by Daša Drndic
When you came, did you know where you were?
No. Only that we had arrived at Treblinka.
You had heard about Treblinka in Warsaw?
We had heard.
Did you know that Jews were being exterminated at Treblinka?
We did not believe those stories.
You did not believe?
One simply could not grasp that it was possible—extermination. But when we set out from Malkinia towards Treblinka, I saw the Polish railway workers making signs at us—they were drawing their fingers across their throats. I remembered that later.
Did you see corpses when you got off the train?
Yes.
And?
At first I thought they were the corpses of those who had died on the trip, that they would be bathed and buried. Then Matthes took me into a building at Treblinka 2 and ordered me to begin dragging bodies towards the graves.
In the evening, you again came across the Hauptmann with spectacles?
Yes.
What did he say when he saw you dragging bodies?
He asked why I was dragging bodies. He said, After all, you’re a dentist, you shouldn’t be dragging bodies.
You are a dentist?
No, I am not.
And?
He pulled me by the sleeve, seized me by the hand, dragged me by force, again with blows to the back—I want to stress this—he kept hitting me, and he brought me to a well. Next to the well there were basins with gold teeth and also pairs of forceps for extracting teeth. He said, take the forceps and start extracting teeth from those corpses over there. The corpses were lying by the back exit of the gas chambers.
From where they took them to the graves.
Yes.
And you extracted their teeth?
I did.
You extracted teeth from corpses until the revolt?
Not exactly. I extracted teeth for about a month, a month and a half, until I recognized my sister’s body.
She was lying there, among the dead?
Yes. Then I told the group commander Dr Zimmermann to give me another job. I told him I couldn’t go on with that one.
Who was this Zimmermann?
Dr Zimmermann was the kapo of the dentists.
A Jew?
Yes. I asked him to take me off teeth extraction and put me on cleaning the teeth in the cabin where we lived.
Teeth were being cleaned there?
Teeth were being cleaned there.
How much gold from extracted teeth was sent out of Treblinka each week?
Two suitcases, each weighing between eight and ten kilograms.
Where were the suitcases sent to?
Matthes, one of the camp commanders who also supervised our barracks, said they were dispatched to Berlin.
Did they only contain gold teeth?
Gold teeth and also false teeth removed from bridges. Porcelain teeth.
What did the Germans call the transports of Jews?
They called the bodies die Figuren, as if they were dolls, and the actual transport they called die Scheisse, die Lumpen and other insulting names. It was forbidden to mention victims or corpses or bodies. Everything was secret. When Matthes came down with typhus, he raved in a delirium about the burnings and the gas chambers, so they posted a guard by his bed to silence him if necessary.
Gustav Münzberger, S.S.-Unterscharführer, born on 17 August, 1903. Works as a carpenter, first at his father’s firm, then at a paper factory, and then in the euthanasia centre at Schloss Sonnenstein where he helps in the kitchen as well, so becoming a cook. Was in the S.S. from 1938, in Lublin in 1942, at Treblinka 1942–43 assists Heinrich Matthes in managing gas chambers. Member of team for transporting corpses. In Trieste and Udine in November 1943. Arrested in 1963 at first trial for crimes committed at Treblinka in 1965; sentenced to twelve years in prison. Released for good conduct in 1971. Dies in 1977. His son Horst remembers him as a tender father.
August Miete, S.S.-Unterscharführer. Born in 1908, member of the Nazi Party from 1940. Part of T4 (Grafenek and Hadamar) 1940–42. Treblinka: June 1942-November 1943. Nickname: “Angel of Death”. One of cruellest S.S. men. Shoots without remorse, straight at head, whenever moved to do so. Sentenced in 1945 to life imprisonment. Dies in prison.
Josef Hirtreiter, S.S.-Scharführer, born in 1909. Nickname: “Sepp”. Low I.Q. Held back twice in elementary school; fails locksmiths examination. Finds work as labourer at construction site. Member of Nazi Party from 1932. Hadamer 1940 (washes dishes); Sobibor and Treblinka 1942–43. Speciality: killing one- and two-year-old children: when transports are being unloaded, grabs children by the legs and smashes them against a freight car. The children expire instantly, their skulls crack open. In October 1943 transferred to anti-partisan unit of Trieste police force. Arrested in 1946. Sentenced in 1951 to life imprisonment at the Frankfurt trial. Released in 1977 due to illness and dies six months later in old people’s home in Frankfurt.
