QB VII (35 page)

“Mr. Bannister,” the judge said. “May I call your attention to the fact that from time to time editorial comments creep into your questions.”

“I am sorry, my Lord. Speed in the mass sterilization program was also essential to the German purpose. Could it be possible these operations were performed before Dr. Voss to demonstrate just how quickly they could be done?”

“I did not operate with such speed as to harm a patient.”

“Weren’t you, in fact, proud of the speed with which you could remove Jewish testicles, and didn’t you want to demonstrate it to Voss.”

“My Lord,” Sir Robert said, “this objection is obvious. My client has testified he did not use undue speed.”

“I must admonish you again,” Gilray said. He turned to the jury with his first display of judicial authority. “Dr. Kelno is being distressed through innuendo. I will advise you thoroughly at the proper time as to what is relevant and what is not.”

Bannister did not blink an eye. “Do you recall a Dr. Sandor?”

“Sandor was a Jewish Communist.”

“No, as a matter of fact, Dr. Sandor is a Roman Catholic and not a member of any Communist Party. He was one of your doctors. Do you recall him?”

“Somewhat.”

“And do you recall a conversation in which you said to Sandor, ‘I’ve got twenty pair of Jewish eggs for scrambling today.’ ”

“I never said that. Sandor was a member of the Communist underground who will swear anything against me.”

“I think it may be a good time to explain to my Lord and the jury about these two undergrounds inside Jadwiga. You referred to your underground as a Nationalist underground, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“Composed of what sort of people?”

“Anti-Germans from every country in occupied Europe.”

“I suggest that is not true. I suggest that ninety-five percent of your underground was made up of Poles and that no one held any position of authority who was not a former Polish officer. Is that not the case?”

“I do not recall.”

“Can you recall any Czech or Dutchman or Yugoslav who had any position of authority inyour Nationalist underground?”

“No.”

“But you can certainly recall Polish officers.”

“Some.”

“Yes, some who are in this courtroom as spectators and prospective witnesses. I suggest, Dr. Kelno, that the Nationalist underground was the same pre-war anti-Semitic Polish officers’ clique inside Jadwiga.” Kelno did not answer.

“You have testified to a Communist underground. Is this not the same as the international underground?”

“Yes, composed of Communists and Jews.”

“And non-Communists and non-Jews who outnumbered the Polish officers’ clique by fifty to one and whose ranks and officials represented every occupied country in equal proportion. Is that not so?”

“They were dominated by Jews and Communists.”

“Is one of the causes for hemorrhaging in the post-operative period the speed with which a surgeon operates?” Bannister said with his now patented change of subjects.

Kelno drank from the water glass and mopped his forehead. “If a surgeon is qualified, speed can often reduce the possibility of shock.”

“Let us come to the time in mid 1943 when Dr. Mark Tesslar arrived at Jadwiga. You were no longer a laborer taking beatings from the Germans, but a doctor with a great deal of authority.”

“Under German direction.”

“But you made decisions completely on your own. For example, who could be admitted to the hospital.”

“I was always under a great deal of moral pressure.”

“But by the time Dr. Tesslar arrived you had a rapport with the Germans. You were trusted by them.”

“In a left handed way, yes.”

“And what was your rapport with Dr. Tesslar?”

“I learned Tesslar was a Communist. Voss sent for him from another concentration camp. One can draw his own conclusions. I was polite on occasions we met but as you would say in England, I gave him a wide berth. I stayed clear of him.”

“I suggest there were numerous conversations between yourself and Tesslar because you really had no fear of him and he was trying desperately to get more food and medicine for post-operative victims he was taking care of. I suggest that you mentioned to him that you had performed some twenty thousand operations with uncommon speed.”

“You may suggest until your head falls off,” Adam snapped.

“I intend to. Now then, Dr. Tesslar has made a statement that on one occasion in November of 1943 you performed fourteen operations at one session. Eight males, seven of them Dutch, were either castrated or had a testicle removed. Six females had ovaries removed by you on the same occasion. There was so much commotion that the SS sent a medical clerk, an Egon Sobotnik, for Dr. Tesslar to come over to Barrack V and keep the patients calm while you operated.”

