The Mechanic

by Alan Gold

  But I stray. I’m being indulgent with my time, and your patience. I apologise. This is to be a record of my experiences in Auschwitz. So I will return to my tale.

  When I began to work for the mechanic, my path diverged from the paths of those with whom I shared the barracks. Some were marched to the I. G. Farben factories to slave away; others to the Krupp factories. Me? I was marched to the mechanic’s building to work morning till night with Wilhelm Deutch as we repaired the machinery which made the camp work. He knew he could only keep me for a matter of months while he was doing his work, and for some reason I’ll never, ever fathom, he decided to help me live. Even to this day, now that I am able to think more clearly, and to record the events of my life in the camps, even to this day I can’t understand why Deutch chose me to live. He must have worked with so many men and women. He could have chosen to kill any of us, to work us to death; or he could have equally well chosen to give any of us a helping hand and aided our survival. Maybe he did help others. Maybe there are many Joachim Gutmans living now in the ruins of Germany thanks to this man. I don’t know. All I do know is that were it not for Wilhelm Deutch, I’d be dead, a corpse, part of the dust of Europe, one of the six million forgotten.

  Early on, when I first began to work for him in Auschwitz, I did ask him why. Why me? Why not others? Why was he, a good German, performing this act of grace, this act of salvation?

  We were working on repairs to the drainage system from the kitchen to the ditch outside when I asked him. The camp was fairly quiet. Most of the work detail had gone off to the factories and compounds which had been built by the German industrialists within the grounds of Auschwitz. It was approaching midday, and the first guard shift had gone off to have lunch, and the second shift were taking up their positions. Security was at its least observant. It was then that I casually asked him why he was helping me.

  ‘Why?’ he responded. He shrugged. ‘I have helped others. Many others. You’re just one of the many. But if I made a big song and dance about helping you prisoners, the guards and the SS would soon hear about it, and then my neck would be the first to be stretched. Just count yourself lucky, Gutman. I’ve chosen you, just like your God Yahweh chose your people. Don’t fight it. Go along with it and keep your mouth shut from now until the end of time.’

  I remember gulping, nervous of asking the question. But it had to be asked. I had to know the reason that this lone, brave German was trying to save my life. I had to understand the underlying reasons. So with some trepidation, I whispered, ‘Are you a homosexual? Is it my body you want?’

  He burst out laughing and then suddenly became very angry. ‘Quiet, you fool. Don’t you know what happens to homosexuals? Of course I’m not a queer. How could you even think such a thing? I have a wonderful wife and a beautiful daughter whom I love more than life itself. And when this damn war’s over, and I can get on with my life, I’m going to have many more children, repopulate Germany for all the losses we’ve suffered. How could you even consider saying that about me? A queer? I’ve never had any interest in men.’

  Then he looked at me, dressed in stripped prison clothes, filthy and emaciated, not yet benefiting from the additional food he managed to feed me when the guards weren’t looking. ‘And anyway, do you seriously think I’d be interested in a physical relationship with somebody like you—thin and scrawny and ridden with lice? And Jewish.’

  He suddenly burst out laughing. It was then that I realised something which struck me with the force of a guard’s rifle butt. This was the first occasion in all the time I’d known him that he’d ever referred to my religion. It came as a shock, as though this was a barrier between us. And then with an awful clarity and insight, I realised that it was … that this was precisely the barrier which separated Deutch from the other Nazis. They treated me as a thing. He treated me as a person.

  ‘Then why are you helping me? Why are you taking such a risk by feeding me? Why?’

  He stopped what he was doing. I was standing in the trench, digging it deeper; I supported myself on the shovel; if I’d taken a break like this in a factory, I’d have been shot to death or torn to pieces by a dog. He looked at me and smiled strangely. He shrugged and then continued tightening the bolts on a pipe. His silence frightened me.

  Curiosity overcame my caution. ‘You risked your life taking me from Sachsenhausen and bringing me here. And you’re risking it again by feeding me. Is it something you want from me?’

  ‘Carry on with your work, Gutman. If that trench isn’t dug by nighttime, we’ll both be shot.’

  There would be no answer to the question that came to dominate my mind. It was the last time I ever asked him. For all intents and purposes, he was a good German. A good Nazi. I’d seen him with the guards, laughing and sharing cigarettes; even a beer outside their building. I’d seen him standing mutely by as Jews were shot or torn to pieces by dogs. I’d seen him walk away from some of the most hideous sights ever orchestrated by mankind.

  Yet with me, and no doubt with the others before me, he was kind and understanding … as though I was the apprentice and he the master. But I wasn’t the slave. As far as he was concerned, I was there to help him, and as though he was paying me wages, I deserved rest and consideration for a hard day’s work.

  Did we speak? Oh yes, all the time. We judged the moments to talk according to the patrols of the guards. As they neared, his tone would become aggressive. ‘Pick that up, you stupid fool!’ ‘Don’t do it that way, or I’ll have you shot, you filthy pig.’

  And when the guard passed out of earshot, he would look at me in an almost apologetic way, and pick up the conversation again from where we’d left off.

  He asked me about my life in Berlin, my friendships, my sexual experiences, my studies. It was as if he were trying to get inside my soul, my body. There were almost no areas of my life which were sacrosanct. ‘Tell me about the feeling when you first made love to a girl?’ ‘What happened when you first went to the university … who did you meet … what were their names … what did their fathers do …?’

  I answered fully. I kept nothing back. Nothing. It was as if he were my most intimate life-long friend, from whom I held back no secrets. Yet he was old enough to be my father, and he was of a far lower social class than that to which I’d been born, making our friendship impossible in the old world. I wouldn’t even have noticed him in that world. The world from which I’d been ejected when the Nazis cleared the Jews out of Berlin.

  And what did I learn of him? Nothing. Wife, daughter, where he lived in Berlin … that was all. I knew nothing of his life, his past, his likes and dislikes … not even if he’d fathered an illegitimate child or if he’d been a member of one of the many patriotic German clubs and societies, the ringvereins. In many ways I was scared to ask him questions. He was, after all, a Nazi, and he held my life in the palm of his hand. And my life could have been extinguished at his whim. While I was eager to please him by answering his questions, I was uncertain if a two-way traffic was allowed. Almost all I knew of him was what he’d volunteered. So I held my peace. And he seemed glad that I wasn’t too inquisitive. In that way, I suppose, he was a surrogate father.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Berlin, Germany, 1998

  CHASCA BRODERICK FUMED WITH indignation every time she thought about the way she’d been treated by Gottfried Deutch. How dare he throw back at her the work and effort and expense she’d gone to just to resurrect his precious grandfather’s reputation? Who the hell did he think he was?

  When he’d stormed out of the bar, leaving her all alone at the table and feeling the humiliation of the publicly jilted girlfriend, she’d forced herself to sit for half an hour staring at the other patrons, returning their knowing smiles, looking nonchalantly at her glass of lager, the photographs on the walls, the influx and egress of customers, and trying to ignore the occasional outburst of muffled laughter from couples on other tables, the women looking at her as though she were an overpriced whore. />
  When the time was right, when the music which filled the empty spaces in the rapidly filling bar was sufficiently loud to muffle the noise of her chair scraping against the floor, Chasca stood, straightened her dress and coat, and slowly walked away from the smoky and claustrophobic room, vowing never to return to it, nor to any other part of Berlin again.

  It was still early when she hailed a taxi on the rain-slicked road, and so she returned to her hotel room in the Unter den Linden, had a quick snack in the coffee lounge, and then took herself to a performance of the Berlin Philharmonic playing Brahms. As she crawled into bed later that night, Chasca realised that for once, the genius of Brahms’ seductive rhythms hadn’t managed to soothe her ire, and she still bristled with embarrassment at Gottfried’s treatment of her. The last thing she thought about as she closed her eyes and went to sleep was, ‘Who the hell does he think he is?’

  Over breakfast, she bundled the copy of the testament into an envelope with a curt note on hotel letterhead saying, ‘This belongs to you … a decent Jewish German gentleman wanted somebody to remember your grandfather kindly … Perhaps you should follow his example …’ and signed it. She gave it to the reception desk with instructions for it to be sent by courier. Then she went to the zoo.

  When she returned in the late afternoon, she showered and took herself out to a restaurant. She was quite comfortable entering a café or bar or restaurant on her own and treating herself to a meal. Many women of her age, women in their late twenties and early thirties, felt uncomfortable doing something social without an accompanying man … but not Chasca, who enjoyed time with herself.

  That evening should have been her last in Berlin, except that when she returned to her hotel, there was a message under her door. She ripped the envelope open and read the words:

  ‘Thank you for sending me this document. I behaved very badly last night. I want to apologise. Please phone me on your return, so that I can make amends. There is much about my grandfather that I didn’t know. I’ve only read a dozen or so pages of this Gutman’s testament, but already I’m amazed. And delighted. But I don’t know whether or not to show it to my mother. I don’t want to reawaken awful memories. I’d rather find out if Mr. Gutman is still alive. I need your advice. Please, please contact me. Again, I apologise for my rudeness, my stupidity.

  Gottfried.’

  She didn’t know what to do. Emotionally, the document and Gottfried, and especially the mechanic, had receded into her past. Right now, they were on her back burner. But the note brought them very much to the fore again. Should she phone him and continue the search? Or should she pretend that she’d never seen the note and continue where her life had left off a very long month ago?

  But above all else, she hated loose ends, and so she picked up the phone and dialed the number. It was as though he had been waiting by the phone all evening, just for her call. Without her introducing herself, he said, ‘Chasca?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Chasca, please forgive me. I was totally wrong in the way I behaved last night … I behaved like a stupid person. I’m really, really sorry.’

  ‘So you said in your note.’

