“Thank you, Fr?ulein Binz,” I said, walking her to the canteen door.
“Never thank an Aufseherin, Doctor,” Fritz said. “Bad precedent.”
Binz let the door slam behind her and strode out onto the platz. She discarded her cigarette, not even half-smoked, flicking it onto the cobblestones with her thumb and forefinger. It was clear Binz was not the friend I was seeking.
After lunch, I walked with Fritz and Dr. Hellinger toward the utility block, where new prisoners were processed. On the way I saw every H?ftling in uniform wore a colorful triangle on her sleeve, just below her number.
“What do the colored badges mean, Fritz?” I asked.
“Green triangle is a convicted criminal—mostly from Berlin, rough sorts, though some are here for breaking insignificant rules. Many Blockovas wear this. Purple is Bible girl—Jehovah’s Witness. All they have to do is sign a paper saying they put Hitler above all else, and they can walk free, but they won’t—crazy. Red triangle is political prisoner. Mostly Poles. Black is asocials: Prostitutes. Alcoholics. Pacifists. The letter sewn inside the triangle indicates nationality. Jews get two triangles put together to make a star. Himmler’s idea.”
We walked to the utility block, along a line of naked women waiting outside. The women all appeared to be Slavs of some sort, of all ages and body types. Some were visibly pregnant. When they saw the male doctors, some shrieked, and all tried to cover themselves.
“These women need clothes, Fritz,” I said.
Once inside, we stood in a quiet corner to talk. “Here’s how we do our selections,” Fritz said. “First, Hellinger looks for and records all silver or gold fillings and bridgework. Then we choose those least fit to work. If those two things line up, the prisoner is chosen. A prisoner too sick to work with a mouthful of metal goes on this list. We tell them anything but the truth.”
“And the truth is?” I asked.
“Express bus to heaven, either the gas van or Evipan. Gasoline if we run out. After that, Hellinger extracts the Reich’s payment. We’ll do Evipan today.”
I hugged my waist. “I thought the prisoners needed to work.”
“Old ladies can’t pull a concrete roller, Herta.”
“Few of them are that old and the ones that are can be put to work knitting. And the pregnant ones need to be off their feet.”
“It’s German law. No child can be born at a camp. And a certain percentage needs special handling. Otherwise this place will be too crowded, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not crazy about typhus. And besides, some of them are Jews.”
The reeducation-camp label was a front. How could I have been so na?ve? My nausea returned.
“I need to go to my room and unpack,” I said.
“You were fine with the cadaver lab at school.”
“They weren’t breathing, Fritz. I’d rather not be involved.”
“Rather not? You won’t be here long with that attitude.”
“I’m just not comfortable with all this. It’s so, well, personal.”
The thought of administering a lethal injection was too abhorrent to dwell on. Would we inject into the arm? Lethal injections were barbaric and bound to be psychologically damaging for those administering them.
I touched Fritz’s hand. “But cyanide is quick and quiet. Mixed with orange juice—”
“You think I like this?” Fritz asked, drawing me closer. “You do what you have to here. The alternative for them is Vernichtung durch Arbeit.”
Death by labor. Planned starvation.
“It’s orders. Direct from Himmler. They all get just enough calories to keep them alive to work for three months. Slow extermination.”
“I can’t…”
He shrugged. “They’ll die anyway. Just don’t think about it.”
Fritz approached the line of naked women and clapped his hands, and they huddled together like horses in a barn.
“Good day, ladies. Any of you who are over fifty years old, have a temperature above forty degrees, or are pregnant, step to the side, and we’ll make sure you get a rest, after your typhus inoculations. I can only take sixty-five, so step up now.”
The women talked among themselves, some translating Fritz’s instructions into other languages, and soon volunteers emerged. “Here, this is my mother,” said one young woman as she prodded an older woman forward. “She has been coughing so hard she cannot work.”
“Of course,” Fritz said.
One obviously pregnant, dark-skinned girl with brown, heavily lashed eyes like those of a dairy cow came forward and smiled at Fritz, her arms crossed, resting on her swollen belly. In minutes Fritz had his sixty-five candidates, and he instructed a guard to accompany them to the Revier. At least they went along calmly.
“Since when is there a vaccine for typhus?” I asked, keeping my voice low, in case some of the prisoners understood German.
“Of course it doesn’t exist. On average sick H?ftlings only live fourteen days, so we’re simply hastening the process. It’s far more humane than other methods.”
Fritz led us to my new workplace, the Revier, the prisoner medical clinic, housed in a low-slung block identical to the rest. The front reception area opened onto a large room filled with cots and bunk beds, crowded with patients, some lying on the bare floor, some in advanced stages of disease. One H?ftling hosted such an abundance of adult lice, her short hair was white with them, and she had scratched great patches of her skin raw. Not a quality operation.
A young prisoner-nurse named Gerda Quernheim greeted us. Gerda, a pretty, chestnut-haired girl from Düsseldorf, had attended the School of Midwifery there. She was an excellent nurse, but even Gerda couldn’t handle the Revier.
Fritz led us down the hall, past a large meat locker, not unlike Heinz’s.
“What is this?” I asked, touching the door, cold and damp with condensation. I brushed away a flash of Onkel Heinz’s face.
“Cold storage,” Fritz said. “Gebhardt’s.”
Fritz led me to a back room, painted a soothing, pale green, two stools and a tall lab table the only furniture. The light caught the silver barrel of a syringe, one of three laid out on the table, certainly not sterile. A gray rubber apron hung on a wall hook swayed with the breeze as we entered. The windows in that part of the building were painted white, like cloudy cataract eyes. It felt claustrophobic, as if we were snowed in.
“Why are these windows painted over?” I asked.
“Gebhardt is a freak for privacy,” Fritz said.
“Honestly, Fritz, I am tired from the train today.”
“Take half a pethidine if you have to,” Fritz said, his brow creased. “Would you rather take last call? Shooting-wall duty.”
“Shooting wall?” I said. “Perhaps this is better.”
“Much tidier. The first is the hardest; trust me. Like jumping in a cold lake.”
Two Aufseherinnen brought in the first prisoner from Fritz’s selection, a surprisingly spry older woman wearing only wooden clogs and a blanket over her shoulders. She tried to speak to Fritz in Polish through a jumble of confused teeth.
Fritz smiled. “Yes, yes, come in. We’re just preparing the inoculations.”
He tied on the rubber apron.
“Kill them with kindness,” Fritz said. “Makes it easier for all.”
The Aufseherinnen led the old woman to the stool. Over my shoulder I watched Gerda load a 20-cc hypodermic syringe, drawing enough yellowish-pink Evipan into the barrel to kill an ox.
“We painted this room pale green since it soothes patients,” Fritz said.
The Aufseherinnen removed the blanket, wrapped a towel around the woman’s face, and held her left arm out as if preparing for a venous injection.
“Injections were not my forte in medical school,” I said.
One of the Aufseherinnen pressed her knee into the old woman’s back to thrust her chest forward.
Fritz pressed the heavy syringe into my palm.