“It is a blatant lie. Dr. Tesslar never came into Barrack V while I operated.”

“And Dr. Tesslar has stated that you did not give the spinals and that they were not given in the operating theater and that no pre-injection of morphia was given.”

“It is a lie.”

“Now then, let us consider the ovariectomies in Dr. Tesslar’s statement. Forget for the moment what he has said and let us go through an ordinary operation of this sort. You make an incision in the abdominal wall. Is that correct?”

“Yes, after the patient has been scrubbed and given morphia and a spinal by me.”

“Even those who had serious irradiation burns.”

“I had no choice.”

“You put in the forceps, lifted up the uterus and put a forceps between the ovary and the Fallopian tube, and then snipped off the ovary and placed it in a bowl.”

“More or less.”

“I suggest, Dr. Kelno, when this had been done you did not stitch up the ovaries, uterus, and veins properly.”

“It is not true.”

“Are the raw stumps called pedicles?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t it proper to cover these pedicles by using the peritoneal flaps?”

“You are a good lawyer, Mr. Bannister, but not much of a surgeon.”

Bannister ignored the ripple of laughter. “Then kindly educate me.”

“There is no peritoneum to cover the stump. The only way to keep it down is with a cross-stitch from the infundibulo-pelvic ligament. You cover the stump in that way to prevent inflammation and adhesions and excessive bleeding.”

“And you always did that?”

“Naturally.”

“Dr. Tesslar recalls that on six ovariectomies he witnessed by you, you didn’t do that.”

“It is nonsense. Tesslar was never there. And even if he was in the operating room it is almost impossible to see my work unless he had X-ray eyes. With a theater staff assisting me, with Voss and Germans present, and with a screen at the patient’s head, where Tesslar claims he sat, it would be impossible for him to observe.”

“But if he sat to the side and there were no screen?”

“It is all very hypothetical.”

“Then it is your testimony that Dr. Tesslar didn’t warn you the patients would hemorrhage or get peritonitis?”

“It is not so.”

“And Dr. Tesslar did not argue with you about not washing your hands between operations?”

“No.”

“Or using the same instruments without sterilization?”

“I am a proud and competent surgeon, Mr. Bannister. I resent the insinuations.”

“Did you keep notes to advise you whether to take out the left or right testicle or the left or right ovary?”

“No.”

“Isn’t it true that doctors have amputated the wrong finger or toe or whatever because they didn’t check their notes?”

“This was Jadwiga, not Guy’s.”

“How did you know where to operate?”

“Corporal Kremmer, who did the X-ray, was in the room. He told me left or right.”

“Kremmer? Corporal Kremmer. The semiskilled radiologist told you?”

“He did the X-rays.”

“And if Dr. Tesslar was not there then he could not have pleaded with you about the irradiation burns or the fact that no general anesthetic was given.”

“I have repeated. I used morphia and a spinal, which I administered myself. I operated quickly as it was safer to prevent pneumonia, heart collapse, and God knows what. How many times do I have to repeat it?”

“Until everything is quite clear.” Bannister paused, studied the weariness of his witness. There is a natural breaking point beyond which the judge and jury are apt to gain sympathy for him. There is also a time that the clock says one must work to the climax of his examination.

“So all these things said by Mark Tesslar are invention.”

“They are lies.”

“Men and women screaming. In frightful pain.”

“Lies.”

“And handling patients in a rough and ready manner on the operating table.”

“I am proud of my record as a surgeon.”

“Why do you think Dr. Tesslar has told all these lies against you?”

“Because of our early clashes.”

“You have stated that on occasion when you practiced medicine in Warsaw you sent a member of your family to Tesslar for an abortion without Tesslar’s knowledge. I ask you now to identify the member of your family who had an abortion performed by him.”

Kelno looked around for help. Control yourself, he said, control yourself. “I refuse.”

“I suggest no such abortions were ever performed. I suggest Dr. Tesslar had to leave Poland to finish his medical training because of the anti-Semitic activities of your association, and I suggest Dr. Tesslar never performed abortions or experiments for the SS in Jadwiga.”

