Authors: Leon Uris
“Well, you’ve had enough for one day. You’ve been brought to the point of death. But you get the same thing the next day, and the next, and the next until your mind and your body have been reduced to a blithering vegetable.
“Well, that was what Jadwiga Concentration Camp was all about. A mad hellhole in which every semblance of normal human society had been destroyed. And now you, a British jury, must decide how much the ordinary man can bear in those conditions. Where is the breaking point in all of us?
“We have a man whose life and works have been in complete dedication to the alleviation of suffering among his fellow man. If he could not bear the voltage in that insane place, has he not redeemed himself before the world? If this man had felt guilty of wrongdoing would he have come into this court and asked to clear his name? Is he to be damned forever, if he broke in a moment of agony in a snake pit? Is he to be damned in light of a lifetime of service to humanity?
“Adam Kelno deserves no further degradation. Perhaps for an instant in that horrible situation, a lifetime of social conditioning made him feel that some people are inferior to others. But before we condemn him for that, let us think about ourselves. Adam Kelno did his best for the greatest number of people and how many Jewish lives did he save! If he was broken to compromise with an insane German doctor shrieking in his ear, he did so to keep the other thousands alive. I suggest this is the most terrible decision any of us would ever have to make.
“Where were you ladies and gentlemen on the night of November 10, 1943? Think about that, too.
“We know, do we not, that armies obey orders to kill people under some thin guises of national right. And after all, members of the jury, when God commanded of Abraham to sacrifice his own son, he agreed.
“Adam Kelno should be awarded substantial damages and returned in honor, to a world he has honored with his presence.”
37
T
HOMAS
B
ANNISTER RECONSTRUCTED HIS
case over a period of several hours with the same melodic underplayed voice with which he conducted the trial.
“This is the story, as history will record it, of what the Christians did to the Jews in the middle of the Twentieth century in Europe. And in all of history we have no blacker chapter. Of course Hitler and Germany are to bear the brunt of what happened, but it would not have happened if hundreds of thousands of others did not cooperate.
“I agree with my learned friend that armies are taught to obey, but one sees a growing evidence of people refusing to obey orders to kill other people. And the story of Abraham and God. Well, we all know the ending to that. God was using a little semantics and didn’t take his son at all. But somehow I cannot equate SS Colonel Dr. Adolph Voss to playing God anymore than I can envision Adam Kelno as Abraham. The fact is Voss didn’t have to make an Otto Flensberg experiment on Dr. Kelno. Dr. Kelno took a long look at things and did not resist whatsoever. He did what he did without hesitation, without threats, without terror tactics being used on him.
“Well, you heard him testify that he refused to give a fatal injection of phenol to a prisoner. What happened to him for that? How was he punished. He knew full well doctors weren’t shot or sent to the gas chamber. He knew that!
“You’d think a man who has done what Adam Kelno did would shut up and consider himself lucky and try to get along with his conscience, if he has one, and not rake it all up again after almost twenty-five years. He did it because he thought he could get away with it. But alas, the medical register showed up and he had to confess to lie after lie after lie.
“Can anyone in this room with a daughter of his own ever forget Tina? Tina Blanc-Imber had a mother and a father and they survived the holocaust, and they learned that their daughter had been murdered as a human guinea pig. It was not a Nazi doctor who killed her, but a Pole, a fellow ally. And had this happened to any of us and we learned later that an English doctor had destroyed our child in a useless, perverted medical experiment by butchery ... well, we would know what to do with him.
“I agree that Jadwiga Concentration Camp was as awful as things had ever come to. Yet, members of the jury, the inhumanity of man to man is as old as man itself. Just because one is in Jadwiga or anyplace else where people are inhumane, that does not give him leave to discard his morality, his religion, his philosophy, or all of those things that make him a decent member of the human race.
“You heard the testimony of some other doctors in Jadwiga Concentration Camp, two of the most noble and courageous women to ever grace an English court. One a Jewess and a Communist and the other a devout Christian. What happened when Voss threatened to throw the switch on Dr. Viskova. She refused and prepared to take her own life. And Dr. Susanne Parmentier ... she was in the very same hellhole of Jadwiga too. Will you kindly remember what she told Dr. Flensberg.
