting, I did not attend.”
“Did the other doctors ever tell you they were consulted about this?”
“Dr. Kelno did not consult with the other doctors. He told them what to do.”
“I see. Do you think you would have known if such a meeting ever took place?”
“Certainly.”
“Dr. Kelno has testified that he does not remember you.”
“That is very strange. We were in daily contact for over a year. He certainly recognized me this morning in the corridor of the court. He said to me, ‘Well, here is the friend of the Jews again. What lies are you going to tell?’ ”
Smiddy slipped a note to Adam;
IS THAT TRUE?
I BECAME ANGRY
, he wrote back.
YOU TESTIFIED YOU DIDN’T REMEMBER HER.
WHEN I SAW HER, I SUDDENLY RECALLED.
“Do you know a Dr. Mark Tesslar?”
“Intimately.”
“Whom you met in Jadwiga.”
“Yes, after I saw Flensberg’s experiments I went almost everyday to Barrack III to try to help the victims.”
“Were there prostitutes being kept in Barrack III?”
“No, only people waiting to be experimented on, or those who had been returned from experiments.”
“Were there prostitutes in the medical compound?”
“No, they were locked up in another camp and they had their own medical facility in their own barrack.”
“How do you know that?”
“There were a number of mental disturbances and I was sent for on numerous occasions.”
“Were there doctors in the prostitutes’ barrack who performed abortions?”
“No. Any prostitute who became pregnant was sent to the gas chamber automatically.”
“What of the female Kapos?”
“The same. The gas chamber. It was a closed rule in Jadwiga for all females.”
“Certainly not the wives of SS guards or other German personnel?”
“There were extremely few wives. Only the top-ranking SS officers, and their wives were treated in a private German clinic.”
“In other words, Dr. Parmentier, it would have been impossible for Dr. Tesslar to commit abortions because none were being performed in an organized manner.”
“That is correct.”
“Well, if a prisoner/doctor found a pregnant woman and wanted to save her from the gas chamber, would a secret abortion be performed?”
“It is an extremely rare situation. The men and women were segregated. Of course they always found ways to get together, but we speak of isolated cases. Any doctor would do it to save a woman’s life in much the same way it is done today to save a woman’s life.”
“Who were the prostitutes kept for?”
“German personnel and high-ranking Kapos.”
“Is it possible that a favorite prostitute could have been kept alive by an SS guard?”
“Hardly. The prostitutes were very drab and very disturbed. They were only performing in order to stay alive. However, they were dispensable. It was easy to get new women at the selection shed and force them into prostitution.”
“So, in any event, to the best of your knowledge Dr. Tesslar could not have been and was not involved with abortions in Jadwiga?”
“No. He was occupied day and night in the men’s portion of Barrack III.”
“But that is Adam Kelno’s testimony.”
“He seems quite confused on a number of things,” Susanne Parmentier answered.
“Now would you tell us about your first meetings with SS Colonel Dr. Otto Flensberg?”
“Otto Flensburg was of equal rank to Voss, and he had an assistant, Dr. Sigmund Rudolf. Both of them were in Barrack I and Barrack II in the restricted experimental area. I was taken to Otto Flensberg in the summer of 1943. He had learned I was a psychiatrist and told me he was doing important experiments and needed me. I had heard of the kind of things he was doing, and I told him I would not take part in them.”
“What did he say to that?”
“Well, he tried to convince me. He said that Voss was a pseudo-scientist and what he was doing with X-rays was worthless. And that his own assistant was equally useless.”
“What was Captain Sigmund Rudolf doing?”
“Attempting to introduce cancer into the cervix of the womb, trying sterilization by injections of caustic fluids into the Fallopian tubes, and some other rather bizarre blood and sputum experiments.”
“And his own assistant said they were useless.”
“Yes, he gave his assistant Barrack I to play in and get enough reports back to Berlin to keep him off the Russian front.”
“What did he say about his own work?”
“Hensberg considered himself vital. He said he had worked at Dachau during the mid-thirties when it was a prison for German political prisoners. Later he worked on obedience experiments for the SS. He dreamed up all sorts of tests for SS cadets to prove their loyalty and instant obedience. Some of them were gruesome, such as murdering a puppy they had trained, stabbing prisoners on command, that sort of thing.”
“And Otto Hensberg was proud of that?”
“Yes, he said it proved to Himmler the absolute obedience of the German people.”
“What did he tell you about coming to Jadwiga?”
“Himmler gave him carte blanche. He even had his assistant assigned to come with him. Flensberg became nonplused when he found that Voss was his superior. There was a definite rivalry and he felt Voss was wasting human material, while his work was important to Germany’s being able to occupy Europe for centuries.”
“How?”
“He felt that the obedience of the German people was an accomplished fact. Yet, there were not enough Germans to control an entire continent of hundreds of millions of people. He wanted to find methods to train the conquered peoples to control the general population. In other words immediate obedience to German orders.”
“Like Kapos?”
“I should say, to sterilize people mentally. To turn them into robots.”
A weird fascination gripped the courtroom. The unreality of a mad scientist in a fiction story. But it was not science fiction. It happened. And Otto Flensberg was still alive, escaped to Africa.
“Would you explain to my Lord and the jury what kind of experiments Otto Flensberg was carrying out in Barrack I?”
Highsmith was up. “I am going to object to this line of questioning. I fail to see to what point all of this is relevant.”
“It is relevant to the point that a German doctor in a concentration camp was carrying out experiments on prisoners and brought in a prisoner/doctor to assist in these experiments.”
“I think it is relevant,” the judge said. “What was Flensberg doing, Dr. Parmentier?”
“He was running a series of obedience experiments in a number of small rooms. Each room had two chairs. The people were separated from each other by a glass window so they could see each other. In front of their chairs was a panel of switches. Each switch threw an increasingly higher voltage, and was marked, and had words like
slight shock
and up to five hundred volts with the words
possible death.
“How ghastly,” Gilray uttered.
“There was an operator’s booth where Flensberg was stationed which also had a panel of switches.”
“Just what did you witness, Dr. Parmentier?”
“Two prisoners were brought in from Barrack III. They were males. Both of them were strapped into the chairs but had freedom of their hands. Flensberg from his booth called down and told prisoner
A
he must give prisoner
B
on the other side of the glass a shock of fifty volts or he, Flensberg, would punish him for not obeying.”
“Did prisoner
A
do as he was told?”
“Not at first.”
“And Flensberg shocked him.”
“Yes.
A
screamed. Flensberg then ordered prisoner
A
again to shock prisoner
B
. Prisoner
A
resisted until he was getting almost two hundred volts and at that point he began to obey the commands and shock prisoner
B
so he would not receive any more himself.”
“So the gist of what was happening was forcing people to inflict punishment on other people or get it themselves.”
“Yes. To obey out of fear.”
“Prisoner
A
started giving prisoner
B
shocks on command of Flensberg. Didn’t he see and hear what he was doing to the other fellow?”
“Yes.”
“How much voltage did prisoner
A
apply on orders?”
“He eventually killed prisoner
B
.”
“I see.” Bannister drew a long breath. The jury seemed puzzled as though they were not certain of what they were hearing. “After showing you this experiment, what did Flensberg do?”
“First I had to be calmed down. I was demanding that the experiments stop. I was forcibly removed to his office by a guard. He told me he really wasn’t interested in killing the fellow, but it happened sometimes. He showed me graphs and charts and records. What he was looking for was the breaking point in each individual. That point in which they would become robots to German commands. Beyond that point they tended to go insane. He showed me experiments on which he forced blood relatives to shock one another.”