The History of History - By Ida Hattemer-Higgins Page 0,139

callous. I would not have been so quick to conform if it had not been for something else. Before all this governmental interest began, I had a terrible experience. I was given the opportunity, you see, to try out this invention of mine, my lovely Inner Eye, in a civilian setting early on; it had nothing to do with the RSHA at all. It was the hysterectomy of a woman who had only one kidney and had almost died during the birth of her fourth child. A hysterectomy which was entirely called for and should have been an easy procedure.” The doctor spoke slowly.

“It should have been easy. But unfortunately, I made a cut that was a few millimeters to the left. There was massive hemorrhaging. And I lost the patient.” The doctor’s eyes glowed remotely, blindly. She sat still for a moment.

“Comrade, I wonder if you know that there are two types of disappointment: disappointment in oneself and disappointment in God. In other words: self-hatred and alienation.”

Margaret didn’t say anything. The doctor sighed, and then went on in a grey voice.

“So. Although I had made a strong start, I must say—I gave in. I abandoned my own work and became an assistant to Stieve almost full-time.” The doctor sighed again.

“Stieve was interested in psychosomatic illness as it relates to fertility. In particular he was interested in the effects of environmental factors, psychological factors that is, on the female menstrual cycle.”

Her voice changed yet again. It became very deep, uninflected. She stretched her words down to an ever lower pitch. “In our research, we were dependent on women who had come to death suddenly. Only in these women could the ovaries and uterus be removed instantly, almost the moment of death itself. The tissue was examined and correlated with the psychological circumstances surrounding the woman’s passing. Luckily for our research, there was a glut of women being executed by the Gestapo at just that moment in time, at the Berlin Plötzensee Internment Facility. In large part, ‘traitors to the Reich,’ political prisoners, mostly Communists.

“At first Stieve merely made postmortem studies of the reproductive organs of these women and compared them with those of women who had died under natural circumstances. Later, however, he began to take a more active role in determining the ‘psychological circumstances’ that would surround these convicts’ deaths. For example, he would decide at which point before the execution date the victim should learn of her fate. We would tell them ourselves, and immediately begin recording menstrual patterns.”

The doctor stopped and put both hands on the desk, with the palms, very soft and white, turned up toward the ceiling. What Margaret noticed were the veins of her narrow wrists, wrists that appeared naked and childlike.

“My dear,” began the doctor, “you can’t imagine how losing my patient in that first hysterectomy affected me. It is a terrible thing, this responsibility for life, and her death convinced me I did not want to stand alone and carry it. Not as a scientist, not as a human, and not as a woman with reproductive capacity herself. Nor did I have a great faith in a higher power, else why should this have been allowed to happen? My wonderful Inner Eye, such a brilliant invention it was! I was disappointed both in myself and in the durability of the soul, which is another word for God. So from then on, I did not think it wise to work as an individual. Frankly speaking, comrade, I enjoyed this work with Stieve, I wanted this work in fact, for the simple reason that it removed the gamble with death: there was no mystery in our patients’ survival or failure to survive.

“Do you know when you are greatly frightened, the color leaves your cheeks?”

Margaret started at the direct question. “Yes,” she answered, although somewhat uncertainly.

But the doctor took her answer warmly. “Precisely, my child. I know it too. I saw it many times even in this very office. Well, that’s what I observed in these women when they were told the date of their execution. It’s because the capillaries draw together—nervous vasoconstriction. But this is only part of a much larger response—all of the body’s systems which are not active in the fight-or-flight response shut down—the digestive tract, the skin, and the reproductive organs lose as much blood as can be spared. A third of the blood in the abdomen will be removed by the vasoconstrictors and sent to where it is most needed