QB VII (46 page)

“Fortunately,” Gilray said, “this case will be settled on law and not philosophy.”

“My Lord,” Oliver Lighthall said, “I am going to take difference with you on the matter of medical practice under duress. Granted, Jadwiga was at the bottom of the pit, but physicians have practiced in all sorts of hells, in all sorts of plagues, famines, battlefields, prisons, and all imaginable evil situations. We are still bound by the Hippocratic oath of twenty-four hundred years standing, which binds us to help our patient but never a view to injury or wrong-doing. You see, my Lord, a prisoner has the right to protection from a physician for the oath also states, “and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption and further from the seduction of females or males of freemen and slaves.”

25

T
HE ROOM REVERBERATED FROM
the testimony of Oliver Lighthall, who was smothered in the consultation room by Abe and Shawcross and Ben and Vanessa and Geoffrey and Pam and Cecil Dodd. Lighthall was still angry and felt he had not said enough. The press ran to telephones and down Fleet Street.

FAMED PHYSICIAN RECITES HIPPOCRATIC OATH ON WITNESS STAND
the headlines would blare.

“Before we adjourn for the weekend,” Anthony Gilray said, “I should like to know, and I am certain the members of the jury will be much obliged, if you could tell us how many more witnesses you plan to call and of what duration, Mr. Bannister.”

“Three, your Lordship, and an outside chance of a fourth. Only one, Dr. Tesslar, will be examined at great length.”

“So taking into consideration your closing speeches and my instructions there is a possibility the case can go to the jury by the next weekend.”

“I should think so, my Lord.”

“Thank you. In that event I am going to ask the associate to pass the jury copies of
The Holocaust.
I take it into consideration that this is a hook of over seven hundred pages and it is hardly likely that you could read it carefully in two days. However, I do ask you to go through it as thoroughly as you are able so as to have a basic understanding of what the author wrote. I ask you to do that for when I give you my instructions we will bear in mind that the offending portion of the book takes up a single paragraph and this will have to do with the weight or sting of the libel. The court stands in recess until Monday.”

26

T
HE LOT PLANE FROM
Warsaw bearing Dr. Maria Viskova cut its Soviet-built engines. She passed through customs dressed in a severe two piece suit, flat heels, and without make-up. Even so she could not conceal a certain beauty.

“I’m Abraham Cady. My daughter Vanessa and my son Ben.”

“Ben? I knew your uncle Ben in Spain. He was a fine boy. You resemble him, you know.”

“Thanks. He was a great man. How was your flight?”

“Just fine.”

“We have a surprise for you,” Abe said, taking her arm and leading her into the lobby where Jacob Alexander stood with Dr. Susanne Parmentier. The two women approached each other, separated by twenty years’ absence. They took each other’s hands and held them and looked into the other’s face, then embraced softly and walked arm in arm from the terminal.

The trial entered its third week. The Shawcross-Cady forces showed the wear of a nonstop weekend of preparation for the final push. Even the frigid Thomas Bannister was showing the effects.

As Maria Viskova entered the court, she paused for a moment to stare at Adam Kelno. Kelno turned away and feigned talking to Richard Smiddy. Abe helped Susanne Parmentier to a seat beside him. Jacob Alexander passed up a note,
I TALKED TO MARK TESSLAR THIS MORNING, HE SENDS HIS DEEPEST REGRETS THAT HE WAS NOT THERE TO MEET DR. VISKOVA’S PLANE, BUT HE IS A BIT UNDER THE WEATHER AND WANTS TO SAVE HIS STRENGTH FOR HIS TESTIMONY. PLEASE HAVE DR. PARMENTIER RELATE THIS TO DR. VISKOVA.

Maria Viskova’s voice and eyes were mellow as she was affirmed through her Polish interpreter. They had decided her English was not quite good enough for direct testimony. “I am Maria Viskova,” she said in answer to Bannister’s question. “I work and live at the Miner’s Sanitarium, Zakopane, Poland. I was born in Krakow in 1910.”

“What happened after you completed your secondary education?”

“I was unable to get into any medical school in Poland. I am a Jewess and the quotas were filled. I studied in France and after I received my degree I moved to Czechoslovakia and practiced in a mountain health resort in the Tatra Mountains, a tubercular sanitarium. It was in the year of 1936.”

