It was a total bluff. Hitler had no intention of revealing the Fischer discovery that the Jews might be “superior” to the Germans. He simply intended to exterminate. But the bluff worked. The Pope stayed silent about the Shoah, thus assisting the Germans in their genocide; the shame of papal complicity has plagued the church to this day.’
Simon sighed, but continued.
‘So…Between 1944 and 1945, the Allies slowly liberated Occupied France. The Nazi doctors who had worked at Gurs feared for their lives. But they had one grand bargaining chip: the mindblowing results of the Fischer experiments.
‘Eugen Fischer realized that the western democracies would be just as keen as the Catholic church to suppress this knowledge – as it would destabilize the world, in so many ways, and of course lend disastrous credibility to Nazi racial theories. So Fischer and his colleagues had potential leverage over the Allies – but only if they could preserve the data. They therefore hatched a plan to conceal their results: in the labyrinthine vaults of an inaccessible SS castle, in Bohemia. The vault was hurriedly built – here – even as the Red Army marched across Slovakia.
‘The plan worked. The doctors, many of whom had committed the most appalling crimes, threatened to reveal their experimental data if they were harmed; so they were hastily exonerated and returned to work at German universities by the fearful Allies. The Fischer data remained entombed and unknown. The conspiracy of silence had worked. Up to a point.
‘At the end of the war, there was one other class of people who might reveal the terrible secrets of the Fischer experiments. The survivors of Gurs. Cagots and Basques, in the main. The Germans had been free and easy with the Fischer results in the camp. The few survivors therefore also had to be silenced: this was done with large sums of money. The Gurs survivors were bought off by the Catholic church – which was consumed by guilt at the behaviour of its chaplains in the camp. The church was also shamed by its cooperation with the Nazis. Blood money was paid.
‘Some of the survivors then dispersed around the world, to Britain, to Canada and to America. But for many of these people the Gurs money was tainted: associated with the terrors of Gurs. Many of them never spent the cash, and endured a life of concealed shame.’
‘So what happened afterwards?’ Amy asked.
Angus answered. ‘Nothing. At first. The plan worked: the Nazi doctors slowly died off, as did the Gurs survivors.’
‘But everyone forgot about…the Kellermans?’ she said.
Simon nodded:
‘Yes. The Kellerman dynasty in far-off Namibia. They had been close to Fischer; Fischer stayed in touch with them after the war. Indeed some of Fischer’s Nazi colleagues fled to Namibia, after the war, and were protected by Kellerman Namcorp.’
David gazed around the assembled faces. ‘But what was in it for the Kellermans?’
Angus spoke:
‘I can provide that answer. Truth is, the Kellermans were interested in the Fischer results for the Jewish people. Old Samuel Kellerman was a strict believer in Leviticus 25, that Jews were allowed by God to take slaves from the inferior Gentiles.’
Amy protested, ‘But – Nathan?’
‘Sure, yup, the younger Kellermans were different…they may have dispensed with these superstitions, but they were still ardent Zionists. Determined to create and then preserve Israel as a homeland for Jews.’
‘So?’
Angus gazed Amy’s way. ‘Think about Israel, Amy. You’re Jewish, you know this stuff. Through the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, demographics have been pointing to one outcome in Israel: at some point Jews are gonna be outnumbered by non-Jews even in their Jewish homeland. And then Israel will no longer be safe: and maybe another Holocaust will ensue.’
Simon interrupted: ‘The Fischer results promised a philosophical escape route. If it could be proved that Jews were a different subspecies to ordinary gentiles – or at least headed that way – that would give a justification for treating non-Jews, within Israel, in a discriminatory fashion. Why should a different kind of man get the vote – in a homeland reserved for Jews?’
Amy shook her head. ‘Homo judaicus? Shameful!’
‘But it makes sense,’ Angus answered her, calmly. ‘Universal human rights do not apply if humans are not universally the same. If the Jews are provably different, superior, then they deserve provably different and superior rights. If you really want to fucking push the point.’
‘Therefore,’ Simon added, ‘the Kellermans wanted the Fischer results for their Zionist purposes – or, failing that, to repeat the, ah, experiments and get the same data.