“And you heard from the bravest of them all. An ordinary man. A teacher of Romantic languages in a little gymnasium in Poland. Daniel Dubrowski, who sacrificed his own manhood so that a younger man might have a chance to know a normal life.
“Members of the jury, there is a moment in the human experience when one’s life itself no longer makes sense when it is directed to the mutilation and murder of his fellow man. There is a demarcation line of morality beyond which no man can cross and still claim membership in the human race and this goes for London or Jadwiga.
“The line was crossed and for that there can be no redemption. Anti-Semitism is the scourge of the human race. It is the mark of Cain upon us all.
“Nothing he did before or since can redeem him for what he did there. He has forfeited his rights to our compassion. And I suggest he should not be rewarded by a British jury for what he did with anything but our contempt and the lowest coin of the realm.”
38
“M
EMBERS OF THE
J
URY,”
Anthony Gilray said, “we have come to the end of a month’s testimony in what has become the longest libel trial in British history. The kind of evidence given here has never been heard by a civil English court and much of it is filled with conflict. Future generations will describe the Jadwiga Concentration Camp as the greatest crime ever committed. But we are not here to act as a war crimes tribunal. We are here trying a civil case according to the common law of England.”
The summing up was an arduous affair, which Anthony dispensed with unusual brilliance, reducing everything into common law and what issues and evidence were relevant and what had to be settled. After a day and a half, he turned the burden over to the jury.
Thomas Bannister arose for a final time. “My Lord, there are two issues to be settled. Would you explain them before the jury retires.”
“Yes. First you will determine if you hold for the plaintiff or the defendants. If you hold for Dr. Kelno and agree he has been libeled, then you must determine how much damages you will award him.”
“Thank you, my Lord.”
“Members of the jury,” Gilray said, “I can do no more. The task is upon you now. Take as long as you like. My staff will do their best to see that you are supplied with whatever you wish in the way of food and light refreshments. Now, there is one final matter. The government of Poland, through its ambassador, has laid claim to the medical register as a document of great historical significance and wishes it returned to that country for proper display in one of their national museums. Her Majesty’s government has agreed to do so. The Polish ambassador has given us leave to have the register in the jury room during the deliberations. Kindly treat it with utmost care. Do keep cigarette ashes away from it and do be careful not to have any coffee or tea stains damage it. We should not like future generations of Poles to think a British jury took this document lightly. You may retire now.”
It was noon. Those nameless nondescript Englishmen left the courtroom, and the door to the jury room closed behind them.
Adam Kelno and Abraham Cady had come to the end of their battle.
At one-thirty Sheila Lamb rushed into the consultation room and said the jury was returning. The corridor was jammed with newsmen who had to obey the stringent rules of no interviews or photographs inside the court. One of them was unable to resist. “Mr. Cady,” he said, “do you think the short time the jury was out is an indication you’re going to win?”
“Nobody is going to win this case,” Abe answered, “we’re all losers.”
He and Shawcross shoved their way in and found themselves standing next to Adam Kelno.
Gilray nodded to the associate who approached the jury box.
“Have you agreed upon a verdict?”
“Yes,” the foreman answered.
“And this is the verdict of you all?”
“It is.”
“Do you hold for the Plaintiff, Sir Adam Kelno, or the Defendants, Abraham Cady and David Shawcross?”
“We hold in favor of the plaintiff, Sir Adam Kelno.”
“And have you all agreed on a sum of damages?”
“We have.”
“What is that sum?”
“We award Sir Adam Kelno one halfpenny.”
39
A
NGELA BURST INTO THE
office where Adam sat motionless. “It’s Terry,” she said. “He’s returned and he’s packing his suitcases.”
Adam rushed out, bouncing off the corridor walls and up the steps. He flung the door open. Terry was closing the suitcase.
“Haven’t taken much,” Terry said, “just enough to get along with.”
“Are you going back to Mary?”
“I’m going away with Mary.
“Where?”
“I don’t know really. I’m leaving London, England. Angela will know where I am.”
