QB VII (52 page)

“He probably hid it.”

“How? You were his superior. You had a dialogue with Voss and Flensberg, whom you described as your associates. How could he have hidden it?”

“I can’t know. He was very crafty.”

“I suggest he performed no surgery of any kind in Jadwiga.”

“It was rumor,” Adam answered, breaking into a sweat.

“Please turn to page sixty-five. Now that seems to be quite a different handwriting except the signature of the operator. Would you explain that?”

“Sometimes a medical clerk filled out everything except the surgeon’s signature. It could be Sobotnik who falsified the operations for the Communist underground.”

“But you aren’t suggesting you didn’t sign it or the signature is a forgery? If you caught him forging your signature later you’d have done something about that, like what you did to Menno Donker.”

“I am going to object,” Highsmith said.

“The register will bear out what was done to Menno Donker,” Bannister said in an unprecedented show of outright anger. “Well, Dr. Kelno?”

“I was very tired at the end of many days and sometimes I did not read carefully what I signed.”

“I see. We have photocopied twenty double pages from the register and each one of these double pages lists some forty operations. In those operations that are marked amputation testis, sin or dex, we refer, do we not, to the amputation of a right or left testicle.”

“Yes.”

“Now, how does that differ from the operation described as castration?”

“One means the removal of a dead or irradiated gland as I testified. The other means ... well ... it means ...”

“What!”

“Castration.”

“The removal of both testicles?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. I will now ask the associate to hand you a document which was your sworn statement to the Home Office during the extradition proceedings of 1947. It was written by you in Brixton Prison.”

Highsmith bounced up. “This is out of order, most out of order. In having approved the defendant’s amended Particulars it was understood by us all that the questioning would be confined to the medical register.”

“In the first instance,” Bannister said, “Dr. Kelno entered his Home Office statement as part of his own evidence. It was a document he himself brought forth. There now appear to be enormous discrepancies between what he said in 1947, what he testified to earlier in the trial, and what the medical register is saying. If the register is lying, then all he has to do is say so. I believe the jury has every right to know which is the correct testimony.”

“Your objection is overruled, Sir Robert. You may continue, Mr. Bannister.”

“Thank you. On page three of your statement to the Home Office you state, ‘I may have removed a few unhealthy testicles or ovaries, but I was performing surgery all the time and in thousands of cases one is always bound to find this part of the body diseased like any other part of the body.’ That’s what you swore to in 1947 to escape extradition to Poland, is it not?”

“It was very long ago.”

“And a month ago in this courtroom you testified that you may have performed a few dozen and assisted Dr. Lotaki on another dozen. Is that what you said here?”

“Yes, I recalled a few more operations after my statement to the Home Office.”

“Well, Dr. Kelno, I suggest that if you add up the ovariectomies and testicle amputations you performed that are recorded in this volume of the medical register it will add up to two hundred and seventy-five, and that you assisted in another hundred.”

“I am very confused as to the exact number of operations. You can see for yourself there were almost twenty thousand operations. How can I remember the exact number?”

“Dr. Kelno,” Bannister pressed, now softening his tone again, “you heard Tukla’s testimony that there were two more volumes of the surgical register completed before you left Jadwiga. Is that a fact?”

“Yes, perhaps.”

“Now, what do you think these two volumes would bear out if they suddenly showed up? Wouldn’t the total show us that closer to a thousand of these operations were performed or assisted by you?”

“Unless I see it with my own eyes, I would not say so.”

“But you agree that you operated or assisted in three hundred and fifty operations borne out in this volume.”

“I think it may be right.”

“And do you now agree you had an anesthetist available and actually you never did give the anesthetic yourself in the operating theater as you previously testified.”

“I am confused on that point.”

“I ask you to turn to page three of your statement to the Home Office, and I quote your words, ‘I categorically deny I ever performed surgery on a healthy man or woman.’ Did you say that in 1947?”

“I believe that was my recollection at the time.”

“And did you give the same testimony in this courtroom?”

“I did.”

“Will you open the medical register to page seventy-two and look at the fourth operation from the bottom performed on an Oleg Solinka and tell the court about this.”

