The Chosen Ones (47 page)

JUDGE LEADING THE INVESTIGATION:
Are you familiar with this book, Mrs Katschenka? [
He holds up, with both hands, a heavy textbook in nursing practice; the cover says HAND-UND LEHRBUCH DER KRANKENPFLEGE.
]

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
No, I’m not. It was not used during my training years.

JUDGE:
No, of course not [
leafs through a few more pages
]. It was printed in 1940. If I may, I’ll read a short extract to you. It is taken from the third chapter’s second section, second paragraph. It is entitled ‘Other regulations affecting professional healthcare practice’. This is what it says:
The National Socialist transformation [of society] has brought about extensive changes in the practice of healthcare. The thinking that now guides German care of the ill as well as general healthcare is based on new approaches to the welfare of the people as a whole. To replace the ‘curative liberality’ that previously dominated the medical profession and which entailed regarding the care of the ill as charity, often exercised by churches and other religious institutions, today’s form of care is directed by the goals already established in our new legislation concerning matters of race and heritability of traits. Hence, new laws and regulations supporting those purposes have been introduced, such as the law defining a Uniform System of Health Care. Also, new organisations have been instituted with the aim of developing and practising NSDAP’s political will and leadership.
Are these ideas at all familiar to you?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
I have never been a member of NSDAP. I
have already made that clear. Party politics do not appeal to me at all.

JUDGE:
That’s understood. But what we’re talking about now is not membership of a political organisation. The passage I read to you sets out the law as it affected everyone working in healthcare. It was written in 1940, one year before you, of your own free will, applied for a post at the children’s institution. I take it you can’t seriously claim that you were unaware of the new statutes described in this textbook. Especially as you sought out this workplace yourself and Doctor Jekelius had informed you of the type of children admitted to the clinic. And, presumably, also of what kind of services were expected of you.

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
I carried out my work in the same spirit as in the past. And with the same intentions.

JUDGE:
I have asked you before if you noted any changes that followed immediately after Doctor Illing’s arrival as medical director. You said no. Is that correct?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
Yes.

JUDGE:
However, when Doctor Illing was heard in the People’s Court, he emphasised himself that his powers in the institutional context, and the justification of his right to do what he did, were based on a circular that he safeguarded in one of the desk drawers in his personal office, number 15. I assume that you know of this room, Mrs Katschenka?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
Yes.

JUDGE:
Would it be fair to say that you actually went there quite often?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
I don’t understand your line of questioning.

JUDGE:
This investigation was initiated to prepare for the court case against two defendants who were both your superiors,
doctors Illing and Türk. Since the investigation began, a great deal has been unearthed which also changes the circumstances affecting my interviews with you. I believe that you by now have heard of the investigation that is underway in the case of Doctor Margarethe Hübsch, now that she has been found and taken into custody. Apparently Margarethe Hübsch also expects you to be a witness in her favour. But, before you do, I should inform you of the fact that some of your former superiors have changed their statements in view of what has come to light recently. To give you an example, Doctor Türk has admitted that so-called mercy killings were carried out during Doctor Illing’s time as medical director of the clinic. She admits also that these practices were already taking place, although to a lesser extent, during the previous medical director’s time in office. That is, during Doctor Jekelius’s time. Doctor Türk states that she was called in to see Doctor Jekelius soon after she had taken up her post, and that he instructed her about a document issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Berlin which set out the recommended procedures and, furthermore, he made it clear that this document was the equivalent of enacted legislation. Now, Mrs Katschenka, I’m sure you will recall that during our earlier conversation, you denied all knowledge of any such circular or document. You confirmed that
if
there had been such a thing you would definitely have known about it. This would be reasonable in view of your rank in the institution and the nature of your work, and possibly also because of your personal relationship with Doctor Jekelius. When you sought out this institution, it was, you have said, because you
wanted
to work under Doctor Jekelius. That is already on record and would seem to point to the very likely possibility that you, too, were called
to the director’s personal office, number 15, and informed about this document in just the same manner as Doctor Türk. Also, it would indicate that the suggestions that you earlier dismissed as false and groundless rumours were what actually happened.

