But there’s a distinction, after all—
And you continue arguing against me, your own father! You stand against all of us. Just what do you stand for?
Forgive me, father, but this distinction—
We see a distinction only because we’re abstracting the two cases of matricide; we’re letting them be hypothetical, so that we can play God and peer into the defendants’ hearts. But in real life we’ll never know.
But you knew.
Yes, I do believe, I’m humanly certain, that the man whom I sentenced to death was a mercy-killer; and the current law of our land might well allow his mother to be released from her agony, provided that it was the Reich itself which—
Speaking of such things, father, I’ve obtained proof that Berthe was euthanized at Hadamar.
You’re interrupting me. What if she was? Poor girl, she’s better off! Have you forgotten how she used to touch herself in church? I hope you’ll show the decency never to tell Elfriede. The point is, we shouldn’t have the impertinence to play God. It’s not up to us to decide who should live and who should die.
Father, said Kurt Gerstein desperately, if I had been you I should have resigned my office.
For shame! To think that I would ever hear my own son . . .
Forgive me, father. I don’t mean—
Then why don’t you resign yours?
I won’t lay down my responsibility, the blond man steadily replied, and then, in an effort to defuse this conversation: By the way, where is Friedl?
Shopping, shopping, said the old man with an indulgent wave of the hand.
Gerstein smiled, trying to hide his rage. Friedl was probably standing in a queue to buy watered-down milk.
Unlike you, his father continued (Ludwig Gerstein never got distracted from a topic), I’m not a quitter. When I was a magistrate I did my duty, no matter how painful it was. I also fought on the Westfront in the last war, Kurt; you can’t imagine the things I saw . . .
The son almost laughed.—No, father. I can’t imagine.
I did my duty, and I never played God. I kept to the humility that befits a human being.
And you don’t think we ought to choose for ourselves?
As Adam and Eve chose, against the commandment of God? As the Bolshevists continue to choose today? Have you forgotten that KatyForest massacre? That’s their bloody, bloody work, which our Führer would save us from—
Kurt Gerstein whispered: We need to choose as Jesus chose.
No, said his father, that’s perfect fantasy. You’re not Jesus. What you imagine is impossible.
His father, who believed in the growing might of our Reich’s air defenses, had never been like him: From birth Kurt Gerstein had always been as fearful as a Jew.
28
In 7.44 a Swiss newspaper printed an article about the situation of the Hungarian Jews, the headline being: People Are Disappearing. An anonymous friend slipped a clipping of the story under Gerstein’s door. His heart began to pound so fiercely that he feared he might vomit. Collapsing on the bed, he read it through, hoping not to be implicated. Fortunately, Die Ostschweiz credited the Polish Government-in-Exile. Then of course Gerstein felt disappointed.
That was when the Second Guards Tank Army of the USSR liberated Maidanek concentration camp. They found the mounds of clothes, the shooting room. The documentarist Roman Karmen, stern and correct in his army cap and uniform, filmed the grubby captured Nazis in front of Block 2, his camera pressed in against his body as if he didn’t want it to get too close to them; they were us; he was shooting us from underneath, aiming up at our stubbled chins to make us look even uglier than our souls. He filmed the giant cabbages; he zoomed in on the human ashes which fertilized them. And thousands of Russians saw that newsreel, maybe hundreds of thousands. The Soviet press organs printed extensive accounts. As yet, however, the Western Allies still refused to believe. Gerstein was in despair. As for his colleagues, they’d begun to look over their shoulders a little, almost as if they could see the Russians coming.
Captain Wirth, who for some reason always tilted his head back when saying Heil Hitler!, just as our Austrians do, poured him a drink and said: To get right down to it, that Günther of yours, they don’t call him Clever Hans for nothing. All this time he’s been complaining about being Stahlecker’s subordinate! You don’t report to Stahlecker, do you?
No, Herr Captain.
