We took a seat around the desk. As Zgismond poured, the Chaze reached a powerfully simian arm down to the floor. I noticed then that he was wearing only boxer shorts, no uniform trousers. At his feet was a bulging manila folder. His fingers tapped around on the wooden boards and came up clutching a second bottle of Smirnoff tucked under the chair, which he swigged from the neck. Two-thirds of the vodka was already gone.
‘I tell you,’ he said, smearing his lips. ‘Nobody will believe what they’re doing - ’
The door creaked again and Julius Ritter entered the room. He nodded at us, smiling.
‘Gentlemen. I was beginning to think my invite was lost in the post.’
The Chaze said, ‘It’s an abomination against God, that’s what it is.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ Ritter said. ‘Just don’t think of doing it again.’
‘Julius, sit.’ Zgismond rose and pulled out a third chair.
Eyes adjusting to the gloom, Ritter took in the scene before him, the bottles, the Chaze stripped to his underwear, the Manilla folder.
‘Where’s your uniform?’
‘Burn it,’ he said. ‘After today, I’m done.’
Ritter paused next to me before sitting down. ‘What’s he talking about?’
A third glass thumped to the table. ‘Here.’
Zgismond poured. Without knocking glasses, we drank.
At the Chaze’s behest, Zigmond refilled our glasses. We tossed premium Smirnoff back like it was moonshine.
The Chaze bent over his considerable gut, scooped up the pile of folders and handed them to Ritter.
‘See for yourself,’ he said. ‘It’s all here.’
‘See what? You’re not making any sense.’
But the Chaze could not bring himself to say more. The evidence he had taken from Gestapo HQ would do the talking for him, as it will now for me.
The first document chronicles the early days of the German invasion.
Operational Situation Report USSR No. 17
The Chief of the Security Police and the SD
Berlin,
July 7, 1941
38 copies
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21st copy
Operational Situation Report USSR No. 17
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Einsatzgruppe C
Location: Minsk
First summary report of the activity of Einsatzgruppe C in the Polish and Russian sections of Byelorussia.
1) Organisation and March Route
One June 23, Einsatzgruppe B met in Poznan in order to continue the march towards Warsaw the following morning. According to the order of RSHA, contact was established with Army Group Centre and the commander of the Rear Army Group Area 102 in Warsaw. As was agreed, Sonderkommando 7a started the march on June 26 attached to 9th Army HQ and Sonderkommando 7b on June 27 to 4th Army HQ. Sonderkommando 7a marched via East Prussia in order to enter Wilno with the troops. After being relieved by the Einsatzkommando 9, it proceeded on road 4, and turned south towards Minsk, the capital, and arrived on July 4.
Sonderkommando 7b marched via Brest, Kobrin, Pruzhany, Rushana, Slonim, Baranovichi, Stolpce, via Route 2 towards Minsk and arrived there with the Vorkommando on July 4.
Einsatzkommando 9: Proceeded towards Wilno on June 29 according to instructions issued by the commander of the Rear Army Group Area.
Einsatzkommando 8 proceeded, according to orders of the commander of the Rear Army Group Area, to Bialystok on July 1, and marched on with the two commands towards Slonim, Novogrudok and Baranovichi. The staff continued towards Bialystok on July 3 with the advancing units of the Rear Army Group Area.
In conjunction with the commander of the Security Police for the General Gouvernement, six supporting units were set up for Byelorussia, who relieved the Sonderkommandos and Einsatzkommandos on July 3 and advanced from Warsaw to the assigned areas.
Based on these tactics, all towns in the Polish and Russian sections of Byelorussia are occupied as far as the fighting zone. A supporting unit is posted in Brest, one supporting unit in Pinsk and another in Slutsk with the aim of marching into Gomel after occupying the area. One supporting unit is posted in Bialystok with the task of also taking care of Bielsk. One supporting unit is in Wilno, with the task of also taking care of Grodno and Lida. One supporting unit will be moved forward to Minsk in order to assume the work in Minsk after Einsatzgruppe C will march on Moscow.
