Roots of Evil(106)

Alice asked the man if he had ever known the composer Conrad Kline. The Gestapo had taken him to Dachau.

The violinist had not known Herr Kline, but had heard him play once in Vienna – ah, a privilege that had been! A maestro indeed! He had not heard what might have happened to Herr Kline, but the baroness should keep in mind that the musicians in the camps were not being so harshly treated as some other inmates. ‘So that they can play as we do here,’ he said. ‘He has a good chance of surviving.’

Alice was heartened by the thought that Conrad might have his beloved music around him. (And one day, my dear love, we will dance together in that Viennese ballroom again, and I will be wearing a Parisian gown and perfume from Mme Chanel, and you will have evening clothes from Savile Row…) She had been soothed, as well, by the lyrical Mozart concerto that had formed the afternoon’s programme, but when she thanked the man for playing so beautifully, he only said, ‘If we don’t play well, we go to the gas.’

And then in the spring of 1943 a new chief physician came to Auschwitz.

The man whom some called the Angel of Death, and whom others called the Nazi Mystic. Dr Josef Mengele.



A web of sinister speculation seemed to surround Mengele almost within hours of his arrival. There were whispers about the work he was here to perform – rumours of experiments with twins or dwarfs; whispers of tests to establish the boundaries of human endurance, and grisly procedures aimed at observing the results of bone transplant and nerve regeneration.

Ilena, with her medical background, was assigned to work in one of Mengele’s clinics. ‘I had been na?ve enough to think I might spike his guns,’ she said to Alice and the others after the first few days. ‘I had visions of stealing morphine and secretly administering it to the victims. After all these months in this place, I really thought that might be possible, can you believe that!’

‘Isn’t it possible?’

‘Everything is locked and guarded,’ said Ilena bitterly. ‘You couldn’t smuggle so much as a needle out of the place.’

‘For God’s sake don’t put yourself at risk,’ said Alice, frightened.

‘I won’t,’ said Ilena with her slanting smile. ‘One day, Lu, we’re going to walk out of here – perhaps when the Russians liberate us, or the British or the Americans. Perhaps we shall even find a way of escape for ourselves before that. But walk out we will, Lu. All of us. And you and I will go out together, arm in arm.’

Somehow, some day, they would walk out, because somehow they would survive.

Ilena had been working in the medical block for several weeks when she sought out Alice one night after the meagre bread-and-margarine supper. Her face was white and pinched, and she said, without preamble, ‘If they suspect I’m telling you this, Lu, they’ll probably hang me but I can’t help that.’

‘Telling me what?’

‘Mengele has noticed Alraune. You know how Alraune likes to sit in the recreation yard in the afternoons. Well, Mengele has noticed him.’ She paused and then said very gently, ‘I think they have earmarked him for one of their experiments.’

The iron stove was burning in its corner – there was the usual tin cup of water heating on it, and there was the warm scent of hot metal from the stove’s interior. But Alice felt as if an icy hand was closing around her heart. One of their experiments. One of their grim inhuman explorations into the human body or the human mind…

‘How do you know?’

‘They have a schedule of their week’s work pinned on a board inside the main administration room in the medical block,’ said Ilena. ‘Names and numbers of prisoners to be brought in, and who is to be seen by whom. I keep a close eye on that, of course, in case any of our own people are on it. And then this morning—’

‘Alraune’s name was there,’ said Alice in a whisper. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it? Oh God.’

‘Yes. One of the annexes – Annexe VI. Dr Josef Mengele’s patient.’

‘When?’ said Alice after a moment. ‘I mean – was there a date?’

‘Wednesday. The day after tomorrow.’

The day after tomorrow. So soon, thought Alice in panic. Less than two days. That’s all the time I’ve got to find a way to save him. ‘What kind of experiments are they doing in that annexe?’ she said. ‘Ilena, please tell me.’

‘Several different ones. But Mengele’s main interest at the moment,’ said Ilena unhappily, ‘is to pinpoint the breaking point in the human mind – to understand precisely how much pain and how much fear a man can endure before his mind splinters. They are trying to establish if pain or fear is the dominant factor – and that means applying both to their victims, and then observing the results.’



‘We could hide him,’ said the Russian girl some time during the night. ‘Some of the others have done that with children. Hidden them under clothing.’

‘But they’re always caught,’ said Alice.

‘And where could we hide him?’ said Ilena, with a swift angry gesture around the bare wooden floors of the hut and the narrow bunk beds.

Alice was dizzy with exhaustion and fear, but she was managing to force her mind to concentrate because there must be a way out of this. The women had not even tried to sleep; they had talked for hours, sitting up in their narrow beds, several of them grouped around the iron stove for warmth and comfort, all of them trying to think of a way to save Alraune from Mengele.