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Sinister Syndrome

Mike Rader

    A white shape moved in a window above. A girl with long unkempt hair, wearing a ragged smock. She pressed her face to the glass, her tiny hand splayed against the pane. She beckoned me to join her. I waved back, smiled, and walked to the door. As promised, it was unlocked.
    All around me, Vienna slept.Vienna, the city of dreams, Strauss waltzes, the blue Danube, old palaces, and rich cakes. Also the city where thousands of children were “permanently cured” by Nazi doctors at a special clinic and never seen again. And that is why I am here, at Building 15 at Am Spiegelgrund, where Heinrich Gross ran the Children’s Ward.
    My trip from New York had been swift. The moment we received the tip alleging strange new atrocities, my editor put me on the first flight to Austria.
    Moonlight abandoned the forbidding structure as I pushed open the heavy door set with an iron grille, and entered the gloomy clinic. It took little imagination to picture the past. Sick and disabled children, who did not comply with Nazi ideology, enduring electro-shock therapy and cold water cures. Injections of sulphur into their legs made escape impossible. Some were left out in the cold and died of “natural causes”, others were guinea pigs for tuberculosis vaccines. In those years, having cerebral palsy was not a good idea in Vienna.
    The girl appeared at the top of an old broad staircase, one hand on the rail.
    I gave her another smile. “We got your message. I’m here to help you.”
    “You must not smile in this place,” she said. “They do not like it.”
    As she drew closer I realised she had the body of a girl of ten, but the face of an old woman.
    “How long have you been here?” I said.
    “Dr Asperger sent me here in 1943 when I was twelve. He visited me sometimes. He said he wanted to observe any changes and see whether I could be educated.”
    I did the math. Her gaze had the intensity of youth, despite her wrinkled flesh having the translucence of a 90-year old. Her voice had a dry, powdery quality. “My schoolwork wasn’t good and Dr Asperger said I had hereditary social disorders. I was deemed unworthy of life.”
    “But you are still here,” I said. “Do you remember your name?”
    She lifted her hair to show the scars behind her left ear. “No. I was treated because I was defective.”
    “Then how did you survive all those years?” I said. “Why are you still here?”
    “I will explain.”
    She led the way past an old reception desk, down cold concrete stairs, deep into a basement room. Hundreds of glass jars containing tiny brains confronted me. A strong, sickly chemical odor invaded my nostrils. I shuddered.
    “There are 800 of them,” she said. “Mine is in one of them. One day it will be mine again.” Little giggles broke out around me as other withered children surged forward, clutching at me. “But first,” she said, “we have to treat you.”

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