“And you met and married a Dr. Viskski?”

“Yes, he was also Polish. Our Czech name is Viskova.”

“Dr. Viskova. Are you a member of the Communist Party?”

“I am.”

“Would you tell us the circumstances?”

“I joined the International Brigade with my husband to fight for Loyalist Spain against Franco. When the civil war was over we fled to France, where we worked in a sanitarium for respiratory diseases in the town of Cambo on the French-Spanish border in the Pyrenees Mountains.”

“And during the second war, what kind of activities did you engage in?”

“My husband and I established an underground station in Cambo to smuggle out French officers and soldiers so they could join French forces in Africa. We also smuggled arms in from Spain to the resistance, the FFI in France.”

“After two and a half years of this underground activity you were caught and turned over to the Gestapo in the occupied portion of France, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“After the war, did the French government recognize your activities?”

“I was decorated with the Croix de Guerre with star by General de Gaulle. My husband was awarded one posthumously. He had been executed by the Gestapo.”

“And in the late spring of 1943 you were sent to the Jadwiga Concentration Camp. Would you tell us what happened on your arrival?”

“It was discovered, at the selection shed, I was a doctor, so I was assigned to the medical compound to Barrack III. I was met by SS Colonel Voss and Dr. Kelno and learned that a Polish woman doctor had just committed suicide, and I was to take her place in charge of the women on the ground floor. I found out shortly what Barrack III was all about. It always held two to three hundred women being experimented on or waiting to be experimented on.”

“Did you come into contact with the other doctors?”

“Yes. A short time after my arrival, Dr. Tesslar came to take care of the men on the upper floor. I was quite sick from exposure in an open wagon on the trip to Poland and contracted pneumonia. Dr. Tesslar nursed me back to health.”

“So you saw him on a daily basis?”

“Yes, we were extremely close.”

“It has been testified to by Dr. Kelno that it was common knowledge that Dr. Tesslar not only cooperated with Voss in his experiments but performed abortions on camp prostitutes.”

“It is too ridiculous to comment on. Nothing but a lie.”

“But we do want your comments, Madame Viskova.”

“We worked together day and night for months. He was the greatest humanitarian I have ever known—a man morally incapable of any wrongdoing. Dr. Kelno, who made these accusations, has made them only to cover his own foul deeds.”

“I’m afraid your comments are getting rather editorial,” Judge Gilray said.

“Yes, I know. It is difficult to editorialize a saint.”

“It has also been testified to that Dr. Tesslar had private quarters in the barrack.”

Maria Viskova smiled and shook her head in disbelief. “The doctors and Kapos had a space of seven feet by four feet. Enough for a bed, a chair, and a small stand.”

“But no private toilet or showers or dining facilities. Hardly luxurious?”

“It was smaller than any prison cell. They gave it to us so we could write out our reports.”

“Were there any other doctors associated with this particular area of the medical compound?”

“Dr. Parmentier, a French woman. She was the only non-Jew around Barrack III. Actually, she lived in the main compound but had access to come to Barrack III to try to help the victims of Dr. Flensberg’s experiments. Flensberg was driving people insane. Dr. Parmentier was a psychiatrist.”

“How would you describe her?”

“She was a saint.”

“Any other doctors?”

“For a short time, Dr. Boris Dimshits. A Russian Jew, a prisoner.”

“What did you discover about him?”

“He was doing ovariectomies for Voss. He told me so. He wept about what he was doing to fellow Jews, but he did not have the strength to protest.”

“How would you describe his physical appearance and his mental state?”

“He seemed ancient. His mind began to wander and his hands were covered with eczema. His patients, whom I cared for, were coming back from surgery in progressively worse condition. It was apparent he had become incompetent.”

“On some of his earlier operations, what did you observe?”

“His operations seemed proper. The scars were of a three inch length, and he used care and put the girls to sleep with general anesthetic. Of course there were always complications because of the terrible sanitation and lack of proper medicines and food.”

“So then when Dr. Dimshits was no longer able to do his work, Voss sent him to the gas chamber.”

“That is correct.”

