2
On 17.8.42, three months after the assassination of Deputy Reich Protector Heydrich, Gerstein stood before the desk of Hans Günther, who was assistant to Adolf Eichmann himself. It was time to write a new chapter in each and all of those multitudinous books entitled Historia Polski. “Clever Hans” Günther was one of those people who never stop believing that pure energy will solve the question of the day. When this method fails, the optimist turns angry. Such bosses are feared and respected. Our Führer loves them.
Gerstein, do you like to travel?
I’m ready, Herr Captain.
That’s the answer I like! We’re going to Poland tomorrow. Are you acquainted with Dr. Pfannenstiel?
Of Marburg? Naturally, Herr Captain. He’s a professor of hygiene; we’ve corresponded—
Good. He’ll also be taking part in this. Get a hundred kilograms of prussic acid without fail. Do you need a requisition?
No, Herr Captain, I have that much in stock.
It’s best to deliver it directly to this office. My orderlies will load it onto the baggage car.
By your order, Herr Captain.
That’s all. Here’s your ticket.
By your order, Herr Captain.
One more thing, Gerstein. Listen carefully. This is one of the most secret matters, even the most secret. Do you understand? Anyone who talks about it will be shot immediately.
I understand, Herr Captain.
Heil Hitler!
Heil Hitler, said Gerstein, and he clicked his heels.
In their compartment of the Warsaw Express, a beautiful, placid darkhaired Polish girl sat ever so slowly turning over the leaves of her illustrated German magazine; the skin of her naked throat was as perfect as a political idea. She might have been a woman of pleasure. Presently a middle-aged Wehrmacht officer came and sat beside her. At his breast he wore a Knight’s Cross which he kept fingering nervously. Gerstein leaped to his feet and saluted; the lieutenant waved him down, his small eyes swimming ceaselessly in his exhausted, desperate face. Then he whispered something to the girl. Strangely enough, although she now awarded him the first of several cursory smiles, it was Kurt Gerstein whom she seemed to look upon. The young man lowered his eyes.
Dr. Pfannenstiel drummed his fingers on the windowsill. Finally he indulged himself to the point of remarking: As the Führer says, after so many generations we Goths are riding again!
No doubt, said Captain Günther.
The lieutenant grinned mockingly at this (for, in truth, poor Dr. Pfannenstiel was as heavy as an Opel-Blitz truck). The girl also smiled, stroking her lover’s sleeve, but the smile sank away at once. Turning to Kurt Gerstein, as people so often did, the lieutenant inquired: Where might you Goths be riding to?
Warsaw, the young man lied pleasantly. And yourself, Herr Oberstleutnant?
I’m taking Basia to her parents. Then it’s straight back to the Ostfront!
With a self-important air, he adjusted his Knight’s Cross. Gerstein thought him rather pitiable.
And when will you come back for me? asked the girl in a weak and listless voice.
Don’t worry, darling; there will be plenty of passes given out as soon as we take Stalingrad.
The summer-green forests were growing crazily, nourished by atrocity. It seemed to Gerstein, such was the profusion of foliage, that the train was now passing into the earth itself, and through some illusion the shimmering of the leaves resembled veins of crystalline chalcedony. After all, it was now evening, the sky turning Prussian blue in the train windows. Ahead lay the still richer summer leaf-darkness of the Polish countryside. (But Poland, of course, had ceased to exist.) Although Basia suffered the lieutenant to hold her hand, she never stopped looking at Gerstein. Unable to control himself any longer, he allowed his eyes to find her eyes. At once, doubtless through some peculiarity of lighting, her face seemed to take on the features of his murdered sister-in-law, and she said in a voice which only he could hear: Be brave, Kurt Gerstein. I am your conscience. When you walk the dark way, remember me, and always do your best.
He had, perhaps, been in love with Berthe. Her smile was always grave approaching sadness, and the more sweet for that. She had deep brown eyes with rich lashes, and brown hair which waved so graciously across her forehead before, caressing her rich eyebrows, it curled back against her temples and then flared down all the way to her shoulders. Her lips were both full and delicate. There had been something Jewish-looking about her.
