Eichmann's Executioner

by Astrid Dehe

  Let’s listen to Moshe’s writing.

  All of a sudden Nagar stood up. But he just took off his jacket and hung it on a nail. Then he sat down again, sat there in his white shirt in front of his white bundle, stared at my white pages. Said nothing. I picked up the first page, started to read.

  A train rattles in the distance. The prisoner raises his head.

  Nagar edged forward in his chair while I read, straightened up, lifted his chin—that’s how he sat in Eichmann’s cell, I thought, on his chair by the door. When I reached for the second page, he interrupted me.

  The prisoner, that’s Eichmann?

  Yes.

  You’re writing about Eichmann?

  About Eichmann and you, Shalom.

  Why?

  I want to know how it was.

  I tell you how it was, Moshe! Again and again, I tell you!

  Other people tell stories too.

  Other people? My words echo across the compound like a threat. Nagar narrows his eyes, he’s disappointed, disappointed and angry. Two voices? There’s only room for one voice here. I’ve broken the law of the compound, Nagar’s law, I curse myself, curse Ben, who talked me into it. He’ll leave now, I think.

  But Nagar didn’t leave. The guard doesn’t leave. He remains seated, he does not yield.

  If you’re writing about Eichmann, why call him the prisoner? There were lots of prisoners in Ramla, but Eichmann was Eichmann. You have to say Eichmann! A train rattles in the distance. Eichmann raises his head.

  I call him the prisoner, Shalom. Then I say the accused, the condemned man.

  Why? Are you afraid of saying his name?

  As soon as I say Eichmann, I might as well stop writing. Everyone has heard of him, everyone knows what he looked like, everyone has their own Eichmann in mind and deals with him accordingly, an inner process that’s triggered whenever his name is mentioned. That’s not what I want.

  What do you want?

  I want Eichmann to be—

  Like the first man? Adam?

  If Adam stands for any man, for all men, then yes. We inherit the apple, not the sin.

  But victims, why do you say victims? He’s thinking about Jews, this German man. He transported Jews! It’s us, the Jews, he wants to exterminate. You have to say Jews, Moshe.

  I can’t, Shalom. It wouldn’t be right.

  Why not? We are Jews!

  That’s why it wouldn’t be right. I can’t say Jews when I write about Eichmann. I’ll stand before God as a Jew, not before the Nazis. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, so it is written. Day by day, hour by hour, we are Jews standing before God, who made a covenant with us, we are loyal, we are obedient, we keep his law. If I say extermination of the Jews, I place everything that makes us who we are before the Nazis. If I say victims, I keep us apart, standing before the Lord. That’s how it was in the trial, too; the attorney general accused Eichmann in the name of the victims. The witnesses testified as victims. Jews like us, they testified as victims. He was judged in the name of the victims.

  No, Moshe. They were crimes against the Jewish people.

  There are no crimes against a people who have a covenant with God, Ben. The kingdom of priests cannot be defeated by man. Their faces are turned toward God! No man can defeat them. When they get beaten, they are victims. It should have been crimes against the people of the victims. And that’s what I write.

  They persecuted us because we are Jews.

  Yes, but we cannot give them our Jewishness.

  They took it!

  Then we must take it back! They never had the Jews. They never had a single Jew. Never! Not a single one! Only victims. They had victims!

  They don’t understand. Ben looks confused, Nagar distraught, he jabs his finger in the air, points at me as if he wants to gore right through me.

  Jews!

  Victims!

  I have to say victims, why don’t they understand? Nagar runs his hand over the bundle on the table. Why is that? Superstition? Is he healing me? Himself? Us Jews? I see my hands shaking; I can’t hold the pages anymore. They rustle as they fall to the ground.

  Ben looks away. He picks up his tea, holds the cup in two hands.

  That’s your business, Moshe. You write, we listen.

  His advice could mean one thing or another.

  Ben touches his kippah, Nagar lays a hand on his arm. Ben passes him a piece of pear. Nagar waves him off. Reaches behind him, searches for something in his coat pockets, something he chews and then spits out again.

  Let me tell you a story.

  The sounds of the chickens surround them once more. Moshe’s text nothing but an interruption, powerless in this place, alongside the shochet and healer. Finished before it’s really begun. The overture a finale. Why did I let myself be persuaded?

  Let me tell you a story.

  Tell us. We’ll keep them apart. Your Eichmann, my Eichmann. But, Nagar, the day will come when they will meet despite us. One will hang. And the other? Let’s wait and see. You tell the story, I’ll continue to write.

  Let me tell you a story.

  Eichmann was given the same food every morning. Two slices of bread, two kinds of sausage, a cup of coffee. I fetched the tray; still in the hall, I tasted everything, had a sip of coffee, ate a small piece of bread, a bit of each sausage. Then I took the tray into Eichmann’s cell. Eichmann stood to attention, I set the tray on the table, he sat down and started to eat. When he was finished he cleared his throat very politely, ahem, ahem, and I took the tray away. It went like clockwork. One morning—

  Shalom—

  No, wait, Ben. I want to tell you the story. One morning I made a mistake. I was restless and lost in thought because our little boy was ill. He’d been running a fever for days. So I forgot to taste Eichmann’s breakfast. I set down the tray, sat down on my chair, and thought about our son.

  Eichmann starts eating. I look up at one point, he’s still eating. Deliberately, as is his wont. He’s taking his time today, I think. He’s eating like this, slightly strange somehow, grinding his teeth and swallowing all the time. I’d never seen him eat like this. I had no idea, is he savoring the bread or doesn’t he like it? I study him, take a closer look—and all at once I realize that I didn’t taste his food!

  I break out in a sweat, I leap to my feet, he is just putting the last piece of bread into his mouth, his eyes question me. I point to the plate, make signs, like this, can he tell me does he feel ill? He doesn’t understand at first. When he does understand, he shakes his head, hints at a smile, points at his plate, holds up two fingers and puts them down again, holds up six fingers. That was it: They’d given him six pieces of bread instead of two! I hadn’t noticed. And Eichmann had eaten the lot.

  I had no choice, I had to report it. Merhavi cautioned me severely, it was a serious offense. Then he started pondering: If Eichmann had eaten all six slices of bread, maybe the portions had always been too small? Merhavi asks the director, he asks the prison doctor, who says they should ask Eichmann.

  And? What did Eichmann say?

  No, no, Herr Director, Eichmann said. Two pieces of bread are perfectly sufficient. But if I am given six, then I must eat them all.

  Orders are orders.

  Exactly, Ben.

  If you’d given him twelve, he’d have eaten twelve.

  Twelve slices, jawohl!

  Nagar laughs. He’s pleased, he’s in a placating mood.

  Are you hungry? I’ve got some mutton—

  No, Shalom. Enough for today. Moshe needs to get home.

  Nagar nods, heaves himself off his chair, starts picking up the papers that are strewn all over the floor, dusts them off, folds them, and puts them in my coat pocket.

  You’ll read more tomorrow, Moshe.

  There are finger marks on the pages when I pull them out of my pocket in my apartment, my outer shell. I wipe them off as best I can. You’ll read more tomorrow, Moshe? No. No! I won’t let them hear what I’ve writte
n again.

  The Inner Guard

  The prison structure has no core, it is makeshift and crude, blocks of varying lengths and heights stuck together, a space created from crimes that deny all contact with the outside world.

  There is only one route to the prisoner’s block. They must climb several floors, cross yards, pass through nine locked doors. The final door opens into the inner area, made up of five rooms.

  The first hall leads to the guards’ lounge area. The second leads to the cell and the meeting room in which the prisoner, surrounded by guards, sits behind a heavy glass panel opposite first his lawyer, then a preacher, and, on just one occasion, his wife.

  The prisoner’s cell measures three by four meters. Whitewashed walls, dark tiled floor, a single bulb hanging from the white ceiling. A bed, table, and chair are lined up against the wall opposite the door. The prison bed has a thin mattress and four woolen blankets, which serve as the prisoner’s bedsheet, blanket, and pillows. While he sleeps, his checked felt slippers sit neatly beside his bed, always on the same tile, which is just the right size. The books stacked on the plain wooden table have pieces of paper sticking out of them at all angles. A folding chair sits by the table, back against the wall. There is another chair next to the door. The first guard sits on this chair; he watches the prisoner. The second guard sits on a raised chair outside the cell door; he watches the first guard and the prisoner through the open hatch in the door. The third guard sits a few meters away, watching the second guard. The guards work in shifts; twenty-four hours on, forty-eight hours off. During their shifts, they sit for three hours and then have three hours’ rest, before spending another three hours sitting on the chair assigned to them. During his shift, Shalom Nagar is the first guard. For four lots of three hours he sits in the cell, opposite the prisoner.

  Nagar is twenty-five years old, short and stout. His wide, smooth face is adorned with a mustache, which is reminiscent of Errol Flynn’s and so does not suit him. Before he was transferred to the prison service Nagar worked for the border troops as a military engineer, defusing mines. Sometimes he says he used to be a paratrooper, too, which always makes his colleagues smirk a little. He was chosen to be a guard in this block because he is not a victim, he knows nothing of the extermination, and does not speak either of the prisoner’s languages, German and Spanish. But the prisoner thanks Nagar in Spanish, whenever the guard carries out one of his rare requests, and Nagar has learned to understand these few words. Otherwise they communicate with gestures. None of the guards carries a weapon, none has the key to the room in which he sits. When a guard enters one of the rooms he locks the door behind him and passes the key through the barred hatch in the door to his colleague on the other side. Every guard locks himself in. The last guard, the inner guard—Nagar—locks himself in with the prisoner.

  Are you still writing, Moshe?

  Yes.

  Are you saying Jews now?

  No.

  And Eichmann, are you saying Eichmann?

  No.

  It’s his business, Shalom. Moshe writes what he writes.

  I’m not saying anything. He can write what he likes.

  And then Nagar stops talking. With his arms folded over his stomach, he stares at the ground and stays silent. This time he’s the one to break his own law, undermining the purpose of this place. The law says stories are told here; the law says Nagar tells his stories here. Right from the start, I always assumed that Nagar had built this place for this very purpose, rough-and-ready like the sheep pens. Had made himself a little stage to do what he had to do. Tell stories about Eichmann. And now he is silent.

  Ben is silent, too. Somehow, Nagar’s law applies to him as well. Nagar tells stories so that Ben can ask questions. Directly or coupled with objections. Why? How? Didn’t you just—? If Nagar is the storyteller, then Ben is the questioner. Someone who doesn’t have stories of his own to tell. We met in a kibbutz when we were young, then we lost touch, and didn’t find each other again until I got sick. Ben’s wife was my nurse. She was the one who told me that he had been a bricklayer and then a policeman, that he hated being in the house, that he always left early in the morning and didn’t come home until late at night. He had never told me anything about himself. Instead, he asked me questions. Even his greetings were questions. And so were his goodbyes. The same compulsion, I thought. Ben needs to ask questions the way Nagar needs to tell stories. Not because of the answers. I think Ben asks questions to keep things moving, to give everything its own proper order. He doesn’t set the pace, but he keeps it steady. Endless questions, on and on. If he can’t ask questions, can’t keep the story moving, then he needs to move, like now; he stands up, takes our cups, although they are still half full, goes over to the fire.

  Nagar shuffles his feet, twiddles his thumbs. Stays silent. The place is shocked by this breach of law. No sound at all. The spell isn’t lifted until I take my eyes off the silent, shuffling Nagar and look across the compound, my gaze passing over chicken coops with wire mesh that has been mended time and again. Now I hear the squawking ducks, the honking geese one by one, and then all together as the noise swells, a clamoring backdrop cloaked in clouds of dust. Then the animals quiet down, as if on command. A dog barks somewhere. Ben returns with steaming cups of tea. Nagar stops shuffling. He takes a sip, it’s too hot.

  Let me tell you a story. Eichmann—

  What about Eichmann?

  Eichmann wrote, too!

  He was a writer? Is that what you mean?

  He wrote, every day. I don’t know what.

  He wrote in German, you don’t understand German.

  He writes differently now.

  Differently? How?

  So that I can understand. When he comes—you know what it’s like when you’ve had a high fever and you start to feel better? Everything seems different. You hear things differently, you touch things differently, your feet touch the ground differently. It’s different ground. Perhaps the world is different? That’s how it is for me and Eichmann. He reads, and suddenly I can understand. He comes, takes his papers out of his pocket, holds them very near to his eyes, he hasn’t got his glasses, you know, they were left in the cell—his eyes bulge out, they came out you see—his eyes read, and I understand.

  Eichmann doesn’t read to you, Shalom. Not with his mouth and not with his eyes. Eichmann is dead.

  The Walk to the Roof

  They monitor the prisoner’s health and safety; he must remain alive. He is to see, hear, and breathe until the trial is over and the verdict has been given. He is to be alive when the sentence is carried out.

  The guards are under strict instructions not to give or allow the prisoner anything that he could use to harm or even kill himself. These fears are rendered pointless by his fervent obedience. He knows what is required of him and he obeys. The guards are more generous toward him as a result. Of course, the lenses in his glasses have been replaced with plastic; of course, any staples and paper clips are removed from documents before they are given to him; and the ten cigarettes he is allowed each day are lit by one of the guards. But they let him keep his watch and give him writing materials, all kinds of different pencils, carefully sharpened.

  He is examined regularly by a doctor, he is well fed, and all food placed in front of him is tasted first by Nagar. They want to be careful; even here inside the prison, some would have reason to kill the prisoner. The poison meant for him would result in Nagar’s death instead.

  Once each day the prisoner is allowed to get some exercise, on the building’s flat roof. When the time comes, Nagar knocks on the door of the cell and his colleague on the other side passes the key through the hatch. Nagar opens the door, the prisoner gets up and follows. He is flanked by two guards, with Nagar in front. They walk across the hall and pass through the nine doors, cross the inner courtyard, the main building, enter the stairwell, climb up floor after floor.

  It is usually quiet on the way up to the top; shouts can sometim
es be heard from another wing, and then the guards hurry the prisoner on until they reach the roof.

  Barriers have been erected on the roof—railings covered with sacks, designed to stop anyone from being able to see the prisoner. He walks along the path created by the railings, changing direction several times before emerging into a square that the guards call the sports ground. This area is also screened off on all sides. A folding chair, just like those in the cell, sits in front of one of the walls. Perhaps they had expected the prisoner to use the time to do gymnastic exercises, perhaps they put the chair there as a piece of apparatus that would allow him to stretch, to bend, to revive the muscles wasting away from sitting and lying down in the cell, to ensure he is ready. The guards give the prisoner some space here, too, having stayed by his side all the way up. He could do anything he wanted.

  But the prisoner just walks with even steps, his arms crossed over his chest, his head bowed. That is how he interprets the command to do yard exercise, which for him means a walk on the roof. Or is he daunted by the sudden freedom, scared by the expanse of sky that gapes above him? Does he not trust the ground?

  He takes a deep breath, then starts walking. He paces up and down the square as always, step by step, as though that could increase the space around him. He walks down the side, turns around, walks halfway back, crosses the square, turns around, walks back to the start. A pattern that makes no sense, but that seems to be the only one possible for him. He has never once changed this pattern.

  Today, however, the prisoner stops at the end of the side wall; he seems to be listening, then he looks at Nagar’s colleague, who pauses too, he raises his left arm, moves his hand up and down, points upward. Nagar and his colleague follow his arm, his hand, his outstretched finger. There is nothing to see, although the prisoner is not only pointing, he is explaining something too, he talks continuously, as though with friends, but says only one sentence, over and over. Always the same sentence, a German sentence.