Was it possible his mother never knew she was sired by Alois Steiner ? Not only possible, he now concluded, but probable; and entirely believable.
He tore up the sheet he had started on and addressed instead a letter to Henrietta. “Dear Oma. I was in Innsbruck. I stayed with Uncle Walther. We thought of telephoning you, but you can’t just put in a long distance call to America from Innsbruck yet. When Walther was out of the house — you were right, he plays with an orchestra — I looked at your mother’s scrapbook. It’s all there, like A. B. C. What I want to know is: Did you ever tell Mama? Please write to me. Love, Sebastian.”
He looked over at Teresa, sitting on the chair in the kitchen, her hair braided about her young face, the radio on, tuned low, the Nuremberg newspaper on her lap. She looked up at him and turned up the music.
“ Lieber Sebastian, are you coming to keep me company now?”
He wondered if his grin was concupiscent as he rose ardently from his chair.
Book Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Spring 1943
Axel Reinhard — SS Captain Axel Reinhard — was back from Auschwitz. He had studied the designs of the latest crematorium at Auschwitz’s subcamp, Birkenau. In Joni, using mostly Polish forced labor, he applied himself to the construction of a unit, appropriately modified. Sometimes, when critical supplies hadn’t come, work was suspended or retarded. On such days he worked only eight or ten hours. He preferred it when he was working sixteen hours. When idle, he had the time, that awful time, to allow his mind to focus on what he was doing. He sought refuge in vodka.
Stefan Plekhov, adjutant for Governor Frank, had been all but detached from other duties in Cracow. His orders were to devote himself fully to rounding up the labor forces required for the Joni enterprise, the completion of which Reichsfuehrer Himmler was so insistently demanding. “I have to have plumbers,” Axel said when, at midday, Plekhov appeared in his office. ‘And not, Stefan, so-called plumbers who came to the profession the day before yesterday in order to qualify for survival. I need the kind of plumbers who can create pipes through which your poison gas can pass without danger of leakage.”
“ My poison gas?” Plekhov raised his hand and his eyebrows. “ You’re German, Axel. I’m Polish.”
“And we’re both working for him . Doing his work...” He knew to check this flow of conversation. “I was talking about the need for plumbers.”
“That will not be easy, Axel.”
“Shall we just report that we will abandon the construction of the crematorium because it will not be easy?”
Captain Plekhov had dealt with fractiousness from Axel Rein-hard ever since the crematorium business had come up and Axel had accepted the commission to get on with Joni. Once again Plekhov advised him to swallow such sentiments, or at the very least, to confine the expression of them to Plekhov — “I am used to them, but I know” — he lowered his own voice — “that such reservations as we have about this business simply have to be overcome. That is die Natur der Sache , the nature of the situation. We have talked about that. It would not do, not do at all, for someone to overhear you when you give voice to such sentiments and carry the word to General Amadeus.”
“Fuck General Amadeus.”
Plekhov seized the slide rule on the desk and banged it down on Reinhard’s knees. “Do you want to become a forced laborer yourself ?”
“Let’s get to work.” Axel went back to calculating the lengths of pipe needed.
*
Captain Plekhov faced a problem of his own only days later. He learned that one Lieutenant Sigmund Soddeberg of the SS had undertaken to segregate, in the library of the University of Cracow, those library books he deemed corrupting. The Governor General called a staff meeting to review Soddeberg’s recommendations. Frank told Plekhov to be present whatever the demands on him at Joni. “You were a university librarian. Obviously you should be present at a meeting at which we discuss library books and the recommendations of Lieutenant Soddeberg.”
At Cracow headquarters, staff meetings were held in what was once the audience chamber of the royal palace of the Wawel dynasty. From both ends of the governors large desk, tables stretched out. As many as twenty-four officials could be seated, but at routine staff meetings there was only the cadre of nine. In the high-ceilinged room, with the light-hearted frescoes and decorative gilt, Governor Frank gaveled the meeting to order.
“Admit Lieutenant Soddeberg.” He motioned to an aide.
The huge wooden door framed in brass opened and the young, blond lieutenant with the clipped hair strode in with his briefcase. He was bidden to go to a chair at the far end of the table. He raised his arm and declaimed “Heil Hitler!” Plekhov discerned a militant reverence in the young man’s voice.
Lieutenant Soddeberg removed a sheaf of papers from the briefcase and started in. In what seemed a practiced voice, he said that the great movement of the National Socialist Party was best illuminated by the Fuehrer’s reference to a thousand-year Reich. “What this means,” said the young officer, “is that the great work being undertaken by the Wehrmacht on the eastern front, and in the oceans of the west by the navy, and by the liberating Nazi forces in North Africa, and by the important progress in eliminating from Europe the contaminating presence of the Jews — ” “Soddeberg, do not consume the morning describing what is being done by the Third Reich at military, political, and social levels. Get to the point.”
Soddeberg snapped to attention. “As you say, Herr Governor General. I was seeking merely to give the background for the intellectual challenge before us, which is to inform the class of university young people who will one day bear the responsibility for directing the Fuehrer’s thought into congenial intellectual, social, and academic channels for the thousand years we speak of — ”
“What books do you want to eliminate?” Hans Frank interrupted again.
