The Whistler: A Murderer's Tale

by Ben Stevens

  With a shaking hand Heinemann took the violin, as much to be free of The Pig’s noxious breath as to avoid further punishment.

  Tuning the instrument with almost nonchalant speed, he then played a lightening-fast flurry of notes in preparation for his performance. A piece came immediately from memory – never mind the name: this was of no importance. He was playing again after so many months and he was still brilliant. That was enough.

  He was no longer aware of the evil men stood around him or the camp or indeed the war. He was as removed and as remote as heaven, entirely lost in the music.

  And as The Whistler stood there listening he was transported by the music, taken back to that time when Berlin had been his night-time kingdom.

  Never, never, must this young genius be allowed to perish at Auschwitz – this Kurt Schmidt swore to himself yet again.

  At last Heinemann’s thin delicate fingers ceased in their blurred ascent and descent of the violin’s neck; his eyes opened as reality shattered the fathomless void which music had temporarily afforded him. He was again an inmate of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and his beaten kidneys ached.

  There was an almost respectful silence: no one could argue that this young man was not a master. As though in admiration The Pig himself put some food onto a plate, handing this to Heinemann as the violin was taken away.

  As he wordlessly accepted the plate and stared disbelieving at a thick piece of sausage, Heinemann’s mind screamed caution.

  This was a trap – he’d pick up the meat and be hit; struck in the face or kicked in the balls. Of course – this was the type of entertainment that was required, not a bloody violin recital.

  ‘Eat, then!’ barked The Pig.

  Left with no choice but to do as told, Heinemann was in fact not molested as he ate, savouring every mouthful after the watery soup that had been his staple and highly-insufficient diet for far too long. There stood the bizarre spectacle of the emaciated, shaven-headed young man dressed in the ragged striped garments of an inmate, around him gathered some twenty camp guards.

  All too soon The Pig snatched the plate petulantly from his hand, and again put his face close to the Mischling’s.

  ‘You play well, but such an art as music is not for the Jews. You have no right to it,’ said The Pig as he scrutinised Heinemann’s face, searching for the reaction he sought – terror.

  But there was nothing of the sort: the inmate stood absolutely still, his expression carefully impassive.

  Sighing, The Pig briefly wondered whether he ought to have this inmate shot. He had, after all, initially refused a direct order. Or perhaps Josef Mengele – better known to the camp inmates as ‘The Angel of Death’ – would like to have him entrusted into his care; for he always required males for his assorted experiments.

  But such actions seemed to require far too much effort to arrange at this particular moment in time: The Pig was beginning to suffer from a migraine, the penalty he always paid whenever he chanced drinking alcohol; and having been constipated for almost a week he was now experiencing crippling stomach pains. So he motioned with exasperation at The Whistler to return the inmate to his barrack.

  The inmates who remained stood to attention observed Heinemann’s approach almost with hostility. There was no evidence suggesting that he’d been beaten or otherwise abused; and so the question concerning just why he’d been taken from the barrack occurred to them all.

  But this question was temporarily forgotten as The Whistler’s dead blue eyes swept past their own, his handsome, typically Germanic face holding the terror of the blackest nightmare.

  Another guard might have ordered the inmates to remain standing to attention until morning, or amused himself by giving random blows with his truncheon. The Whistler, however, had no interest in such cruelty unless it formed part of a direct order, and so he shouted, ‘Dismissed! Get back inside!’

  Having crawled into one of the long bunks, Heinemann sighed as a scratchy voice whispered from nearby, ‘What did they want with you?’

  It was obvious that his answer was eagerly awaited by many of the inmates, and Heinemann was suddenly angered by the equally obvious suspicion that he was some sort of spy. He was by now well aware of what happened to those who were – they served their purpose (whatever this might be) before being promptly gassed, having been fooled into thinking that their treachery would safeguard their life.

  So how dare these men think that he could be one of those bastards, after he’d been humiliated and clubbed?

