“I was born in 1944; first generation.”
Henry looked across at Natasha and saw her eyes light up. Generation: that was what the ‘G’ stood for, but generation of what? The second immediate thought that registered in his mind was his own tattoo: G3. He was third generation then, but what exactly did that mean? Could Schröder be his grandfather?
“I don’t understand,” he said.
Schröder sighed before standing up to reach for the schnapps bottle again. He held it out towards them but they both declined.
“What do you know about Steinhöring?” he said as he carefully filled his glass to the brim without spilling a drop.
Henry shrugged.
“Not enough, clearly.”
Schröder knocked back the schnapps and then studied them both as he licked his lips.
“I must show you something first. We will walk. It is not far and we can talk along the way.”
They all stood up, Henry and Natasha reaching for their pull cases.
“You can leave them here, for now,” Schröder said.
Henry and Natasha looked uncertainly at each other.
“It’s OK – I have plenty of locks on my front door,” Schröder said with a wry grin and a throaty chuckle.
They stepped outside and waited for him to complete the ritual of locking his front door: seven locks in total, Henry counted.
“Were you born in Steinhöring?” Natasha said as he turned around with a satisfied grin.
“Ja. Where else do you get a tattoo like this?” he said, pointing to the back of his head.
Natasha looked at Henry as if to say, how long have you known that you were born in Steinhöring? Henry looked away, unable to hold her wounded stare. It was all beginning to catch up with him, he realised. He wondered how far it would go and where it would ultimately end.
Fifty-Four
Steinhöring April 1939
Huber watched as the scrawny man with a hunched back worked on the baby’s neck. Huber despised the man for so many reasons: he had greasy, sweaty skin; he smelled unwashed; he worked at an internment camp at Dachau; but above all because he was hurting his baby boy.
The nurse cradled the little bundle, tightly wrapped up in a clean white blanket, in her lap. She only needed one hand to keep the head flexed forwards to allow Hörst, the tattooist, access to the neck.
“Will it take much longer?” Huber asked irritably, pacing back and forth to quell his guilt, amplified by the baby’s distressed cries.
“I am done, Sturmbannführer,” Horst said. His voice was a disagreeable as his appearance.
Huber could hardly bear the anguish of his conflicting emotions. If he could have been guilty of such duplicity, he would have prevented his baby from being tattooed. But such an act of hypocrisy would have jeopardised his position of infallible objectivity and scientific piety, essential requirements as leader of the unit.
He leaned forward with an air of disaffected interest and studied the tattoo: G1.
“You have ensured it will be covered by the hairline when the child grows up?” Huber said to the tattooist.
“Of course.”
Hörst began to pack up his tools into a leather holdall. Huber sighed deeply. There was no more to say; the man was simply doing his job, something he and Bauer had instructed him to do.
“Doctor!” A nurse knocked lightly at the door and pushed her head through discreetly.
Huber looked up.
“Dr Pahmeyer wants you to come urgently.”
Huber’s heart skipped a beat. Having just watched his baby son being tattooed, he was not braced for receiving further unfavourable news, but he knew that the portent was ominous.
Rushing down the tiled corridor, he found Oskar sitting at Gudrun’s bedside. She was soaked in perspiration, eyes closed, chest heaving, the delicate recesses in her neck pulsating with the desperate energy being generated by her labouring heart to defeat the bacterial invaders. Oskar looked up, his face drawn and pale.
He did not need to say that Gudrun was deteriorating. He did not need to say that he feared she was slipping away and that there was nothing he could do to prevent it.
“Her pulse is one hundred and forty,” he said quietly, defeated.
Huber stepped forward to look at Gudrun as she lay on her back, damp, perspiration-saturated sheets pulled up to her chest. Every now and then her entire body would convulse in a rigor, as though someone had cruelly poured iced water over her.
“I’m going to telex Bauer.”
Huber hurried away and stopped the first armed guard he encountered.
