24

Wewelsburg Castle, NORTH RHINE-WESTPHALIA, Germany

October 16, 1938

3:21 a.m.

Josef, the burlap bag still covering his head, stood blindly in the cold awaiting his fate. But no guns were loaded, no shots fired.

The only sounds were remote noises of other people echoing from an unseen building he sensed was surrounding him.

They must have been delivered to a prison.

Finally hands gripped his shoulders and started him walking.

Another thought came to his mind.

Their prisons have guillotines.

The realization made him nauseous as through the bottom of his hood, Josef dizzily watched his feet slowly step up three steps, cross over a heavy stone doorstep, then follow a smooth-floored corridor, newly tiled in highly polished red, white, and black squares.

They walked far into the building before turning and entering what he thought must be a large room—unlikely in its overpowering warmth and rich smell of food.

Despite his fear, Josef’s mouth instantly started watering.

The guard pushed Josef down onto a bench and removed the hood to reveal a heaped plate of steaming potato and sausage placed on the table in front of him. A ceramic mug of hot wine was set alongside it. It too steamed with a smell of mulled spices. To Josef’s side, Kurt was also sat at the table, his leg propped out straight to the side of him, but there was no sign of Gunter.

The pair of them looked at each other, shrugged, and started eating hungrily.

When Josef drank from the mug, he noticed a small design on it. It was also on the plate, even engraved into the cutlery. Words within it read: “SS-Schule Haus Wewelsburg.”

Josef had no idea what that was. He didn’t care; he hadn’t been shot and he couldn’t imagine he was going to be if they were letting him eat and drink like this.

Those were his last conscious thoughts.

Josef awoke to find himself lain out on a blanket on a wooden floor. His head was aching, his mouth dry, his tongue swollen, as if he was suffering the consequences of an evening mixing liters of wine and beer before a heavy yet too brief sleep.

Lifting his head, the daylight shining in through a single-dormer window above him bleached his eyes.

With some difficulty, he stood up. Head reeling, he pushed out a hand to stabilize himself against a wall and looked around to see Kurt lying on another blanket. Gunter was on the only bed. Both were sleeping. Gunter’s bandages seemed new, but blood was already seeping through them. He looked at his own hand and saw that the dressing on that had also been changed.

He checked his watch.

3:47

But it was stopped.

He asked himself, When, a.m. or p.m?

He didn’t know.

The spinning in his head subsided a little so he moved over to Kurt, crouching down to give him a shake. Slowly he too began to wake.

Moving on to Gunter, Josef saw that he was breathing slowly now. Laying his undamaged hand on his friend’s forehead he felt that his fever had receded a little.

Deciding to leave Gunter sleeping, he looked instead around the little room. It had few identifying features. The bare wooden floorboards were smoothly polished, the white walls newly painted. The dormer window had been recently reglazed. It was little more than another cell but cleaner and brighter, more monastery than prison.

Josef went to the window and looked out over rolling countryside. The land appeared hard and frosty, rendered colorless by a pale autumn haze. A roundel of white light hung low in the sky. Josef wondered if he was looking west or east, if the almost hidden sun was rising or falling. Trying the handle of the window, he was surprised to find that it clicked open readily. He pushed his head out into the cold air. The chill brought some precision to his befuddled brain as he understood that they were in a room high within the roof of a castle or country house, a tall building positioned higher still on some cliff or promontory that raised it up far above the surrounding countryside.

Directly below the window, Josef could see only the fall of the roof. It ended abruptly and barred him from seeing what was directly below. He could only look diagonally down at a distant wood and, further on into the distance, at a wide valley with a brown river that meandered through barren, buff-colored meadows punctuated by copses of tall, leafless black trees.

Holding on to the side of the window frame, Josef stuck his head and shoulders out further still. With a twist backward, he saw that the window projected out from a very steep, pitched roof that rose up to a high ridge. The covering was almost new, tiles of black slate, perfectly square, smooth to the touch, and tightly lapped together. His climbing instinct instantly questioned the grip they would offer and told him that that the unbounded edge below was unforgiving. One slip would send him down and out into the open air as efficiently as the ski jump his regiment had built in Garmisch for the ’36 Winter Olympics.

To each side of him, more dormer windows punctuated the fall of the roof. The line of five to his right finished in a single, massive circular tower of a pale limestone that dominated that end of the castle. The tower’s flat, round top with only a shallow battlement gave it an incomplete look, as if still awaiting some tall spire to give it further height and drama. From the windows that ran down the tower’s side, Josef could see that it was at least five or six stories high. As he studied it, he noticed that the low sun had fallen a little from its first position. It was going down. His window was looking due west; the tower pointing directly to the north. The setting sun told him that whatever had been put in their food or drink the night before had knocked them out for the best part of a day.

