Burning & Burial

The stench of sizzling human flesh filled the furnaces of German crematoriums last week as they worked overtime on the bullet-riddled remains of men and women who died fortnight ago in Adolf Hitler's "blood purge" (TIME, July 9). No respect was paid to the fact that cremation is against Catholic tenets. Into the flames, despite the protests of grieving relatives, went the corpse of Dr. Erich Klausener, beloved leader of the Fatherland's Catholic Action Society. What Dr. Klausener had done to deserve death the State had not yet officially said, merely classed him with "other traitors."

In the case of General Kurt von Schleicher, onetime Chancellor and Defense Minister, Military Chaplain Schleigel announced: "I will officiate at the funeral whether it is forbidden or not!" Elderly retired brother officers of General von Schleicher mustered up courage to send telegrams indicating disbelief in the Government's charge that their comrade and his wife had been "shot resisting arrest." Some of these telegrams, bold but not too bold, used a word combination possible only in German, expressing sorrow at the "comradeassassination."

To the funeral chapel at Lankwitz's Park Cemetery in Berlin went in full uniform with all his medals General Baron Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord. who was the Reichswehr's brilliant commander under Chancellor von Schleicher. Floral tributes rolled up by the truckload and Military Chaplain Schleigel was striding resolutely up to begin the service when he was nabbed by Secret Police.

"We have orders from above!" they barked. Pushing aside the Chaplain and General von Hammerstein, they seized the coffins of General and Frau von Schleicher and carted them off. Other Secret Police chased mourners away from the empty graves. For 48 hours the von Schleicher family knew not what had become of their dead. Then more Secret Police arrived.

"You are forbidden to give out any information," they ordered. "Here are two urns. They contain the ashes." Fearfully the von Schleicher kin buried the urns in a grave over which they dared not place the smallest cross or mark.

That the killing of "traitors" had been illegal, the Hitler Cabinet tacitly admitted last week by issuing a decree which legalized retroactively all acts of the Chancellor and his subordinates. German jurists assumed that no subsequent non-Hitlerite Government would consider this decree valid, pointed out the value, to Nazi killers, of burning up by cremation the major evidence of their deeds.

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