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September 1941
Number 4 Tiergartenstrasse was a large nineteenth-century house, near the centre of Berlin. It overlooked a park that had been home to Berlin’s zoo before the war.
Wide steps led up to the neatly painted front door. Curtains hung at the large windows. In every way it appeared to be an unremarkable building. Except that what went on inside was anything but innocuous. As Minki stood outside on the opposite pavement, she tried to imagine how people could work in such a place, organising the removal of children from their parents.
From time to time as staff emerged from the building, Minki had to fight the urge to run across the road and demand that they tell her where her child had been taken.
But Goebbels’ secretary had said the operation was top secret, so Minki knew that a direct challenge was pointless – clearly no one would talk. If she wanted information, her only option was to wait until the staff had left for the day and then try to break in. She sat on a park bench opposite, watching people gradually drifting out of the building. By six o’clock, she estimated that most of the staff would have left for the day. Nervously she crossed the road, went up the steps and gingerly pushed against the front door. It was locked.
Frustrated, she decided to search for a back entrance. Behind the row of houses was a narrow alleyway, separated from the gardens of each house by a high brick wall. Each house had its own rear garden entrance – a wooden gate set into the brick wall. To Minki’s frustration, the gate to Number 4 was also firmly locked. But placed on either side was a pair of dustbins. In the failing light, Minki had an idea. All offices produced waste paper that had to be disposed of. But waste paper may also contain scraps of information. Surely it was worth having a rummage in the dustbins. Looking around to check she was alone, she peered inside one of the bins; it was filled with general rubbish – some food waste, used typewriter ribbons, and what appeared to be an old moth-eaten curtain. But the second bin was more promising. It was filled with paper, which, frustratingly, had been shredded. Hitler, she recalled reading somewhere, had installed paper shredders in all his top government buildings.
Nevertheless, she reached inside the bin, pulling out handfuls of paper strips until they lay in a huge white heap on the ground. Towards the bottom of the bin were a few intact sheets that had somehow missed the shredder. Eagerly she retrieved them. The first few pieces of paper appeared to be irrelevant – memos of meetings, even someone’s shopping list. But then she found a copy of a letter. Frustratingly, the first page was missing, but the second page had been signed by a name that was familiar: Karl Brandt. Racking her memory, Minki recalled that Brandt had been Hitler’s personal physician for some years. Goebbels had told her that the policy of abducting the infirm and disabled was mainly administered by the medical profession. Might Brandt be involved somehow?
As she quickly scanned the remaining page of his letter, it became clear he was integral to the whole operation.
…gassing and subsequent cremation is now out of the question, since the Bishop of M’s intervention. But suffocation, injections, poisoning and starvation are all suitable alternatives, followed by burial in the hospital grounds. The Führer is concerned that nothing must leak out to the population about this programme. There has already been far too much public disquiet. Once a life is terminated, a suitable medical condition must be found to explain the subject’s demise. Sepsis, meningitis and blood poisoning due to infections of the tonsils, and so on, have all proved acceptable in the past and we suggest their continuation.
I look forward to our discussion later in the week.
With best wishes,
Etc etc.
The letter had been scored through with a red pen, indicating that it was a rejected draft.
It took Minki a few moments to understand what she was reading. The letter was obviously discussing means of killing people – or ‘subjects’. Her heart almost bounced in her chest. Was her child one of these ‘subjects’?
She delved further into the bin and found another unshredded fragment of paper entitled ‘T4 Transports to Hadamar, January to August 1941’.
Lined up neatly in columns beneath the headline were the year, month, date, number of patients – or ‘subjects’ – and the name of the ‘interim’ institution.
1941, January 13: 30 Subjects, via Eichberg
January 15: 30 Subjects, via Weilmünster
January 17: 19 Subjects, via Kalmenhof
The rest of the sheet was missing but, reading these three short entries, Minki deduced that within a space of four days in January seventy-nine people had been transported to somewhere called Hadamar.
Rummaging among some soggy coffee grounds at the bottom of the bin, she found a final scrap of paper that had also escaped the shredder. At first glance it looked like a blank sheet, stained dark brown. She was about to throw it away when she noticed a few lines of indistinct type. At first sight they seemed innocuous enough – merely a list of German towns: Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Bernburg, Sonnenstein, Hartheim…and Hadamar.
Were these all destinations for T4 subjects? She put the coffee-stained list into her handbag along with the other two sheets of paper.
Then, in the fading light, she stuffed the pile of shredded paper back into the dustbin, and hurried to the main road, where she caught a tram to Potsdam.
She walked the fifteen minutes from the tram stop to her old house.
Lena opened the door. ‘Madam! You’re back.’
‘Is my husband in?’ Minki pushed past Lena and headed for the stairs.
‘Yes, madam…he’s in the drawing room.’
‘Don’t tell him I’m here. I’ll see him in a minute.’
Upstairs in their bathroom, she washed her face and hands, desperate to rid herself of the filthy contents of the dustbin. Drying her hands, she caught sight of herself in the mirror – a white-faced, hollowed-out version of the pretty girl she had once been. She smoothed her blond hair, and went downstairs to the drawing room.
Max was sitting by the window staring out into the darkening garden.
