Winter of the World

Carla noted the mention of a ‘programme’. That had not been admitted before. She began to realize that Ochs was cleverer than he might at first appear.

Ochs spoke his next sentence as if confirming something already stated. ‘And all handicapped Jewish children were included, irrespective of their particular disability.’

There was a moment of silence. Willrich looked shocked. Carla wondered how Ochs knew that about Jewish children. Perhaps he did not: he might have been guessing.

After a pause, Ochs added: ‘Jewish children, and those of mixed race, I should have said.’

Willrich did not speak, but gave a slight nod.

Ochs went on: ‘It’s unusual, in this day and age, for Jewish children to be given preference, isn’t it?’

Willrich looked away.

The pastor stood up, and when he spoke again his voice rang with anger. ‘You have told me that ten children suffering from a range of illnesses, who could not possibly all benefit from the same treatment, were sent away to a special hospital from which they never returned; and that Jews got priority. What did you think happened to them, Herr Professor Doctor Willrich? In God’s name, what did you think?’

Willrich looked as if he would cry.

‘You may say nothing, of course,’ Ochs said more quietly. ‘But one day you will be asked the same question by a higher authority – in fact, by the highest of all authorities.’

He stretched out his arm and pointed a condemning finger.

‘And on that day, my son, you will answer.’

With that he turned around and left the room.

Carla and Walter followed him out.

(v)

Inspector Thomas Macke smiled. Sometimes the enemies of the state did his job for him. Instead of working in secret, and hiding away where they were difficult to find, they identified themselves to him and generously provided irrefutable evidence of their crimes. They were like fish that did not require bait and a hook but simply jumped out of the river into the fisherman’s basket and begged to be fried.

Pastor Ochs was one such.

Macke read his letter again. It was addressed to the Justice Minister, Franz Gürtner.

Dear Minister,

Is the government killing handicapped children? I ask you this question bluntly because I must have a plain answer.

What a fool! If the answer was No, this was a criminal libel; if Yes, Ochs was guilty of revealing state secrets. Could he not figure that out for himself ?

After it became impossible to ignore rumours circulating in my congregation, I visited the Wannsee Children’s Nursing Home and spoke to its director, Professor Willrich. His responses were so unsatisfactory that I became convinced something terrible is going on, something that is presumably a crime and unquestionably a sin.

The man had the nerve to write of crimes! Did it not occur to him that accusing government agencies of illegal acts was itself an illegal act? Did he imagine he was living in a degenerate liberal democracy?

Macke knew what Ochs was complaining about. The programme was called Aktion T4 after its address, Tiergarten Strasse 4. The agency was officially the Charitable Foundation for Cure and Institutional Care, though it was supervised by Hitler’s personal office, the Chancellery of the Führer. Its job was to arrange the painless deaths of handicapped people who could not survive without costly care. It had done splendid work in the last couple of years, disposing of tens of thousands of useless people.

The problem was that German public opinion was not yet sophisticated enough to understand the need for such deaths, so the programme had to be kept quiet.

Macke was in on the secret. He had been promoted to Inspector and had at last been admitted to the Nazi party’s elite paramilitary Schutzstaffel, the SS. He had been briefed on Aktion T4 when he was assigned to the Ochs case. He felt proud: he was a real insider now.

Unfortunately, people had been careless, and there was a danger that the secret of Aktion T4 would get out.

It was Macke’s job to plug the leak.

Preliminary inquiries had swiftly revealed that there were three men to be silenced: Pastor Ochs, Walter von Ulrich, and Werner Franck.