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
[…]

JUDGE:
Mrs Katschenka?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
[
in tears
] You don’t understand. You don’t understand what it was like. There were so many of them and they suffered so dreadfully.

JUDGE:
Mrs Katschenka. I must reiterate. You are called as a witness. You are not accused of anything. It is also recognised by all of us that we are bound by the oaths of service and that we all have committed ourselves to be loyal to our superiors and have a duty to obey their instructions. I do understand that you feel constrained by such binding declarations but surely you also recognise the absurdity of insisting that you had no idea of what was going on in the institution when those who were your superiors have already admitted that much. Now, you took up your post in 1941, at about the same time as Doctor Türk, isn’t that so?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
[
faintly
] Doctor Türk was already there when I started.

JUDGE:
Well, it’s not important here. You began your work in 1941 and you have already said that you did so willingly because you felt such a great confidence in Doctor Jekelius. Now, it is a fact that even then it was relatively well known what kind of medical man Doctor Jekelius was – if I may put it like that. The condition for Am Spiegelgrund existing at all as a specialist clinic dealing with children with disciplinary problems and, also, very severely ill children, was of course that the majority of the
previous in-patients were … let’s call it ‘evacuated’. Transported to another place. Eliminated. This, you must have known. With regard to the daily duties and procedures in your new place of work, you must either have been already aware of them or been told of the aims of the institution after a meeting with Doctor Jekelius, who presumably also felt great confidence in you … [
leafs through her personal documents
] I can’t see here that you ever looked for another position somewhere else during all those years.

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
But you don’t understand. There were … look, I couldn’t get a job anywhere else. All doors were closed to me by then. That was when I realised that there were posts at Steinhof, and that Doctor Jekelius … [
weeps
] I had been at Lainz but would so much have preferred to work with children. Before, at Wilhelminenspital, I had worked with children, many of them were so very ill but it wasn’t …

JUDGE:
So, it shocked you to see what kind of clinic you had signed up for?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
I was completely horrified. It was not at all what I had expected. Besides, I had never had any training to prepare me for nursing children who suffered from such extensive malformations or neurological diseases. This was actually true of most of the staff in the children’s clinic – they weren’t trained for this work either. There were some who had qualifications in paediatric nursing but most of them were leftovers from Steinhof. Asylum nurses. And nursing assistants. Soon after I had taken up the post, I asked to see Doctor Jekelius to tell him that I was not suitable, simply not the right person. That was when he explained it to me.

JUDGE:
Explained what?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
Well, that letter … the document you were speaking about earlier.

JUDGE:
When was this?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
I can’t remember. Soon after I had begun my new job. Perhaps just a few days later.

JUDGE:
And what did he tell you?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
He said that I had by then seen with my own eyes that the condition of the children who were admitted to the clinic was truly miserable, that some of them were incurable and, in such cases, certain procedures had to be followed.

JUDGE:
And what were the procedures in such cases?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
He said that the final decisions were made in Berlin and that the local doctors never decided on their own. In that sense, the children on the wards were there for observation. Our main task was to observe them very carefully so that we could submit accurate and thorough case reports as bases for final conclusions.

JUDGE:
When that conclusion from Berlin arrived, what did you do?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
The judgement was up to the doctors.

JUDGE:
How did you react when you learnt all this?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
I simply didn’t understand at first. I only realised when Doctor Jekelius let me see the Berlin document. He showed me that it was sent out from the Führer’s own ministry and was signed by the Führer personally. Jekelius said that since it came from the person of the Führer, it had the same status as any law, only in this instance the situation demanded secrecy. I assumed that he referred to the war.

JUDGE:
And then?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
Then he reminded me that I had taken an
oath and sworn to be silent about the work I do. And he said that I must not, in any circumstance, tell anyone about any aspect of the institution or about the principles which were applied and, well obviously, anything about individual cases.

JUDGE:
Was that all?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
What do you mean?

JUDGE:
Do you remember anything else? For instance, do you remember what the Berlin circular – that’s what we’re speaking about, surely – looked like?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
I was far too upset to notice any details. I remember that it was written on quite ordinary letter-pad paper, nothing special at all. Except the symbol, the eagle and the swastika in the top left-hand corner. And the signature at the bottom.