“It says ... gypsy ... court order ...”

“And the operation?”

“Castration.”

“Is that your signature as the surgeon?”

“Yes.”

“Now, kindly turn to page two hundred and sixteen about mid-page. We see a Greek name, Popolus. Would you read for my Lord and the jury the diagnosis, the operation, and the surgeon?”

“It is another court order case.”

“A castration performed by you because this man was a homosexual?”

“I ... I ...”

“Will you kindly now turn to page two hundred and eighteen. At the very top we see a woman’s name, apparently a German woman, a Helga Brockmann. What does it say about her?”

Kelno glared at the page.

“Well?” Gilray prodded.

He took a long sip of water.

“Is it correct,” Thomas Bannister said, “that this woman, a German criminal sentenced to Jadwiga, had her ovaries removed by a court order because she was not a registered prostitute, and she was practicing prostitution?”

“I think ... it could be.”

“Now kindly turn to page three hundred and ten and let me see, twelfth from the top. A Russian name, Borlatsky, Igor Borlatsky.”

Again Adam Kelno stalled.

“I think you’d better answer the question,” Gilray said.

“It is a court order for castration of a mentally incompetent.”

“Was there anything wrong with these people?”

“Well, the prostitute may have had a venereal disease.”

“Do you hack out a woman’s ovaries for that?”

“In some cases.”

“Well tell my Lord and the jury what kind of disease mental incompetent is and how that can be cured by a castration.”

“It was the crazy things the Germans did.”

“What kind of disease is gypsy?”

“The Germans sentenced certain people by court order, ‘inferior to Germans.’ ”

“Now kindly turn to page twelve, bottom third of the page, a castration performed on an Albert Goldbauer. What is the diagnosis?”

“Court order.”

“For what?”

“Smuggling.”

“What kind of illness was smuggling?”

Adam did not answer again.

“Isn’t it true that smuggling was a way of life and that you yourself engaged in it? It was universal in Jadwiga, was it not?”

“It was,” he croaked.

“I suggest there are in this volume twenty court order cases, fifteen males and five females in which castrations and double ovariectomies were performed by you on healthy people. I suggest you were not telling the truth in that witness box when you testified that you never performed a court order surgery. You did not do this, Dr. Kelno, to save their lives or because they had dead organs as you justified before, you did it because the Germans told you to do it.”

“I simply did not recall the court order cases earlier. I did so much surgery.”

“I suggest you would have never recalled it unless this register showed up. Now, Dr. Kelno, in addition to testicle amputation and ovariectomies, for what other type of operations would you prefer to use a spinal?”

Adam closed his eyes a moment and gasped in air. It was now almost as though he were hearing it all in an echo chamber. “Well?” Bannister repeated.

“An appendectomy, a hernia, a laparotomy, most anything below the belly.”

“You have testified, have you not, that in addition to your personal preference for a spinal, there was little or no general anesthetic available.”

“We had many shortages.”

“I suggest that in the month before November 10, 1943, and the month afterwards you performed nearly a hundred operations, ninety-six to be exact, in the lower body. I suggest that in ninety of these cases you personally chose a general anesthetic and you used a general anesthetic in dozens of other cases of minor surgery such as boils, and I suggest there was plenty of general anesthetic available as well as an anesthetist to administer it.”

“If the register says so.”

“I suggest that you chose spinal injections in only five percent of the lower body operations in the entire register in your own surgery, and you always wrote under ‘remarks’ that you gave a pre-injection of morphia, except in Barrack V.”

Adam began flipping the pages of the register again and looked up and shrugged.

“I suggest,” Bannister continued to assault, “that you did not tell the truth to the jury when you testified you preferred spinal but developed a certain penchant for it on the Jews in Barrack V, and you did not give pre-morphia because I think you were getting pleasure out of their pain.”

Highsmith was up but sat without speaking.

“Now then, let us clear up one more point before we get to the night of November 10. You will kindly turn to page three of the register and look at the name Eli Janos, who was castrated for smuggling and black marketeering. Do you recall an identification line-up at the Bow Street Magistrate’s Court some eighteen years ago.”

