He stared and said nothing.
“I know about the T4 program, Johannes. I know all about it.”
He looked down at his wounded hand, now fully bandaged, resting on the table. “Then you know it ended in 1941.”
“Did it, though? Perhaps it did if all the disabled and ill and elderly had already been killed by then,” I said coolly. “Or perhaps T4 was halted because the Nazis needed their many gas chambers for other horrific purposes.”
Johannes shook his head but did not look at me. “I had nothing to do with that. I had nothing to do with those camps.”
“You were an officer in Hitler’s Wehrmacht.”
“I was just following orders. None of this was my idea. None of it.”
His words were calmly spoken, as if he felt no emotion at all in saying them. Rage boiled up from within me. “And you think that excuses you? That you were just following orders? My God, Johannes. You objected to nothing, you challenged nothing! Not even when your commander shouted over the phone that your own daughter was a monkey! Every Nazi order you obeyed furthered their cause. Don’t you see it? Every time you said nothing, you were saying you agreed with them. Every time you did nothing to stop the madness, you were pushing it forward!”
He smiled weakly. “Says the American who sheltered in Switzerland while the rest of the world burned.”
The barb landed swiftly in my chest as if it were a tangible thing. With its sting, I realized I’d always known I could have done more to stand against the evil that was the Third Reich. And so could my homeland. We could have done so much more. America could have provided safe haven to European Jews who had been desperate for asylum. We could have done that easily. I saved eleven children, yes, but when the Swiss borders closed and rescuing anyone from Nazi-occupied countries became exceedingly dangerous, what did I do? I retreated into the safety of fear. I’d heard the news that Jews were being apprehended on theshores of Lake Constance after rowing all night from Germany to Switzerland. I could’ve asked Franz before he left for Bern for the names of all the people who’d helped rescue the Austrian children. I could have told those people to be on the lookout for refugees crossing the lake at night. Could have coordinated with them to bring these people down to Lucerne to hide them. I wish I had. Perhaps I would have been quickly found out, arrested, and deported, but I wish I had. Oh, how I wish I had. Maybe I could have only saved one Jewish person before being discovered and the operation shut down. But if every one of us who could have saved just one had done so, how many could have been saved from the concentration camps? It was staggering to ponder.
But Johannes was looking at me now like we were the same in this respect. We were not the same.
Not when it came to Brigitta.
“You’re right, Johannes,” I said. “You’re right that I could have done more when I left Vienna. But at least I did everything I could to save Brigitta. At least I did that.”
He startled, but only slightly.
“You knew all along she didn’t die of pneumonia, didn’t you?” I went on. “You knew they had killed her, and you pretended it was just her time. You even told Martine pneumonia could be a difficult disease. I heard you say it.”
He looked at me, held my gaze, and then nodded. “It’s all right if you want to blame me for what happened to Brigitta. And yes, that is what I said. I thought at the time it was the most merciful thing to say to Martine.”
“Don’t talk to me about the Nazi brand of mercy,” I hissed, leaning forward. But when he didn’t recoil or lash out in return, I sat back. “And I don’t blame you directly for happened to Brigitta, but I can’t understand how you were able to live with it. You knew what they were doing! You went back to your panzer division as if losing Brigitta was nothing!”
“I went back to my division because I believed I had no other choice. As I have already said, you have every right to blame me for what happened to Brigitta. Martine does. The other children do.”
“Why? Why should I blame only you?”
He closed his eyes and swallowed before answering, as though he expected the next words coming from his mouth to scrape his throat raw as he spoke them. “Because I’m the one who asked—begged and bribed—for Brigitta to be given the injection that killed her.”
The air seemed to be swept from the room, and I sat unable to draw breath. What he was saying was impossible. No father would do that.
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
“It’s true. I’m the one that had her moved from Am Steinhof to the killing center at Hartheim.” He opened his eyes to look at me. “That’s why Martine and the children blame me.”
“No.” I shook my head. “No!”
“Yes.” Tears were now slipping down Johannes’s face.
“How could you do such a thing?” I whispered.
For a moment, Johannes did not answer. It was as if he could not summon the words or convince his tongue to form them. When he finally spoke, his voice seemed to splinter in two. “Because I’d learned from someone inside Am Steinhof that they were doing experiments on her. They were doing dreadful medical experiments on all the children. I could not bear it, Helen. I could not! I paid someone to take her to the place where they killed them, so that it would stop.”
Johannes leaned forward, dropped his head to the table atop his folded arms, and began to quietly sob.
I sat still in my chair, afraid I would shatter into a thousand pieces if I moved. For many long moments, I sat frozen as the man next to me cried. I wanted to hit Johannes; I wanted to hold him. I wanted to scream at him; I wanted to soothe him. I wanted tofind every doctor who’d tortured the children at Am Steinhof and every nurse who’d stood by and helped and cut them down with a sword. I wanted to push them into hell myself.
I wanted to forget I had ever known this family; I wanted to remember them always.
