“Yes, sir.”
“All right. Go get some results.” As Mason turned to leave, Colonel Walton said, “Remember . . . those reports. Embellish.”
Ten minutes later, Mason exited headquarters by the main entrance. The silent protesters were still there. In fact, the number had increased considerably. He gave them a parting glance as he climbed in a jeep the motor pool had brought around for him.
• • •
It revolted him to be close to so many wretched creatures, packed in as they were on the sidewalk. They held signs of protest or simply stood in silent vigil. But even in their silence he could hear the cacophony of their beating hearts, their rasping breaths, the blood running in their veins. Though all wore heavy coats, he could sense their warm flesh, and he fought the urge to remove the scalpel from his pocket. . . . Flesh is your canvas, organ and bone your marble. The urges overwhelmed him and made him shudder.
The man closest to him turned to him and smiled. “It is very cold, yes?”
The sudden attention sent a pulse of panic through him. He dived into the crowd, using his shoulder as a wedge and forcing his hands deep into his pockets lest he succumb to the temptation to cut his way through them.
Near the front of the crowd he stopped. The man he had been waiting for just emerged from the triple-arched entry. Ramek watched his nemesis briefly scan the crowd and nod to an American MP. Ramek pushed his way to the front as the man climbed into the waiting jeep.
He stopped. This was neither the time nor the place. . . .
But a new plan formed in his mind as he watched Investigator Collins drive away.
• • •
You guys really stirred things up around here,” Major Rivers said as Mason and Wolski entered the administration building. Major Rivers, Dachau’s camp commander, had deep-set eyes framed by thick black eyebrows that arched high on his forehead like exclamation points on his scowl. Rivers led them down the hallway to the interrogation room as he talked. “I don’t know how you started the rumors, but half the prisoners think that the Russians are coming to get them. I’ve been inundated with calls from the prisoners’ lawyers trying to find out what’s going on.”
“The message was only intended for Herta Oberheuser, sir.”
“Yeah, I found that out only after putting in a few high-level calls. I’ve held off quashing this rumor until you’ve had a chance to talk to the evil witch of Ravensbrück, but I’d appreciate it if in the future you inform me of your plans before starting a panic.”
“I apologize about the inconvenience, but I’m running out of time and need results. I really want to thank you for all your help in this case. General West will appreciate it, too.”
At hearing that last remark, Rivers took a more conciliatory tone. “My help isn’t going to amount to much now. They’ll clam up tight once they catch on to your ruse.”
They stopped at the closed door of the interrogation room, and Mason said, “It’ll be worth the gamble if Oberheuser talks.”
Major Rivers risked one more scowl before walking away. Mason looked at Wolski. “I hope it’s worth the gamble.”
They entered the small interrogation room. The two escorting MPs stood guard on each side of the door. Mason asked them to wait outside, and the guards complied. This time Herta Oberheuser and her lawyer were already there. The lawyer peeked over the top of his newspaper and nodded from his chair in the corner. Oberheuser waited in the chair facing the blank wall.
“May I have a cigarette, please?” Oberheuser said without turning around.
Wolski handed her one and lit it for her. He then took his place by the window. Mason sat opposite her. She looked smaller and frailer than the last time. Her face expressed defiance, but her hands fought with each other on the table surface.
“I’m glad you agreed to talk with us,” Mason said. “We’d like to know about the German prisoner doctor you mentioned. The one who the inmates referred to as the Healing Angel. What can you tell us about him?”
Oberheuser remained silent and gave no indication that Mason was in the room.
“Herta?”
She looked up at him. “Frau Doktor Oberheuser. We are not friends.”
“Frau Doktor . . . now that you’ve had some time to think over our last conversation—”
“You said that if I gave you information, you would file a favorable report to the prosecutor’s office.”
“Yes. Showing compassion for the innocent victims and a willingness to cooperate can help your defense.”
“I do not wish to be handed over to the Russians. I don’t want to be hanged.”
“We’ll do our best to help you avoid them, but—I’m being honest with you here—your sentencing is not up to me.”
Oberheuser’s frown deepened. She noticed her battling hands and dropped her free hand to her lap. “I want to be clear that anything I say will not implicate me in any way. I will only tell you things that cannot be used against me.”
“Whatever you tell us about your activities stays in this room,” Wolski said.
“What I told you before, that I hardly knew the German prisoner doctor, wasn’t quite correct.”
“Why don’t you start with his name?”
“Dr. Ernst Ramek.”
Wolski wrote it down, and Mason asked, “Could you describe him for us?”
Oberheuser took a long drag on her cigarette. “I . . .” She paused. “Maybe this was a mistake.”
“I believe part of you wants to come forward because you know these killings are wrong,” Wolski said. “You became a doctor to save lives. German lives. And this killer is murdering fellow Germans.”
Oberheuser chortled. “Do not patronize me, Detective. I give you information, and you save me from the Russians. Though I think you are lying about that, what choice do I have?”
“Then don’t tell us anything and go back to your cage. It’s up to you.”
With a smirk of superiority, Oberheuser fixed her gaze at the wall.
