Well-deserved? And what did you do that is so outstanding as to have that well-deserved time? Turned your independent country – the former empire – into merely a province? Robbed several hundred thousand of people to support your Führer’s ambitions? Rid the country of unwanted minorities? If that’s what you understand as great accomplishments, then certainly, yes, you won your laurels. Go pat yourself on your back and get drunk like a pig like you always do.
I chuckled, lighting up a cigarette. I wondered if anyone else’s conscience had such a sarcastic tone as mine did. I walked aimlessly through the unfamiliar surroundings, guard patrols walking the narrow dirty streets snapping at attention at the sight of me. I wandered further and further away from them, hoping to find some quiet street where I’d be able to just sit on the steps, enjoy my cigarette, wait out for a while and then go back to my car, announcing that I saw everything I wanted to see and found everything to be in perfect order.
The truth was that I was hiding away from them because I didn’t want to see anything, and yet I had already walked around two corpses, which no one had bothered to remove. The elderly woman, scrawny to the point that her skin looked like it was stretched over a skeleton with no flesh under it whatsoever, seemed to be sleeping by the wall; only the terrible stench emphasized by the stifling July day, and a flock of flies surrounding her wrinkled, toothless face, made her death obvious.
I turned the corner and almost stumbled upon a little boy, who immediately crouched by the nearest wall, covering his head with dirty little hands. I stepped closer to him and he immediately broke into barely audible whimpers, almost squeezing himself into a tiny ball.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” I crouched next to him so as not to intimidate him even more with my height. “Do you live around here? Do you know that old woman over there? Is she your neighbor? Why is no one picking her up?”
The boy almost completely pressed himself into the mold-ridden, peeling wall and gave me no answer besides a terrified, unblinking stare.
“Do you speak German?” I asked as softly as I could. He shook his head vehemently. “Do you know anyone who does?”
Realizing that there was not a chance that I would get anything out of the petrified shivering boy, I got up and left him alone. The further into the ghetto I walked, the eerier it became. Dirt, stifling air filled with all sorts of stomach-turning smells, and absolute neglect, together with almost a complete absence of habitants made it look like a ghost town. I covered my nose and mouth with a handkerchief as I neared one of the buildings with a small sign in Polish and German on it. Hospital. The guard, who had just come out of the doors, saluted me and froze at attention.
“What’s that unbearable stench?” was the first thing I asked him.
“Typhus epidemic, sir. We can’t manage transporting all the dead ones to the nearest forest to burn. The morgue is in the basement, and there are no functioning freezers.”
“Why haven’t you informed your Kommandant?”
“He knows all the conditions, sir.”
“And?”
“He says that transporting corpses for cremation is not a priority. The construction is.” He stepped from one foot to another and added quietly, “You better not walk around here, sir. You can catch it, too. Several of our guards have died. Herr Kommandant sent out the order to execute ten Jews for each guard as a form of reprisal, because they spread this filth around. Please, don’t touch anything, sir. And try not to breathe too deeply. It’s very infectious.”
I replaced my hand with the handkerchief back onto my mouth.
“Where is everyone? The people I mean?” I asked through the cloth.
“Working, sir. Outside, in the city, in the fields and in the factories.”
“You aren’t afraid that the gentiles will catch typhus from them?”
“They aren’t communicating with gentiles, sir. And they’re ordered to inform their supervisors of the first symptoms of typhus.”
“You place them in quarantine in here after they report the symptoms? Can you manage so many people in such a small building?” I nodded at the hospital.
“No, sir, they’re not allowed in the hospital so as not to spread the disease even further. And Herr Kommandant doesn’t want to waste the medication on them either. We just shoot them.”
“I see,” I finally managed to say after a pause.
“Please, forgive my insolence, sir, but you better go to ghetto A, it’s on the right from that big road that separates the two parts, you should have seen it when you entered through the main gates. That part is cleaner and there are almost no cases of typhus there. Could you please go to that side? If you catch it, God forbid, they will put me before the tribunal for not warning you properly. Please, sir. I’ll escort you, if you allow me.”
I nodded to the pleading guard and we made our way to the other part of the ghetto, where, as he informed me along the way, the Jews, who were valuable to the Reich, were currently placed: the qualified workers, doctors, engineers and scientists – in other words, anyone that could be used for specific purposes. Being assigned to ghetto B, as I concluded from his words, was equal to a death sentence. No one needed Jewish musicians, school and university professors, writers, and especially ones who weren’t strong or qualified enough to contribute to the Reich war and agricultural effort.
As we stepped onto the wide, cobbled road, my guide saluted me and asked for permission to go back to his assigned position in the sector where we came from. I dismissed him after thanking for his detailed report and stood still for a minute, pondering where to go next. I lit another cigarette and took a long drag, feeling a little queasy both from the heat and too much nicotine in my system. I couldn’t force myself to eat that morning, and had only taken a cup of coffee with a splash of cognac to help me through the dreadful day. I looked at my watch; it was almost twelve, and the burning sun was making me extremely uncomfortable in my woolen uniform and knee-high leather boots on top of it.
