Zbornik Mednarodnega literarnega srečanja Vilenica 2004 - Ljudmila

Daša Drndić
were soaked with rain, they were falling
apart, there were tiny limbs dropping
from the bags, children’s limbs, tiny bare
feet, tiny hands. It’s been 55 years. They
gave me my son’s file. They took me to
the Spiegelgrund basement, today the
hospital carries Otto Wagner’s name.
Otto Wagner was an architect, I was told.
He had never been a Nazi, that’s why the
hospital carries his name. I was taken
to the basement. There I found my son’s
brain. In a jar. They said, take Friedl. You
can bury him now.
With the end of the Second World War
the killing of handicapped children
hadn’t stopped. The last victim of the
deranged doctors – experimenters, was
four-year old Richard Jenne, killed in the
children’s ward of the state hospital
Kaufbeueren-Irsee in Bavaria, three
weeks after Germany’s unconditional
capitulation.
With ardent cooperation of scientists,
students, medical staff and Nazi officers,
from 1934 till 1945, throughout Europe,
German and Austrian doctors sterilized
375.000 women and men allegedly diagnosed
with inherited psycho-physical
deformities. More than 5000 children
and 80.000 adult mental patients were
killed. Most of those doctors were never
taken to court; they remained heads of
their hospitals and wards, they published
their scientific discoveries, they were
awarded for their work and they died as
honourable citizens. In the bliss of total
oblivion.
Translated by Andrea Pisac and the author
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