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‘Did you have any foreknowledge of that?’ Peter asked.
‘Before I left Germany, we feared it might happen. Doctors at the time were enthusiastic about ridding society of people they considered useless.’
Peter shook his head sadly.
‘Tell me Peter, the extermination you’ve uncovered, was it sanctioned officially, or was it overreach by the local physicians?
‘Oh, it was sanctioned, all right – from the top. And it was incredibly well organised. We’ve uncovered an organisation called Aktion T4, which was run out of Berlin by Hitler’s chief medical officer. He and his team made the decisions about who would be sterilised, and who exterminated. They selected people who were considered useless to society – the disabled, or children with congenital illnesses, the mentally ill and so on. They scoured mental hospitals and children’s homes all over the country, and transported people to six centres, one of which was Hadamar. The man who ran the killing operation here was DrWahlmann. We have him in custody already, along with some of his staff. We’re interrogating them, of course, but they maintain they were simply following orders.’
‘I suspect that will be a common excuse,’ said Leila sadly. ‘As I mentioned when we arranged this meeting, one of the reasons I’m here is to see if we can find out what happened to Clara von Zeller – Minki’s daughter. Did you find any records relating to her death?’
Peter nodded, and picked up a fat leather tome from the floor and placed it on his desk. ‘When you rang and said you were coming, I dug this out.’ He flipped the tome open and swung it round to face Leila. ‘There’, he said pointing to her name. ‘It shows the date of her arrival, the date she died, her grave number – eighty-seven – and finally the date she was exhumed and sent back to Augsburg. It’s all there…’
‘Cause of death,’ Leila read out loud, ‘epileptic fit.’ She glanced up at Peter. ‘So that would seem fairly conclusive then?’
‘Perhaps… but remember, that’s just the word of the doctor – and if I’m honest, so many lies have been told here it’s hard to evaluate how truthful those records really are.’
Leila sipped her coffee.
‘I wonder, Leila, would you like to see around the place? It would enable you to understand what went on here.’
Leila nodded. ‘Yes – I should see it all.’
Peter rose from his desk. ‘OK, but I warn you, what I’m about to show you will come as a shock.’
Peter steered her down a series of dark corridors, past empty wards, until they reached a side entrance. Opening the door, he led her round to the back of the hospital, and stopped in a clearing dominated by a large black barn.
‘What’s this?’ asked Leila, puzzled. ‘How odd to have a wooden agricultural building outside a hospital.’
‘Oh, it’s not any old agricultural building,’ said Peter, pulling apart the wide barn doors and leading her inside. ‘This place was integral to the whole operation. Let me explain. The victims were transported from other hospitals around the country in old school or postal buses. As soon as they arrived, the buses were driven inside, and the barn doors locked behind them. The only way out was through this side door.’
Peter pushed open a door in the side of the building. ‘Follow me.’
The path led to the hospital building itself, inside which was an empty reception hall.
‘This is where the horror really began,’ Peter explained. ‘The staff who had accompanied the victims would get them undressed, pretending they were just going to be examined by the doctor. The women were allowed to wear old army coats to protect their modesty. They were then funnelled through this room here.’ He led Leila to a smaller room off the main hall. ‘Here, they checked their personal data – names, ages, medical history and so on. So far, the victims might have thought it was all above board. But as one physician examined them, another was sitting at an adjacent desk assigning a false cause of death to each patient. Effectively, their death certificate was written before they even left the room.’
‘Surely not?’ gasped Leila.
‘I’m afraid so…come this way.’ Peter held open a door leading to a second room. ‘This is where the victims were weighed, measured and photographed.’ He paused, and turned to Leila. ‘I mean…why would they do that? They were going to kill them. It’s just so absurdly meticulous.’
Leila felt barely able to breathe. It brought back memories of the parcel of clothes she had been sent after Viktor’s death – once again meticulously folded and labelled.
‘OK,’ Peter continued, ‘so now we come to the end stage. The victims were led down this staircase here – watch your step, Leila, it’s quite steep. At this point other personnel took over.’
Leila found herself standing in a basement room; it had no windows and the ceiling was covered with pipework.
‘Is this…?’ She couldn’t finish her sentence.
Peter nodded. ‘This was “the death shower”, so called because the victims believed they were going to have a shower. Up to sixty people at a time were forced in here. Some of them became suspicious at this point and fought back. We’ve been told that violence occurred – you can just imagine, can’t you, the sense of terror and helplessness. Anyway, the doors were locked – they’re air-raid doors, so totally airtight – gas was pumped through the pipes and, within minutes, everybody was dead. We now realise they were using these hospitals to test the whole gas chamber concept, which was later used so widely in the concentration camps like Auschwitz.’
Leila felt her legs give way. To actually be standing in the space where thousands of innocent people had been exterminated was almost unbearable.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Peter, taking her arm. ‘Perhaps we should leave now?’
‘No, carry on, Peter. I need to see and understand everything. Is there more?’
‘All right, if you’re sure. So, once the people were dead, the “disinfectors” – that’s what they called the staff who disposed of the bodies – turned on a ventilator to extinguish the poisoned air, entered the chamber and extracted any gold teeth. At that point, any corpses the physicians had earlier identified as suitable for dissection were moved to the pathology lab, and the rest were burned in the crematorium. For a while the ovens were running twenty-four hours a day. It’s said that the black smoke from the chimneys could be seen for miles around. The stench must have been appalling.’
