Sporadic flashes of light crash on to the screen. Nine… eight…seven… six…
Otto hugged himself, feeling the reassuring embrace of his own arm around his chest, the other hand clasping his chin. The once–soothing whirr of the Bell & Howell motor, the rhythmic soft staccato of the film being clawed through the gate – none of it was exciting him as it always had. It was as though a deep visceral apprehension had been roused within him, and he feared that he was about to witness images that would forever, and indelibly, alter his family memories.
He glanced at the unhurriedly rotating front reel of film, not with the usual sense of anticipation, waiting for the thousands of frames to be illuminated in rapid succession, transformed magically into a moving picture on the screen, but with trepidation, fearing the imminent unmasking of dark secrets long hidden from his world.
Four… three… two…
A crisply focused scene of uniformed men gathered around a table bursts onto the screen. Scratches and a few rolling lines are the only blemishes to tarnish the impeccable, professionally procured image. The men are wearing black Schutzstaffel uniforms trimmed in silver with pips and sig–runes on their lapels, sitting with their arms resting on a polished wooden table in a large, well–lit room. The camera pans around the table, revealing the faces of at least a dozen officers, smiling, chatting, casually relaxed though conscious of the camera that captures their every move. Furtive glances into the lens, tugs on the earlobe, fingers rubbing noses, hands clasped together protectively on the table.
The image zooms in to the face of a middle–aged man with greying temples and an affable smile sitting at the head of the oval table. He nods and forms small hand gestures as those beside him speak. The printed sign in front of him on the table reads Standartenführer Max Pauly.
The next man onscreen has short black hair, neatly slicked and combed back from a beakish face. His eyes dart about restlessly, his hands clasped together. His sign reads Hauptsturmführer Kurt Heissmayer.
More faces occupy the screen, stern yet disarming, dark eyes coupled with broad smiles, manicured hands and neatly combed hair: Hauptsturmführer Bruno Kitt; Hauptsturmführer Alfred Trzebinski…
Otto felt a chill as he read that name. It was both familiar and sinister and yet he did not know why. Where had he seen it before?
Rottenführer Adolf Speck; Unterscharführer Wilhelm Bahr; they laugh, politely it appears; they nod and glance about the table at each other in a show of unity for the camera. A waiter wearing a white starched tunic and bearing a silver platter hands a glass of champagne to each officer. The camera zooms in on an officer in a black SS tunic and insignia. Dark eyebrows brood over steady eyes. The sign on the table in front of him reads Hauptsturmführer Ernst Adermann.
Otto felt a knot of nausea twist his stomach around and threaten to eject his lunch into his lap. He stared into the unmistakeable face of his father, seated at a table with fellow SS officers drinking champagne, toasting a success. Otto wiped at his mouth, dry as a desert rock behind parched lips, and stared in disbelief at what was being projected onto the screen.
The officers gathered around the table all stand up and turn to face the central figure, Standartenführer Max Pauly, who remains seated. They raise their glasses in a gesture of mutual commitment captured for eternity on celluloid in teasing silence. Pauly nods humbly and allows his subordinate officers to drink to his health before lifting his glass to his own lips.
Otto watched his father drink, eyes upon his senior officer in the centre. The look on Father’s face was unmistakeably one of pride, admiration and reverence. How could this be? Surely it was not true? For a moment Otto’s gaze faltered and he stared down at his feet in shame, but then quickly looked up to the screen again for fear of missing something vital.
The film jerks through a splodge of film cement to an outdoor scene as the group of officers in SS tunics, flared trousers and caps bearing the SS–Totenkopf, walk beneath trees swimming in manicured lawns. They stop beside a brick building crammed with elongated rectangular metal windows, like rows of predatory teeth, and gesticulate at a sign: Walther–Werke. Max Pauly leads the group as they stride into the building; Ernst Adermann follows immediately behind Alfred Trzebinski. Inside labourers wearing ragged striped uniforms work at various machine stations tooling the components of rifles and pistols. Their heads, close–shaven and often bearing scabs and blemishes, bow down to avoid eye contact as the party of high profile officers files by inquisitively.