“Yes.”

“And an Eli Janos was unable to identify you although he said he saw the surgeon without a mask. Would you read the name of the surgeon?”

“Dr. Lotaki.”

“And if it had been you, who was also doing the same thing, you would have been returned to Poland to stand trial as a war criminal. You know that, don’t you?”

Adam longed for a recess, but Anthony Gilray would not call one.

“You will kindly open the register to page three hundred and two and tell my Lord and the jury the date.”

“November 10, 1943.”

“Beginning with tattoo number 109834 and the name Menno Donker you will kindly read the number and names of the next fifteen people listed.”

Adam began after a long silence. He read in monotone, “115490 Herman Paar, 114360 Jan Perk, 115789 Hans Hesse, 115231 Hendrik Bloomgarten, 115009 Edgar Beets, 115488 Bernard Holst, 13214 Daniel Dubrowski, 70432 Yolan Shoret, 70433 Sima Halevy, 70544 Ida Peretz, 70543 Emma Peretz, 116804 Helene Blanc-Imber and 116805 ...”

“I did not hear the last name.”

“Tina.”

“Tina Blanc-Imber?”

“Yes.”

“I hand you the names and tattoo numbers of ten of these persons who have testified in this trial. Considering the name changes to Hebrew in some instances, and by marriage, are these not the same people?”

“Yes,” he whispered even before the associate handed him the paper.

“Is there any listing for a pre-injection of morphia?”

“It may have been overlooked.”

“Is there or isn’t there?”

“No.”

“Who is listed as the surgeon? Whose signature is on all fourteen operations?”

“Doctor ...” Terry cried from the balcony.

“I suggest the signature reads Adam Kelno.”

Adam looked up for a brief instant as the young man disappeared from the courtroom.

“And in the remarks column, in your handwriting, what is listed after Tina Blanc-Imber and Bernard Holst?”

Adam shook his head.

“It says, ‘deceased that night’ does it not?”

Adam came to his feet “Can’t you see all of you it’s a new plot against me. When Tesslar died they sent Sobotnik after me! They’re out to get me! They’ll hound me forever!”

“Sir Adam,” Thomas Bannister said softly, “may I remind you, it was you who brought this action.”

36

S
IR
R
OBERT
H
IGHSMITH ADJUSTED
his robes and faced the jury, a drawn, hurt man yet unable to go against the core of his being, a British barrister who would fight for his client until the last breath. He went into his familiar swaying motion and thanked the jury for its patience, then reviewed the case hammering away at the enormous discrepancy between what was written in
The Holocaust
and what actually happened in Jadwiga.

“It is a discrepancy of fifteen thousand operations totally experimental in nature and without the use of any anesthetic. Well, that would be the act of a madman. We have come to learn that Sir Adam Kelno was not a madman, but an ordinary man in an insane situation. He is the tragedy of all of us, suddenly trapped in the most horrendous circumstances.

“We keep returning to a thought of how we in England can really re-create in our minds the nightmare of Jadwiga Concentration Camp. We heard of some of the horror, but can we really relate to it? Can we really understand how this would affect the mind of an ordinary man ... you or I. How would we have stood up in Jadwiga?

“I think about Dr. Flensberg’s experiments in obedience. How much voltage can a human being take before bending to the will of an evil master? Any of you who have ever received an electric shock is never apt to forget it.

“Let us say, members of the jury, that you are not in the jury box, but at this moment you are strapped in a chair facing the person you have been sitting side by side with this last month. You have before you a set of switches, and I order you to shock your neighbor. How much voltage are you going to bear before you throw the switch on him? Do you think you’ll be very brave about all this?

“Think about it, all of you. You people out there. You newsmen, you solicitors, and all of you who read about it in future years. You are in the chair and a shock rips through your body. And another, of higher voltage, and you scream! And another, and you feel the pain in the fillings of your teeth, in your eyes, your testicles, and another, and you go into a convulsion and bleeding comes from your ears and nose and mouth and whatever agony can be related shrieks out for mercy.