The Haigerloch Project

“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….”

Gisela's tears could no longer be contained, and she let them flow freely down her cheeks. She looked at the girl drawn up unto herself, cowering uncomprehending on the bed.

“And they — they observed her. And made their notes.” She turned back to Sig and Dirk. She bit her lip and gulped a deep breath.

“And when they had observed enough, when her body too had been burned out, they discarded her. They packed her into an old Sonderkraftwagen—an S-truck — with a load of others, and sent her on her way to Dachau to join her family in the ovens….”