Ernst Adermann stops beside one labourer and points to the part he is making. The startled labourer stares back through wide eyes and holds out the angular piece of metal. Adermann grabs the man’s hand roughly and turns it over to reveal missing index and middle fingers. A slight commotion ensues as a foreman appears and remonstrates with the worker, cuffing him across the face. Adermann saunters away indifferently to rejoin the group, slapping his black gloves across his left forearm absently. Behind him the worker is led away from his work station, prodded in the back by a Wehrmacht soldier’s rifle.
A pulse of bitter vomit surged to the back of Otto’s throat. He managed to swallow it. What had his father just done – with such callous dispassion? Otto could not reconcile in his mind that the action he had just witnessed was perpetrated by his own loving father.
A further smudge of film cement is the prelude to the next scene outside yet another nondescript brick building, this time signposted Carl Jastram Motorenfabrik – U–Boot. The entourage of uniformed officers makes their photo call beside this sign and then dutifully moves into the building behind Max Pauly. Labourers in pyjamas, thin and gaunt, unshaven and dirty, work without a flicker of emotion at lathes, presses and drills. The officers, many of whom walk with their hands clasped behind their backs, nod to each other in approbation at what they see.
A labourer, emaciated and sweaty, slumps forward at his work station, his arm narrowly missing the spinning drill bit. Nearby workers watch in terror, their hands maintaining a perpetual activity, afraid even to slow down. Alfred Trzebinski approaches the labourer, his hands still clasped firmly behind his back, rocking on the heels of his jackboots. He bends over stiffly at the waist, casting a sneering look over the ailing worker as one might inspect a stricken farm animal. He makes eye contact with the attending Wehrmacht soldier and shakes his head, making a quick gesture with his index finger beneath his chin. Instantly the incapacitated labourer is dragged away from his post without a flicker of protest.
Otto swallowed and glanced at the reel of film. How much more was there? This was far worse than he could ever have imagined, and he felt as though he was committing a crime merely by watching the incriminating images.
The next splice heralds a clinically utilitarian room furnished with glass cabinets and an examination couch. Alfred Trzebinski is wearing a white laboratory coat over his SS tunic. Beside him stands a tall, gaunt man with very closely cropped hair that more keenly resembles that seen on prison labourers. The prominent tag on his white coat reads Obersturmbannführer Ludwig–Werner Haase. Haase is addressing Trzebinski and two others, one of whom is Ernst Adermann, whilst holding in his hand a conical glass flagon etched with the letters ARSEN and containing a colourless liquid. He removes the glass stopper and inserts a pipette into the flagon, siphoning out a measured quantity which he checks by holding the pipette up to the light of the window. Trzebinski and Adermann watch Haase intently as he adds the ARSEN to a jug of water, using the pipette to stir the mixture a few times.
Replacing the stopper in the flagon he moves to a blackboard and begins to write numbers and formulae on the board. Adermann and Trzebinski nod, huddled behind Haase as they watch his every move. Then Haase walks across the room and produces a canister which he places into the neck of another jug, returning briefly to jab his finger at the blackboard once more. He turns to study the faces of the men gathered around him, says something, and then Ernst Adermann pours the liquid in the jug containing ARSEN through the canister into the second jug.
The next scene shows a row of prisoners wearing pyjamas, some with matching linen caps on their shaven heads. All men are painfully thin with sunken cheeks and eyes, sitting in resigned acceptance with their hands in their laps. A metal cup is passed from prisoner to prisoner and refilled each time from the jug. Adermann, Trzebinski and Haase watch with smug satisfaction as all the men consume the ARSEN. Haase turns to the others and shrugs his shoulders, upon which a Wehrmacht soldier shepherds all the inmates away and locks them in a small room.
Otto could feel the perspiration building up beneath his armpits and on his upper lip. He felt dirty, voyeuristic, watching something seedy and criminal, implicating and tarnishing the memories of his father and his family, and by inference even him. He thought of Max and Karl at home in Durham, blissfully unaware of their grandfather’s nefarious actions, and was immediately deeply ashamed.
He had seen images similar to this before when he and Dieter had watched Father’s personal films several nights earlier. In this footage, however, Father’s presence was unequivocal, his collusion beyond dispute. He was not the cameraman, he was the perpetrator amongst ignominious company. How did Father manage to keep this from all of them and take his sinister past with him to his grave?