Mason stood. “We’re done here. Guard!”
Oberheuser stiffened. “No, wait.”
The MP guard opened the door. Mason signaled him to go back outside. He sat again and waited for Oberheuser.
“He was as you described. Tall and broad shouldered. Though very thin.”
“Anything else about his appearance?”
Oberheuser shrugged. “After a year of slave labor anyone looks like a skeleton. He always looked sickly to me. He had this long stare and hollow eyes.”
“What about hair? Scars or deformities? Glasses?”
“Brown hair, brown eyes, no glasses, no deformities that I know of.”
“Did he tell you anything about where he came from? Family? Friends? Was he a deeply religious man?”
“We never talked except for my instructions during procedures. I had no interest in him other than his skills as a surgeon.”
“So this man, Ramek, assisted you in your experiments?”
Oberheuser nodded.
“Can you tell us why he was put in the concentration camps?”
“I have no idea. All I know about his history is that he had worked as a slave laborer at Sachsenhausen for a year before arriving at Ravensbrück.”
“And where was he transferred after his stay at Ravensbrück?”
“Mauthausen.”
Wolski flipped through his notepad. “Kiesewetter took him on to Mauthausen?”
Oberheuser nodded.
“Okay. What else do you remember about him?”
“I found it amusing that most of the other inmates considered him a gentle and kind man. A savior. That’s why they called him the Healing Angel.” She let out a soft chuckle. “Yet he operated with a certain . . . glee. You see, he could manipulate subjects into believing that he was there to help and protect them
. That the procedures were for their own good. He could get them to lie down on the operating table despite the camp rumors to the contrary.”
“Did he ever . . . go beyond what was required?” Wolski asked. “We’re asking this because we want to feel confident that this is our killer. Anything you could tell us about his behavior could help us.”
Oberheuser took a puff as she thought. “After we had performed several procedures together, I noticed he became sexually aroused during the operations. He seemed to go into a trance, though his methods were still very good. Very meticulous. I grew to respect his work, but as an individual he disgusted me. And later, after I had moved on to other studies, I heard he had, at times, gone too far—performing multiple amputations or separating a subject’s entire pelvis and legs. He would operate with incredible intensity, and then once the procedure was finished, he would fall into a kind of despair.”
“Did he ever perform these operations on subjects without anesthesia?”
“Never. What would be the point? All our studies were conducted to discover better ways of treating wounded soldiers.”
“Any rumors of him performing other types of operations without anesthesia?”
Oberheuser crushed out her cigarette, and Wolski offered her another. After he lit it for her she said with a quiet and unsure voice, “None that I had anything to do with.”
“Then he may have.”
“He assisted Dr. Kiesewetter in several studies. What they did or how they did them is none of my affair. I will not substantiate rumors.”
“Then there were rumors about Kiesewetter and Ramek operating on subjects without anesthesia?” Wolski asked.
“There were always rumors. But I will not tell you something I did not see with my own eyes.”
“How long did he stay at Ravensbrück?”
“To my knowledge, nine months. Like I said, he followed Dr. Kiesewetter to Mauthausen. In early 1944.”
“Was it usual at Ravensbrück for SS doctors to take prisoner doctors with them when they were transferred?”
“Yes. However, Dr. Kiesewetter seemed to rely heavily on Ramek. Who knows? Maybe they both had erections while operating and then simultaneously ejaculated at the moment of the subject’s death, like some depraved men’s club.”
Mason leaned forward and looked into her eyes. “Frau Doktor, I hope you’re not telling us fairy tales just so you won’t be turned over to the Russians.”
The doctor glared at Mason. “I have far more to lose if you discover I am lying. And how can I be sure that once you’re finished with me you won’t hand me over to the Russians? Or that you’re lying about that favorable report?”
“We’ll do what we promised, Frau Doktor,” Wolski said. “The Judge Advocate’s office assured us that they will deny the Russian petition in exchange for talking to us. We will also submit the favorable letter today.”
A three-way staring contest lasted a few moments until Wolski asked, “Do you have anything to add?”
Oberheuser tossed her cigarette into the ashtray and stared at the table. Her hand shook and her eyes watered. She shook her head and used the table for support as she stood. Her lawyer moved over to the table to help steady her. Wolski walked over to the door and knocked. The two MPs entered, and Mason watched as this now-broken woman allowed the guards to attach her shackles and lead her away.
Wolski feigned a shudder of disgust. “She was more disturbed by the idea of two doctors ejaculating than them cutting open a live patient.”
“Aside from her twisted mind, do you think she’s telling the truth?”
“You saw her eyes. She was back there in the camp, reliving all the madness. . . .” Wolski shuddered again. “She was telling her truth, anyway.”
“Now we get to hear from an inmate, Dr. Blazek. Another truth, another camp, and another nightmare.”
THIRTY-THREE
At three o’clock Mason and Wolski were led to a two-story house, just outside the Dachau camp enclosure, reserved for the camp commander and visiting war crimes lawyers and investigators. They waited in the front foyer where the escorting sergeant had left them. A tall, lanky JAG captain with a bald pate and wire-rimmed glasses slid open the living room pocket doors, closed them again, and entered. He introduced himself as Arnie Patterborn.
