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Back The One from the Other
Chapters (50)
  1. Praise
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. ONE
  7. TWO
  8. THREE
  9. FOUR
  10. FIVE
  11. SIX
  12. SEVEN
  13. EIGHT
  14. NINE
  15. TEN
  16. ELEVEN
  17. TWELVE
  18. THIRTEEN
  19. FOURTEEN
  20. FIFTEEN
  21. SIXTEEN
  22. SEVENTEEN
  23. EIGHTEEN
  24. NINETEEN
  25. TWENTY
  26. TWENTY-ONE
  27. TWENTY-TWO
  28. TWENTY-THREE
  29. TWENTY-FOUR
  30. TWENTY-FIVE
  31. TWENTY-SIX
  32. TWENTY-SEVEN
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT
  34. TWENTY-NINE
  35. THIRTY
  36. THIRTY-ONE
  37. THIRTY-TWO
  38. THIRTY-THREE
  39. THIRTY-FOUR
  40. THIRTY-FIVE
  41. THIRTY-SIX
  42. THIRTY-SEVEN
  43. THIRTY-EIGHT
  44. THIRTY-NINE
  45. FORTY
  46. FORTY-ONE
  47. FORTY-TWO
  48. EPILOGUE
  49. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  50. Teaser chapter

The details of the experimentation made extremely uncomfortable reading. In the Dachau doctors’ trial of October 1946, a Roman Catholic priest, one Father Koch, had testified that he had been sent to the malaria station at Dachau, where, every afternoon, a box of mosquitoes had been placed between his legs for half an hour. After seventeen days he left the station, and it was another eight months before he succumbed to a malaria attack. Other priests, children, Russian and Polish prisoners, and, of course, many Jews, had not been so lucky, and several hundred had died in the three years that these malaria experiments had continued.

For their crimes, seven of the so-called Nazi doctors had been hanged at Landsberg in June 1948. Rose had been one of five sentenced to life in prison. Another four doctors had been sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from ten to twenty years. Seven had been acquitted. At his trial, Gerhard Rose had justified his actions, arguing that it was reasonable to sacrifice “a few hundred” in pursuit of a prophylactic vaccine capable of saving tens of thousands of lives.

Rose had been assisted by a number of other doctors including Eric Gruen and Heinrich Henkell, and a nurse-kapo called Albertine Zehner.

Albertine Zehner. That was a real shock. But it had to be the same girl. And it seemed to explain a great deal that had been a mystery to me. Engelbertina Zehner had been a Jewish prisoner turned kapo and nursing assistant in the medical block at Majdanek and Dachau. She had never worked in a camp brothel at all. She had been a nurse-kapo.

Gruen’s file described him as being still at large, a wanted war criminal. An early investigation into Gruen’s case by the legal officer of the 1st Ukrainian Front and two legal officers from the Soviet Special State Commission had come to nothing. Statements from inmates at all three camps, and F. F. Bryshin, a forensic medical expert from the Red Army, were provided.

The last page in the file was the record of file protocol, and this, too, provided a surprise for me, for here I found the following note: This file examined by American occupation authorities in Vienna, October 1946, in the person of Major J. Jacobs, United States Army.