Einsatzkommando 8 is stationed, until further notice, in Bialystok. Einsatzkommando 9 is stationed in Wilno so that it can be moved via Minsk towards Moscow at a later time. The staff of Einsatzgruppe C (1) has been posted in Minsk since July 6 with its headquarters in the Soviet building of the USSR. (2)
Because of the encirclement and due to the highway system, a rear and a front line cannot be delineated. Thus the Sonderkommandos 4a and 7b, as well as their staff, are constantly in the fighting zone and have been exposed on the highways to Russian sniping. At this time, Minsk is still in the fighting zone. Army Group B HQ is located 150 km in the rear in Baranovichi. After consultations in Minsk, Sonderkommando 7a was transferred from the 9th Army HQ, which is to march to the north of Moscow, to the newly formed 4th Armoured Army HQ. Sonderkommando 7a is joined by a Vorauskommando with translators and persons familiar with Moscow, under the direction of SS-Standartenführer Dr. Six. The former Army HQ four is now Army HQ 2, and Sonderkommando seven has been put at its disposal.
In the course of further advances, the towns of Gomel, Mogilev, Vitebsk, Orsha, and Smolensk are to be bypassed.
2) Police Work
According to the instructions by RSHA, liquidations of government and party officials, in all named cities of Byelorussia, were carried out. Concerning the Jews, according to orders, the same policy was adopted. The exact number of the liquidated has not as yet been established. On June 22, almost all the officials of the Communist party has fled, probably following higher instructions, and had taken with them all well-prepared documents. It is likely that some of the officials will try to return. Some will be identified with the help of the network of informants. The city of Minsk was an exception, although the officials had fled from there; surprisingly, the documentation remained intact in the sole government building - the house of the BSSR Soviet that had not been destroyed. On the other side, in destroyed Minsk, the NKVD and the internal party materials were destroyed by fire caused by the bombardment. Evaluating reports on Minsk follows.
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Special report on the political situation and activity in the area of Wilno
Police Matters The Lithuanian police branches in Wilno, subordinated to the Einsatzkommando, were given the task of drawing up current lists of names of Jews in Wilno; first intelligentsia, political activists, and wealthy Jews. Subsequently, searches and arrests were made and 54 Jews were liquidated on July 4, and 93 were liquidated on July 5. Sizeable property belonging to Jews were secured. With the help of Lithuanian police officials, a search was started for Communists and NKVD agents, most of whom, however, are said to have fled.
A search was also started for hidden weapons of the Polish secret military organisations, of which the Lithuanian police has yet not made an accurate estimate. The establishment of a Jewish Quarter is being prepared. Upon suggestion of the EK, the Jewish Quarter will be declared to be out of bounds to military personnel by order of the Field Command HQ.
Tucked away at the end after that numbing litany of military advances, buried under the bland miscellany of Police Work and Police Matters – indeed, you may have stopped reading by that point - was a cursory mention of the beginning of a process that would slaughter up to one hundred thousand Lithuanian Jews.
In Wilno, it began on July 4th, less than a fortnight after the first Nazi bombs fell, and the night of my arrest. As we were being marched from the garage workshop, we came upon another procession of press-ganged Jews at the corner of Gediminas Avenue and Lukiskes Street. Unlike us manual labourers, covered in grease,
engine oil and sweat, these were a dapper, briefcase-carrying crowd, smart beards and overcoats, professors and academics, as I had once been.
I’d been spared thanks to my new career as a shoe-maker, but the killings followed me to Ponary.
The first executions took place in the forest on the July 8th. One hundred Jews at a time were brought from the city, to what they believed was a ‘waiting zone’. Here, in what had been a popular Jewish holiday resort, they were ordered to undress and to hand over whatever money or valuables they had with them. They were then marched naked, in single file, in groups of ten or twenty at a time, holding hands to the edge of the pits dug by the Soviet army to store fuel. They were then shot down by rifle fire, after they had fallen into the pit, no attempt was made to see if they were all dead. If anyone moved another shot was simply fired. The bodies were then covered from above, with a thin layer of sand and the next group of naked prisoners led from the waiting area to the edge of the pit. From where they had waited, the people had heard the sound of rifle fire but had seen nothing.
I remembered Abba Kovner’s warning, delivered before I sent him packing from Pilies Street for fear-mongering:
The whole of Europe shall be our burial pit.
The Aktions continued without respite. In addition to the SS’s own methodical tallies, the Chaze had been given the following diary entries – ‘flesh upon the bones’ - by a Polish journalist called Kazimierz Sakwowicz he knew, who lived at Ponary.
27 July 1941 Sunday
Shooting is carried on nearly everyday. Will it go on for ever? The executioners began selling the clothes of the killed. Other garments are crammed into sacks in a barn at the highway and taken to town.
People say that about five thousand persons have been killed in the course of this month. It is quite possible, for about two hundred to three hundred people are being driven up here nearly every day. And nobody ever returns.
30 July 1941 Friday
About one hundred and fifty persons shot. Most of them were elderly people. The executioners complained of being very tired of their ‘work’, of having aching shoulders from shooting. That is the reason for not finishing the wounded off, so that they are buried half alive.
2 August 1941 Monday
Shooting of big batches has started once again. Today about four thousand people were driven up, shot by eighty executioners, all drunk. The fence was guarded by a hundred soldiers and policemen.
This time terrible tortures before shooting. Nobody buried the murdered. The people were driven straight into the pit, the corpses were trampled upon. Many a wounded writhed with pain. Nobody finished them off.
The three of us passed the papers back and forth for an hour, sound-tracked only by the occasional clink of glass or the splash of more vodka.
I have never drunk more in my life, nor been more sober.
It was impossible to process in the space of one night what the Chaze had taken six weeks to absorb. He assured us he’d read every word, over and over until he could recite whole sections verbatim, but he’d still struggled to believe it was true.
Until today, when the authorities at Moda had received an ‘invitation’ to attend the Ponary liquidations. The Chaze had even been given the opportunity to fire a few shots himself.
‘How could we not know about this?’ I asked, numbed. ‘It’s only a couple of miles from here.’
‘The Aktions aren’t every day. When Rausch is told of one, he seals the buildings. Nobody in or out. Plus, factor in those damned lasting machines, it’s a miracle we haven’t all gone deaf.’
‘But…’
‘There is no but,’ the Chaze said. ‘Feels like the end of the world, doesn’t it. Book of Revelations. I hate to tell you, but the bastards are only just getting started.’
‘How?’
‘Something big’s planned for August 31st. I’m not hearing any details at the moment, but I’ll find out. Something ugly.’
Julius Ritter’s voice broke and he tried to pass it off as the remains of an undigested supper. He repeated his question. ‘Are we safe here?’
‘For now.’
I said, ‘And in the meantime?’
‘First thing tomorrow,’ the Chaze said. ‘I’m sending all this to Canaris.’
‘What’s Canaris?’ I hadn’t heard the name before, but it sounded like the bird - canaries in the cold mine, warning of danger. Perhaps there was some kind of clandestine support group.
‘Not what, but who,’ the Chaze said. ‘Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr.’
‘A Nazi?’ I hissed, momentarily forgetting that I was talking to one. ‘What’s he going to do?’
‘You’d be surprised. He’s been sending the Vatican reports of atrocities in Poland since 1940.’
‘The Pope knows about this?’
‘Not Ponary, not yet. But Canaris is getting ready to send his Pastor to Sweden, where he’s meeting a British Bishop. I’m going to make sure a copy gets back to ten Downing Street. And there’s the resistance movement in the Kovno Ghetto, the partisans of the People’s Army. We get stuff in to them through the couriers.’
‘We need to get this information out,’ I said. ‘Not into a closed Ghetto.’
‘It goes in, it comes out. The leader of Akiva Halutz – you heard of them?’
I nodded.
‘Guy called Rado Lieber, he gets to travel to all the other Russian Ghettos, working for the Jewish Communal Self-Help.’
‘And the Nazis allow this?’
‘At the moment. While they still care. It looks good to the Red Cross.’
On top of what I’d read about the Ponary massacres, I was now being asked to accept on faith the existence of a network of a secret agents extending from the Vatican to the field of Great Britain that might have been ripped from the pages of The 39 Steps, with Hauptsturmführer Gertenberg standing in for the dashing Richard Hannay.
‘Why?’ I said.
‘Why what?’
‘Why… Why you?’
‘Why?’ the Chaze said.
Putting down his glass, his fingers rose to the silver chain around his neck. As he tugged it free, the pendant caught against his vest and a tiny silver point poked through the fabric. Leaning forward, I could see the outline of five more under the cotton, arranged in the shape of a hexagramatic star.
Julius Ritter seized my hand and placed his other index finger over his lips. He jerked his head over to the doorway: around the gaps in the frame, light was seeping in from the turquoise room we’d previously left in darkness.
We held our breath as footsteps padded along the scarlet carpet and stopped outside the door.
Two quick knocks in succession, the confident rap of one who expects an immediate answer.
‘Jensen?’
Rausch, the Chaze mouthed, tucking the star under his vest.
‘That you in there burning the midnight oil?’
The handle turned.
Oswald Zgismond darted forward and blew out the flame.
‘Hold on!’ the Chaze shouted, lumbering up and lunging past. ‘I’m not decent.’
He cracked the door, positioning himself in the opening. ‘Sorry, I’ve got company.’
Rausch sniffed. ‘Anyone I know?’
He gripped the top of the door and scratched his armpit. ‘Clara and Zara.’
‘You old dog! Two for the price of one, eh.’ And then, in an excessively gay voice that suggested Rausch too had been seeking liquid solace, he called, ‘Good evening, ladies,’
When we didn’t answer, the Chaze said, ‘Aw, look. They’ve gone all shy.’
‘I don’t know why. Nothing I haven’t seen before, right, girls. Anyway, I won’t keep you. Just wanted to make sure you were alright. I thought you looked a bit green in the gills out there this afternoon.’
‘Not me,’ the Chaze said. I saw him flash his trademark crooked grin. ‘Must have been all those leaves, making you colour-blind.’
‘Maybe so. It
’s good to hear, anyway.’
The Chaze lowered his hand and scratched his cheek. ‘You sure you’re feeling alright, Irm?’
‘Me?’ Rausch said. ‘Never better.’
‘Cos if you’re looking for, I don’t know, some distraction tonight, my girls are always happy to share. You know that, right?’
Zgismond found the neck of the vodka bottle in the darkness. His fingers gripped the neck and lifted it from the table. Silently pushing back his chair, he tiptoed over to the side of the door and raised the bottle over his head.
Rausch leant closer to the Chaze until he was less than a foot away from his Kapo’s face. He whispered, ‘I believe they gave me crabs last time, so with the best will in the world, I’ll pass.’
The Chaze and Zgismond stood either side of the door while Rausch walked back along the scarlet carpet.
‘On or off?’ he said, pausing at the light switch by the exit.
‘Off,’ the Chaze said, and we exhaled as one into the darkness.
8
After that evening, nothing happened for a week, and then on August 31st, as predicted, something ugly broke loose from its subterranean moorings and surfaced in our back yard. In a strange way, those next seven days of drudgery were the hardest of all to endure. My soul, pierced by the death of Ronen Kessselman, had now been flayed alive. It was the little things around camp that hurt the most. When we were prohibited from going outside the next day, I forced a smile as the others celebrated another reprieve from the dread Appelplatz, whose gallows still cast a shadow, even over the most beatific August day. I ghosted across the factory floor that week, flinching at phantom gun-shots from the trees. The knowledge of the liquidations gnawed away like a cancer, but our Council of Four had sworn an oath of secrecy in that candle-lit office. Inside the camp, there was nothing to be gained from revealing the truth, not yet, not unless we wished to precipitate a doomed uprising. In the world outside, the Chaze lived up to his promise and by the end of August 26th, the dossier was on its way to Sweden. I never doubted the man again, and burnt with shame when I remembered how I’d condemned him as a drunken wastrel. To have lived and breathed twelve months within the SS, as a Jew, with the express intention of protecting as many of his people as he could, was the most extraordinary sacrifice I could conceive.
I Am Juden Page 16