“Take this straight to the SS office in Steinhöring and get them to telex it immediately to Standartenführer Bauer at KWI in Berlin. It is a matter of life and death. Understand?”
“Yes, Sturmbannführer.”
Huber hastily scribbled on a square of paper which he then folded and handed to the soldier. The man saluted, turned sharply on his heel, and marched off. Huber watched him go with the sickening fear that it was already too late. For the first time since he had met Bauer and listened with such captivated enthusiasm and interest to the grandly ambitious plans of the Reich and the part he would play in them, Huber felt torn by enormous doubts. He felt betrayed by his personal aspirations, clouded by his hunger for success at all costs, for now those costs were proving too high.
Suddenly, he felt like a monster unleashing unjustifiable suffering on people’s loved ones: on his own loved ones. He returned to Gudrun’s bedside, covering his nose and mouth with his hand as he stared at her foundering battle to beat the multiplying bacteria.
He rushed out of the room, needing to vomit.
Fifty-Five
Dieter Schröder strode like a long distance athlete with effortless ease, requiring that Henry and Natasha double their efforts to keep up with him.
“I both love and hate this town,” Schröder said, gesticulating at the quaint Bavarian houses beside them. “It is all I have ever known, but I wish also that I had never known it, never known anything about it.”
They walked along the periphery of Steinhöring from Wöllingerstrasse across to Seeweg, sensing always that they were within just a row or two of houses from open farmland. Henry could smell the dust and activity of harvesting and every now and then would hear the coarse rumble of diesel harvesting machinery more clearly as it resonated between houses, shaking the ground.
“Do you see that large building up there?” Schröder asked, pointing ahead as Seeweg straightened out, leading directly to a large, three-storey building with a black slate roof, visible in the distance.
Henry squinted and nodded.
“That is where I was born,” he said.
“A hospital?” Natasha asked, somewhat out of breath from the cantering required to keep up.
“It is now, a… how you say… Psychiatrische Klinik?” He looked to Henry for assistance.
“Psychiatric hospital.”
“Ja, but not when I was born.”
They drew closer and stopped on the corner of Munchenerstrasse to contemplate the building opposite: three storeys of white painted walls; windows with well-stocked flower boxes at regular intervals; small dormer windows in the black slate roof; what appeared to be extensive gardens all around it.
A round grey pillbox occupied a prominent position beside the entrance drive. It looked for all the world like a security checkpoint, a guard room, and it looked as though it had been constructed out of unfinished reinforced concrete at least seventy to eighty years earlier.
335 “Have you heard of Lebensborn, Inspector?” Schröder said, turning to face Henry.
Henry could feel his heart racing. Something told him he was closing in on his empty past. He sensed it, with an accompanying nausea in the pit of his stomach.
“No, I haven’t.”
Natasha raised an eyebrow. It was not like her guv’nor not to know stuff. He knew everything. Was he bluffing?
“Lebensborn was establ
ished in December 1935 by Heinrich Himmler. Heard of him?” Schröder asked.
Henry and Natasha nodded in unison, unsure whether Schröder was being facetious. Henry felt his mouth drying out. Natasha was aware of a growing unease within her about the man standing beside her, the man on whom she had been asked to keep an eye, the man she thought she knew.
“The Reich wanted to boost population growth, to compensate for the losses of the Great War and to build up its strength for a lengthy occupation and domination of Europe, and perhaps the world beyond, ja?” He looked at them for confirmation.
“This was the first of its kind, but by the end of the war in 1945 there were birthing houses like this throughout the Reich, as well as France, Austria, Norway. Come, let me show you.”
After a careful traffic check they crossed Munchenerstrasse and strolled down the gravelled, deserted entrance to the institute. A large bold sign read: Keine Durchfahrt.
“This is private, Dieter, we’re not allowed in,” Henry said cautiously. The policeman in him did not like transgressing.