“Dr. Blazek is ready for you now. But just a few ground rules. It took him four months in a hospital to recover, and he’s still weak. You name a disease and he had it when Mauthausen was liberated. This trip, our deposition, and identifying the camp perpetrators has taken a lot out of him. So try to make this as brief as you can. If he drifts off subject, which he tends to do, then gently get him back on track. We still have to return him to Prague this evening. The Czechs don’t want us to keep him overnight, and I don’t think they’ll be too happy if they know he’s being interviewed in a criminal investigation. I’ll be in the room with you, and if I determine you’re pushing him too hard, then I’ll cut it short.”
Mason and Wolski agreed. Patterborn slowly slid open the doors like stage curtains opening on a somber play. The living room curtains were drawn halfway. The reduced incoming daylight and the mahogany paneling made the room quite dim. Blazek sat in a wheelchair with a blanket across his lap. Mason knew the man was in his late forties, but he looked sixty-five. His white hair topped an angular face made more so by his sunken cheeks and white goatee.
Patterborn introduced them.
“Forgive me, gentlemen, for not greeting you properly,” Blazek said. “My heart and kidneys are not what they should be.” He spoke perfect German with a thick Czech accent.
Mason and Wolski sat on a sofa facing Blazek. Patterborn took a chair off to one side.
“We’re very happy you’re willing to talk to us, Dr. Blazek,” Mason said.
“Captain Patterborn told me all about your investigation. A terrible thing. Terrible.”
“We hope our questions won’t be too tough on you, bringing up bad memories and all,” Wolski said.
“The memories are burned into my psyche. Your questions will have no effect on their constant presence in my mind.”
“We understand you were a prisoner doctor at Mauthausen,” Mason said. “We’re hoping you might be able to give us information on a possible suspect.”
“The murderer. Yes . . .” Blazek paused a moment, as if to summon his memories. “I was at Mauthausen from the summer of 1942 until liberation this past May by your American army. Though I was a psychiatrist before my internment, I had practiced enough medicine to be chosen to work as a prisoner doctor. I was on block twenty-six in logistics and block thirty-two for convalescing inmates.”
“Did you know a Dr. Ernst Ramek, a German prisoner doctor?”
“My, yes. Toward the end of ’44 we were housed in the same block. We shared many talks together, whispering in the night. Dr. Ramek had a very troubled soul.”
“How do you mean?”
“We all—‘we’ meaning the prisoner doctors—felt a certain amount of guilt about working with the SS doctors. We were better fed, better housed, and spared the appallingly brutal labor. We survived by agreeing to work for sadistic thugs. Administering medical care to inmates, while knowing that if they recovered, they must once again suffer in the quarries or the underground factories. We all to some degree made a pact with the devil for the chance of survival. Do not misunderstand me; we all lived with imminent death, hour by hour, day by day. We risked the nightly beatings and random murders by the kapos. We suffered from malnutrition and, in my case, contracting any number of diseases. . . .”
Mason interrupted Blazek to bring him back to the question. “And Dr. Ramek? All of you suffered, so why do you say that he had a troubled soul?”
“He never told me details of his participation, except to say that he assisted in savage, inhuman medical experiments. So his guilt, the guilt we all
share, was amplified a hundredfold.”
“But he wasn’t the only prisoner doctor forced to assist in experiments like that,” Wolski said.
“Ah, but layered with his guilt, he admitted to fantasies and arousal in the act, only to be devastated afterward. I believe he was a troubled man before his internment. Being forced to participate in those experiments unleashed repressed feelings. Flights of fancy as a boy or adolescent, normally repressed, suddenly collided with reality.”
“Another witness who knew him claims that he started out as a kind and respected prisoner doctor,” Wolski said.
“Yes, he was kind and gentle to other inmates. He was never a monster. He simply lost his soul and, consequently, his sanity. I witnessed many inmates who, when faced with such terror and depravity, teetered on the edge of insanity. Dr. Ramek became trapped in a mental cycle of fantasies, desire, performance of the act, then the crushing disappointment that his fantasies had not been realized.”
“So, as long as he needed to fulfill his fantasies, he’d go on killing,” Mason said. “Like the man we’re hunting in Munich.”
For a time, Blazek fell silent. “During my long recovery, I’ve had time to consider the many men placed in the extreme environment of Mauthausen. The men who performed unimaginable cruelty . . . and the victims. What brought each to that point, and how does one go back to a normal life? How could a camp guard or a kapo or an SS doctor who for years performed inhumane acts settle back into normal society? There must be a dissociation between the two experiences, creating a duality that preserves the psyche. Dr. Ramek, and perhaps your murderer, could not maintain that duality, leaving them unable to recover from their experiences.”
“What if I told you that we believe Dr. Ramek and the Munich killer are the same person?” Mason asked.
“The same? Oh, no, that is not possible.”
Mason and Wolski exchanged looks of surprise. “How is that, Doctor?” Wolski asked. “They both fit the physical description, and their methods of killing . . .”
Ruins of War Page 24
