My nose is running. I’ve got diarrhoea. I’ve lost my appetite. I feel queasy.

What’s wrong with me? They say the morning after a party is hard. Quite right. You’d think I was hung-over, like those nurses who drank too much champagne after the Führer’s speech. But my christening was a long time ago. Two months already…I hate being like this. Sluggish, grumpy. Like Heidi’s son, Helmut.

Deep down, I think I know why I feel lousy.

It happened two nights ago. I was fast asleep when I heard noises. Muffled footsteps, frightened whispers. What was going on now? The nursery really isn’t a quiet place, you know, and the bawling of one or other of my buddies is not the only regular commotion. That’s normal; I’m used to it, no problem. On the other hand, what’s disturbing, for example, is when a mother, on a sudden whim, rushes down to see her baby. The night nurses spot her straightaway and try to take her back to her room, which just ends in interminable discussions. Best-case scenario. Because sometimes…there’s no baby! The mother finds an empty bassinet.

‘Don’t worry, your child was unwell, nothing serious. He’s in the infirmary,’ they tell her.

‘I want to see him!’

‘You can’t right now. He’s contagious. We’ve quarantined him.’

‘You’re lying! You’re lying!’ screams the hysterical mother.

She’s in a total frenzy; the nurse calls for assistance and she’s given a shot to calm her down. How am I supposed to get back to sleep after a racket like that?

Especially when it stays in my head. I wonder if ‘infirmary’ and ‘quarantine’ are new code words I don’t yet know the meaning of? Some nights, it’s Josefa who prowls the nursery. She wears a big black cape as if she was going out, and there’s a man with her. She inspects all the bassinets and stops in front of one or another and says, ‘This one! This one! And that one!’ The man takes the babies she’s picked out and puts them in a large sling and soon I hear the rumbling of a motor and a van takes off and disappears. Just like all the vans that deliver food early in the morning. Except there’s only one van on those nights.

The next day, the bassinets are still empty, a dummy or a rattle the only signs of their former tenants. If the mothers are still living at the Home, there’s sure to be a huge scene; if they’ve already left and been replaced by a wet nurse, it’s not an issue. Anyway, within a few hours, the empty bassinets are home to new occupants.

So where do they go, those babies who vanish in the night? It bothers me. I wonder if there’s some kind of trafficking going on? Could Josefa—honest Josefa, so devoted to the Home, Josefa, Doctor Ebner’s right hand—be selling them? Our Führer assures us we’re worth our weight in gold, so you’ll understand why I panicked when, on this wretched night, Josefa’s footsteps stopped at my bassinet.

Why mine?

I was sure I was headed for the delivery van.

‘I’m doing you a favour, Frau Inge,’ Josefa murmured nervously. ‘I’m making an exception because you have an excellent track record here. But, for your own sake, keep this short.’

Frau Inge? So it wasn’t the man with the sling. That was a relief. Especially when I recognised Mother’s smell as she took me in her arms. She hugged me and I immediately felt that tension she gives off when she’s upset. She was shaking, weeping. Floods of tears. Some landed on my face and, since my nappies were soaking, I felt even colder.

‘Come now, Frau Inge,’ protested Josefa. ‘You’re making it harder for yourself. Here, this will cheer you up.

You left it on your bedside table. Put it in your bag.’

Mother said nothing. Her tears prevented her from uttering a word, other than Max, Max, Max. (She’s stubborn: even though I was baptised Konrad, she insists on calling me Max.)

‘Really, Frau Inge,’ Josefa continued, ‘this photo is wonderful. Signed by the Führer, how lucky you are!’

It was the photo from my christening. They could have shown it to me!

When Josefa realised that Mother wasn’t going to respond, she stuffed the photo in Mother’s bag and signalled to the two duty nurses. They rushed over to flank Mother, who still held me tight, not wanting to release me, kissing my hands, cheeks, nose, eyelids, smothering me in her embrace.

‘Can I write?’ she asked. ‘Will you send me another photo of him? Send me news about him?’

