... VlÃ Ä a told my father a far more dramatic tale, one that rewrites an
important page of history: as Heydrich lay bleeding, the Czech medical team at
work in the hospital secretly switched the blood for his transfusions to the
wrong type, knowing the mismatched blood would kill the patient. VlÃ Ä a did not
say whether he played a direct part in this, and he did not elaborate with
further details.
I
have no reason to doubt VlÃ Ä a's story. He is certainly a credible source, one
intimately familiar with the inner workings of the Czech resistance as well as with
the use of blood and other biological materials for covert operations. His
credentials speak for themselves: from 1941-1945, he served as Health
Commissioner of the National Health Department; was an assistant at Charles
University in the bacteriological, serological, and pathological anatomy departments
during the war; and in the 1990s, he was an active member of the New York
Academy of Science.
I spent several weeks studying the issue of
Heydrich's assassination, his time in the hospital, blood transfusions (there
were no blood banks as there are today), and what I could learn from people
familiar with the autopsy (much different from today's thorough process). I
reviewed books about Heydrich, spoke to blood experts (like Morey Blinder, MD,
of Washington University School of Medicine, Hematology Division), and medical
journalists (like Amos J. Wright, MLS, co-author of "The Puzzling Death of
Reinhard Heydrich," published in the 2009 Bulletin
of Anesthesia History). To help me, Leo Greenbaum at YIVO Institute for
Jewish Research Archives in New York enlisted a volunteer to read a German
version of Heydrich's autopsy.
Beyond the most prevalent speculation about horsehair-induced
infection and the poison grenade, conjecture also landed on a massive pulmonary
embolism. Finally, I realized that the answer to Heydrich's cause of death
could never be known for sure. The definitive sources are now gone--physicians
are deceased and records from the hospital were lost in a 2002 flood. The
Germans removed sixty tons of documents as they left Prague in May 1945, and
Allied bombers destroyed Berlin Gestapo files in 1943, which may have held
important facts.
What
was repeatedly reported in the documents I read was that the protective squad
of SS guards, not immediately present upon Heydrich's arrival at the hospital,
later barred any Czechs from approaching him. But just perhaps, some very brave
staffers ensured that the man known as --the Butcher of Prague'' was finished
off by early intervention, either through a laboratory or pharmacy technician
tampering with blood, or by infusing a bacteria through an injection performed
by a nurse. Heydrich died seven days after my grandparents, Arno... t and Olga
Holzer, were executed at his Sobibor mass extermination camp.
My father never knew what I later
learned through my research--the eerie link between the Butcher of Prague and his
parents' demise. If he had known, the tone of his voice as he repeated VlÃ Ä a's
tale would have revealed how he felt about this man. The story he heard from VlÃ Ä a
was one Dad repeated on audiotape at different times for me and my cousin, Tom
Weiss--an uncorroborated account that offered for my father some justice in a
world full of injustices that he had witnessed firsthand.
When I ponder why Vlada
might have only told my father and perhaps a few others of what really happened,
I remember what Hitler unleashed in response to the assassination. He authorized
the destruction of the Czech towns of Lidice and Lezaky and the killing of all the
men and transportation of women and children to concentration camps. It was a
difficult time for all Czechs but this particularly was a moment questioned by
some as whether the assassination at that time was worth it. Perhaps Dr. Wagner did not want to bring the
truth to the open because of this circumstance.
But at this point, who knows? Let the experts debate.
Reinhard Heydrich Stamp by Joanie Schirm
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