Adam blocked the door. “I demand to know where you’re going!”
“Out among the lepers,” he screamed. “If I’m going to be a doctor, let me be like Dr. Tesslar!”
“You stay right there, do you hear me ...”
“You lied to me, Doctor.
“Lied! I did all of this because of you and Stephan.”
“And I thank you for that. Now stand aside.”
“No.”
“What are you going to do? Cut my nuts off?”
“You ... you ... you’re like the rest of them. You’re out to get me too. They paid you to leave me. It’s the same plot!”
“You’re a bloody paranoid whipping through life cutting the balls off Jews to get even with your own father. Isn’t that right, Sir Adam?”
Adam slapped him across the mouth. “Jew!” he screamed. He slapped Terry again and again. “Jew! Jew! Jew! Jew!”
40
A
BE OPENED THE DOOR
of the mews. Thomas Bannister stood on the outside. He was let in wordlessly and followed Cady into the living room.
“You had an appointment with me,” Bannister said. “I waited.”
“I know, sorry about it. Whisky?”
“Please, make it neat.”
Bannister took off his coat as Abe poured the whisky. Took, I’ve had my fill of good-bys in the last couple of days. Plain ones, fancy ones, tear-filled ones. Anyhow, I saw my daughter off to Israel.”
“So sorry to miss your daughter. She seems like a lovely girl. I should have liked to have known her better. The news from the Middle East is indeed distressing.”
Abe shrugged. “You learn to live with it. When I was writing
The Holocaust
, Shawcross would get into a dither every time a new crisis came up, and he’d badger me for the manuscript. I told him, don’t worry, whenever I finish the book, the Jews will still be in trouble.”
“Must be very taxing.”
“Writing or being a Jew?”
“Actually I meant the writing. Sort of going inside of people and filming their minds for months on end.”
“Something like that Bannister, I’ve been avoiding seeing you because you can be damned frightening.”
Bannister smiled. “Well, I didn’t intend to put you in the witness box.”
“Know who I’ve been thinking about?” Abe said.
“Adam Kelno.”
“How did you know?”
“Because I’ve been thinking about him too.”
“Highsmith is right, you know,” Abe said. “There but for the grace of God go all of us. A simple man with his pecker caught in a wringer. What the hell would I have done?”
“I think I know.”
“I’m not so damned sure. The world doesn’t have enough Daniel Dubrowskis or Mark Tesslars or Parmentiers or Viskovas or Van Damms. We talk courage and end up acting like piss ants.”
“There are more than you are willing to believe right now.”
“I left somebody out,” Abe said, “Thomas Bannister. The night you were listing my responsibilities you didn’t mention yourself. Wouldn’t that have been a pistol, to deny the English people of you as their prime minister.”
“Oh that. Well, one must do what one thinks right.”
“Why? Why did Kelno bring this suit? Sure, I know he has to be a big fish in a little pond. He feels inferior so he has always gotten himself placed into a position where he could be superior to those around him. In Sarawak, in Jadwiga, in a workingman’s clinic in London.”
“Kelno? Tragic figure,” Bannister said. “He’s paranoid, of course, and as a paranoid he is incapable of introspection and cannot judge right from wrong.”
“What made him that way?”
“Perhaps the result of some cruelty towards him as a child. Poland handed him anti-Semitism. He had a place to go with his sickness. You know, Cady, surgeons are a strange breed and often as not surgery fulfills their blood lust. So long as Adam Kelno was in civilized places, surgery took care of his needs. But turn a man like this loose in a place where all social order has collapsed and you have a monster on your hands. And then, when he went back to a civilized society again, he became a proper surgeon with absolutely no guilt about what he had done.”
“After what I heard in that courtroom,” Abe said, “after learning what people can be made to do to people and after the holocaust seeing it still go on and on, I feel that we are wrecking our world beyond our ability to save ourselves. We have polluted our planet, and the creatures who live on it. I swear to God, and we have destroyed each other. I think we’ve run out of time, and space, and I think it’s not a case of
if
it is going to happen, it’s only a matter of
when.
And from the way we’re behaving, I think God is getting very impatient.”