Why?

Josef’s eyes were drawn back to the top of the tower. There were two tall white poles rising up from the top. Each held an immense flag, one scarlet, the other jet black. Both were too big to be more than faintly disturbed by the weak breeze that was blowing from the northeast. Within the blood-red flag, Josef could see the familiar black and white of the circle and the swastika. The black of the other was broken only by two white blazes, the SS insignia. The sight made him recall again the “SS-Schule Haus Wewelsburg” embossed on the crockery of his last meal.

What is this place?

Turning back into the room, Kurt was now sitting up. He asked where they were. Josef tried to describe what he had seen but was distracted by Gunter, who was mumbling unintelligibly. At first they thought he was still asleep, but as Josef moved closer, he understood that Gunter too was now awake. He was asking for water.

Knowing already there was none in the room, Josef banged on the door to demand some attention. Almost instantly it unlocked, and a white-jacketed orderly entered as if they were at a hotel. Josef told him that they needed water. The man quickly left to return with a pitcher and some glasses. He waited as Josef gave some to Gunter. While he held the glass to Gunter’s lips, Josef asked the hovering orderly where they were. “Wewelsburg, Westphalia,” came the reply. “It is the castle of the reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, the academy and home of the SS. Now that you are all awake, I will get a doctor for your friend.”

A little later, an SS officer with a medical bag came in. He introduced himself as a medical doctor but gave no further name. Diligently and slowly, he examined Gunter, who was drifting in and out of consciousness again. Then he administered an injection from a nickel and glass syringe into a vein on Gunter’s inner forearm, saying only, “It will help him sleep,” as he gently laid the arm with its bandaged hand back down on the bed.

Finished with Gunter, the SS doctor surprised Josef by asking to look at his finger. He stripped off the new dressing and thoroughly cleaned the ragged tear where his nail had once been with a strong disinfectant. The contact of the spirit with the bare flesh burned so much that Josef had to grit his teeth not to scream with pain. As the hole started to bleed again, the doctor quickly put on another new dressing, binding the individual finger so tightly that it throbbed intensely. After, he said, “I need to stitch that finger; the wound is still open. But now is not the time to anesthetize your hand, maybe later. It will hurt, but covered like this you can still use it.”

The man then turned his attention to Kurt’s damaged right knee. He unwound the bandage and released the splint to slowly try and bend the limb, feeling, as he did so, the patella—the action of the joint. It could barely move. Just the doctor’s touch made Kurt flinch with pain. Rebandaging it, the doctor said only, “This knee is very badly broken,” and left the room without further comment. Alone again, Josef and Kurt said little, confused by the medical visit. Uncertain as to what they should or could do next, Josef leaned against the side of the window and watched the light of the dull day fade to darkness until, unannounced, a single electric light went on in the small room and the orderly returned to set down a tray that offered them a simple meal of bread, cheese, and ham. This time there was no mulled wine, only another carafe of water. There was also no cutlery.

Instead of leaving immediately, the orderly joined Josef by the window. Standing alongside him to look out at the night, he said gently under his breath, “I don’t have time to explain what happens here, but if you can get out, I would. It would be better to take your chance rather than wait for what they are going to do to you when the reichsführer arrives.” Saying nothing more, the man quickly left the room. Josef heard the door key turn behind him even if the window remained open.

“Did you hear that?” Josef whispered.

Kurt nodded, looked at Gunter, and then pointed at his own knee as he shook his head.

Josef understood.

“Is he getting any better?”

Kurt hopped on his left foot over to the bed and sat on the side of it as he touched the side of Gunter’s cheek with the back of his hand.

Gunter didn’t move.

Immediately Kurt rushed his fingers down onto the side of his neck, feeling for a pulse.

He pushed once, then twice, in search of it, before stopping and turning back with a look of disbelief to say, “Josef, I think Gunter’s dead.”

Josef rushed over to them.

It was true. Gunter was dead.

He replayed the visit of the SS doctor over in his mind.

What was in that injection?

What is happening to us?

They both looked down at their oldest friend in silence, transfixed to the spot until Kurt said simply, “We will go when it’s darkest.”

“But what about your leg?”

“I would rather fall than wait here and let them play with us anymore.”