‘You know very well that’s against the rules,’ Josefa replied, tight-lipped. ‘Rules that I am already breaking right now, may I remind you, Frau Inge.’

‘Oh, please, I beg you!’

‘Don’t make me tell Doctor Ebner,’ Josefa threatened.

She tore me from Mother’s arms so roughly that I came away with a few strands of her hair that my fingers had been tangled in. The nurses each took Mother by an arm and dragged her to the door. She kept crying, screaming, in the stairwell, outside. Until the growl of a motor drowned out her wails. A car started, drove off. Then there was nothing but silence, total silence. All the more noticeable after so much weeping. It was unbearable.

Mother’s tears were still damp on my face, her hair hooked in my fingers. A gust of wind whipped the strands away. I would have liked to keep them to remember her by. I peed and no one came to change me. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I started howling, so loud that the whole nursery followed suit.

It was a hell of a racket.

For my first feed the next day, I found myself in the arms of a stranger, my nose squashed into her breast, which, although ample, was nothing like a nice soft pillow. She tried to stuff her nipple in my mouth, but I kept twisting my head away. She didn’t smell right. She wasn’t tense. I felt nothing. There was obviously no magic cord between her and me. The magic cord could only work with Mother, who had left last night. Left for good, I realised.

I felt a strange sensation: as if the cord was still there, between my fingers, but no matter how I tugged on it, shook it, there was no one on the other end to answer anymore.

I tried to reason with myself. If Helmut had got over Heidi leaving, if Léni had got used to Gisela’s absence, if dozens of others had managed to do without their cord, why couldn’t I? After all, I’d been baptised by the Führer himself; I was, in a way, the Chosen One. I should have set an example. I should have been the first to go through the experience of separation, since I was the veteran of the Home. But there you go, Mother had had the privilege of staying longer than the others, so the cord had attached a bit too strongly.

I tried to swallow the wet nurse’s milk, but it made me want to vomit. Sour, thick, disgusting. Yuk! I couldn’t stomach it.

During the next feeds, I scarcely managed a few drops before throwing up. My throat was burning; I was in agony. Over the following days, I kept up my cantankerous behaviour and yelled at every opportunity. I couldn’t lie down without getting cramps. And they’d moved me: I no longer slept in the nursery with the newborns, but with the big kids in another room. Besides, the nursery was overflowing. The new arrivals were piling up, almost on top of each other, not in bassinets, but in large tank-like containers. Like battery-cage chickens. The construction noise only added to my anxiety. (Once again they had to renovate the premises to accommodate all the new arrivals.) Being held didn’t calm me either. Overcome by hunger, I stopped being so fussy and resigned myself to drinking the disgusting milk. Result: diarrhoea, the runs!

On the wagon. Nothing but rice milk.

Then I realised I had to act, and fast. Two events opened my eyes.

First, the weekly visit to Doctor Ebner’s laboratory.

Herr Ebner pursed his lips in disgust when he saw my nappies soiled with that foul, green, slimy, stinking stuff that was not at all in line with the nicely moulded stools of a child of the master race, evidence of excellent health and perfect bodily control. I was so ashamed! When Ebner put me on the scales, it seemed that, behind his round glasses, his steely eyes froze, like two beads of ice. The vein at his temple was bulging more than ever. He dictated my weight to his secretary, who recorded it in the ‘Adequate’ column. I’d lost 700 grams since my last visit. Far too much. If this kept up…Ebner didn’t finish his sentence, but I knew that what he’d left unsaid was part of the code language.

I was getting scrawny. Unharmonisch!

Pull yourself together, Konrad! And fast!

The second event was Ursula.

She was still at the Home, even though she’d asked Josefa several times to get her an early release.

‘I’m sick of being cooped up! I’ve had it with nappies, naps, feeds, and the whole shebang! You never said I’d have to take a raincheck before giving another child to the Führer?’

‘Of course,’ replied Josefa, ‘but you know perfectly well that you have to wait a decent amount of time.’

Ursula also fed her baby well; that’s why she was forced to stay longer at the Home. To stave off boredom, she indulged in her favourite activity: spreading gossip.

We were on the terrace. The wet nurse was trying to feed me a bottle of water, which I refused. After persisting for a bit, she gave up and made do with holding the teat near my mouth, to give Josefa the right impression, while she lounged in the sun. That’s when Ursula came and sat next to us.

‘Well, now I know!’ she announced triumphantly.

‘Know what?’

‘I know where they took Edith, Klaus and Markus.’

The other fat cow didn’t seem to have a clue who Ursula was talking about, but I did. Edith, Klaus and Markus were the babies picked out by Josefa the other night, the ones who’d left in the delivery van.

‘So where are they?’ asked the wet nurse idly. (She had absolutely no interest and was just making conversation.)

‘They were sent to the Steinhof Institute in Vienna. To Am Spiegelgrund, the children’s clinic, Ward 15,’ whispered Ursula.

‘Oh, good, they’ll be well looked after there.’

‘You just don’t get it!’ snapped Ursula, playing her guessing game with a cheeky smile. Eager to reveal her big secret, she continued, ‘They are part of a new program called “Merciful Death’.’’

She rattled off the rest in a low voice, stopping often to look around and make sure there were no indiscreet eavesdroppers. Especially not the other mothers on the terrace. I hung on her every word, in particular the new code words.

‘Merciful death’ means that once the babies reach Ward 15, they’re killed. ‘Merciful death’ is not exactly synonymous with ‘purification’ or ‘relocation’; it’s different, subtler—it’s inducing death following an incurable illness. Because, well, the doctors at the Homes realised that, even if we children of pure Aryan stock had been engineered with the greatest care and rigour, even if we were the fruit of an impeccable union, once we were born, we were prey to any sickness that we might be exposed to as we grew up. A sad truth and a huge disappointment. Klaus, for example, had been afflicted with a harelip, Edith was deaf, and Markus suffered from asthma. Other defects had been discovered in one baby or another in places outside Steinhöring. If we were meant to be the incarnation of a new generation of lords and masters, then these flaws were inadmissible.

Why did they occur? the doctors wondered. What could be the cause, the precise origin of these growth disorders? How could these congenital abnormalities be eradicated? In order to find a solution, they had to do research, experiments, tests.

On the sick babies brought to Ward 15.

First while they were still alive; then once they were dead. Their corpses were dissected, their heads, brains and organs preserved in formaldehyde and placed in jars on shelves—with labels.

Another code word: ‘weak heart’—the term used in the clinic’s record books for cause of death.

Ursula waited for the wet nurse’s reaction. The fat cow remained silent for a while, opening and closing her mouth like a soundless hand puppet.

‘I don’t believe you. That’s all nonsense!’ she finally announced.

Annoyed that the fat cow wouldn’t take her word for it, Ursula ploughed on: ‘So what do you think our Führer, the Reichsführer Himmler, and the doctors Ebner and Brandt were discussing, here at this very Home, after the name-giving ceremony? Everyone knows the Reichsführer Himmler is passionate about scientific research, right? So why were certain bassinets empty after their visit to Doctor Ebner’s laboratory?’

‘Who told you all this? How did you find out?’

‘I like being social, you know,’ said Ursula. ‘It’s boring here with only women, so sometimes I have a chat with the delivery drivers in the morning. One of them told me. He’s happy because it’s more work for him. He delivers food in the morning, and in the evening he comes for the “rabbits”.’

Another code word. The ‘rabbits’ are the babies taken to Ward 15 at the institute in Vienna to be used as guinea pigs.

The wet nurse stared at Ursula without saying a word, without even opening her mouth the way she had before. She looked anxiously round at all the mothers on the terrace, as if she wanted one of them to be her witness. Then, suddenly disenchanted, she shook her head. ‘Oh, you young people!’ she exclaimed. ‘What will you come up with next?’

She leaned backwards, angling her face at the sun, while Ursula, still annoyed, walked off to put her baby back to bed and sneak away for another cigarette.

Markus, Edith, Klaus.

Markus the asthmatic. Edith the deaf one. Klaus the harelip.

I’d often hung out with them. In the nursery, our bassinets were next to each other. Were they contagious?

And my diarrhoea and loss of appetite, were they growth disorders? Defects? Intolerable flaws for a baby of the master race? I had just paid another visit to Doctor Ebner’s lab. He hadn’t finished his sentence…Now his silence resonated in my head, roaring, empty, terrifying. Now I knew what his silence meant: ‘Rabbit. Deliver to Ward 15.’

No! No! I don’t want to be a rabbit! I don’t want to be chopped into pieces!

A nervous spasm went through me and I flung my arms back so violently that the bottle of water clattered to the floor. I threw myself onto the wet nurse’s breast, latching on to the nipple as if I was going to swallow it.

I sucked and sucked until I was full, even if the milk didn’t taste as good as Mother’s. And I clenched my buttocks, praying that this food wouldn’t end up in my nappy as soon as I’d gulped it.

The next evening, I had terrible nightmares. I dreamed I was a ‘rabbit’ and they were injecting needles into my eyes to change their colour, make them bluer. I dreamed they gave me poison; that they drowned me in a bucket like a kitten; that they threw me into a furnace; that they strangled me. I dreamed of Klaus’s twisted mouth: it became more and more warped and misshapen, opening like a gigantic oven that engulfed me. I dreamed of Edith’s deaf ear and saw it swimming in the formaldehyde like a big fish in a bowl.

I admit I was afraid, terribly afraid.

So I battled to overcome my fear. And I succeeded.

Now I am doing much better. I never baulk at a feed anymore, and I’ve gained weight. I came out of that ordeal a lot stronger.

I understand now that my buddies’ sacrifice was essential in guaranteeing that the Reich’s medical science is the finest in the world. Markus, Edith, Klaus and all the ‘rabbits’ from the other Homes can be proud because they will be contributing to great discoveries: vaccines against tuberculosis and typhus (diseases spread by Jews and Gypsies), medications to heal the wounds of our soldiers at the front—once the war gets going, many of our men, alas, will be wounded. I now know that we make up a chain, every link of which, even the smallest, is vital. The weak die so the strong can become invincible.

Now I’m no longer distressed by the disappearance of the ‘rabbits’ in the middle of the night. They’re necessary. And lots of them are needed. I’ve heard that, in addition to the clinic in Vienna, other ‘scientific institutes’—a new code word—will be opened. Former prisons will be refitted as ‘children’s hospitals’, with ultramodern ‘operating theatres’. (You’ve cottoned on, haven’t you? I don’t need to repeat myself? Let’s agree that, from now on, words in quotation marks are code words.) Reichsführer Himmler intends to open another fifty ‘research institutes’. Medical research will go ahead in leaps and bounds! Especially because, when they run out of ‘rabbits’, the war will keep the supply going, in the form of prisoners.

There. I’m relieved to have confided in you about this moment of weakness and doubt, this bad patch I went through. I’ve undertaken my self-criticism, thus fulfilling one of the essential duties of any good National Socialist.

I’m fine now. I eat, sleep and grow. I’m in perfect health. Harmonisch!

And also…no more magic cord! It no longer exists. I’ve cut the umbilical cord once and for all. My memory of Mother is fading. It’s more and more blurred, like a reflection on the water’s surface that ripples and then vanishes. I can’t remember her smell anymore, or the feeling of pressing against the soft pillow of her breasts. Soon I’ll have forgotten she existed. Besides, I’m going to erase the word ‘Mother’ from my vocabulary. It serves no purpose right now, so why would I bother myself with it, when I’ve got my work cut out learning all the new code words.

It’s good to feel free, unencumbered. I let myself lounge in anyone’s arms; I feed from any old set of breasts. Actually, soon I’m graduating to the bottle.

I’m growing. Tall. Strong. Tough.

Made of Krupp steel.