The Brenner Assignment by Patrick K. O'Donnell

Author:Patrick K. O'Donnell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2010-03-30T04:00:00+00:00

The killers let Hall’s body hang on the noose for ten or fifteen minutes. Andergassen then checked Hall’s vital signs, placing his ear upon his heart and shining light into his eyes with a lit match. Hall was dead.

In a feeble attempt to get away with murder, Schiffer then set in motion the elaborate plan to stage Hall’s suicide. First, he asked his trusted friend Hans Butz to walk along the corridor from the machine room to prevent an uninvited person from stumbling upon Andergassen and Storz while they carried the body. Schiffer went in the opposite direction to stop anyone’s approach from the other corridor. Schiffer’s thugs laid Hall’s body across the floor of his tiny cell, near the plank bed he had slept on. Next, Andergassen and Storz positioned his body on the backrest of a chair that was brought into the room specifically for the simulated hanging. According to Andergassen, Schiffer expressed satisfaction with their work. Everything was ready for a uninformed SS guard to stumble upon Hall’s lifeless body.

Much to his disappointment, Schiffer made the mistake of relying heavily on the vigilance of his SS guards. He waited for them to discover the “unexpected” prison death, but an entire day went by uneventfully. Peeved, he finally telephoned the guards to “find out how the internees were fed.” At that point, the sergeant of the guard reported they had found Captain Hall hanged in his cell in an apparent suicide. Schiffer acted surprised.

Next, Storz and Andergassen brought Hall’s body to the Bolzano Concentration Camp so the camp doctor could certify that Hall’s death was a suicide. Everything was working according to plan as Karl Pittschieler was stepping out of his office at the concentration camp. The local Italian physician, forced to serve as a doctor for the Nazis, was on his way home when an ominous black Mercedes limousine rolled up.

The Italian internee from Bolzano had no choice but to do the bidding of the Nazis. From 1939 to 1943, the non-Italian speaking people in the Bolzano area were given the option of either staying in and integrating into Italian culture, or immigrating to the Third Reich and losing their cultural heritage. Pittschieler opted to become Italian, opening himself up to suspicion of political unreliability. He was arrested on December 27, 1943, when he was the assistant doctor at a hospital in Brunico, and taken to the Corpo d’Armata. He was held without charges until May of 1944. A kangaroo court sentenced him to detention at the Bolzano Concentration Camp as one of its first inmates. Here he engaged in forced labor, but he was forced to perform medical services because there was no camp doctor. The Germans eventually allowed him to live in Bolzano with his family, but they forced him to remain as camp doctor, and attempted to persuade him to wear an SS uniform and register with the SS.

As the Mercedes rolled into the camp, the bushy-browed Storz and hulking Andergassen stepped out of the car, ordering the young doctor to join them.

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