Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder by Gitta Sereny

be relieved but for “having had financial dealings with a Jew”.

5
    “A T H ARTHEIM ,” Stangl said, “the winding up process ran very smoothly, but not everywhere.” In October 1941 he was sent to Bernburg near Hanover, an ‘institute’ where the doctor in charge was Dr Eberl (another figure, like Wirth, who was to reappear soon afterwards in Poland, and in Stangl’s life).
    “There were all kinds of things which had to be settled properly in the institutes,” Stangl said rather vaguely about his “tour” at Bernburg. “I had to look after property rights, insurance and that sort of thing. After all, some of those who died left children who had to be properly provided for. Bernburg was a mess. ”
    Perhaps: but according to the records it was Bernburg as well as Hartheim which, from November 1941, were used for the gassing of political prisoners whose “eligibility” for euthanasia was certified on the “14 f 13” forms issued by a committee of psychiatrists, primarily Professors Heyde and Nitsche and Dr Fritz Mennecke – all now dead.
    “ You had no idea ,” I asked Stangl, “ that political prisoners from concentration camps were being gassed in the institutes by then? ”
    “No, not within my experience. At least I never knew this.”
    Franz Suchomel, however, did know it; of course, as he was then stationed at T4 in Berlin, he can better afford to admit knowing it. “Hartheim existed until the end of the war,” he said. “They brought people there from Mauthausen; I don’t know whether from other places too. But I have even heard tell that they were still gassing at ‘C’ [Hartheim] when the ‘Amis’ [Americans] were already on the Rhine.”
    In view of these facts on record regarding events at Bernburg and Schloss Hartheim while Stangl was still there, his assertion that he knew nothing about them certainly throws doubt on his veracity in this instance. It is, however, just possible – and not out of keeping with his personality – that, as he rarely actually saw the victims but limited himself to his function of checking the “lunacy certificates” issued by the commission, it may not have occurred to him to question the signatures on certificates of eminent specialists such as Heyde, Nitsche and Mennecke. He could conceivably have accepted these papers as genuine and never have realized that these particular patients were in fact healthy men and women.
    While I remain sceptical on this point, I am convinced that Stangl managed to keep his wife in complete ignorance of what he was involved in at Schloss Hartheim. It was not only the secrecy rule that would have prevented him from telling her; it was also because he was profoundly dependent on her approval of him as a husband, a father, a provider, a professional success – and also as a man. Even if he persuaded himself that the Euthanasia Programme was justifiable ( all of these men did) and even if an occasional remark she made (as she did later to me) could have given him reason to think that at least theoretically she might not totally disagree with this opinion, he could not possibly be sure that she would react with anything but horror to the idea that he himself was actively involved, and he would certainly not have risked the consequences of such a reaction.
    “Yes,” Frau Stangl said to me in Brazil. “Of course I remember when he was called to Berlin. He didn’t know [what T4 was]; certainly it seemed to me at the time that he had no idea what was wanted of him. When he came back he merely said he’d been transferred to a special job, but not far away and that he would be able to see us quite often. He said that his assignment was an official secret, and that he couldn’t say anything, so I didn’t ask further. I did see him every two weeks after that: I saw no change in him during that time. But then, when he came home, he only stayed for a few hours, a night perhaps. No, I had no idea there was anything wrong –