Verboten
The 13th Century Herb Tower of the Heidelberg Palace
During my recent visit to Germany, it was a real pleasure to meet some people in person that I’d been in contact with, such as fellow survivor Chantal Frei and Marcel Polte, a lawyer who has quietly done much to support the SRA cause. Marcel had offered that we visit Heidelberg. I have been vocal about the monthlong torture-based mind control that I suffered in a villa in that town. I only remembered that the house did not look like it was in the city, because it was surrounded by green, and that the outside walls were brown. A therapist whom I met during a brief visit to Germany in 2019, had told me that former sibling clients of hers had pointed to a specific address in Heidelberg, where they had undergone mind control training, some years after 1972 when I was there. When this therapist questioned me, she asked if I remembered the car in which I was driven from that house to another location, and I said “a white Peugeot.” She was shocked, because the sibling clients had also mentioned that they had been transported in a white Peugeot. This therapist had passed on the address for this villa which these clients had given to her. I had seen Google map arial views and some photos, but could not be 100% certain that this was the place. If I would visit that address, maybe I could remember. On my recent trip, Marcel, Chantal and I decided to also visit the famous ruins of the Heidelberg Castle, which was our first destination.
Right away, we noticed the prevalence of small structures on the castle grounds that appeared to house two or three dark, musty cells, bars intact. Crossing the grassy knoll, we headed towards the castle entrance, and, passing the most ancient part of the castle, my body went into shock upon seeing the herb tower. While the adrenaline rushed through my veins, I was frozen, rigid, and my right arm began to shake. The voice of the part that had stored this memory quickly pointed to the chimney of the tower being new, and said it was still in use. As horrific images rolled by, I also received the insane purpose of this torturous experience I was put through.
Hans Harmsen, the doctor in charge at the mind control facility in Heidelberg in 1972
At the house where I and other children were kept for the mind control training in 1972, the doctor in charge, Hans Harmsen, was not quite human. Of all the psychopaths I have met, he was the one in whom I never detected any feeling at all, any sign that there was a little boy locked inside screaming to get out. Even the Belgian child murderer I nicknamed the “blood baron,” concealed, behind his extremely sadistic front, behind even the carelessness he displayed during killings, a severely hurt child of which I caught a small glimpse. With another, red haired aristocrat who liked to kill children, I could still tell that behind his insane cruelty, his meanness, his out-of-control violence, there was a boy too damaged to know any better. Hans Harmsen was entirely lost to humanity; he was purely sadistic.
Before being sent to Heidelberg, I had been told that I was chosen - I was special and I belonged to my perpetrator, to his family, to his class of people. Whatever was meant by that, I experienced a profound difference in how I was treated, versus before this perpetrator took an interest in me. In the first three years in the network, I was expendable, and treated as such, exposed to those crazy aristocrats who could kill you on a whim. Paul Vanden Boeynants, the boss of the Belgian branch of the network, treated me like a piece of gum he had to peel off his shoe, as if my very existence so annoyed him that having to pay attention to exploit me was too big a waste of his precious time. And yet, behind his grumpy and grandiose front there was also a scared little boy, secretly feeling worthless and useless. And then the man of international business renown whom all the Belgian sadists were dying to impress unexpectedly took an interest in me. He had a plan that had me belong to the international network, which would raise my status above any of the Belgians, who were already enlisted for my drop offs and pick ups around Europe.
Hans Harmsen, however, useful as he may have been to the network, could never make me feel special. He could scare me out of my wits for his specific purposes, a practice he had clearly researched and perfected over his lifetime. When he strangled me - a combination between punishment and training - I would pass out. Harmsen seemed to know exactly how long I could remain unconscious before my spirit would not be able to return to my body; he would release his grip at the very last second. And, this practice was rote to him. When I was exposed to his mind control expertise, he was 73 years old. I’ve never seen eyes as dark and empty as his.
How then, could I be made to feel special during my time in Heidelberg? Harmsen was not present every day. He left most of the work to three handlers in their early twenties. One of these young men treated me as though he would never do anything to hurt me, if only he’d had the choice. When I was forced to kill, he encouraged me beforehand and said that I would do fine. Afterwards, he assured me that I had done well. He might have been forced to create a trauma bond with me, but it worked. Still, one handler’s attentions was not enough - he could not foster the idea that I belonged to an entire group. I was now part of a larger whole.
New, working chimney on 13th century ruin
As I stood before the herb tower of the Heidelberg Castle, I knew exactly what that new chimney on those ruins was being used for. Gruesome images of several dead bodies in a dungeon-like space inside the lower part of that tower flashed before my eyes. German voices were telling me to light the fire. The message began to sink in that to belong, meant to be part of this horror, of burning bodies of murdered children and adults. Back then I did not realize that we were in a place that was open to the public by day, and that the smoke would easily be seen rising from the chimney at night. The men in charge of teaching me that I belonged with them, internally as dead as the lifeless bodies before us, with skin as grey as the stone oven, seemed entirely unconcerned about getting caught. They were rather just doing a job, a duty like any other. They did not act in any way like the jaded aristocrats or the up-and-comers first getting exposed to the network, but like this was their life. There was something artificial, though, in the way they said that this is what you do when you belong. I understood they meant it is better to be the one making the fire than to be burned, but it felt like something they had to say. It was my lesson for that night.
The image that haunts me the most, is of the body of a long, emaciated man, all white, and strangely, also soft. He might have died of hunger. It reminded me of pictures I had seen of the Holocaust victims. What, really, has changed?
That memory sank very deeply into my subconscious mind, and planted a seed there, that this is not a club to which I ever wish to belong.
Door to the herb tower with “Entry Forbidden” sign
As the three of us walked around along with many other tourists on that sunny day, we found a quiet passageway behind the restaurant which had a locked gate at the end. Through the bars we saw the door to the herb tower. I instantly recognized the decorative hinges and their swirling metal extensions, looking like long swords, shaped like ceremonial daggers. The castle grounds are large, and this is the only area Verboten to the public, even though there are railings installed on the tower to prevent anyone from falling down.
We learned that the restaurant next to the tower features a very large, wide oven with an enormous chimney, part of the original castle structure, that is also still working, and is used by the restaurant. Another survivor from Germany has said that in her childhood, she had an experience in that large oven in the restaurant, next to the herb tower, that was similar to mine.
When I thought we should get in the car to visit the address of the villa where the mind control facility might have been located, Marcel assured me we could walk, that the villa was at less than five minutes distance. I was tired from the emotional strain, and worried that it would take longer, but to my great surprise, the address is right next to the castle grounds. The house was impossible to reach, hidden at the end of a private road behind a gated entry on a steep hill that makes any type of observation particularly challenging. The color of the walls, though, was brown, and it was surrounded by greenery.