  ‘They made me play the violin. Now shut up before you get us all killed,’ he whispered fiercely in reply. Should conversation be overheard by a patrolling guard, the inmates would be lined-up and men shot at random as a punishment.

  Silence fell, disturbed only by the familiar death-rattle coming from an elderly inmate.

  4

  Looking down at the violinist sat in the chair, Schmidt said finally in German, ‘You played very well, tonight.’

  Dazedly Heinemann shook his head, struggling to make sense of what was occurring.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded at last.

  Schmidt cocked his head curiously to one side.

  ‘Because I wanted to see you perform,’ he replied, as though it was self-evident.

  ‘Why?’

  With something that appeared suspiciously like a reminiscent smile, Schmidt said, ‘I have every record you made, but I always wanted to see you play live – again.’

  Heinemann’s brow creased as he considered this last word; then with a grim nod he said flatly, ‘Of course – the first time you saw me play was at the camp.’

  ‘No,’ countered Schmidt. ‘It was in a large building by the Spree – the Aalto Theatre.’

  ‘You were at the Aalto?’ murmured Heinemann disbelievingly.

  Schmidt nodded, and then – with that same, oddly reminiscent expression playing on the undamaged side of his face – said, ‘Once, sometime in the late fifties, you performed in Berlin, you know. I tried to get a ticket for that, but I was too late. You never played in Germany again.’

  ‘I’ve not been back there since I played that concert,’ declared Heinemann, cautiously moving his right hand towards the phone that was on a table next to his chair.

  ‘Are you going to call the police?’ asked Schmidt.

  ‘Yes – yes, I am,’ said Heinemann fiercely, revulsion suddenly erupting like a volcano within him. ‘You bastard – do you think I forget what you did, even after all these years? Do you think you can just come in here, to talk to me like you’re some kind of old school friend?’

  From inside his blue jacket Schmidt now produced a small but sharp-looking knife, and instantly Heinemann felt his blood chill.

  ‘I see,’ said the violinist, trying to keep his voice steady. ‘So you’ve come to murder me, then – to do what you should have done at the camp.’

  Schmidt appeared genuinely shocked.

  ‘No!’ he said forcefully. ‘This is the only way to prove to you that I will not allow myself to be taken alive; you call the police, and I will be dead before they get here. You understand? So, do you still wish to call them?’

  Reluctantly, Heinemann’s hand moved away from the phone. And he grimaced as Schmidt managed another of his ghastly half-smiles.

  ‘Good,’ said Schmidt. ‘You see that you have just saved my life, just as I saved yours – many times over, in fact.’

  ‘What are you talking…’ began Heinemann; and then he remembered. For certainly, on one occasion, The Whistler – that man who had the blood of thousands on his hands – had saved him from a horrific death.

  Schmidt nodded as his eyes bored into Heinemann’s own. It seemed almost as though he was able to read the violinist’s thoughts.

  ‘Yes,’ he rasped, his voice like a winter wind blowing through dead leaves. ‘Yes – you remember now, don’t you…?

  ‘Yes,’ murmured Heinemann, now hardly even aware that he was speaking as his mind r
eturned to that awful time. ‘Yes, I do…’

  *

  It was August 1944, and within Auschwitz the rumour was spreading that the Germans were losing the war. Somehow, thought Heinemann, if he could just keep fighting the perpetual hunger and cold – to say nothing of staying out of the gas chamber – he might live long enough to see his release at the hands of the Americans, the Russians or the English...

  The cattle-trucks, however, kept on arriving daily, bringing with them a fresh batch of inmates who generally survived no longer than a month. And yet occasionally a few lived long enough for Erich Heinemann – who along with a handful of others was certainly by now a veteran of Auschwitz – to become aware of them. And one such man was Father Passarge.

  Fat and almost defiantly good-humoured, Passarge was placed in Heinemann’s barracks and assigned to work – like Heinemann had been himself – in the Monowitz factory, which manufactured synthetic oil and rubber for the German war machine.

