Zbornik Mednarodnega literarnega srečanja Vilenica 2004 - Ljudmila

Daša Drndić
looks at Johann the house-painter. He is
smiling. He is leaning against a silver
handled cane. It is an expensive cane. His
suit is too large. I am a psychiatrist, says
doctor Gross, I know when people confabulate.
This man has a vivid imagination,
he’s seeing people and events. This
man should be treated.
On winter nights they’d leave us halfnaked
on the balconies. We would die
slowly. I haven’t died. They gave us shots
and sedatives and first we would shiver
on those balconies, then we would fall
asleep, then we would catch pneumonia.
Gross remembers nothing of his past.
The trial is stopped because doctor Heinrich
Gross has no memory, no one’s
memory, neither his nor that of his patients,
nor that of history. He dwells in a
false fugue, in a fugue of hypocrisy or
dementia, no one knows which, and no
one will ever find out. Without memory
it is impossible to bring back the past.
There is evidence, there are tiny pieces
of memory stored in the skulls of those
who no longer exist. For sixty years that
mummified evidence has floated in
formaldehyde, but it is not sufficient evidence.
The court psychiatrist of the accused
former SS psychiatrist Heinrich
Gross, from 1950 to 1988 also his wellpaid
colleague, an active neuro-paediatrician
with dozens of research papers
on the deformities of the brain, proclaims
the doctor senile. The judge, Karlheinz
Seewald, acquits him. Doctor Heinrich
Gross will die a natural death as an
innocent and free man.
I am Waltraud Haupl. I have the healthfile
of my sister Annemarie from the year
1943. She was admitted to Spiegelgrund
because of rachitic changes on her
bones. Doctor Gross included her into his
programme of euthanasia of mentally
retarded children. The file holds the
doctor’s therapeutic starvation diet: coffee
with milk and a piece of bread once
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