Schröder waved his hand dismissively and walked on.
“We’re just looking. Come on, it’s okay. I come here, sometimes.”
They followed Schröder’s large frame around the side of the building, revealing a substantial garden beyond, terraced down a gentle slope, shaded beneath numerous mature trees, with benches scattered throughout the tranquil and serene grounds.
“It is estimated that 2800 children were born here between 1936 and 1945. I was one of them; so was the fat man with the Doberman.”
“What was it called?” Natasha asked.
“Heim Hochland,” Schröder said, looking up at the imposing building.
Henry felt chills playing the xylophone up and down his spine as he looked around. In some ways the gardens looked idyllic. One could imagine it being the perfect place to be raised as a young child, yet there was something deeply and darkly disturbing about it.
“The Nazis made abortions illegal after 1936. People were poor, many of them starving, the country in the grips of the, how you say… Die Dreisiger Jahre…”
“The Depression,” Henry said.
“Ja.” Schröder nodded. “Himmler encouraged young women and men of good Aryan background to produce children for the sake of the Reich. Women who had more than three or four children were rewarded with medals, the Mutterkreutz. They did not care if you were single, under age, or immoral, as long as you were pure Aryan. They had to be perfect specimens. Not even people with dental fillings were… you know.”
“Permitted?” Henry suggested.
Schröder stopped near a large stone statue of a woman suckling an infant cradled in her arms. It was a poignant symbol of an ideal that clearly did not pertain in any way to the modern psychiatric hospital.
“What happened to the children?” Henry asked.
Schröder shrugged, a tic visible in his shoulder and across his face. Deep-seated unresolved issues, perhaps, Henry thought.
“Most women did not want them and once the babies were weaned they were cared for by others, ending up in foster care, always with the best of everything, you understand: food, clothing, education. After all, they were destined to be the leaders of tomorrow’s Reich, rulers of the world. But… nobody loved them.”
Schröder began to walk again, slowly, turning occasionally to study the front of the vast building on the elevated grassy knoll behind them.
“I find it strange to walk here, to think how these gardens would have been filled with prams, children, nurses: the perfection of German society. It is a joke, is it not, that I was among them. Look at me now.” Schröder snorted, patting his paunch.
Henry began to taste nausea rising in his throat. He could feel sweat building on his forehead and around his neck. He had not expected to be confronted with truths so brutally, so suddenly. He had not considered how he might react. He had never given thought to who he might turn out to be at the end of his much awaited visit to Steinhöring.
“You look pale, guv. You OK?” Natasha said, grabbing his arm in her gentle but firm grip.
Schröder helped her guide him to a bench in front of the hypocritical statue of perfect motherhood.
“I’m OK, thanks,” Henry said, wiping his damp forehead. “I just need a minute.”
“Perhaps it is the schnapps?” Schröder suggested.
“Why are there no records of these births at the registry office?” Natasha said, casting furtive glances of concern towards Henry.
Schröder wagged his finger.
“There are records, but not at the Geburt Eintragung. I will… show you… when we get home.”
Natasha thought back to the obsessive security system of seven locks and bolts on Schröder’s front door. Did he need the security, or was it just his compulsive nature?
“Were any children taken away from Steinhöring?” Henry asked, looking up with slightly more colour in his face.
Schröder inhaled deeply.
“It depended on so many things. I stayed, for better or worse. I could not leave this place. I am still here, cursed by my past, unable to face a future anywhere else. But others were even less fortunate. After 1945, children identified from foreign parents, like Norwegian or French, whatever, were sent back to those countries. But when they got there they were rejected and treated as… unerwünschte Ausländer. Many were locked up in, er… Psychiatrische Klinik…” Schröder paused and his eyes drifted down.
“Undesirable foreigners,” Henry explained to Natasha.
