Pursuit

by Robert L. Fish

  Hamburg? It was where Benjamin Grossman had been born, also in 1917 although not in April. It was also where Benjamin Grossman had been raised until he went away to the university. A coincidence? Possibly not. Possibly this unnamed aunt of von Schraeder or the mother might be the connection to some Grossman family in the past. However—

  Helmut’s education was in public school, followed by university at the Technical Institute in Munich, where he graduated second in his class with a degree in mechanical engineering—

  That was a coincidence. Benjamin Grossman had also graduated as a mechanical engineer, although in Switzerland, not in Munich. Although it wasn’t all that much of a coincidence—there must have been thousands upon thousands of students around the world who graduated with degrees in mechanical engineering in the year 1938. Let’s move on, Herzl thought, and reached for another book.

  In Hamburg, while still in public school, Helmut joined the Hitler Youth, and as soon as he registered for admission at the university in Munich, he went to Party headquarters in that city and joined the Nazi Party. Thereafter throughout his university career he was very active in all Nazi Party affairs, being the leader in the harassment of Jewish students and professors until their banishment from the university. When Germany announced Anschluss with Austria in March of 1938, von Schraeder requested and received early graduation so that he could join the troops as a lieutenant in the SS. His young age—he still lacked one month to his twenty-first birthday—for the rating of lieutenant was due, it was felt in many quarters, to the fact that his father had many friends in high positions in the army who used their influence in the SS for Helmut. Thereafter his career was in the army.

  Like my father, Herzl thought without knowing he was thinking it, and went on with his work.

  The following year, 1939, as a captain, Helmut von Schraeder was in the first line of mechanized infantry in the invasion of Poland, and received his majority on the field in that country from the hands of Hitler himself. He received his colonelcy in Russia six months after the attack on that country in June of 1941, mainly as a result of his fearlessness and fierceness in battle. His troops were said to admire him extremely.

  Again like my father, Herzl thought, and opened yet another book.

  Throughout his army career his superiors had noted von Schraeder’s engineering talents and ingenuity, and when the Final Solution program was put into effect in 1942, von Schraeder was transferred from the Waffen SS to the regular SS and posted to the concentration camp at Maidanek in Poland as assistant to the commandant. Here he was in charge of the operation and efficiency of the gas chamber and the crematoria ovens, where his work won him many commendations. In 1944, shortly before the liberation of Maidanek by Russian troops, Colonel von Schraeder was transferred to Buchenwald, and shortly after his arrival contracted typhus and died. He was cremated in the camp crematorium. It was suspected that he was one of the officers involved in the plot against Hitler’s life at Wolfschantze in July of 1944, but no proof of this is available.

  Herzl leaned back wearily and rubbed the back of his neck, staring at the mountains of books he had had to go through to garner the little information he had managed to extract, a sentence here and a sentence there. Research, it seemed, was not much different from the job of carrying the equipment, after all; they both involved hard labor. But at least he had a base from which to launch his investigation. There had been nothing in his findings to indicate von Schraeder had any Jewish blood in him, but Herzl had not expected to find that in his study of the man himself. That would come from going back into the history of both parents, but probably chiefly the mother’s forebears, the Langers and the Boettichers. Some of the information might be available in the Almanach de Gotha, some in other records, possibly in the town hall in Angermünde, and in the records of wherever the Langers or the Boettichers had lived before the marriage to Karl Klaus von Schraeder. All in all he was satisfied with his day’s work.

  He glanced at his watch and was surprised to see it was past six o’clock. The day had gone by without his being aware of it. He was also suddenly aware that he had missed lunch and was ravenously hungry. He looked up; Miriam Kleiman was watching him.

  “You are finding what you search for?”

  “A decent base for further investigation, at least.” He thought a moment. “Do you suppose Rolf Steiner is still here?”

  “He is always here. He lives here. He is being like a watchman.”

  “I wonder if we could ask him to dig out any films he might have on von Schraeder—”

  “But it is quite very late …”

  “I know. I mean for tomorrow.” He waited while she made a telephone call and spoke into the instrument for several minutes. When she hung up he said, “And I want to thank you for your help.” Something suddenly occurred to him. “You didn’t go out for lunch.”

  “Often I am not going out.”

  “I don’t believe you. You stayed because you didn’t want me to be at loose ends, wanting for books. The least I owe you for that is a decent meal.” He hesitated a moment and then suddenly smiled his boyish smile. “How about tonight?”

  She looked at him gravely a moment, then also smiled. “All right.”

  “Good! When are you through for the day?”

  She smiled again. “An hour past. Come, I am locking up.”

  They ate at a small intimate restaurant near the Olympiapark, and over their food they spoke of many things, of their mutual love of books, of music, of the interest she had had in languages since a child, inherited, she said, from her father, who had spoken even more languages than she did. They spoke of the difference between being raised as a Jew in Germany, as she had, and being raised as a Jew in Israel, as Herzl had. It was hard for either one of them to clearly understand the difference, and they changed the subject to places they had been or hoped to visit.