Gerstein did not even feel frightened. Perhaps he was dreaming, for the others in the compartment continued to notice nothing. Ever since his childhood, strange enthusiasms and hallucinations had attacked him. His late mother had always worried about his susceptibilities, and used to keep him away from military uniforms and memorabilia inasmuch as she was able—not merely because any reminder of her other son’s death grieved her, but also since she feared, not without foundation, that any passing whimsy might induce him to sign up for dangerous adventures. In adolescence he used to dream of a pale face, neither male or female, which hung over his and kissed him all night. Sometimes it had seemed more than a dream, as did this apparition.
He tried to cobble together some reply, but now already Berthe’s face was melting back into Basia’s (for a moment, when it was neither one or the other, it almost seemed to take on the appearance of a skull); then Dr. Pfannenstiel took out his pocket watch as the train entered a zone demarcated by searchlights and barbed wire: the former frontier. The lands ahead had all been annexed into our Reich. And out the window they saw a helmet on a cross, a flower-bush on a mound of earth. Gerstein and the other two-men rose and rigidly saluted the corpse. The lieutenant stared at them with twitching lips. As for Basia, she had returned to her German magazine.
3
On the silent weed-grown tracks of Rzepin, a long black windowless train basked beside them in the dusk. The lieutenant and his mistress disembarked here without any farewell. The whistle screamed. Then came small houses whose roof-tiles partook of the color of earth. Big-breasted Polish girls were lounging in a brickwork doorway, smiling at the train and smoking cigarettes. One of them laughed aloud, and her mouth glistened poisonously. After more brown-green grass and shunted trains, they passed bullet-riddled hulks of engines at the yard at Posen. Gazing through the window at the dim platform crowded with Poles, Gerstein wondered who Basia had really been. A real German woman needs no makeup, but she had painted her lips as carmine-red as the service colors of the Polizei fire brigade. Neither his father nor his wife would have liked her.
They paused at the next station for a long time. No one disturbed them. Dr. Pfannenstiel snored, then awoke with a gasp. Captain Günther was so still that he might as well not have existed. As for Gerstein, he stared wearily out the window. Tired S.D. men were checking documents, their jackbooted feet wide apart on the dirty concrete. The train began to move again at last, very slowly now, and after an interminable time reached the new frontier. They stopped once more for nearly an hour while the police inspected everyone’s papers. Then they crossed into the General Government.
So it’s sprayed directly on the clothes? inquired Dr. Pfannenstiel. I’m not personally familiar with this substance.
Correct, said Gerstein. It comes highly recommended by the Sanitation Office.
In Berlin?
Berlin, yes, answered Gerstein with a vacant smile, that smile which lacked three teeth.
Changing trains in Warsaw, they rode across the Vistula bridge and arrived in Lublin.
Gerstein, I’ve heard that there are some outstanding Ruthenian-Byzantine frescoes in that Dominican church over there. You’re a Catholic, I believe?
No, Herr Captain, an Evangelical.
So. I’ll do my best to overlook that. Do Evangelicals cross themselves?
No, Herr Captain.
All the same, don’t start crossing yourself in public! The Führer has said that after Jews, Slavs and Freemasons, the churches are Germany’s most d
angerous enemies.
By your order, Herr Captain.
I’m afraid you won’t have time to see your little frescoes, Gerstein. But we may be able to visit Lublin Castle. Quite a number of prisoners being kept on ice in the cellars . . .
4
What’s your opinion of the castle, Gerstein?
Well, from the outside it seems—
The Führer has said that everything Polish must be erased from the world.
Heil Hitler! cried Gerstein at once.
The railroad tracks were the same color as the evening sky.
5
They went by car to Lvov, which our forces had captured a year ago from that Slavic general, Vlasov. (Vlasov would soon begin working for us.) Lvov was now called Lemberg. In the windows of all the nice restaurants, neat signs warned: GERMANS ONLY. NO POLES ADMITTED.
You’re a quiet young man, Gerstein. I commend that.
Thank you, Herr Captain.
You haven’t been in Lemberg before.
No, Herr Captain.
I’m happy to say that Lemberg was a very anti-Semitic city long before we arrived here. Even the Polish students used to . . .
Gerstein smiled on him with hatred.
