House of Evidence(97)

“Where were you during the war years?”

“The Germans were not happy with how things were progressing with the railroad company, and imposed travel restrictions on Matthías, confiscating his passport so that he was unable to leave the country. Of course I could not abandon him. We tried to get out of Germany secretly at the beginning of 1940, but we were betrayed and arrested on board ship at the Hamburg docks. We were imprisoned until the end of the war.”

“Do you feel able to talk about that time?”

“Yes, perhaps it’s time that story was told,” he replied, sighing. “To begin with, we were detained in Hamburg while our case was being investigated. The conditions there were tolerable to start with, compared with other prison camps, but they would later become worse. We were lucky enough, however, that a young German woman, who worked for the Ministry of Justice as an interpreter for the Norwegian prisoners, put us on her list of clients. The Norwegian seamen’s pastor in Hamburg was thus able to visit us with her, and they sometimes sneaked in vitamin pills, which probably saved our lives, because the food they gave us was little and unvaried. When the Allies began to step up the air raids on Hamburg in 1943, we were moved north of the city, to a town called Rendsburg, on the Kiel Canal.”

Klemenz was silent for a moment, and then continued. “In Rendsburg we were forced to do hard labor, and our health began to deteriorate. We were, nevertheless, relieved to be there, because other inmates transferred to our camp brought terrible stories of prison camps elsewhere; names such as Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen would come to epitomize horror to our ears. Although our guards were of varying dispositions, there were those there who tried not to treat us with unnecessary cruelty.”

Klemenz paused and gazed out the window. Hrefna waited patiently, in silence, for him to continue with his story.

“On the second of December 1943, we were paid a rather unpleasant visit in prison,” he began again. “Up to that point we had been detained on the basis of the escape attempt and alleged fraud to do with the railroad company. Later, actually, we learned that the German envoy in Iceland had tried, in vain, to use our imprisonment to bully Jacob Senior into spying for them. Anyway, on this atrocious day, two men arrived from Berlin with an indictment for alleged antisocial behavior and immoral acts under the so-called Paragraph 175 law. Our friends and comrades from the homosexual community in Berlin had been arrested, and, after brutal torture, had broken down and named names. These men from Berlin now wanted more names. We were interrogated in separate rooms, and I immediately told them everything I knew, whereas Matthías remained silent. The men were clearly not satisfied, having probably long since arrested all those I told them about. They took me into the cell where Matthías was being held. He was naked, and they had tied his hands and hung him from a hook high up on the wall. He had been beaten badly, and his mouth was bleeding. I was told to strip, and they tied me and hung me up, too. They kept pressing Matthías for names, but he kept as silent as the grave. Then the knives came out.”

Klemenz fell silent. He looked down and put his hand to his eyes.

“You don’t have to say any more,” Hrefna said.

“If you think you can hear it, then I think I can continue,” Klemenz replied, looking at her. She met his gaze and, after a moment, nodded.

“They told Matthías that if he didn’t answer their questions, they would torture and then kill us. At that, he relented, but the names he was able to give them were no different than the ones I had already given them. The men were still not satisfied. They seemed to be looking for evidence that some high-up people in Berlin had been members of our circle. Something we had no knowledge of. They beat us and threatened us with their knives. And then, without warning, they cut my genitals off and threw them to the floor.”

Hrefna felt like she had been kicked in the guts. “Off you? But Matthías, he was…are you also…” She could not finish the sentence.

“Yes, then it was his turn. But I had passed out by then.” The thought seemed to send a chill through Klemenz, and he crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes closed.

There was a long silence, until Hrefna finally said, “But you survived.”

“Yes, we survived. The men from Berlin left the scene, and the guards at Rendsburg took over. There was an old German doctor, long since retired, who served the camp, and with the help of some Norwegian prisoners, he was able to stop the bleeding. He also managed to preserve the urethra, though it was not neatly done. We spent months in the hospital wing, until we were moved east to Dreibergen.”