  “I am hoping soon to go to London,” she said. “There is there a library much like our institute here. It is called the Wiener, in a street called Devonshire, number four. You should also be going for your work. Tomorrow I write down the address for you.”

  “When do you plan to go? Maybe we might go together.”

  She laughed. “If you wait for me, you maybe never go. I have no plans.”

  “And if it’s the same as here, why go?”

  “I go to see London. Also to perfect my English.” She put the accent on the first syllable and then smiled, a gamin smile. “Perfect. You see?”

  And how I would love to help you perfect your English! Herzl thought, but he said, “You really have no definite plans as to when you go?”

  “All I know is, someday.”

  “Have you ever been to Israel?”

  “No, but of course I am wanting someday to go there, also. What is it like?”

  “It’s—” Herzl stopped. What was Israel like? What would it be like to a person who hadn’t been born there, or who hadn’t come there to find a refuge from a world that wanted to kill him? What would it be like for Miriam? “It’s like many countries all in one, even if it isn’t very big,” he said. “Tel Aviv has wonderful beaches and the streets are wide and clean, and the buildings are neat and well kept and the weather is good, and I think it’s a beautiful, wonderful city. Of course we live in a suburb of Tel Aviv and I’m prejudiced.” He suddenly smiled. “American visitors come and they say that Tel Aviv is like Miami Beach, and they don’t mean that as a compliment, either. But I don’t know Miami Beach and they don’t live in Tel Aviv. I must admit, though, that our traffic is far worse than Munich’s. Probably worse than Miami Beach.”

  Miriam was watching him, listening in a fascinated manner.

  “And Jerusalem?”

  “Jerusalem? Jerusalem is—well, Jerusalem. There is no city in the world like it. It’s beautiful—it’s more than beautiful. It’s history. But Jerusalem is also indescribable; you have to see it for yourself. It’s hilly, and the buildings are all made of the same kind of st
one that our ancestors used thousands of years before, and when you go into a souk—that’s a native street—in the Old City, you swear it cannot be real, that it is a movie set. Munich is old, I know; Paris is old. But Jerusalem was a city when all Europe was merely plains. It’s impossible to describe Jerusalem properly. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

  “And the country itself?”

  “Well, a good part of it is desert, unbelievably severe, wild, rugged, mountainous, and to me also very beautiful, although to be honest a good many people hate the desert. My father for one. Again I may be prejudiced; I was born on a kibbutz in the desert. And what isn’t desert or cities in Israel is good farm land, much of it recovered from swamps; wide green valleys, orchards—” He looked at her across the table, aware of a feeling he had never before experienced with a girl. “When are you coming?”

  “Oh, I do not know, of course—”

  “You must come, you know, and very soon. We also have a very good library in Jerusalem that is dedicated to the holocaust.”

  “I know, at Yad Vashem. It is very famous. I want very much to be visiting there.”

  “Then come. Don’t go to England, come to Israel. Look—” Herzl reached out impulsively, putting his hand on hers. “My father, if you’ll pardon the immodesty of his son, is rather an important person in Israel; he’s a brigadier general in the army, and he travels all over the world for the government. He’s in Argentina for them now, as a matter of fact. And our best friend is in the Mossad, head of security in the government. I’m sure they would be very happy to help you get a job in Israel, in your own line. Possibly even at Yad Vashem.”

  She smiled at him and gently disengaged her hand.

  “These are dreams, no? Someday I am getting to Israel, I am sure, or at least so I am hoping, but not so soon.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” she said honestly, “one does not meet a stranger who talks of Israel, and the next day right away drop a job and travel to a strange place.”

  “Stranger?” Herzl sounded hurt.

  “We are meeting only yesterday.”

  “I know, but people can know each other for years and still be strangers. And other people can meet and in five minutes know they were meant—” He reddened. “I mean, can be friends.”

  “Possibly.” She stared down at her plate a moment and then looked up, quite obviously changing the subject. “About the movie film you are making—”

  Herzl sighed. He had not wanted the subject changed.

  “What about it?”

  She hesitated a moment and then switched to German, looking at him seriously.

  “I’m sorry, I know I should use English if I want to improve, but I want you to understand, and my English is not good enough. You think I am changing the subject because I don’t want to speak of anything personal, and that is true; but I also want very much to speak to you of this. I have been thinking of it all day. I think the German people will like the film very much.”

  “I hope so,” Herzl said, also speaking German.

  “Do you? I did not mean it that way. The Germans want very much to humanize these men you call monsters. You will do it for them. Many are beginning to deny that the holocaust occurred, that there were any atrocities at all. In the library I can show you books, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, all emphatically denying that people were purposely slaughtered in concentration camps, that any figure like six million Jews—not to mention the millions of Russians, Poles, Rumanians, Gypsies, Germans, and others—French, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Italian—I could go on—are pure fantasy, propaganda of Israel to extract reparations, lies of Jews around the world.”