Cut the phony formality with me, Gerstein; we’re in this together. Here’s the way I see it: Stahlecker’s going to be the fall guy. You mark my words, Gerstein. If this war keeps going to shit, Clever Hans will be sitting pretty, and all the world’s going to hear about Major-General Walther So-and-So Stahlecker, who committed all these crimes against the Yids! But you know what, Gerstein? Hey, are you drunk? I said, you know what? I’m not going to be the fall guy. Now listen. Here’s what you and I have got to do . . .
But Gerstein was not listening at all.
He kept haunting churches, adventuring like a knight, approaching any pastor who preached sermons against killing; he showed almost every guest those red-edged dark grey folders which read SECRET REICH MATTER and; and his colleagues went marching triple file along the righthand edge of a barbed wire lane, their Death’s Head insigniae baby-white against their tanned baby faces and dark uniforms; they were not all blond like Gerstein, but they marched in step, chins up, gazing straight ahead; they were as reliable as Panzer tanks. Now here came Commandant Rudolf Höss, en route from the department “Canada” with his head up and his benignly stupid eyes a little worried while helpful Kurt Gerstein,-Obersturmführer Kurt Gerstein I mean, trotted alongside, bending down to murmur into the Commandant’s ear that some of the Zyklon B had been decomposed in transit and would need to be buried to avoid any risks to the health of the gassing detail.
But what’s Himmler going to say? And this has happened before. It seems as if you’re always trying to take away my prussic acid, Gerstein! Ha, ha! Is the substance really that dangerous?
I’m afraid so, Herr Commandant.
Well, this will affect our efficiency! Tell me, Gerstein, can’t you improve the reliability of the transportation process? As I understand it, the prompt and safe delivery of this essential neutralizing agent is really in your sphere of responsibility.
By your order, Herr Commandant!
I understand that you observed those preliminary ad hoc operations at Treblinka and Belzec. That is correct?
Yes, Herr Commandant.
At that time, you supported Captain Wirth’s argument in favor of diesel exhaust as opposed to Zyklon B. I’ve read your report. Frankly, I’m surprised that you could have expressed those views. Is that what you still maintain?
Herr Commandant, as you yourself remarked just now, Zyklon B suffers from a tendency to spoil. In my opinion, it’s better to resettle fewer Jews per day in a reliable fashion than to gamble with an extremely dangerous and uncontrollable toxic agent—
I see your point, but I disagree with it. We have to forge ahead. Unfortunately, we just don’t have the manpower to shoot them . . . Well, I understand that this is not your worry. We each of us work toward the Führer in the best way we can. But I must warn you, Gerstein: If this happens again, and we have to resort to diesel engines again, or, God forbid, to small-caliber weapons, I’ll file a report. Do you understand?
Absolutely, Herr Commandant, and once again I assure you that it’s not my—
Do you know what I find very strange? Most of our Zyklon comes from Dr. Mryugowsky’s hygiene service. And his gas never seems to spoil. Who’s your supplier?
A Dr. Peters, at the Degesch Company. Herr Commandant, I want you to know that I have already been following up this matter with him. Apparently the most microscopic impurities in the tin cannisters may cause—
All right, all right, sighed Commandant Höss. We don’t want any impurities . . .
Sorry about the inconvenience, Herr Commandant.
Don’t worry, Höss said
calmly. Had you inconvenienced me, I should certainly have filed a report. As it is, Gerstein, the quantity you’re able to supply is so negligible in comparison to Dr. Mryugowsky’s that these interruptions don’t impede our operations here. Will you be staying for lunch?
With pleasure, Herr Commandant. I—
That’s enough now. Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to file any report at this stage. I’ll expect you at 1315 sharp. Heil Hitler!
Heil Hitler!
What a goodlooking boy! Höss was thinking to himself as he continued on to the crematorium.
29
Now he no longer dared to destroy the prussic acid. Therefore he became an accomplice, history said.
Suffering from diabetes, he frequently blacked out. His-brothers also lost heart; they got drunk more often than ever, saying to one another: If only I’d known how everything was going to turn out . . .—In his dreams he saw Berthe’s skull, which wept, the tears drying, leaving a whitish crust on the verdigrised bell-dome of her skeleton-church. Just as trenches grow shallower as they approach the front line, so his own defenses against what he had seen, and the secret life he led, sheltered him less and less. Another way of saying it is that culture gets cruder, life less valuable, as we go East: Prague’s baroque decorations, for instance, are heavier and squatter than the fluid marble nudes of Vienna. By the time we get to Leningrad, there’s nothing at all, only a smoking mass grave bereft of any adornment but snow and rubble—pure proof of Slavic subhumanity. On Kaprova-Josefov Street in Prague, not far from “Clever Hans” Günther’s office, a tall, skinny, mummylike bas-relief flexed its skinny arms upon a corner wall; adorned with chains and fishes, it was a harmless Christian symbol, but to Gerstein it was a dead Jew hanging there and haunting him. (Don’t be a coward! Captain Wirth would have said.) In Berlin, thank God, no bookstores assaulted him with the word SLAVISTIKA; but other items frightened him unpredictably. His depositions against the Hitler regime were now as white, regular and endless as a German cemetery in December at Stalingrad. If the Gestapo found those, he’d be lucky if they did nothing worse than shoot him and his family . . . In his office the telephone rang and said: . . . A block raid, to catch suspects . . .
He sought out Monsignor Orsenigo again, to try to reach the Pope, but once more got turned away. In anguish he cried out to his wife: What action against Nazism can anyone demand of an ordinary citizen when the representative of Jesus on earth refuses to hear me?
Listen to me, Kurt! Please, please listen! Nobody demands of you what you’re doing!
Our Lord Jesus Christ would have done this much and more, he said to her.
Elfriede wrung her hands, but in fact she’d become very bitter against him. Every other-wife she knew lived well, but Kurt never brought anything home, not even Bohemian honey anymore, no matter how hungry the children became. He was an egotist, she told everybody; he didn’t care about anybody but himself. And those Yids he went on and on about, they made her ill. Didn’t he remember that our people were suffering, too? In fact, our Führer had said . . . She longed to command her husband, as her father-in-law could: And now we’ll never talk about it again.
The truth was that Kurt had never been normal. Even before the war he’d been so highstrung; she wondered what could have possessed her to marry him.
Frau Hedwig’s twins, considering him odd, had returned to their mother, for which he blamed himself. Edmund grew up to be more reserved than Erich, who in later life was known to say: My brother and I both saw it coming. (Summer is always pregnant with winter, of course, and when September arrives, Berlin is positively gravid, her heavy white clouds about to burst with rain, her yellow leaves ready to descend like paratroopers from the maternal stem.) The blond man became a patient at varioushospitals, muttering like so many other shellshocked men: What does God think of me?—In those places there was nothing to read but Signal magazine: “I’ll have the second from the right,” says Hilde as she admires the new handbag which has just been placed in the repaired shop window. “I don’t care how many bombs they drop,” says old Mayer. “Germany will keep right on working!”
30
He entered a church’s open door and heard: We admonish our German folk to stand by the doctrine of blood and soil. Then he went out to the beerhall withman Müller, “the crematorium clown.” It was Müller who first told him about the malaria experiments of Dr. Klaus Schilling at Dachau.—Commendable, said Gerstein gravely, realizing that now he would have to add an entirely new section to his war crimes affidavit.
Commendable nothing! cried Müller, who now was very drunk. I’ve got a comrade in the S.D. You know what he likes to do, just for laughs?
What?
Make the Jews kneel down and beg for their lives, and then—
And then?
Don’t be stupid. You know the rest. But first he . . .
And Müller whispered something really obscene into Gerstein’s ear. And the blond man laughed. He laughed! He had to.
31
Baron von Otter had been transferred to Bucharest, they told him, but he managed one last secret interview with Consul Hochstrasser, telling him: I’ve checked this information personally. The code name for Hitler’s special train has been changed from “Amerika” to “Brandenburg.” He rarely takes one of his cars anymore, but if he does, it’s worth knowing that he’s had the bulletproof tires removed for the sake of his queasy stomach. The thickness of the rear steel plate is eight millimeters . . .
Herr Obersturmführer, this is outright provocation. Do you realize what would happen to my country if Berlin had any suspicion of—
I’m telling you, even as we speak, people are being stripped naked and forced into gas chambers all over Central Europe! You can hear them screaming . . .
I do believe that you have, said the Consul as graciously as he could.
And I am grateful for your belief, said Gerstein a little stiffly. Now shall I go on? The side-plates are only four millimeters thick; therefore—
Herr Obersturmführer, your own security, and that of your family, is your business. I myself—
If Hitler should lose, he’ll slam the door behind him with such force that the earth will shake. Can’t you imagine what he’s preparing for all of us?
As I said, I myself refuse to be compromised, replied the Consul with a stony thick-lipped smile not unlike the one eternally carved on Bacchus’s face; I’ve seen him grinning and glaring at me above an archway of the Palais im Grossen Garten in Dresden. You had warning. I intend to give orders that you never again be admitted to this office.
His inspection tours of the shrinking Eastern territories, if they continued at all, went entirely unwitnessed; however, I do have at hand fairly reliable evidence of his having visited the camps at Oranienburg (where they clapped his shoulder and said: Gerstein, what you see here makes you either brutal or sentimental!) and Ravensbrück, the latter being particularly upsetting to him since its inmates were females. The-women there (so I’m told) were quite struck by tall, handsome Kurt Gerstein. One in particular, a bisexual opera singer who had a different Frenchwoman served up to her every week, a crime for which she later become a prisoner herself, had a scheme involving the disinfection of thelaundry, which would have brought the blond man to Ravensbrück quite often; pretending to be interested in her, Gerstein was able to hear from her own lips about the secret “Night and Fog” Gestapo stamp in certain prisoners’ dossiers; he also learned from her that since the Hungarian Jewesses weren’t dying rapidly enough, other measures were in preparation. Ravensbrück was a pretty soft camp, with only one crematorium, and Gerstein fairly quickly realized that he had seen far more than-Aufseherin Luise. I think it unlikely that she told him about the young Polish girls whose legs were slit open and injected with gangrene, to simulate war wounds.—They all whine and pretend to be specialists! giggled Luise, pinching his arm. But enough about them! Would you like me to sing the “Liebestod” from “Tristan”? It’s said I can move a man
to tears. Are you ready? Kurt, I said are you ready?
Rage’s beak drilled at the back of his skull. Rage’s claws grubbed in his guts, piercing and digging.
32
“Clever Hans” Günther called for his advice as to whether it would be practical to liquidate the remaining Jews of Theresienstadt all at once if we herded them into open ditches and then sprinkled them with Zyklon B. The always clean and pleasing look of Kurt Gerstein’s face came into play when the blond man lied and said that it was utterly impossible. That was the last time he succeeded in saving anybody. As it turned out, those Jews got murdered anyway, by shooting.
In his flat he frequently committed the capital crime of listening to BBC broadcasts; moreover, he increased the volume until the neighbors could hear it through the walls. He lay in bed thinking what his father always called his evil thoughts; he scribbled additions to his indictments: During the French campaign they’d murdered British prisoners-of-war in the village of Le Paradis. He even tuned in to Radio Moscow. Field-Marshal Paulus was speaking on the Freedom Broadcasting Station, offering to fight for a “democratic order” in Germany. When his increasingly rare visitors taxed him with giving in to suicidal impulses, the blond man stubbornly insisted that he was doing this only so that the neighbors could have access to these broadcasts without any risk to themselves. He defended this absurd position so loudly that guests sometimes feared for his reason. Then, in a sudden fury, he began to describe to them the way Jew-brains explode high into the air when we shoot at close range. He couldn’t stop seeing that, he said.
Herr Gerstein, forgive me for asking this, but have you ever personally taken part in the actions against the Jews?
I have clean hands, he replied through clenched teeth.
33
His father came for a visit, and Kurt Gerstein, summoning up all his courage, began with a dry mouth to hint at some of the things which were occurring in the East. (Anyone who talks will be shot immediately, “Clever Hans” had said.)
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