Hidden beyond the greatness and greenness of Polish summer trees, past tallish rounded Polish haystacks like ancient tumuli, a railroad spur ran to the secret place called Belzec, which would sometimes appear in his nightmares as a negative image, white on black, the Nazi eagle-stamp a white blotch on the document with the swastika black; sometimes eagle and swastika went completely white together, becoming a winged bomb falling in prefiguration of our V-2 rockets:And then that file was opened; the secret of Belzec opened unto him in typed and numbered paragraphs, the numbers centered, the section titles underlined after the fashion of legal contracts. It was all for the best; thus the lesson he’d been meant to learn. Once the zone was clean and clear, there’d be happier scenes: Volksdeutsche receiving farmhouses, identification cards and framed photographs of the Führer as they entered their new inheritance.
Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet-Brigade Chief Otto Globocnik. Chief, I believe you’ve already met Professor Dr. Pfannenstiel, our Waffen-hygienist. And this fresh-faced young man is our delousing expert,Obersturmführer Kurt Gerstein.
Heil Hitler! Yes, Dr. Pfannenstiel and I exchanged ideas just two weeks ago, in Lublin.
Heil Hitler!
Heil Hitler!
Brigade Chief Globocnik has been entrusted with organizing the actions against the Jews in Lublin District. And how’s the good work coming?
It’s a cesspool here, Günther. No matter how hard we work, there’s more shit and more shit! Jewish shit. Hopefully we’ll be able to clean it up faster—
That’s your task, Brigade Chief.
Of course. But they keep dumping more Jews on me. Just when I got Lublin nearly cleaned up, they sent me Jews from Austria. Last week I got a shipment from the Old Reich, and they’re all pretending to be war heroes!
What scoundrels!
They’ve all gone to the bathhouse now! Do you understand me, Gerstein?
No, Brigade Chief.
Well, you’ll learn. Now, you’re going to have two jobs at Belzec. First of all, you’ll develop a procedure for disinfecting clothing. We have mountains of it piling up, all used, and crawling with God knows what sort of vermin from Russians, Poles, Jews and all that riffraff . . .
By your order, Brigade Chief.
Secondly, we need a faster working gas than diesel exhaust. That’s where your prussic acid comes in.
Gerstein trotted after them, smiling woodenly as he waited to be enlightened. Dr. Pfannenstiel already knew. Dr. Pfannenstiel horrified him.
Gerstein, meet Kripo Chief Herr Christian Wirth. Wirth, this isObersturmführer Kurt Gerstein, who’s a very ingenious and reliable young man, I’ve heard . . .
Heil Hitler, Captain Wirth!
Heil Hitler! You’ll get used to the smell, Gerstein. Haven’t you ever passed by a rendering plant? Even paper-mills stink. Now, this here is the dressing hut. Do you see that window to turn in valuables? It’s surprising how many of them actually do it. We find that it reassures them. Moreover, it saves work for the Sonderkommando later, although our regulations do require us to inspect every body cavity.
That was when Captain Günther said: You’re not going to disappoint us, will you, Gerstein?
By your order, sir—
Next I’ll take you to the barber room, where we shave the heads of the women. We actually turn quite a profit on haircloth. Jewesses in particular seem to pamper their hair. I suppose it’s a racial characteristic. Then that lane over there with barbed wire on both sides, that leads to the baths, which is where you come in.
By your order, Captain Wirth—
A naked blonde Jewess, smiling at Gerstein without hope or shame, raised her hands one by one above her head and mopped her sweating armpits with a rag which had not yet been taken from her. The hair of her axilla resembled golden wire. Seeing how he looked at her, Captain Wirth shook his head.
Nature is inherently cruel, Gerstein, explained Captain Günther.
6
Gerstein, start your stopwatch.
In a fury, Captain Wirth was whipping Heckenholt’s Ukrainian assistant.
After two hours and forty-nine minutes, Heckenholt got the diesel motor working. Thirty-two minutes after that, all the Jews were dead.
Gerstein said to nobody in particular: The Führer himself has stated that Madagascar would be an acceptable residence for the Jews.
As a matter of fact, replied Captain Wirth in a monitory tone, the wishes of the Führer on this matter are top secret. Just remember this: The Final Solution is the only way we can reduce the danger of epidemics.
I understand, Herr Captain.
Now what? he was wondering. The answer proved logical: iron hooks in the mouths, then Captain Wirth gloating over his jam-box filled with the gold teeth of dead Jews. (The Ukrainians had made off with a golden mace from the sixteenth century, some coins, an ivory figurine of some saint.)—Into the mass grave! Now for petrol and match!
Dr. Pfannenstiel approached the pit rather gingerly and said: These bodies have not been completely burned.