August Hengst, S.S.-Unterscharführer, born in 1905 in Bonn. Cook and pastry chef. Member of Nazi Party from 1933. Member of T4 from 1940. Installs kitchen at Brandenburg euthanasia centre and cooks there. Also cooks at Treblinka before 1943, then transferred to Udine, and on to San Sabba, where apart from cooking up swill for camp inmates, he bakes cakes for the commanders. Rainer adores his poppy-seed cakes and strudels. After the war Hengst opens a bakery near Hamburg and local housewives fight over his butter rolls. Closes bakery due to illness and finds work as courier in the port of Hamburg. Likes to wear wide-brimmed hats. Date of death unknown.
Karl Schiffner, S.S.-Unterscharführer, born as Karl Kresadlo in 1901 in Weisskirchlitz, now Novosedlice, the Czech Republic. Trained as carpenter and tradesman. Serves in Czech Army 1921–23. After Czech occupation joins S.A. and later the S.S. troops “because the black uniforms look better”. Works at Sonnenstein euthanasia centre until 1942. In Lublin, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka until late 1943, when he is transferred to Trieste to an antipartisan police unit. After the war flees to Carinthia, arrested and held by the British Army at Usbach camp until October 1945. Leaves the camp to go to Salzburg.
Fritz Küttner, S.S.-Oberscharführer, born in 1907. Sentry for many years in German police, supervisor in Camp 1 at Treblinka. Despised by camp inmates. A snooper. Follows and searches inmates, beats them ferociously, then flogs them with a long whip and takes away the smallest piece of personal property they have (family photographs, letters, money), then sends them to infamous Lazarett. Nickname: “Kiwe”. Takes advantage of the helplessness of certain inmates and turns them into informers. Dispatches children to gas chambers without blinking. After Treblinka transferred to Trieste. Dies before trial begins.
Fritz Schmidt, S.S.-Unterscharführer, born in 1906 in Eibau, Germany. Guard and chauffeur in Sonnenstein and Bernburg 1940–41. Chauffeur and head of garage at Treblinka in 1942; looks after equipment for gas chambers. In Trieste in 1943. Arrested by the Allies in Saxony. In December 1949 sentenced to nine years in prison, but escapes to West Germany and no-one cares. Dies in 1982.
Albert Franz Rum, S.S.-Unterscharführer, born in 1890 in Berlin. Nightclub waiter and policeman. Member of Nazi Party from 1933. Stationed at the Berlin T4 headquarters after 1934, works there as photographer. Treblinka 1942–43. When Treblinka is dug up and the camp closed in autumn 1943, Kurt Franz orders him and Willi Mentz to kill the last thirty Jews, which they do, of course. After Treblinka transferred to Trieste as Wirth’s orderly. Sentenced to three years in prison in 1965, but dies before verdict is announced.
Franz Suchomel, S.S.-Unterscharführer (sergeant), born in 1907 in Krumau, today’s Czech Republic. Tailor. From 1940 to 1942 part of the T4 euthanasia programme in Berlin and Hadamar (department of photography). Treblinka 1942–43. Assigned to Treblinka “railway station” where he supervises the processing of women (stripping, gynaecological examinations, shaving of hair) before they are escorted to the gas chambers. Later runs section of “Goldjuden”, in which some twe
nty inmates—Jews, mostly goldsmiths, watchmakers and bankers—are assigned to collecting and sorting confiscated money and jewellery. In October 1943 sent to Sobibor, then to Trieste. Arrested in 1963 and at first trial for crimes committed at Treblinka in 1965 sentenced to six years in prison. Released in 1969. Dies in 1980 with a relatively clear conscience.
