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4. Unsch
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44 MURDER AND MARTIAL JUSTICE CHAPTER 4 Unschädlichmachung The action began when night fell and the American guards left the compound. The following account is pieced together from the testimony of bystanders and from the (involuntary) statements of the actors. it contains the differences one expects from men acting in darkness, intent upon Unschädlichmachung (preventing harm, neutralizing a poison by force and violence.)1 A bystander later told investigators: “one comrade said to me: ‘They are probably going to hang Drechsler. Come on, let’s go.’ Then we left down to the toilet and there was quite a bit of excitement in Camp, quite a few walking around.”2 The number of men around Drechsler’s barracks kept growing. ignoring them, the six who had “volunteered” decided to drag Drechsler from his barracks.3 At lights out, Wizuy, Kuelsen, Franke, and Fischer headed for Drechsler’s cot, near the door by the soccer field on the camp’s outer edge. Fischer: “somebody pulled the comforter away from him and he . . . jumped up, and asked ‘What is happening?’ and we answered: ‘you know that better than we do.’” Franke: “He asked what we wanted from him. We said that he was a traitor and he had questioned his own buddies in the interrogation camp and so betrayed his comrades and we talked to him for a long time.” Kuelsen: “He said first that we should listen to him.” Fischer: He said: “Comrades, i’ll tell you everything tomorrow” (a mistake, since they knew he would be leaving the compound at sick call). Then somebody said “not to talk too long but to take him out right away. After that we grabbed him.” reyak: “everybody grabbed and just how each one grabbed it was hard to tell because it was dark.” Kuelsen: “of course he defended himself and he was beat up.”4 reyak: “We took Drechsler out of his bunk together with his bedding.” Fischer: “one kicked him in the ass and one must have hit him in the mouth. 44 UNSCHÄDLICHMACHUNG 45 . . . somebody put his hand over Drechsler’s mouth but [he] continued to scream.” Ludwig: “After they had [dragged] Drechsler outside he defended himself and hollered like he was wild.” Franke: “He screamed so much and he got loose from us and we let him go back,” (Fischer:) “in order not to make this thing too conspicuous”; but “because so many men had arrived in the meantime, Drechsler got up and said: ‘Buddies, somebody, come closer’ and we told him nobody would come closer towards him.” Then reyak warned the others that “a guard was coming by . . . just outside the compound” fence. (stengel, standing among the observers, also thought a sweep of searchlight from a guard tower startled them.) Then “they all let go and ran” while Drechsler dodged back inside, (Kuelsen:) taking his bedding with him.5 According to obermaat murza, watching from about a hundred meters away, Drechsler’s screaming drew even more onlookers.6 Why did those American guards fail to notice a screaming man draped in a bed sheet surrounded by a crowd? At night, Americans stayed outside the fences. The road was about 175 feet away, beyond the soccer field. inside the wire, where only a few weak lights still burned, the prisoners knew to keep moving back and forth, or to stand in small groups around the latrines and bathhouses where men would normally be at that time of night. otto stengel, out for gossip, stood on the far side of Drechsler’s barracks during this first attack. The account he gave in his first involuntary confession is probably accurate—with due allowances for his compulsive dramatizing and painful situation. He had begun his new round of fact-finding, he said, with a tour of the washrooms. When he reached Third Company, he “heard a cry—somebody was distinctly calling for help.” rushing closer, he saw Drechsler on the ground. someone “kicked him with his foot and Drechsler shouted and then he jumped up from the gravel,” mounted the barracks steps, and yelled “‘Come over if you have the courage?’ . . . He was full of blood—around his nose and mouth.” Because of his shouting, the “men told him ‘Go on—get inside of the barracks.’” He did, and they “parted in a hurry in opposite directions.”7 The investigating board asked stengel leading questions for the record: “Did a petty officer come down” when Drechsler was lying on the ground...