  (Generally, those who worked within this factory tended to last significantly longer than those inmates who laboured elsewhere, as they required a certain amount of training to be able to operate the heavy and often dangerous machinery. Thus, they were not easily replaced.)

  Father Passarge freely informed everyone around him that he’d been sent to Auschwitz after a series of warnings from the Gestapo concerning his anti-Nazi views, the final straw being the discovery of seven Jews hiding in his cellar. Only when the priest spoke of this family did his eyes grow wet; every member had been hanged as an example to others, both those that sheltered and those who hid.

  At night he exhorted the other inmates to pray. It did not matter, he said, if their religion differed from his: there was but one God, all seeing and all forgiving, who would help them at this time of crisis.

  And so the fat priest quickly became a source of strength and comfort to many – but not Erich Heinemann.

  That any inmate of Auschwitz could believe in a god staggered him; they’d only to look about themselves to realise that there could not possibly be such a thing.

  For some reason Heinemann could never quite fathom, Passarge seemed almost determined to befriend him. This irritated Heinemann, who like most long-term survivors of Auschwitz had become stubbornly solitary. Any attachment to another human being in a place such as this served only to negatively affect one’s own chances of survival; it was infinitely better to remain alone, jealously guarding whatever possessions one had managed to accrue, sharing nothing.

  But after a few weeks of mainly one-sided conversation, the priest finally got a reaction from Heinemann, making the mistake of talking about his religious beliefs while the young Mischling was attempting to fix a niggling fault on a machine within the Monowitz plant.

  It all became too much for Heinemann, and he angrily turned on the man. He did, however, retain enough respect to address him by his title:

  ‘Father, your views are not my own, and I do not wish to hear them. Your prayers keep me awake when I’m trying to sleep, and you give the poor bastards in this place hope when there is none to be had.’

  Passarge merely shrugged, replying, ‘As you say, they are not your views – not your views. However, many men do not have your strength – no, please let me finish – do not have your strength; they need what I give to them. Such is my role in this terrible place. How long have you been here?’

  Feeling somehow chastened by the priest’s words, Heinemann said quietly, ‘Over… three years’ – and as he spoke it suddenly seemed quite incredible to him that he’d managed to survive this long.

  ‘I do not expect, in fact somehow I know, that I will not last even another three months,’ declared Passarge. ‘But in whatever time I have left, I will try to give whatever comfort I can – whether or not you deem it to be appropriate. For many here such comfort is all that they have. How old are you, Erich?’

  For a moment Heinemann had to think; sometimes it felt as though he was sixty, aged and impossibly world-weary before his time.

  ‘Twenty-three.’

  ‘Then you are very young. It is important that you survive, and furthermore that your life is useful. Something positive must come from this.’

  Heinemann shook his head. Despite his wish not to be he felt himself drawn into the conversation. ‘If I survive then it will be only me.’

  ‘Your mother, father?’

  ‘They were gone long before this. I had a woman, someone I loved. She was carrying our child. I don’t know where she is now – I don’t even know if she’s still…’

  His voice faltered as the pain started again. He didn’t want to talk – let alone think – so much, but Passarge seemed somehow to compel it.

  The priest nodded slowly, and then he and Heinemann returned to work as The Whistler walked past. When the guard had gone a safe distance Passarge said quietly, ‘For their sake you must live your life when this is over.’

  Doubt entered Heinemann’s mind; it threatened to overwhelm him and he silently cursed the priest for introducing it while at the same time turning to him for support.

  ‘But what if it never will be over?’

  The grip on his arm was strong, comforting; Passarge’s voice carried a conviction that could not be faked.

  ‘Trust me,’ said the priest with a quiet, gentle smile. ‘Out there in the world the tide is turning against Hitler; the Allied powers are winning. Joseph Goebbels feeds the German public with desperate lies but the truth is plain – the Nazis are losing, my friend. You have to keep whatever it is that’s made you survive this long strong within you. This will not be for too much longer.’