The camera pans across the grubby yet cherubic faces of twenty young children seated around a table tearing chunks off round sourdough loaves. They wear roughly woven linen shirts and shorts, most of them barefooted. Many smile, though reservedly, chewing their food hungrily. The man with slicked–back hair and a beakish nose walks around the table, like a headmaster with his hands clasped behind his back. Some of the children, no older than six, watch him warily.
The scene abruptly changes to reveal a young boy with black hair parted down one side lying on an examination couch, his right arm exposed to a nurse who preps his skin with a wet swab. He suddenly turns away and shuts his eyes tightly, creasing up his entire face around a button nose as a fearsome glass syringe is produced and plunged into his arm, its contents injected. Relief floods back into the boy’s face as he realises it is over, only to evaporate again as his shirt is unceremoniously hitched up under his chin to reveal his ribs. Prepping his chest with the wet swab causes him to withdraw as a look of sheer horror paralyses his face. He begins to writhe but several strong hands descend to restrain him. This time the beak–nosed man, identifiable by his badge as Hauptsturmführer Kurt Heissmayer, steps forward with a syringe and inserts the needle between the boy’s ribs near his nipple before deftly discharging the contents.
The boy’s face erupts, his mouth open wide in a silent howl that exposes his uvula and tonsils at the back of his mouth. The film cuts to another boy being injected in similar fashion, once again by Heissmayer. On this occasion Ernst Adermann is visible in the frame, holding the boy down by his arms as his chest is violated.
Otto’s eyes stung from dryness as he stared in abhorrence at the images that flickered on the screen, unable to blink. His father, holding down young boys to enable them to be cruelly assaulted in the name of medical science, the same father who raised him as a boy and tousled his hair lovingly. It was unbearable to contemplate the mechanisms behind what he was seeing. How could this be the same man he had known as Father?
Heissmayer stands in front of a chart headed with the word Tuberkulose as he addresses a small audience of SS tunic–clad officers in a wood–panelled room. Smiling, he taps on photographs of young children displayed on an easel; frightened young faces staring back innocently at the seated audience. Heissmayer draws his hand up the opposite arm and across his chest towards his armpit, lifting his arm to allow him to prod this space as he speaks.
A bubbly cement join yields to the body of a young boy with torso laid bare, lying on a linen–covered table with a Schimmelbusch mask held on his face by an anaesthetist. The boy’s arm is splayed at ninety degrees to his chest exposing his hollow armpit, which a nurse in a surgical gown is prepping with a dripping swab, leaving a smudge on the skin. A gowned surgeon hidden behind a face mask steps forward and incises the skin, probing its darkening interior with gloved fingers and steel forceps as blood pulses out from within, staining the white linen drapes. He extracts numerous lumps of tissue that resemble tonsils. These he drops into clear liquid in a glass jar before suturing the skin back together.
The next scene shows a line of twenty children, naked to their waists, standing against a white wall with one arm raised above and resting on their heads. The camera pans slowly down the line from one to the next, showing clearly the jagged scar in each child’s right armpit. The children stare back impassively, some younger ones grinning stupidly. At the end of the line the camera lens fills with the images of Heissmayer, Adermann and another man, all wearing white coats and standing with their arms folded across their chests. They smile proudly and puff on stubby cigars.
A grubby splodge of cement precedes a dark scene, heavily scratched. Shadows dominate with occasional dimly lit brick arches visible in contrast. A row of clothes hooks are mounted along one wall, a row of steel lockers down another. A bad splice, more lines smearing the image, then twenty small bodies dangling lifelessly from the hooks, like discarded football shirts, stiff fingers barely protruding from the sleeves, little feet pointing to the ground, the shadows concealing most of the ghastly naked truth.
The screen went white, the front reel had stopped turning but the take–up reel, heavy with film, rotated futilely, rhythmically slapping a trailing edge of film against the table with every completed revolution. Otto just made it to the bathroom and retched into the toilet bowl. His eyes watered, his lungs ached to scream out in useless protest at the terrible images he had witnessed.
But he knew it was too late for protest. It was done. His fate and that of his family had been sealed in those moments of madness over forty years previously.
Why, Father? Why? Another surge of vomit silenced Otto’s attempt at a scream.