“I have here a list of fifty books that are especially subversive. We begin, of course, with the Bible,” he said dramatically.
Governor Frank, a graduate of Catholic schools, winced. “Go on.”
“I will not abuse the humbling experience of appearing before you and your distinguished staff by reading out a list of all the titles I propose be burned in Cracows great public square — ”
“It is the largest square of any city in Europe,” Governor Frank paused to record.
“Yes, Herr Governor General. All the more fitting that they should be burned here.”
Why doesn’t that young fart just gas the books ! Plekhov internalized his exasperation, which was now more like fury.
“Who came up with the titles you wish disposed of?” Frank pressed him.
“May I say, Herr Governor General, with great humility, that I had a bit of a hand in putting the list together. Some of the books — the works of Marx, for instance, and any number by other Jewish authors, for instance, Freud and Spengler — ”
Plekhov spoke up. “Spengler was not Jewish.”
Soddeberg seemed surprised. Then said, “He might as well be Jewish!” and laughed heartily. Others contrived a modest chuckle.
“But as I say, I would hardly presume to read aloud the entire list. Suffice to say that I deem it an urgent, path-setting event, designed to further the holy aims of the Fuehrer.”
“What do you say, Plekhov?” As an aside to Soddeberg, Frank explained, “Captain Plekhov worked as a librarian at the university library before — before joining our staff as adjutant.”
Plekhov had the floor. He proceeded cautiously. “May I ask, Herr Lieutenant, what your own background is?”
“I was commissioned a lieutenant after a year’s military work in Hanover, which included the military maneuvers once praised by General Jodl.”
“I mean, where did you do your academic work?”
“Academic work was offered at the Bismarck High School.”
“You did not, Herr Lieutenant, have any academic training after you graduated from gymnasium?”<
br />
“I went happily into military service.”
“How old were you when commissioned?”
“I was eighteen.”
“How old are you now?”
Soddeberg tilted back his head. “I am twenty-one, Herr Captain.”
No, thought Plekhov. He wouldn’t ask him if he had read any of the condemned books. Presumably, he had read the Bible. He turned instead to Governor Frank. “Perhaps, Herr Governor, the books should be locked away in a reserve area, inaccessible to students except by special arrangement.”
“No, no! ” Soddeberg broke in. “By simply sequestering them, Herr Governor, you would deprive yourself of a great dramatic possibility and of a symbolic opportunity which would surely commend itself in the...higher reaches of Berlin. On this theme, I am moved, Herr Governor, by words spoken by the Fuehrer. I keep them pasted to my writing board.” He reached into his briefcase and began to read:
“‘The heroic strivings of the German people are exercised not only through victorious feats on military fronts, in athletics, in art, in music, in literature. They are exercised by the inspired search for the Aryan purity which comes from stamping out decadent thought in our intellectual life. We must weed out those corrupting sources of misleading and evil thought propagated through the years by alien elements of the academy.’”
Soddeberg looked up, his eyes partly closed by the sheer poetry of the language.
Governor Frank looked about him. “Are there any questions?”
Nobody raised a voice.
“You, Herr Librarian?” He looked at Plekhov on his left.
“No, Herr Governor.”
“Very well, Soddeberg. You will hear from me.”
Lieutenant Soddeberg picked up his briefcase, gave the Nazi salute, and walked out.
Chapter Forty-Six
May 1943
Axel Reinhard was surprised by the query over the telephone. It came from a Gestapo official in Governor Frank’s office. In all the months he had worked on the construction of Camp Joni, in his dealings with Cracow he had worked only through Captain Plekhov and, occasionally, Governor Frank.
The Gestapo officer asked, “Does Captain Plekhov have quarters in your building at Camp Joni?”
“Well, yes. Sometimes he spends the night. He uses a room in this building.”
“Does the room contain anything other than the captains clothing?”
“I don’t know. How would I know, without going into the room and inspecting it?”
“We are just asking questions, Herr Hauptmann. Has Captain Plekhov ever discussed with you the question of subversive books in the Cracow University library?”
“No.”
“When he arrives at Gamp Joni in the quarter-ton, does his vehicle arrive within view of the office in which you work?”
“Yes. It parks directly outside. I can see it through my window.”
“Have you, in the past week, noticed Captain Plekhov bringing from the vehicle any packages — or bags — of substantial size?”
In fact Reinhard had noticed, on Monday, Plekhov carrying a bag, obviously heavy, to his quarters, and then going back to the car for a second bag. “I have no memory of any such thing.”
“Very well. You are under instructions, Herr Hauptmann, to permit no one access to Captain Plekhov’s quarters until my deputy arrives at Camp Joni.”
“Captain Plekhov enters his quarters from a door outside, using his own key.”
“I will arrange with the Postenkommandant to put a guard outside that entrance. But since there is also access to his room in the wing from your own office, you say, you have the responsibility of preventing anyone from approaching his room through your own quarters.”
*
Axel put down the telephone, locked the outside door, and walked down the hallway to the room at the other end of the building. He found the door to Plekhov’s room locked. Axel had a passkey.