I decided to inspect the living conditions in the nearest buildings in case Heydrich asked me about them, and just be done with it. I delivered his order, I saw everything; now let me go back home to Vienna, get drunk, fall asleep and forget all about it, once and for all.
Not my business, all of this. I’m the head of the Austrian intelligence. What am I doing here at all? I was thinking sulkily, walking inside the building into the much desired shade. I walked up to the second floor and stood still for a moment, thinking about which apartment I should go to first. Did it matter, actually? They were probably all the same.
I opened the door with a simple turn of the nob – they obviously weren’t allowed to have locks here, or simply didn’t have anything valuable that someone could take. I walked through a narrow hallway with peeling walls, which appeared to have been green for a very long time, and entered a small living room made into a bedroom with several makeshift beds and a single couch, its threadbare material ripping along the seams so that the stuffing was showing in several spots. The extreme poverty of every single possession of the apartment was more than obvious, but they still kept everything neat and clean I noted with some inward satisfaction.
It was from inside the kitchen that I could swear I heard the voice coming from, from above, speaking in German. Having been told by the guard that everyone was at work, it was even more puzzling. Radio maybe? I looked up at the ceiling which was blackened with smoke and listened more closely. A woman’s voice joined in. No, not the radio.
I walked outside the apartment and climbed the stairs to the third floor as quietly as I could, which wasn’t an easy task taking into consideration my six foot seven frame and the ancient wooden steps, which could give me away with a squeak any second. I don’t know how, but I managed to get to the door of the apartment in question without announcing my presence to the people talking inside, and turned the knob, silently praying to all the gods that the door wouldn’t make any noise. It didn’t, to my luck, and I stepped i
nside the hallway moving on my tiptoes, trying not to chuckle at the sudden thought of what my best friend Otto would say if he saw me now.
“Fucking Chief of intelligence!” He would sneer and roll his eyes.
I made another silent step towards the living room, and from this new position I could see a Wehrmacht officer standing with his back to me in a grey field uniform, talking to a woman, sitting in a chair in front of him. I could only see her legs because he was blocking her with his body, but it was also to my advantage as she couldn’t see me either.
“I’ll bring more medication tomorrow, when the supplies are delivered.” The officer was talking in a quiet, soft voice. The walls in this old building must have been paper-thin if I could hear him talk in the apartments downstairs, I thought. “We always have accidents along the road, so I’ll be able to check those few bottles off the list, stating that they were broken along the way. I can get you some bread, too, but don’t send your boy for it anymore, you remember what happened to the boy they found smuggling food inside the ghetto?”
“Yes, Herr Hosenfeld,” the woman answered barely audibly.
“You don’t want it to happen to your son, do you?”
“No, of course not!”
“Then have some patience and wait for me to come to you, and don’t risk the boy’s life for no good reason. You know that I always come when I get a chance.”
“Yes, Herr Hosenfeld. I can’t thank you enough for what you’re doing for us.”
“No need to. Just stay here for a few more weeks, Hannah, and then I’ll get you those working permits that they issue for the gentile Poles. You’ll pass for one with your fair looks. That farm that I’m sending you to, the owner is a good man. He has helped many of your lot already. Just do what he tells you and you’ll get by until… Until it’s all over.” The officer sighed and nodded at the little table by which the woman was sitting. “Well, you have your insulin, hide it well so no one sees it, and I’ll bring you more tomorrow, together with some bread and dried meat. Maybe I’ll bring you some sugar for your boy, too.”
I knew from those last words that he was about to leave, and that there was not a chance that I could get out of the apartment quickly enough without announcing my presence, so I just stood in the same spot as the officer turned around and froze where he stood, the blood leaving his face at once as he saw me. The woman behind him gasped and jumped to her feet as well, cowering behind the officer’s back with her hand next to her mouth.
The officer and I looked at each other silently. He swallowed hard, not trying to salute me or to explain himself when everything was more than obvious with his situation. He was probably slowly coming to terms in his mind of what his fate would be. He was older than me, I thought. His resolute, intelligent face was furrowed with those lines that men have when having aged gracefully. He couldn’t hold my gaze for too long, though, and lowered his guilty eyes together with his head, in a silent admission of his worst possible crime against the Reich – helping the inferior racial enemy.
At least someone has the guts to actually do something, and not just bitch and moan around about how their life is so miserable because there’s so much injustice in the world. My conscience made its bitter voice heard again inside my mind. And how your leaders turned out to not be what you expected them to be. Poor you, poor Ernst, how horrible it must be to bear such a cross, accusing everyone around you of marring your former noble goals with their inconvenient opinions and methods. But it’s not your fault, and, how did you say it earlier? Oh, that’s right, not your business. You’re not doing anything wrong. You’re a good guy, because you’re only following the orders of your superiors, but you don’t like them, so that changes everything. Unless you like those orders, your conscience is clear, isn’t it? Yes, of course it is. You’re the victim here, aren’t you? Well, go on, report this, what’s his name? Hosenfeld for his treason, because if this comes out, you’ll get executed along with him, for covering up an enemy of the Reich. You have to think of yourself. Go on, do the right thing, save yourself, and to hell with everyone as long as you’re alive and you can pride yourself on your devotion. You can cry later about the injustice while hugging a bottle of your favorite cognac, as you always do. You’ll feel much better, you’ll see.