  Heinemann angrily blinked back tears as Passarge smiled soothingly.

  ‘As for now, young man, I suggest we keep ourselves occupied by trying to fix this damn machine.’

  A few months earlier, unbeknown to either the staff or the inmates at Auschwitz, a South African Air Force reconnaissance plane had, at twenty-six thousand feet, flown over the camp’s industrial factory. The Monowitz plant was a known factor in the German war effort, and consequently was being gauged as a potential bombing target.

  The resulting photographs of Monowitz were studied at Medmenham, Buckinghamshire. Monowitz was now one of the few producers of rubber and oil for the German war machine, the Russian advance having destroyed most of their other factories.

  A month later, in May, another plane was sent to photograph the factory. The technology for such aerial photography was still in its infancy: when the person handling the camera assumed the time to be right, he simply set it to photograph automatically until the film ran out.

  The reconnaissance missions revealed the general layout of the Monowitz factory, and on the 20 August – the day after Heinemann discovered that it was possible to form a friendship in the worst of situations – the Allies bombed Monowitz.

  The explosions immediately awoke everyone in the barracks, Heinemann shaking off sleep as men shouted in the distance. From within his barrack someone started laughing; it was a high-pitched, almost hysterical sound, and it further frayed the inmates’ nerves. It ceased as Father Passarge comforted the mentally sick man.

  The explosions were almost continuous – a seamless wall of noise. Periodically the deep throb of the bombers’ engines could be heard – pour-vous, pour-vous – a curiously hypnotic sound. Thoughts of liberation occurred to every inmate, although such thoughts were subsequently dashed as it was realised where the explosions were coming from.

  ‘The factory, they’re bombing the bloody factory,’ noted a despondent voice. The men remembered Monowitz’s close proximity to Birkenau, where the women prisoners were held. Each hoped and some prayed that a bomb had not gone astray.

  The following day the inmates discovered that the Allies had not succeeded with their objective, as Monowitz had not been put completely out of action. The news that eighty SS men had been killed by a bomb landing on their quarters spread quickly, the inmates unaware that this had not been intentional
but just good luck, the bomb having missed its intended target.

  An immediate source of revenge for the raid was extracted from sixteen British and French Special Operations Executives, who had been captured in France and who were now held captive in special quarters at Auschwitz.

  They were hanged the following day, surprising those inmates used to receiving far worse treatment than these prisoners almost privileged in comparison. They didn’t know that the revenge hadn’t finished with these executions, nor that the barrack containing Heinemann and the others would be targeted shortly afterwards for this purpose.

  Heinemann and Passarge agreed that the raid was a good sign; it meant that at least the outside world knew of Auschwitz. Surely once the Allies became aware of the full horror of this camp they would spare no effort to end the inmates’ nightmare...

  The bombing of Monowitz, however, was undertaken purely to damage the German war machine. Four Jews who’d escaped Auschwitz in June and fled to Switzerland had asked the Allies to bomb the railway lines leading to the camp. They’d provided harrowing details of Auschwitz’s main purpose, and explained that the destruction of the railway lines would at least stop the daily influx of new victims, the majority of whom went straight to the gas chamber.

  But their request was denied by the British Air Ministry, reluctant to risk airmen’s lives for ‘no purpose.’ The American Assistant Secretary of War, John J McClay, quietly instructed his deputy to ‘kill this.’

  The day after the bombing a reconnaissance plane again flew over Auschwitz, this time to ascertain the damage caused. The developed camera film clearly showed the Auschwitz main camp, railway sidings, gas chambers and crematorium. In a few consecutive shots inmates were pictured walking into the main gas chamber and crematorium.

  The inmates of Heinemann’s barrack stood rigidly to attention four days after the raid. The Whistler was on duty that morning, and he watched as The Pig strutted in a circular pattern in front of the assembled men, declaring: