A Fight in Silence

by Melanie Metzenthin

  ‘What kind of letter?’

  Richard saw his brother-in-law start to tremble. It was clear he already feared the worst.

  ‘Jürgen has fallen.’

  Holger looked stunned. Richard’s father cried out, ‘No – please, no!’ The two lads, horrified, let go of the logs they were about to heave on to the vehicle and blurted out condolences. Holger couldn’t take it in. His eyes couldn’t leave Richard’s face.

  ‘And Karl?’ His voice was shaking.

  ‘We’ve heard nothing from Karl.’

  ‘Jürgen, Jürgen,’ whispered Holger. ‘He was always so careful, so cautious. How could it happen?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Richard replied, carefully assessing his brother-in-law. Was he really as composed as he appeared, or would he break down? Given what Margit had told him of late, he feared the latter.

  ‘And we’ve heard nothing from Karl?’ Holger asked again.

  ‘I’m sure he’s not been harmed,’ said Richard, although he felt no certainty about this. It was the second time this morning he’d had to make things look more positive than they were. ‘He’s bound to write to you both soon with what actually happened.’

  Holger said nothing, but his hands were trembling violently now and reminded Richard uncomfortably of his brother, Georg.

  ‘Can I drive you home, Holger? Papa, Ernst and Hannes will take care of everything here.’

  ‘Yes, my son,’ said Richard’s father, resting his hand consolingly on Holger’s shoulder. ‘Let Richard take you home. Margit needs you.’

  Holger nodded without a word and let himself be helped into Richard’s car. The journey passed in silence. Holger was deep in thought and Richard thought it best to leave him be. As soon as they arrived, Holger and Margit fell into each other’s arms. No words came. Just as they let one another go, Lottchen came in from school, saw her parents in distress and ran to them. Holger held his daughter close and wept silently.

  And in that silence, Richard, not a religious man, found himself praying fervently for Karl’s safe return.

  Chapter 33

  That there could be no burial in Ohlsdorf Cemetery was especially hard for Holger and Margit to bear. Jürgen had been laid to rest in some military cemetery between Belgium and France. He was to have no gravestone, just a plain wooden cross, like the hundreds already in place and the thousands more Richard feared would follow. He no longer believed the weekly newsreel.

  In the meantime, he had found out how Jürgen had died and what this meant for Karl.

  His two nephews, with a few other soldiers, had become separated from their company and fallen straight into an ambush. The ever-vigilant Jürgen was one of the first to spot it. Karl would have run straight into it, had Jürgen not pulled him down at the last minute, fatally wounded by a ricocheting bullet as he did so. His comrades returned fire while Karl gave his brother first aid, even managing to get him to the nearest field-dressing station but there was nothing the doctor could do. The bullet had lodged deep in Jürgen’s heart and the pericardium had filled with blood, leaving no room for the vital organ to beat. The attempt at emergency surgery, which had a questionable outcome in any case, had come too late. Since then Karl had suffered unbearable guilt because Jürgen had been shot while trying to protect him. He couldn’t bring himself to tell his parents of his guilt and his failure to save Jürgen but his inner torment drove him to confide in his Uncle Richard by letter.

  In reply, Richard wrote:

  Dear Karl

  I feel the deepest of sympathy for you and share with you the loss of your brother. But you bear no guilt for Jürgen’s death. Your brother acted instinctively to protect you, as you did for him when you risked your life by crossing the lines to get him to the nearest field hospital. If anyone is guilty, then it’s the man who fired that bullet. Or those who gave the order to open fire. Guilt also lies with whoever forced you to leave your family to occupy France. There are many people who are guilty of Jürgen’s death, but you are not one of them. You are free of all guilt because you were a fine and loyal brother. Jürgen loved you as much as you did him. He gave his life to save yours and you should honour his memory and commemorate him with love and a sense of solidarity, while you live the life that he saved and enjoy it in all its beauty.