“Tesslar said these lies against me to save himself,” Kelno cried. “When I returned to Warsaw he was in the Communist secret police with orders to hound me because I am a Polish Nationalist who cries for the loss of his beloved country. The lies were proved as lies eighteen years ago when the British government refused to extradite me.”

“I suggest,” Bannister said in utter calm to contrast Kelno’s rising outburst, “that when you returned to Poland and learned that Tesslar and several other doctors had survived, you fled and subsequently invented a total fiction against him.”

“No.”

“And you never struck a patient on the operating table and called her a damned Jewess?”

“No, it is my word against Tesslar’s.”

“As a matter of fact,” Bannister said, “it has nothing to do with Tesslar’s word. It is the word of the woman you struck who is alive and at this moment on her way to London.”

8

S
ATURDAY EVENING WAS SPENT
in the Paris countryside with Cady’s French publisher, and Sunday Abe and Lady Sarah called upon Pieter Van Damm for a lovely dinner with Madame Erica Van Damm and the two children, both students of the Sorbonne.

The daughter, a homely quiet sort, went off to her room. Anton Van Damm excused himself for a date after promising to come to London to meet Ben and Vanessa.

“The trial does not go too well,” Pieter said.

“The jury seems to show no emotion. We have word from Poland that Dr. Lotaki will not testify for us and so far, no sign of Egon Sobotnik.”

“Time is growing short,” Pieter said. He nodded to his wife and on cue Erica asked Lady Sarah to have a look around the apartment so the two men were alone. “Abraham, I have told my children everything.”

“I suspected so tonight. It must have been very difficult.”

“Strange. Not as hard as I thought. You put into your children all the love and wisdom you are able to yet you fear that in a crisis they have lost it. Well, they didn’t. They wept, particularly for their mother. My son, Anton, was ashamed he did not know earlier so he could have helped me through difficult periods. And Erica explained to them that we have even greater compensations in our relationship than a sexual life.”

Abe pondered. “I don’t want you to think about testifying, ” he said. “I know it’s on your mind.”

“I read your books, Cady. With us, we are able to rise to heights that normal couples cannot attain. Now, there are four of us who feel that strongly.”

“I can’t let you do it. After all, the loss of human dignity is one of the things this case is all about.”

Anton Van Damm was waiting in the lobby of the Meurice when Abe and Lady Sarah returned. She whisked off in the open cage elevator, and they made into the bar.

“I know why you’re here,” Abe said.

“It’s on Father’s conscience day and night. If it means losing the case, of having Kelno paid off, Father would suffer more than if he took the stand.”

“Anton, when I went into this I had some ideas about revenge. Well, I’ve changed that notion. Adam Kelno as a single person is not important. What some people do to other people is important. From this aspect, as Jews we must tell this story over and over. We must continue to protest our demise until we are allowed to live in peace.”

“You’re looking for a victory in heaven, Mr. Cady. I want one on earth.”

Abe smiled and rumpled the boy’s hair. “I’ve got a son and a daughter about your age. I’ve never won an argument with them yet.”

“May I have your attention, please,” the loud-speaker of Heathrow Airport announced, “El Al from Tel Aviv has just landed.”

As the door from customs opened, Sheila Lamb led the surge toward an uncertain little knot of passengers. Dr. Leiberman introduced himself and the two women and four men. The Israeli witnesses.

“How good of you to come,” Sheila said, embracing them each. Jacob Alexander looked on in awe as the girl who had worked for him for five years in abstract suddenly felt the need to take charge to put everyone at ease. They had been numbers in a file but now they were here, the mutilated of Jadwiga.

Sheila passed out small bouquets of flowers and led everyone to a waiting line of cars.

“Abraham Cady was not able to come to meet you and sends his regrets. His face is well known and if he were here it might interfere with your anonymity. However, he is quite anxious to know you all and has asked you to dinner tomorrow evening.”

In a few moments they all seemed more certain and divided up into the cars. “If they aren’t too tired,” Sheila said to Dr. Leiberman, “I think a little spin around London might be nice so they can get the feeling of our city.”

After Kelno’s testimony, Dr. Harold Boland, a prominent anesthesiologist, testified on behalf of Sir Adam Kelno that the spinal was a simple and reasonable method.