“Are you quite certain he wasn’t sent to the gas chamber for other reasons?”

“No, Dr. Kelno told me that is what Voss told him. Voss told me the same thing later.”

“Because Dimshits was useless, unable to perform, I see. Is Adam Kelno in this courtroom?”

She pointed with a steady finger.

“Were any other doctors sent to the gas chamber?”

“Of course not.”

“Of course not? Weren’t tens of thousands of people being murdered in Jadwiga?”

“Not doctors. The Germans were desperate for doctors. Dimshits was the only one ever sent to the gas chamber.”

“I see. Did you ever meet a Dr. Lotaki?”

“Very casually.”

“Dr. Kelno testified that when Voss informed him he was going to do those operations, he and Dr. Lotaki talked it over with the rest of the doctors. What did he say to you?”

“He never spoke to me about it.”

“He didn’t? He didn’t discuss the ethical concepts, or ask your blessing, or seek your counsel, or get your decision that it was for the best for the patients.”

“No, he ran things in an arrogant manner. He asked advice from no one.”

“Perhaps that was because you weren’t free to leave Barrack III. Maybe he made a mistake and forgot about you?”

“I could move freely all around the main medical compound.”

“And you could talk with all the other doctors.”

“Yes.”

“Did any of the other doctors at any time relate to you conversations they had with Dr. Kelno in which he sought their advice and consent?”

“I never heard of any such conversation. We all knew that ...”

“What did you know?”

“We all knew the experiments were a sham, an excuse for Voss to stay off the Eastern Front so he would not have to fight the Russians.”

“How did you know that?”

“Voss joked about it. He said so long as he kept reports going to Berlin he wouldn’t have to see action and as long as he wormed his way into Himmler’s good graces he would eventually get the reward of a private clinic.”

“So Voss himself realized his experiments had no scientific value.”

“He got pleasure from butchering.”

Bannister let his voice rise on this rare occasion. ... “Did Dr. Kelno know that Voss’s experiments were useless?”

“It is impossible he did not know.”

Bannister played with some papers on the rostrum. “Now then, what did you notice after Dr. Dimshits’s death?”

“The quality of the surgery degenerated. We were faced with all sorts of post-operative complications. There were terrible complaints about the pain from the spinals. Dr. Tesslar and I called for Dr. Kelno to come many, many times. We were ignored.”

“We come now,” Bannister said with melodious and ominous monotone, “to a certain night in mid-October of 1943 in which you were summoned to Dr. Voss’s office in Barrack V.”

“I remember,” she whispered, with tears forming in her eyes.

“What took place?”

“I was alone with Voss in his office. He told me that Berlin wanted more information about his experiments and that he was stepping things up. He needed more doctors and he was assigning me to the surgery.”

“What did you answer?”

“I told him I wasn’t a surgeon. He told me I would give anesthetic and assist. Dr. Kelno and Dr. Lotaki were having trouble with unwilling patients.”

“And what was your answer to that?”

“I told him I would not do it.”

“You mean, you refused.”

“Yes.”

“You refused an SS colonel with power to send people to the gas chambers.”

“Yes.”

“What did Voss do about that?”

“He screamed the usual curses and ordered me to report to Barrack V again the next day for operations.”

“What happened then?”

“I returned to my room in Barrack III and thought it over and came to a decision.”

“What was that decision?”

“To commit suicide.”

A dozen gasps pierced an otherwise stunned silence. Adam Kelno wiped the perspiration from his face.

“What was your intention?”

She slowly unbuttoned the top of her blouse, reached in her bosom, and took out a locket. She opened it and withdrew a pill and held it out “I had this cyanide tablet. I have kept it till this day to remind me.” She stared at it as she must have a thousand times.

“Are you able to continue, Dr. Viskova?” the judge asked.

“Yes, of course. I placed this on a wooden crate which was used as a nightstand beside my cot and took a pad and wrote a note of farewell to Dr. Tesslar and Dr. Parmentier. My door opened. Dr. Parmentier came in and saw the pill.”

“Did she become alarmed?”

“No. She was quite calm. She sat beside me and took the pencil and paper from my hand ... and she stroked my hair, and she said words to me that I have remembered in all the difficult moments of my life.”