  If you poison your life with self-accusation and tear yourself apart inside, then your brother’s sacrifice will have been in vain because he won’t have saved your life, he’ll only have saved your body. You know that Jürgen would want you to come back safely and somehow to find your old joy in life again. Be honest, Karl; that’s what you’d have wanted Jürgen to do if it had happened the other way around. You wouldn’t have wanted him constantly to punish himself about it or to weigh himself down with self-reproach.

  I know these words sound hollow and empty while you’re still mourning, but once the initial pain has passed, read these words again and let them help you. I empathise with how you feel because I have experienced the same helplessness and guilt at being the survivor, although in very different circumstances. This was when your Uncle Georg died; I know you barely remember him. I persuaded our father, your grandfather, to take Georg to a mental hospital. I genuinely believed it would help him but instead he died a terrible death there. If anyone carried the guilt for that, it was me, because I was the one who sent my dear brother to a place where unscrupulous doctors subjected him to horrific treatment that tortured him to death. That was when I decided to be a psychiatrist so that this could never happen again. Never again.

  It brings nothing to keep on asking what would have happened if . . . It is as it is – we can’t turn back time, but we can give thought to what we can do differently, and better, in the future. I can’t tell you which path to take in dealing with your loss. I got back my joy in life once I’d worked out what gave my life meaning. Once I’d explained to your grandfather that I wouldn’t be taking over the workshop but wanted to study medicine instead, he immediately understood and did nothing to stand in my way.

  From the bottom of my heart I want you too to find something that gives your life meaning, no matter what it is. It’s not that you may find happiness again, it’s your duty to do so. Our dead brothers have long absolved us of guilt because they know we’ve done everything in our power for them. The fact that it wasn’t enough to protect them is tragic, and we have to live with that loss. We mustn’t poison the life and memory of each of our brothers but must instead show ourselves worthy of their love and forgiveness. This is why I chose to call my own son Georg. Think of a way of keeping Jürgen in your life and remember him with warmth and love.

  Your Uncle Richard

  Ten days after Richard had sent this letter, Margit told him that Karl had at last written and told them how Jürgen had died.

  ‘I know,’ was all Richard said in response. He too had just received a letter from Karl.

  Dear Uncle Richard

  Thank you for your letter, which has given me so much valuable insight and understanding. I’m going to follow your advice in every way. And when we get to Paris, I’m going to do what Jürgen and I always planned. That’s to climb up the Eiffel Tower, send you all a postcard and then at last come home, where I know more than enough woodwork awaits me in the workshop, and then I plan to lead a normal life.

  Your nephew, Karl

  When he showed Karl’s letter to Paula, she said, ‘Karl’s lucky to have not just a good uncle but a good psychiatrist too. He will cope.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure he will. But I’m still concerned. As long as this damned war goes on, no one can be sure of coming out alive.’

  ‘But it looks all right at the moment. Our troops are edging across France without any static warfare.’

  ‘Sounds like the newsreel I don’t set any store by.’

  ‘So what do you set store by? What do you hold on to to get through it all?’

  ‘You, my dearest Paula. You’re worth more to me than any newsreel.’ He gave her a loving kiss
on the cheek.

  A lot had changed in the asylum at Langenhorn. The secure unit was no longer that and the new patients had the right to leave the building and work on the land. There were difficulties only when aggressive new arrivals came. One of the two observation rooms was set aside for new admissions, while the other was used by peaceful former residents of the open country houses. But it was getting overcrowded: there were now eighteen beds in each room instead of the previous twelve, and even one of the day rooms had been converted into a dormitory. On top of that, Richard was still required to complete the registration forms assessing patients’ productivity. These were then dispatched to an address in Berlin: Tiergartenstrasse 4.

  One sunny morning in April, just four weeks after Herbert and the other patients had been transferred to Brandenburg, Richard’s telephone rang.

  ‘Dr Hellmer speaking.’

  ‘Hellmer, it’s Harms here. Are you alone there in the office?’