So, in 1976 Haya makes a little file, utterly pointless. She writes out notes, arranges them, rearranges them, as if shuffling a pack of cards. I could play solitaire with these notes, she says, which, in a sense, she does. This dog-eared file, full of cracked photographs of people, most of whom no longer exist, becomes Haya’s obsession; over the year she supplements her collection, slips into it little oddities, terse news items which after two, three, four decades she digs out and peruses, as if grabbing at dry dandelion fluff, as if catching eiderdown in a warm wind. Pointless, pointless. Forgotten dossiers, sealed archives open slowly, slowly, and what emerges is no more than water dripping from cracked sewage pipes. During the Trieste trial in 1976 only two “big fish” remain: Josef Oberhauser,* brewer in Munich, former San Sabba commander and—from 1941 to the end of the war—Dr Dietrich Allers, a high-ranking official, one of the executive directors of the T4 programme, a lawyer and S.S.-Obersturmbannführer (approximately a colonel). But Allers dies a year before the trial, in 1975. Born in 1910 in Hamburg, Allers works as an attorney until 1968, when he is sentenced to eight years in prison, which he does not serve out. So all the fuss, all the pursuit of justice—for nothing. The Italian judiciary does not call for Oberhauser’s extradition, because according to the agreements in force at the time between Italy and Germany, only those suspected of crimes committed after 1948 may be extradited. The trial goes on literally in a void: no defendants sit in the courtroom, the judges natter on, journalists snap their cameras—at no-one. In a solemn voice the judgement is read out to unschooled farmer Josef Oberhauser, but Josef Oberhauser is nowhere to be seen, so to whom is the judgement read? Oberhauser is sentenced in Trieste to life imprisonment, yet in Munich he goes on selling beer, especially during the Oktoberfest, when he is in particularly fine fettle. Three years later, in 1979, fat Oberhauser dies of a heart attack.
There is one dossier Haya never gets around to closing. One name she skips over. Thirty years have passed. The name, printed next to the number eight on the newspaper clipping, looks wholly innocent, a cluster of letters arranged in two short words: Kurt Franz. Kurt Franz. Letters that elude harmony; letters that zing in staccato out of their context and slam into Haya’s temples like bullets. Kurt Franz watches Haya, Haya watches Kurt Franz, and then, in 1976, under him, under her, all around, gapes a chasm into which Haya strides, into the forecourt of Hades.
Who is Kurt Franz?
Kurt Franz cannot be put into Haya’s archive. His story doesn’t end in 1976. Kurt Franz’s story doesn’t even end with his death, furthermore with Kurt Franz’s death the story of Kurt Franz, the story about Kurt Franz, spreads, flows into waiting, into Haya’s wait, today’s, into our wait.
It was late summer or the beginning of autumn 1942 when I came from Belzec to Treblinka. It was night . . . Everywhere in the camp there were corpses. Bloated corpses. The corpses were dragged through the camp by working Jews, and these working Jews were driven by the Ukrainian guardsmen and also by Germans . . . I reported to Wirth in the dining room. Stangl and Oberhauser were with him . . .
Kurt Franz, S.S.-Untersturmführer, was born on 17 January, 1914, in Düsseldorf. A cook. Trained at Restaurant Hirschquelle, then at Hotel Wittelsbacher Hof, but does not pass his final examination. Serves in the army from 1935–37. Joins the Waffen-S.S., given number 319,906. Begins his career in late 1939 as a cook at the Grafeneck euthanasia centre, and later, when the job at Grafeneck is done, Kurt Franz moves to Hartheim, then to Sonnenstein, and then to Brandenburg, and he cooks less and advances more.
Grafeneck is a medieval castle located in the state of Württemberg on a hill overlooking the town of Marbach, where Schiller was born, so there is a Schiller Museum in Marbach and a rich literary archive. The air is fresh at Grafeneck; the nights are chilly. In the early 1930s a samaritan organization turns the castle into an institution for the mentally handicapped. Then S.S. men come in the late 1930s, members of Aktion T4 arrive, headed by Viktor Brack, to have a look at the castle, to see whether it suits them; the natural surroundings are beautiful, and the software is already there. So the S.S. elite requisition the castle with all the patients and throw themselves into work. The castle is adapted for the personnel. A small settlement of barracks goes up nearby. The barracks are surrounded by a four-metre wall. The patients sleep in the barracks and are killed in the barracks by S.S. men. The S.S. men are playing. Experimenting. At one of the barracks S.S. personnel install two mobile crematorium ovens, which dangerously heat the roof, so they remove the roof, and into the sky goes the smoke, turning nature black, the trees, grass, flowers, the sky—everything is black. Even when the sun shines the environs are black. Even the birds are black. This primitive gas chamber (gas chambers will be perfected later), this barrack, has a capacity of seventy-five people per session. The entire castle is surrounded by barbed wire and guards. And dogs. Expert personnel work at Grafeneck, twenty-five female and male nurses, Dr Horst Schumann is there with his colleagues, and Christian Wirth becomes head of administration.