“My friend Lars, the fat man, when he was four his hair began to change from blond to brown. Katastrophe!” he said with a mock theatrical expression of horror. “His mother told him they might kill him for that. Others were sent to camps because they had deformities, poor eyesight, even minor imperfections. There they were often starved to death, or simply killed. Lars was put in a Psychiatrische Klinik after the liberation in 1945 because they said he was a mental defective, a Nazi war swine. They said he might turn out to be a… Verräter.” Schröder stopped.
“Traitor,” Henry whispered to Natasha.
He looked at Schröder, studying his watery eyes, in which he fancied he could almost see the shadows and ghosts of the past tormenting him still.
“He was not… er… released until he was twenty years old. Twenty.” Schröder shook his head. “Do you know what that does to a man?”
Henry remembered the fat man’s immovable refusal to drink in the Bräuhaus. Schröder was lost in his thoughts for a few moments, staring fixedly at the imposing buildings, occasionally gazing around the lush gardens as though recalling childhood memories.
“Come,” he said eventually. “We go home for more schnapps, ja?” He put on a brave smile but Henry could detect the fine tic below his eye. But he, too, was shaken by this visit, far more than he could ever have anticipated.
“I’ll buy you a schnapps at the Bräuhaus,” Henry offered as they approached Munchenerstrasse.
Schröder shot a disapproving look at him.
“No! I will never drink there. The SS made that Bräuhaus their own during those years. It is still full of their loot.”
They walked on in silence.
“Did everyone at Heim Hochland get a tattoo?” Natasha asked, watching her footsteps.
Henry felt the scar at the back of his head itch but resisted the urge to scratch it. Schröder sighed and smiled painfully.
“No. Lars does not have one. I have one. You say your victims have them. We will talk about this at my house, ja? It is still a bit of a… Rätsel… to me.”
“Mystery,” Henry told Natasha as she gently touched his arm. He knew that she had made contact not just for a translation. He knew that she felt his confusion and his anguish and he felt comforted by that knowledge. He could not wait for the schnapps.
Fifty-Six
Steinhöring
Oskar and Huber looked at each other in desperation. Huber had not shaved for several
days and was looking noticeably dishevelled. Beside them in her hospital bed, Gudrun lay in a semi-comatose state, occasionally moaning and moving her arms and mouth in purposeless gestures, as though she was fighting off demons that only she could see.
“She is becoming delirious,” Huber said.
“I don’t know what else to do,” Oskar replied, his face pained and twisted. “The puerperal sepsis has a hold of her and will not subside.”
Huber knelt down beside the bed and took hold of Gudrun’s wrist. It was warm and sweaty and lifeless. It did not belong to the woman who had used her arms to embrace him; it belonged now to the heartless bacteria that proliferated unchallenged within her.
“Have you heard from Bauer?” Oskar said.
“Her pulse is nearly one hundred and fifty. She cannot go on like this for much longer, Oskar.”
Oskar felt his friend’s pain and knew that to lose two successive loved ones to the aggressions of untreatable bacteria would be a cruel and savage blow.
“She is strong, my friend. She is a fighter. She is Aryan,” Oskar said, trying to be supportive.
The mention of that word made Huber recoil because it defined what was good and what was not; who should survive and who should not; who deserved to live – and who did not. Liesel had not lived. Was this because she was not good or pure enough? If Gudrun did not survive, then what would this say about their ideals of crafting a master Aryan race out of such superior breeding stock?
Huber suppressed a moan.
“Bauer is trying, but amidst the ambitions of the Reich, the turmoils of one little woman here with us is seemingly… trivial to them.” Huber looked up at Oskar with bloodshot eyes. “I’d like to be alone with her for a while, please.”
Oskar nodded. Every minute was precious now. He turned to leave and almost bumped into a nurse in starched whites, out of breath, rushing through the doorway carrying a large brown box.
“Urgent delivery for Sturmbannführer Huber!” she said.
Huber’s heart leapt with sudden hope.
Huber's Tattoo Page 27