  ‘Dr Harms, this is a surprise!’ Richard’s voice came joyfully down the line. ‘Yes, I’m on my own here. Have our patients settled with you all right? How’s our old friend Herbert?’

  Dr Harms cleared his throat before speaking. ‘Listen, this is strictly confidential and nobody must know, but I can’t go along with what’s happening and you have to know what’s going on here.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘Am I right in thinking that you’re still completing those registration forms about productivity?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’re using the information to separate out the lives considered unworthy of life. Every patient deemed economically unproductive is being murdered.’

  There was a sharp intake of breath from Richard. ‘Did I hear you right? Patients are being murdered? Who by?’

  ‘I know it sounds impossible, and I don’t think anyone other than you will believe me, but this is the truth. All our former patients from the secure unit are now dead. A few days after their arrival, they were bundled into sealed, airtight lorries that were driven into the forest and had carbon monoxide pumped into them until everyone was dead.’

  Richard froze. Had Harms gone crazy, or had he developed a strange version of black humour?

  ‘This . . . this has to be some kind of joke, surely. Why would doctors tolerate something like that and risk a jail sentence for being an accessory to murder? What would they get out of it? And why are you telephoning me and not the police if you’re witness to something like this?’

  ‘I know how it must sound, Dr Hellmer, but this is the truth.’ Harms spoke very firmly. ‘This is why I have handed in my notice, but because I am in the know they don’t want to let me go, so I’ve had to come up with something to get myself out. So I’ve volunteered to go to the Front as a doctor. I’d rather that than take part in mass murder here. You don’t believe me? The orders are coming right from the very top. From Hitler himself. They call it mercy killing and it’s subject to the utmost secrecy. It’s the extermination of life unworthy of life, just like Professor Hoche described in his book in the twenties. This lot are taking it really seriously. First the sterilisation programme, then the killing of all those no longer deemed fit for work. In Tiergartenstrasse in Berlin there are doctors whose only task is to assess the registration forms and separate out all those who are no longer productive – they’re the ones that get sent to Brandenburg. Apparently, there are other institutions doing their share of the killing, but I don’t know exactly. It’s difficult enough to piece together what’s going on here, right under my nose. If it ever came out that I’ve told you, we’d both be put straight into one of these new concentration camps – you know, where the government locks up and maltreats all its political opponents, along with anyone else it doesn’t like, for the purposes of re-education.’

  Richard’s belly knotted and ached. He found himself thinking about Alfred Schär’s terrible end.

  ‘But you have to know what your classifications mean for the sick,’ Harms went on. ‘Herbert was one of the first to be gassed. They told him the lorry was going to the cows and that’s why he got on so willingly. Later on, all the corpses were burned and the relatives sent a bit of ash. The only opportunity I had to hint at something here not being right was the death certificate. We were instructed to think up some plausible causes of death and were supposed to vary the dates of death so that nobody would wonder why all the Hamburg patients had died on the same day. For Herbert, I wrote “burst appendix”.’

  ‘He had no appendix,’ said Richard. His voice was dull; he felt dazed, as though moving in a thick fog, and everything Harms was telling him sounded like cheap horror fiction. Herbert . . . Of all the patients in the secure unit, Richard had been the most fond of Herbert. He had sincerely wished him a future life worth living, but all he’d done was send him to his death . . .

  No, he told himself, before the guilt could overwhelm him, I didn’t send him to his death. I was duped, like Herbert was. The guilt lies with those who organised this.

  ‘That’s precisely why I chose this as cause of death.’ Richard realised Dr Harms was still talking to him. ‘Ask his next of kin, Dr Hellmer. Ask if they’ve received an urn showing his date of death as 4 April 1940 and a message of sympathy saying that he died of a burst appendix. Then you’ll know I’m telling you the truth.’

  Richard tried to swallow. The full implications of what Dr Harms was telling him had not yet sunk in.

  ‘Can I phone you if I still have questions?’ he asked, unable to think of anything else.