JUDGE:
The Führer’s signature?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
I believe so.

JUDGE:
Then it would be fair to say that, from this time, from this talk, you knew –
knew
not only what was going on but also what the aim of it was. Is that right?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
[…]

JUDGE:
I suggest that at this point, we should take a break. The court will rise and you can use the time to consider what you will include in your statement. You may want to discuss it with your lawyer. Then we shall have a look at the case of Doctor Hübsch.

JUDGE:
Now, Mrs Katschenka, have you made up your mind about what you want to include in the final statement? We had better
start at the beginning, from the first day you took up your post at the institution.

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
I started work at Am Spiegelgrund in January 1941. At the time, Doctor Jekelius was the medical director. My post was Ward Sister and I was allocated to pavilion 15. The institution, as it was then organised, also catered for children with difficult disciplinary problems. But some of the children were profoundly unwell, with differing types and degrees of malformation and debility. On admission, each child underwent a very thorough examination. Our task was defined as observing the children during a limited period of time in order to provide the required details that were to be the basis not only for a final diagnosis but also for any future evaluation of each child’s condition. Each child was also photographed to illustrate the case notes. All sick children admitted to the clinic were then reported to the state committee in Berlin for scientific evaluation of heritable and family background-related severe disease. Then, at a later point, the committee would issue a recommendation about how we should proceed – that is, which children were to receive treatment or continue to be kept under observation.

JUDGE:
If the decision was that a child was to ‘receive treatment’, what did that mean?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
It meant that the child should be killed. In the meantime, many children died anyway. It also happened several times that a child whom Berlin had ordered us to treat remained under observation because we still had some hope that their condition might improve. This was what we hoped for all the time. You must understand. These children were very ill and often had very severe inherited organic defects. For instance, some of them lacked certain parts of the brain. We
cared for children with water on the brain – hydrocephalus – children with paresis or paraplegia, with spina bifida or spinal cord herniation. At the less serious end of the spectrum were children with cramps, atrophic conditions and paralysis. Most of them were quite heavily medicated. Many had to be tied down at all times, or kept in straitjackets to prevent them from sticking fingers up the rectum and then eating their faeces.

JUDGE:
How was the treatment carried out?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
For those who were able to eat more or less normally, we mixed the medication into the food. For very ill infants who couldn’t swallow, we administered drops of morphine in very small doses. The larger children were mainly given Luminal.

JUDGE:
And everyone knew that a treatment of this kind would end in death?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
Yes, everyone knew.

JUDGE:
How often was this done? Was it a daily occurrence, or weekly? How often would you say?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
I don’t quite understand.

JUDGE:
Was it part of, as it were, the day-to-day routine to carry out such treatments or to discuss further treatments?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
Yes, that’s right.

JUDGE:
On whose orders were these treatments carried out?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
The doctor in charge or, if not there at the time, the doctor on duty.

JUDGE:
What you are telling me is that it would be impossible for drugs of this kind to be administered, and the intended effect achieved, without the knowledge of the doctor in charge?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
Yes, that is so.

JUDGE:
Now, which doctors are we talking about?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
Doctor Jekelius during his time at the institution. If he wasn’t available in person, doctors Gross or Türk would take over. And, later on, Doctor Illing.

JUDGE:
And Doctor Hübsch? She was after all employed as second in command to Doctor Jekelius when he was absent at various times. In your view, was Doctor Hübsch also fully informed and aware of what was required?

ANNA KATSCHENKA:
Doctor Hübsch was a senior consultant and didn’t always join in the daily rounds, but because these recommendations were issued by the board and the director of the institution, it is hard to believe that she didn’t know about them. After all, she was the director’s deputy and attended board meetings when Doctor Jekelius was away. Besides, she was a committed National Socialist. She was always dressed according to regulations, displayed NSDAP party insignia and always used the
Heil Hitler
greeting. I think it’s impossibile that she wasn’t fully informed.

JUDGE:
I think this is enough for today, Mrs Katschenka.