In January 1940 Dr Horst Schumann, S.S.-Sturmbannführer (major), runs the Grafeneck euthanasia “institute”. Once the work is up and running, Dr Horst Schumann transfers to Sonnenstein “institute” in Saxony, in order to start up a new euthanasia programme. Schumann is, otherwise, a member of a medical commission, the task of which is to dispatch ailing camp inmates from Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenburg, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen, Neuengamme and Niederhangen to the euthanasia centres which are beginning to flourish all over the Reich.
Dr Schumann arrives at Auschwitz in June 1941 and selects 575 prisoners whom he sends to Sonnenstein where the guards inject them straight into the heart with super-toxic phenol. Schumann returns to Auschwitz to try out a “cheap and effective” method of mass sterilization of women and men using X-rays. Hardly any of his guinea pigs survive. They die of internal haemorrhaging, of burns. They die after additional “operations”, meaning the removal of ovaries and testicles. They die of exhaustion and shock. At Auschwitz, and maybe later as well, Schumann examines the efficiency of devices he never patents—ah, events follow one upon another with such speed, devices that serve for the experimental harvesting of sperm, a small rectal insertion to stimulate the prostate and ejaculation. Dr Schumann leaves Auschwitz in 1944. A Dr Schumann, such a nice name, shows up in October 1945 in Gladeck, a small industrial town in the Ruhr region, where the local authorities employ him as a sports doctor. Somewhat later, Dr Schumann opens a private practice that prospers for him until 1951, until someone—Lord, such a classic!—someone identifies him as a war criminal. Dr Horst Schumann vanishes, of course. He works for three years as a doctor on a transatlantic ocean liner, then travels to the Sudan and is joined there by his wife and three innocent, golden-haired children. Four years later the happy family hurry through Nigeria and Libya to Ghana. In fact, Dr Schumann does end up in prison around 1966 after President Kwame Nkrumah dies. Nkrumah thinks highly of Schumann for all he does for the people of Ghana, because this tall, well-built man with elegant hands and long artistic fingers, this man who is nearly a saint, living in a damp Ghanaian province where malaria rages, the rains never cease, the tropical heat steals the breath, the poverty is immense, this humanist, in his (Nkrumah’s) African backwoods builds a hospital with forty beds and lives there with his family in a modest bungalow, three day’s trek from the nearest town, because the roads are so ghastly and no white men anywhere, and if someone, a white-skinned visitor, happens to stumble across him, Dr Schumann brings the guest to the humble clinic and shows him the charters from the World Health Organization hanging there, clearly visible, reads them to the visitor so that th
e visitor remembers that it is the duty of every doctor to furnish mankind with the best possible conditions for a healthy and happy life.
Once Nkrumah is no longer there to protect him, Dr Horst Schumann leaves Ghana handcuffed to two detectives. Ah, happy days, schöne Zeiten. Dr Schumann will remember his African interlude; so many old acquaintances from Hitler’s Chancellery, the occasional encounters with Dr Helmut Kallmeyer, for example, the exotic hors d’oeuvres . . . perhaps it is better not to remember. Detained in 1966, Dr Schumann appears before a court in 1970 and then announces he is not well. He’s troubled by high blood pressure. He collapses at trial (this turns out to be a feigned heart attack), so the administration of the prison, humane to a fault, releases him for treatment. No-one protests, not the public or the media, and for twelve years thereafter Dr Horst Schumann lives in Frankfurt, attends the Frankfurt Book Fair, goes to concerts (Frankfurt has a passable symphony orchestra). He strolls in spring through the streets, but he does not leave town on outings, because Sachsenhausen is nearby, and Dr Schumann is not eager to see Sachsenhausen, as his blood pressure might skyrocket. Now and then Dr Schumann enjoys a frankfurter, and this ultimately kills him: he dies on 5 May, 1983, just after his seventy-seventh birthday.