  ‘Yes, I’m working here until 15 May, but after that I’ll be at the Front.’ Dr Harms gave him his telephone number. ‘And we need to see how we can spread this information to as many hospitals as possible without being exposed ourselves. As I said, this is all taking place in extreme secrecy and the kind of deliberate error that I have built in will be weeded out. But the world has to know about this. There is mass murder going on here, in front of our very eyes, of the weakest and the most helpless.’

  ‘But why are the other doctors going along with it?’ asked Richard. ‘Why aren’t they doing what you’re doing?’

  ‘Do you think for one minute Krüger would do what I’m doing? And there are hundreds of Krügers in white coats.’ With these words, Harms hung up. The registration form he had last been working on caught Richard’s eye. Eighty per cent productivity. He’d embellished it to that level. He screwed up the form and completed a fresh one. This time he gave the patient the rating of a healthy individual. And that’s precisely what he would do from now on. Krüger didn’t check the forms in any case, and Berlin was a long way away.

  After all, a bit of impudence had got him through that earlier business with the Gestapo.

  Chapter 34

  The phone call from Dr Harms had thrown Richard into far greater confusion than he’d cared to admit. The story was monstrous, absurd and hardly credible. On the other hand, its treachery made it a perfect fit with the system: first the sterilisations, then the reduction in rations, finally culminating in extermination by carbon monoxide poisoning . . .

  Ordinary people had to resort to the black market for their petrol coupons, or stop driving altogether, but in Brandenburg a vehicle dispatched you to your death. And that was probably not the only place.

  That evening he told Paula what had happened. Her initial reaction was similar to his, one of disbelief, just like her father, who went so far as to suggest that Harms was simply crazed.

  Yet when Richard phoned Herbert’s parents to extend his condolences on the loss of their son at Brandenburg, they confirmed what Harms had told him. Herbert’s father was furious at the cause of death being described as a burst appendix, as Herbert had had his appendix removed as a child. For a moment, Richard wondered whether he should tell him the truth, but he shied away from that. Even his father-in-law hadn’t wanted to believe it, and in any case, what were Herbert’s elderly parents supposed to do about it? So he simply said something about
how there must have been a mix-up and maybe they should ask the hospital exactly why their son had died and left it at that.

  He told Fritz about it, and his friend was as incredulous as the others.

  ‘This can’t be right,’ he said over and over. ‘This is barbaric! What on earth are they doing this for?’

  ‘It’s purely economic. The sick who are unfit for work are seen as a drain on the state. Even sterilisation’s more expensive than killing them.’

  ‘But . . . but if this is what’s happening, we must make it public!’

  ‘Yes, but it’s happening by stealth, really secretly – precisely because it is unimaginable. Do you know what’ll happen if we make this public? They’ll simply declare us insane, lock us up, and then treat us to a trip in the mobile gas chamber or make us disappear, like they did with Alfred Schär.’

  Fritz was pale, struggling to find words. ‘That means there are murderers in our government.’ Richard nodded. ‘What are you going to do, Richard?’

  ‘I have no scruples about putting false information on the forms. From now on, all my patients are going to be as capable of work as the healthy.’

  ‘And what if that gets out?’

  ‘I’ll take the risk, particularly as it’s so small. Krüger has no interest in my expert statements and the forms are sent off to Berlin, along with forms from all the German asylums and clinics for nervous diseases. How on earth are they going to check up on individual cases from Hamburg?’

  Richard kept his word. Henceforth, every one of his patients was recorded as being in a position to carry out work of economic value. He also tried to discharge new additions as swiftly as possible so that they weren’t even registered in the first place. On top of that, he’d asked his father to take on Manfred and Rolf, twenty-one-year-old Downs’ syndrome twins, as helpers in the family business and to give them accommodation in the workshop itself. This was because in a later telephone conversation with Dr Harms he had discovered that identical twins, regardless of their productivity certification, were not immediately gassed but sent off elsewhere for alleged scientific experiments to take place.