  ‘I tried to explain that we never seem to be free of the sins of my grandfather, but this is different. What this man Gutman says about him … well, I don’t know what to do. I need your help. I don’t know whether or not to show it to my mother. She’s not well, she’s got high blood pressure, and is on pills. I’m scared that this thing, this document, might upset her. I need your help, your advice …’

  His words were bursting out as if from a volcano.

  ‘Can we meet?’ he asked. ‘I can come over to your hotel. I know where it is because it’s on the letterhead. I know the building … It’ll only take me half an hour to get there. Please. You can meet me downstairs in the coffee shop. In a half an hour, yes? Let’s meet. I must get your advice … my mother … she’s so frail … she needs to know.’

  She didn’t have time to agree or disagree; he’d hung up before she could say anything. But she worried about what would happen. She was a lawyer, and human emotions, especially those of the frail daughter of a hanged Nazi war criminal, were way beyond her experience.

  Palace of Justice

  Nuremberg, Allied Occupied Germany

  June, 1946

  Theodore Broderick was a worried man. He was concerned over the mood swings of his client. Other Nazi criminals had sat in varying stages of distress during the many Nuremberg trials listening to the evidence amassed against them; some had shown outright contempt for the proceedings; some had smiled and grinned with callous humour as the evidence of their crimes was paraded before the world; others had shown visible embarrassment that their crimes were no longer hidden but were exposed to the scrutiny of an unforgiving future; still others buried their heads or shielded their eyes as visual evidence of the bestiality of their colleagues was recounted in open court.

  But Wilhelm Deutch sat alone in his dock, unsupported by others. Only a phalanx of tough-looking American guards stood behind him as the evidence was presented. He had no shoulders of comrades to support him, no other eyes to look into to answer the unspoken questions.

  Some mornings, Deutch was positively jovial as he walked into court, nodding to the defense team, bowing his head curtly as the judge walked in and sat down. Other mornings, the armed guard almost had to carry him into the dock and support him under his arms to prevent him from falling.

  Broderick had asked an Army psychiatrist to examine him, to determine whether he was capable of understanding the proceedings against him, and if so, to determine whether he was of a mind sufficiently sane to continue with the trial. The psychiatrist spent two hours examining Deutch, coming to the conclusion that, ‘The bastard knows exactly what’s happening to him, and hopefully will still be as sane as I am when the noose is tightened.’ Hardly a medical judgement, but then the psychiatrist was more concerned with the minds of the Nazi’s victims than the sanity of their torturers.

  Broderick had taken to visiting Deutch in his cell, making unauthorised inspections to ensure that he was representing a man aware of what was happening to him. He invariably found his client at his small writing desk, penning notes on the trial, aides memoires to assist him in the following day’s evidence, and generally jovial. He always offered his visitor a cup of coffee, but then, as part of the ritual humour, apologised when he suddenly remembered that he hadn’t been to the grocers that day, and was right out of coffee, milk, and sugar.

  And so, in the hope that Deutch would make it through to the end of the trial, Broderick continued from day to day, treading the delicate path between defending his client, and refusing to add to the palpable distress of witnesses who were giving evidence of Deutch’s cruelty as a slave master. The major problems for Professor Broderick and his defense team came from the seventh and eight witnesses respectively which the prosecution called. The seventh was a man in his early thirties, who, despite a year of recuperation under the care of the Red Cross and the American miliary authorities, still looked cadaverous. He stood with the help of two walking sticks, even though in evidence he told the court that before the war, he’d been a keen football player.

  ‘My name is Gerhardt Neimann. I am now thirty-two years of age. I was interned in the concentration camp at Dachau outside Munich in 1933 at the age of eighteen years for crimes against the state. My crimes were being Jewish.’

  ‘And how long were you in Dachau?’ asked William Sherman, the Prosecutor.

  ‘Initially for three months. During that time, I was beaten and abused. And I was anally raped by two guards. I suffered from a torn anus and got gonorrhoea. It didn’t heal properly because when I was released from the camp, Hitler was well in charge of Germany and things were already going very badly for Jews, and even Jewish doctors began to find it hard to get good medicine.’ The young man answered the questions in such a matter-of-fact way that he made the ordeal he’d suffered even more onerous to
bear for those listening.

  ‘Before you tell the court when you were sent to Auschwitz, Mr. Neimann, perhaps you could briefly fill in the rest of your experiences under the growth of Nazism.’

  ‘When I returned from Dachau, my parents and sisters and brothers decided to pack up and go to Palestine. But by the time we’d sold our business and our house, things were already getting incredibly dangerous. We couldn’t walk in the streets without somebody pointing the finger at us and screaming out, ‘Jew!’ Friends and neighbours we’d lived with for fifty years turned their backs on us, refusing to help us in our time of need. People we’d done business with now refused to trade with us. Our reserves ran down; we were destitute. We thought things couldn’t get any worse for us, but we didn’t realise how much Hitler needed to pay for the growth of his armed forces.