I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, begging for the voice to disappear.
“What’s your full name and title?” I asked the officer in front of me.
“Hauptmann Wilhelm Hosenfeld,” he replied barely audibly, without clicking his heels and not looking at me.
“Gruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.” With those words I turned around and left, hoping that he wouldn’t follow me before I changed my mind.
He didn’t. I made my way back to the awaiting Mercedes and drove back to the local RSHA headquarters, where they set me up with a temporary personal office, even though I was supposed to spend two days in Warsaw only. I tried to rid myself of the very memory about the incident, made all necessary work calls, contacted my agents in Vienna and asked them about the situation on the French border. It was nearing five when Georg put his head through the door and informed me that I had a visitor.
I squeezed my eyes with one hand, silently expressing my attitude to the announcement, which made Georg chuckle.
“I’m sorry, Herr Gruppenführer. He’s very insistent. He says it’s very important. Some Hosenfeld?”
“Oh, what is he doing here?” I almost moaned at the officer’s typical German righteousness. Came to give himself up, probably, the idiot. I didn’t report him, didn’t say anything, so what the hell is he doing? I raked my hair with both hands and motioned to my adjutant. “Let him in.”
Hosenfeld, and it was indeed him, walked through the door and this time saluted me sharply and clicked his heels. I watched him walk resolutely toward my table, to take his belt off together with the holster and put it on top of my papers. He never looked at me once; he was giving all his attention to the spot on the opposite wall, no doubt avoiding my eyes so as not to lose his confidence.
“Herr Gruppenführer, I came to face the consequences of my actions. I hereby give myself to your full authority and I am ready to face the military tribunal to the full extent of law. With your permission, Herr Gruppenführer.”
He nodded curtly and clicked his heels again.
“What are you doing?” I asked him tiredly.
Hosenfeld looked at me for the first time, confused.
“I’m giving myself up, sir,” he replied at last, after a long pause.
“Why?” I asked him again, smiling slightly. “Have you done something criminal?”
Hosenfeld searched my face even longer this time, before barely whispering his reply. “You saw me this afternoon, sir… In the ghetto…”
I smiled wider and shook my head. “You must be mistaken. We have never met. I didn’t see you today, or on any other day. I haven’t left my office today. My adjutant was inspecting the ghetto, not me.”
He frowned even more, and then tilted his head slightly to one side, as if trying to understand my motives.
“You must have had a lot to drink last night, didn’t you, Hosenfeld?” I decided to help him out of the situation he had gotten himself into. “And you must have had some terrible, alcohol induced dream. It has happened to me a few times, too. I get up in the morning and clearly remember shooting my boss in the face. Heydrich, you must know of him. I would get myself ready for the tribunal, just like you did, and go to work. And then he would call my office, yell at me with his annoying voice and I’d smile with relief – no, just a dream then. You must have had some kind of dream like this one, huh, Hosenfeld? That’s why you came here to me?”
He finally understands me, I thought with relief, watching his eyes open wide, and the recognition of the hope shining them with a warm light. He nodded slightly, but couldn’t form words.
“That’s not criminal, Hosenfeld. Everybody gets
drunk from time to time, and imagines things. You imagined me seeing you doing something terrible. But you didn’t see me, and I didn’t see you. I did not see anything at all.” I finished with a sly grin, and pushed his belt and holster back to him. “Go home and have a nice rest, Hosenfeld. You deserve it. And try not to get drunk anymore, will you? You’ve just put yourself and me in quite an uncomfortable situation. Some of your superiors might not be so understanding. Please, be more careful in future.”
“Jawohl, Herr Gruppenführer!” The beaming Wehrmacht officer took his belt and holster with slightly shaking hands and saluted me again. “Thank you, Herr Gruppenführer.”
He left, and I looked dreamily at the papers, on top of which he’d placed his gun.
Are you happy now? I asked my annoying inner voice.
Well, maybe you’re not as hopeless as I started to think, it replied.
Chapter 8
Nuremberg, June 1946
My situation was hopeless, far more hopeless than I started to think just after the hearing of my case had finished. Today the Russians were saying things about me, related to someone else’s charges, but it didn’t matter in the end because they still brought me into this, they had brought me into almost everything, talking in their rough, barking language and scrutinizing me with their hateful eyes from under the heavy eyelids, as if wanting to accuse me of not giving myself up to them, but to the Americans, as if that was my fault, too.
The Austrian: Book Two Page 11