“My — God!” Sig whispered. His flesh crawled. “Oh — my dear God…”
“Do you recognize it, Herr Scientist?” Himmelmann asked. “Does it look familiar to you? The effects of atomic radiation?”
Sig wrenched his eyes from the cowering girl. He stared at Himmelmann.
“She—she was at — Haigerloch?” he asked in a stunned whisper. “There was — an accident?”
The corners of Himmelmann's mouth drew down. “Accident?” he said bitterly. “Not exactly. What you see is the work of our Nazi science. The result of a laboratory experiment. One dosage of gamma rays. Fourteen hundred Roentgen. With a dosage of beta rays thrown in for good measure.”
“Dear — God!”
Sig turned back to the trembling girl on the bed. He was once again aware of the others in the room. And the smell. The pungent-sweet odor of decaying flesh. It burned his nostrils.
He heard Oskar's voice from far away.
“Her name is Wanda. She is a Polish Jew.” His voice was dead. “She — she was part of a medical experiment carried out under the Applied War Research program. An experimental program spawned by the Section R experiments at Dachau Concentration Camp. The chief, Dr. Sigmund Rascher, used the camp inmates for his — purposes. Wanda is—”
Suddenly Gisela interrupted.
“No, Onkel Oskar! If they must know — let me tell them. Let them know the full story.” She stepped close to the cowering girl on the bed, reached out and touched her reassuringly. Then she faced the men, her eyes boring into Dirk's and Sig's. “You will wish to know, will you not,” she said bitterly, “so you may judge? Very well. You shall know. Everything Otto learned and told to me.” There was a sudden catch in her voice She glared at the two, her eyes unnaturally bright. For a brief moment she clamped her teeth together tightly.
“Dr. Rascher — and Nini, his wife. So pretty. I have seen pictures of her. In the Illustrierte.” She spoke rapidly, defiantly. “They may be no longer. But their spirit — and their work at Dachau — goes on…. The low-pressure chambers that were meant to test how much an unprotected human being could stand flying at high altitudes. They may no longer be used for experimentation — but as execution chambers. But then the human guinea pigs were subjected to an ever-increasing vacuum until they screamed and tore their hair out to relieve the excruciating pressure in their heads; until they beat the walls, lacerated and ripped their own flesh with their nails; shrieked until their lungs burst. Now such experiments are no longer needed. Only executions. Exterminations. In a manner to amuse and distract the SS guards…”
She stopped. She gave a small sob. Tears glistened in her eyes.
“For Wanda — for Wanda all that might have been a blessing,” she whispered.
“Gisela. Liebchen,” Oskar said gently, with deep concern. “You do not have to—”
“Yes, Onkel Oskar,” the girl flared at him. “Yes! I do! They must know why Otto and you are willing to — to—” She glanced at Wanda. “Are willing to betray your own…”
Oskar sighed. He looked down. Gisela glared at Dirk and Sig, her face flushed.
“I will tell you about Wanda,” she said. “I will tell you how she came to be — like this…. She is seventeen. And she will die now. Today. The day after—”
Sig started. He glanced at the girl still crouched in terror on the bed. He scowled at Gisela. She met his gaze.
“She will not understand us,” she said, her voice flat. “She speaks Polish. Even if she spoke German — she would not understand. They made certain of that. They were experimenting at Dachau with the effects of cold. Of freezing. It had to do with air crews downed in Arctic waters. Wanda had just arrived at the camp with her family — her father, her mother and her younger brother — when such an experiment began. Her father was chosen. He and others were kept in icy water until they lost consciousness. And then followed the experiments to revive them. If they could be revived at all. With Wanda's father, they tried body contact. They tried to revive his poor, frozen body and mind by placing a warm, naked woman beside him. A prisoner from the camp. First one woman. Then two. Or three. And they wanted to discover if sexual stirrings would speed up the process. Or their absence slow it. So, wherever possible, they used members of the family. Wanda was chosen. Seventeen-year-old Wanda. She watched her father being frozen nearly to death. She heard his screams of agony. She was placed naked next to his icy body. She. And a stranger. And her mother. And she was ordered to try to stimulate her father sexually…. It was while they were watching her reactions that someone had the ingenious idea of using her in an experiment to determine the stages in the disintegration of a human mind. How much could it take? How long?…
“Her father was still alive — although nothing but a mass of pain. They used him to demonstrate to Wanda the expediency of the crematorium procedures. She watched while they killed him with their efficient Genickschuss—the neck shot which brought instant death. They made him kneel. They put a gun to the nape of his neck. With one shot they severed his spinal cord. They trussed his feet together and hung him upside down from a meat hook. They slit open his jugular vein and drained him of blood. Oh, it was very efficient. That way the empty body would burn a lot faster. In fact, two bodies could be crammed into the same oven at one time. They took their huge iron tongs and placed a prong in each of her father's ears — and clamped them tight. And she watched and walked with them while they dragged his thin body to the ovens. She was there as they tore out his gold-filled teeth — and as they stuffed the mutilated remains into the oven, using their blunt wooden poles to cram another corpse in beside him And she heard the flames roar up. Saw the sooty, oily smoke spew from the chimney….
“And they watched her as her mind began to crumble…. But — there was a long way to go. Still It was only the beginning….
“They forced her… it can only be imagined by what tortures… to perform, herself, all the horrors she had witnessed. First — on her own little brother…. Killed him… drained him… burned him… Then — on her mother. And they observed clinically the collapse of her mind. And made notes for articles in their scientific journals….”
She stopped, brushed the tears from her eyes. Sig was staring at her incredulously.
“She is telling you the truth,” Himmelmann said suddenly. “I have seen those journals. Those reports. Copies of them accompanied the girl when she was sent to the Project for the radiation test.” He spoke in a low, dead voice.
“Oh, they were not through with Wanda yet,” Gisela said. “They had killed her mind. Her tears had stopped coming. Her sobs had died away. She saw — without seeing Heard — without hearing. Lived — without living. She'd entered into her own peculiar madness that made it possible for her to stay alive. But her body was still physically strong and healthy. They had seen to that. The breaking of her mind had to be accomplished by mental torture alone. Malnutrition or any other irrelevant weakness could not be allowed to interfere with the experiment. That would not have been—scientific.” Gisela spat out the word. “Oh, yes. They kept her well fed throughout her ordeal….
“So, when they needed a healthy specimen for their radiation test, Wanda was the perfect subject. There had already been complaints that the majority of the concentration-camp inmates sent for medical experiments were useless. Their health could not be compared to that of the German people — to ours—for whose benefit the experiments were being conducted. But Wanda was a fine specimen. And — they subjected her to their radiation test….”