He opened the door. At the far end stood the two closets that Axel had designed to accommodate officers’ coats and miscellaneous gear. He opened the first one. He found clothes and, on the shelf, a case of precious vodka.
The Gestapo could not be raising this kind of alarm over a missing case of vodka.
He moved to the second closet. A large trench coat hung there, and at one side, a shotgun and two rifles, one of them a hunting rifle Plekhov had once brought in to show Axel when the two men were drinking vodka together — it had been his father’s. On the higher shelf, wrapped in newspapers, were two rows of objects which he supposed were books. He put a pencil through the paper at one end and tore open a hole large enough to see through. It was a large antique edition of a Bible. He went to the other end and made a second exploration. It was a book by Santayana.
He thought hard and quickly on the questions he had been asked. These must be stolen books . But why?
What mattered was to get word to Plekhov. Axels mind raced. The telephone number he regularly used when calling Plekhov in Cracow was surely bugged. One possibility was physically to remove the books, which were what the Gestapo was presumably looking for, so that they would not be found. But if the Gestapo was on its way, contacted by radio, there would be no time to transport them to a hiding place, intimately though he knew every corner of the buildings he had constructed.
Where was Plekhov? In his military car traveling to Joni?
Axel walked quickly back to his office.
Plekhov was sitting there, in the chair he so frequently occupied.
“Hope you didn’t mind my using my passkey, Herr Axel.” Plekhov grinned.
The door flung open. Two Gestapo agents walked in.
*
Plekhov was billeted now in Block 11, with 110 other prisoners. Four days later, Axel saw the order: Plekhov, that afternoon, in the presence of the workers returned from their labor at the chemical factory, was to be hanged for seditious insubordination.
Axel concentrated his mind, and made it up.
He walked outside. As Superintendent of Construction, he was free to use any of the vehicles in the pool, and his badge permitted him access everywhere. He walked to a lorry with the heavy canvas awning used to protect men and materiel from sun and rain.
He turned on the engine and drove the truck directly outside the door of Block 11. He kept the engine running and walked into the barracks. A dozen men, too infirm or weakened to report for work, lay on their mattresses, or loitered aimlessly on the first floor of the building. He searched their faces and then raced up the steps to the second floor. In the complement there he spotted Plekhov, face swollen, one eye shut from the beating. He whispered to him and led him down the stairs and into the back of the lorry, placing him under the awning.
He drove to the gate.
But a train blocked the way out to the road. He could see a detachment of men unloading cement.
Axel got out from the driver’s seat and walked past a familiar guard at the gate. He addressed the officer supervising the cement removal. “I am Captain Reinhard, in charge of construction here. I need to move out with my lorry. Stand aside.”
“You will need to give instructions to the engineer, Herr Hauptmann.”
The engine was three cars up.
He walked briskly and called up to the engineer. “Move forward immediately. I am in charge here. We need to get through the gate.”
The engineer saluted. The engine steam began to pump from the narrow smokestack.
Axel walked quickly back to the gate, past the guard, and into the driver’s seat of the lorry.
The train was inching forward, but the guard now stood directly in front of his lorry, facing him.
Axel looked out at the man who approached from his left.
“What’s your hurry, Captain Reinhard?” Kommandant Amadeus asked.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Spring 1946
Prosecutor Robert Jacksons resolve not to permit Soviet crimes to distract from the prosecutors’ focus kept coming up ag
ainst distracting problems. Justice Parker, the American alternate judge, even gave thought, however fleeting, to resigning from the tribunal. That would have been a devastating development, after so many months of hearings.
When tapped for Nuremberg, John J. Parker, universally acclaimed as a distinguished jurist, was serving in Virginia as chief judge of the Court of Appeals. Judge Parker accepted as a matter of duty that while serving as judge at Nuremberg, he would need to attend incidental social gatherings hosted by major figures. It had never occurred to him that that might include exposure to Andrei Vishinsky.
Months before the Vishinsky episode, Parker had attended the compulsory annual Russian celebration of their October revolution. The Russians were quartered closely together in the Erlenstegen sector on the eastern edge of Nuremberg. At their lively October celebration, the Russians and their guests had had to dither for an hour, waiting for U.S. potentate Robert Jackson to show up. When, by 2045, he still hadn’t arrived, a driver was dispatched to Jackson’s home address. He returned twenty minutes later to report that Justice Jackson had appeared at the door of his apartment in shirtsleeves, and responded that he had never even received an invitation to the party. A clerical error, obviously, but he submitted his compliments to the Soviet hosts, along with word that unfortunately he could not, on such short notice, abandon the pressing project he had undertaken earlier in the evening.
The driver passed the message to Captain Guernsey, U.S. diplomatic coordinator. Guernsey was distressed. Everybody in the room was industriously drinking the proffered liquors and liqueurs, and the volume of the social hubbub was at high pitch. For all the effort Captain Guernsey always made at social integration at such affairs, an hour or so after the party began, the Russians were reamalgamated, speaking to each other in their native language. One or two French diplomats circulated among the anglophones; and Judge Parker, of retiring disposition, chatted with a subordinate in the corner of the room.
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