Sackur: You can let it go? Even if it has been one of those days when you’ve had to use your weapons – you know you’ve killed people, but you can let it go at the end of the working day?
Jenkins: You’ve got to. Yeah, OK, it’s going to weigh on your mind. It does, I don’t think you’d be human if you didn’t. But I’ve got a family at home, and I need to be there for my family, so I deal with it. I talk to my wife about – just, general terms about what’s happened, obviously I can’t go into specifics … Yeah, I might be a little bit off … maybe in a bit of a strange mood for a day or so.
Yet what about the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilian casualties from these drone strikes, and all the families destroyed from 8,000 miles away? What about the 201 children killed in drone attacks just in the period between 2001 and 2012?fn4 Presumably, not even the Pentagon could class these as ‘combatants’. And although the effect on the operators of drones is disturbing, the impact on those targeted is truly terrifying – especially when those killed and maimed have nothing whatsoever to do with ‘terrorism’:
Gul Nawaz, from North Waziristan, was watering his fields when he heard the explosion of drone missiles: ‘I rushed to my house when I heard the blast. When I arrived I saw my house and my brother’s house completely destroyed and all at home were dead.’ Eleven members of Gul Nawaz’s family were killed, including his wife, two sons and two daughters as well as his elder brother, his wife, and his four children … ‘I blame the government of Pakistan and the USA … they are responsible for destroying my family. We were living a happy life and I didn’t have any links with the Taliban. My family members were innocent … I wonder, why was I victimised?’fn5
*
Finally in this section, an example, both horrific and remarkable, of what happens when out of the anonymised mass a single person suddenly appears, and can be seen as a human being. This is taken from the testimony of a Hungarian doctor, Miklós Nyiszli (from his 1946 book Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account), who worked as a pathologist, with Mengele, at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Nyiszli became completely habituated to witnessing thousands being killed in the gas chambers every day. But on one particular day something unprecedented occurred. Nyiszli was on duty near Crematorium 1, where another 3,000 people had just been gassed, when the following happened:
The chief of the gas chamber [Sonder]Kommando almost tore the hinges off the door to my room as he arrived out of breath, his eyes wide with fear or surprise.
‘Doctor,’ he said, ‘come quickly. We just found a girl alive at the bottom of the pile of corpses.’
I grabbed my instrument case, which was always ready, and dashed to the gas chamber. Against the wall, near the entrance to the immense room, half covered with other bodies, I saw a girl in the throes of a death-rattle, her body seized with convulsions. The gas Kommando men around me were in a state of panic. Nothing like this had ever happened in the course of their horrible career. [sic]
We removed the still-living body from the corpses pressing against it. I gathered the tiny adolescent body into my arms and carried it back into the room adjoining the gas chamber, where normally the gas Kommando men change clothes for work. I laid the body on a bench. A frail young girl, almost a child, she could have been no more than fifteen. I took out my syringe and, taking her arm – she had not yet recovered consciousness and was breathing with difficulty – I administered three intravenous injections. My companions covered her body which was as cold as ice with a heavy overcoat. One ran to the kitchen to fetch some tea and warm broth. Everybody wanted to help, as if she were their own child.
The reaction was swift. The child was seized by a fit of coughing, which brought up a thick globule of phlegm from her lungs. She opened her eyes and looked fixedly at the ceiling. I kept a close watch for every sign of life. Her breathing became deeper and more and more regular. Her lungs, tortured by the gas, inhaled the fresh air avidly. Her pulse became perceptible, the result of the injections. I waited impatiently. The injections had not yet been completely absorbed, but I saw that within a few minutes she was going to regain consciousness: her circulation began to bring colour back to her cheeks, and her delicate face became human again.
She looked around her with astonishment, and glanced at us. She still did not realise what was happening to her, and was still incapable of distinguishing the present, of knowing whether she was dreaming or really awake … Her movements were becoming more and more animated; she tried to move her hands, her feet, to turn her head left and right. Her face was seized by a fit of convulsions. Suddenly she grasped my coat collar and gripped it convulsively, trying with all her might to raise herself. I laid her back down again several times, but she continued to repeat the same gesture. Little by little, however, she grew calm and remained stretched out, completely exhausted. Large tears shone in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks … I learned that she was sixteen years old, and that she had come with her parents in a convoy from Transylvania.
The Kommando gave her a bowl of hot broth, which she drank voraciously. They kept bringing her all sorts of dishes, but I could not allow them to give her anything. I covered her to her head and told her that she should try to get some sleep.
My thoughts moved at a dizzy pace. I turned towards my companions in the hope of finding a solution. We racked our brains, for we were now face to face with the most difficult problem: what to do with the girl now that she had been restored to life? We knew that she could not remain here very long.
What could I do with a young girl in the crematorium’s Sonderkommando?
I knew the past history of the place: no one had ever come out of here alive, either from the convoys or from the Sonderkommando.
Little time remained for reflection. Oberscharführer Mussfeld arrived to supervise the work, as was his wont. Passing by the open door, he saw us gathered in a group. He came in and asked us what was going on. Even before we told him he had seen the girl stretched out on the bench.
I made a sign for my companions to withdraw. I was going to attempt something I knew … was doomed to failure. Three months in the same camp and in the same milieu had created, in spite of everything, a certain intimacy between us. Besides, the Germans generally appreciate capable people, and, as long as they need them, respect them to a certain extent, even in the KZ [concentration camp] … From our numerous contacts, I had been able to ascertain that Mussfeld had a high esteem for the medical expert’s professional qualities … He often came to see me in the dissecting room, and we conversed on politics, the military situation and various other subjects. It appeared that his respect also arose from the fact that he considered the dissection of bodies and his bloody job of killing to be allied activities …
And this was the man I had to deal with, the man I had to talk into allowing a single life to be spared. I calmly related the terrible case we found ourselves confronted with. I described for his benefit what pains the child must have suffered in the undressing room, and the horrible scenes that preceded death in the gas chamber. When the room had been plunged into darkness, she had breathed in a few lungfuls of Zyklon gas. Only a few though, for her fragile body had given way under the pushing and shoving of the mass as they fought against death. By chance she had fallen with her head against the wet concrete floor. That bit of humidity had kept her from being asphyxiated, for Zyklon gas does not react under humid conditions.