So what, man? They’re only Jews!
Dr. Pfannenstiel cleared his throat and reproachfully explained: That’s not the issue. The whole procedure is not entirely satisfactory from the point of view of hygiene.
Gerstein was sure that he must be wearing his horror as conspicuously as an Iron Cross, but down sank another of his illusions. Everybody smiled at the handsome young blond man. Captain Wirth slapped him on the shoulder and said: There are not ten people alive who have seen, or will see, as much as you.
7
There is a roster of good souls. Open the dark grey folder and read: The names and identification numbers of these righteous have been typed in the lefthand column, followed by other boxes which contain in turn the dates of service, the methods employed and the numbers of people saved. To tell the truth, I had imagined that this roster resembled one of those Greek codices with golden anchors and crowns in the margins; but the practice of virtue is such a dreary, low-paying business that it’s all that the angels can do to hire a military typist; not even alphabetical order can be respected here, which is why on one of the loose sheets we find, in this order, Dr. Hermann Maas of Heidelberg, who helped many Jews get safely to England and Switzerland (he got sent to a labor camp in 1944, but survived the war despite his advanced age); Pastor Erik Myrgren of Berlin, whom the Israelis have designated one of the Righteous Among Nations; and Dr. Elisabeth Abegg, also of Berlin, who sold her jewelry in order to finance the escapes of Jews.—The name of Kurt Gerstein is not here.
There is another register, much more voluminous than the first; it’s an old book on whose title page, above the single red Cyrillic word, hangs an immense bar of darkness with white gratings, then spiderwebs surrounded by a cross. This book is as tall as
a gravestone; its covers are cast out of lead; it takes six strong men to carry it. At Nuremberg the prosecution caused it to be brought into the courtroom as evidence against each of the major war criminals; the appearance of the defendant’s name on any one of its pages sufficed to ensure conviction, unless he was a rocket scientist. Once West Germany became a crucial Anglo-American ally in the Cold War, this volume was deposited in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and subsequently misshelved. This is why most of its inmates lived out prosperous postwar lives. In its pages have been been written forever the names of Captain Günther, Dr. Pfannenstiel (whose indictment got dismissed), Captain Wirth, Brigade Chief Globocnik, and ever so many others—my random gaze uncovers-Personalakte Hellmuth Becker, commander of theDeath’s Head Division, who liked to rape Russian women in the streets.—But Gerstein’s name is not here, either.
What then is Gerstein? Wherein should he be inscribed?—.
His story is as rare, and hence as shocking, as full-figure reliefs of the saints on otherwise featureless walls.
Now that story started to run in earnest, like rope hissing out from greased coils as the gallows-trap drops. He was falling; he was free to make something of himself between beginning and end. On the train from Warsaw to Berlin he met a Swedish attaché and told him what he had seen at Belzec, whispering in his ear all that hot and ghastly night. Soon he’d lapsed into the present tense: The people stand together on each other’s feet. Seven hundred, eight hundred people in an area of twenty-five square meters! At his side, Baron von Otter stood rigidly there in the corridor of the sleeping car, turning his face away from the blond man’s breath. It was pitch-dark in the General Government. Soon, thank God, they’d have passed through Radom Station, and then the Reich frontier would come; not long after that he could get away. He lit another cigarette. When he couldn’t bear to listen anymore, he kept politely nodding, his lips moving in what Gerstein must have assumed was a prayer for the dead Jews but which was actually nothing more than a list of all the names he remembered from a recent visit to a Romanian cemetery: Ecaterina, Eufrosina, Maria, Gelu, Andrei, Gheorghe, Nicu, Leni, Ionifia, Elena, Eleffenie, Melinte. Languages were his hobby. He meant to learn Romanian someday. For a Latinist, it surely wouldn’t be difficult. Elena, Eleffenie, Melinte. Then the light came on, glaring on all the naked blue bodies, and one of them was still moving; she stretched out her hands toward the window, so they turned the light back out and Eleffenie, Melinte. He wished to know how accurately Gerstein had counted these alleged victims. The blond man choked out: My stopwatch has registered everything faithfully. Fifty minutes seventy seconds—the engine still has not started! The people are waiting in their gas chamber. You can hear them crying, sobbing . . .—In short, he’d fallen prey to the dangerous capability of the Untermensch to mask itself behind a human face (his sister-in-law’s, for instance), and thereby excite pity.
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