  “But that’s insane—”

  “Is it? Go to one of the beer halls around the university one night, talk to the people there, the students. Half of them will not even speak of the Hitler era, although many of them think poor Adolf was badly maligned. They do not want to believe their parents were the monsters you are speaking of. They’ve known their parents all their lives, and they’ve always been good people, nice to children, pleasant with animals—”

  “I know,” Herzl said, “but to deny the holocaust is ridiculous! There’s certainly enough proof, from Third Reich files alone, and libraries like yours—”

  “The people who make these statements and who read these statements do not come to our library, they do not go to the files. They do not want the truth. They want to believe they have not descended from monsters. Your film will help them.”

  “In what way?”

  “You still don’t see? What are you going to find when you investigate these people in depth?”

  “I’ve already found why von Schraeder hated Jews—”

  She brushed this aside impatiently.

  “Many people hate Jews; they don’t even need reasons. But they don’t kill them by the millions. Did von Schraeder hate Russians? Or Poles? He killed them in battle as a soldier, but does a soldier truly hate the man he is killing to the extent that he also kills that man’s mother and father and son and daughter in gas ovens?” She shook her head. “I do not believe so. And did you discover why Eichmann hated Jews? If you do you will be the first. Yet he was in charge of the entire extermination program, and once said he would put his own father in the gas chamber if he were ordered to do so—and there is no indication that he hated his father.”

  “I still don’t see—”

  “I am trying to tell you. You do not want emotion; you do not want to show the camps or the horrors because that has been done too many times! Instead you just want to discover why these ‘normal’ people became monsters capable of the crimes they committed. When you have finished with your investigation you will find you are unable to discover any valid reason for the change. And do you know why? Because these people did not change. And the Germans will love anyone who demonstrates that fact.”

  He stared at her. “You’re saying that they did what they did because they were German. You’re a Jew but you’re also German yourself.”

  “I’m not saying that at all. And as for my being German or not being German, you don’t know Germans and you don’t know me.”

  “My father is German—”

  “You insist upon misunderstanding. It’s also possible you don’t know your father. But I am not saying they did what they did because they were Germans. The Russians did it, more than once; the Lithuanians did it. The Turks massacred over 600,000 Armenians in 1915, women and children included; the Manchus killed half a million to subdue Oirat in 1758. Chiang Kai-shek tried to outdo them in 1927 against the workers of Shanghai. The Americans did it to their Indians and they are doing it again this very minute in Southeast Asia.”

  “You’re saying that anyone could do it,” Herzl said slowly.

  “Yes,” she said simply. “All history proves it. Do you want your film to show this?”

  “You’re saying we are all monsters?” He leaned over the table. “What made you come to an idea like that?”

  “The books in the library,” she said. “The books in many libraries. You saw only a few in our one library. I’ve seen almost all of them. You saw a few feet of film. I’ve seen them all. Do you know that the neo-Nazi party in Germany is growing? Do you know there are neo—why do they call them neo? They’re as old as history!—Nazi parties in England, in the United States, everywhere? But I am sure I will never convince you. You live in the safety of a Jewish state.”

  “With our Arabs,” Herzl said dryly. “On all sides.”

  “Who supported Hitler during the war,” Miriam said. “But you want to select a few Nazis and discover why they are different.” She shrugged and looked at her watch, changing back to English. “But it’s late. I must be leaving.”

  “No. Let’s talk some more. Tell me why you’re so bitter.”

  She looked genuinely surprised. “I’m not bitter. I’m simply a realist, a librarian who reads books. But I must leave.”

  “Just a while long
er …”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll see you home.”

  “No, I am preferring not.” She came to her feet. “Thank you for a good—I mean, nice—evening.”

  He wished he could tell if she were sincere or being sardonic. “But—wait—at least let me put you in a cab.” He raised a hand for the waiter’s attention.

  “No. Please. I do not take taxis. The trolley passes very near my house.” There was a finality in her voice that did not permit further discussion.

  “But I’ll see you tomorrow at the library?”

  “Of course.”

  “And we won’t miss lunch tomorrow, we’ll take it together. And dinner. Possibly in a beer hall where I can meet students, and some of these neo-Nazis. Or we can eat anywhere you like. After all,” Herzl said with a smile, “I’m a stranger in town, and as a native the least you can do is show me proper hospitality. For example, I would never have found this perfect restaurant if it hadn’t been for you. I might have starved.”

  “Tomorrow in the library I am showing you the telephone book,” Miriam said with only the faintest of smiles. “It has lines and lines full of restaurants.”

  She walked from the table, leaving him to look after her with an odd combination of curiosity and admiration, almost longingly. He had never felt like this before; he had never met anyone like her before. Beautiful, intelligent—although he would scarcely subscribe to her theory that all men were monsters—or potential monsters. Next to her he somehow felt callow, unsure, almost uneducated—with two years in the army and over three in pre-medical school. Rifkah Zimmerman suddenly came to mind. He had felt more adult with her. He suddenly smiled. And thank you, Rifkah, he said silently, for showing me what love was not. Maybe now I’m old enough to learn what love is, or could be. It will be interesting to get to know this Miriam Kleiman better, to prove to her that at least one man is no monster. He suddenly knew he was not going to leave Munich until he had had a chance to convince her of that, although he had no idea what argument could be called upon to help in making the judgment. Still, the longer it took, the better.