Prala Weide shook his head once more.
“No. I am not mistaken. I was not near Mariannenstrasse. There was no reason for me to be there.”
Deschler nodded and took the piece of paper he was holding, turned it over and placed it on the table before picking up another from his pile.
“Herr Weide, what was the name of the man you were meeting?” he asked.
“Josef Jauner,” replied Weide.
“Were you meeting him alone?”
“Yes.”
“And did he buy your horse?”
“Yes. For seven hundred and forty-eight Reichsmarks.”
“That is a very precise number.”
For the first time Meyer saw Weide smile.
“It was how the negotiations progressed,” he replied, with a shrug.
Deschler stroked his moustache before continuing.
“Were you happy with that price, Herr Weide?”
“It was a reasonable price for the horse, yes.”
“Remember you are not on trial for illegal horse trading Herr Weide, please be frank with the court about the price you were paid and the quality of the animal.”
The smile had left Weide’s face now and his deep Romany voice was much quieter as he gave his answer.
“I was very happy with the price. The horse was worth it mind you, but yes, I was very happy with the price.”
“Josef Jauner paid you in full? And in cash? No promissory note?”
Weide looked aghast.
“In full. In cash. Nobody Romany does business on a promise!”
Deschler made a mark with a pencil on the paper he was holding before continuing with the questions.
“How long did these negotiations over the price for the horse take?”
“I couldn’t be entirely certain but around twenty minutes, including the usual pleasantries.”
“Pleasantries?” asked Deschler.
“You know, asking about family health and so on. Passing on stories and news from the road.”
Deschler nodded.
“And after Herr Jauner had paid you and bid you farewell, did you go directly home?”
It was Weide’s turn to stroke his moustache.
“No, I didn’t go home directly. There are a few bars on the route and I thought that I would quench my thirst with a beer or two.”
“How many bars did you frequent on your journey home?”
“One.”
“Only one, Herr Weide?”
“Yes. Only one.”
“And why only one, Herr Weide?”
“I was arrested coming out of the bar next to the mill.”
Deschler turned over his paper and placed it face down on the desk.
“Thank you, Herr Weide. No further questions.”
Deschler sat down and Judge Koehler asked Fuhrmann, the prosecutor, if he had any further questions.
Fuhrmann stood and ran his fingers through his white hair, while reading notes through spectacles balanced precariously on the end of his nose. Without looking up from the paper he held, he asked, “Where is this Josef Jauner?”
Weide looked over at Deschler and then back to Fuhrmann.
“I don’t know.”
Fuhrmann blinked and finally peered over his glasses at Weide.
“The police also do not know where he is. Or where this,” Fuhrmann cleared his throat, “horse is.”
He was then silent for a few moments before starting his next question.
“I suspect that Josef Jauner does not exist and the money which was found on your person was from several crimes, some of which may not yet have been reported! Is this not the case, Herr Weide?”
Weide looked slightly shaken, before replying that Jauner did exist and that he did sell him a horse.
“No more questions,” sneered Fuhrmann as he sat down.
Deschler immediately stood up and indicated that he wished to call his next witness, Dieter Färber, the victim’s son, before taking his seat again and turning to Meyer.
“Have you been following the questions?” asked Deschler in a low voice.
Meyer thought that he meant the questions written on the papers he had shown him at the beginning.
“Yes, Herr Deschler, and these have been marked as you requested.”
Deschler’s eyes narrowed.
“Herr Meyer, if you think I am going to pat you on the back for being able to tick off questions as they have been asked then perhaps you would be better off working in a kitchen.”
Meyer felt his face flush.
“Herr Deschler, my apologies. I have misunderstood you.”
Deschler rubbed the scar on his eye and Meyer could see a vein in his forehead pulse with his heartbeat.
“Herr Meyer, you may be here as my ‘assistant’ but I am sure I could have found a prettier assistant if I had requested one directly from Herr Bauer. I don’t need you to do these menial tasks such as ticking off lists of questions or pointing out addresses and names of witnesses. It is mildly helpful but not a requirement.”
Deschler’s voice lowered even further and Meyer strained to hear every word, although the meaning was clear.
“You are here to learn, Herr Meyer. To learn. Anyone can memorise the rules of law. Anyone can ask questions. You might even be able to ask the right questions. But working as a defence lawyer is not about what you ask. It is about how you ask it.”
Deschler took a deep breath and looked directly into Meyer’s eyes. He must have seen the disappointment that Meyer felt in himself. Deschler was right. It didn’t really matter if he managed to keep up with ticking off lists of names and attributed questions. That was a clerk’s job, and a stenographer was in the court making a full transcript of everything that was said. Meyer was a lawyer, and he should be learning the techniques, especially from a man such as Deschler.
Deschler’s voice softened.
“Ask some questions that you would expect the prosecution to ask but in a way which allows your client to give an answer you would like. I asked Herr Weide several times about his journey that day, finishing with asking him if he was mistaken. Of course he wasn’t mistaken and would never admit to being mistaken but this allows the jury to see you as pushing the point to its foremost conclusion. Juries expect lawyers to be confrontational, even with their own clients. You must not be seen to be giving your client an easy time in the witness box. In fact, if you can appear to be harder on your client than the prosecutor, the jury will accept the answers you have provided for them and may take the prosecutor’s apparently softer questions as an indication of innocence.”
Meyer nodded and managed a small smile. Of course, it seemed so obvious when Deschler pointed it out. It was all technique. Like Bauer being able to take Meyer’s train of thought down his own tracks to a dead end, Deschler was showing Meyer how questions were asked. It was as if he was being given the secrets to life itself.
“Did you notice anything about the papers I used during my questioning?” asked Deschler.
Meyer ran through the last few questions in his mind, like the re-running of a cinema film. What did Deschler do when asking the questions? Where were the papers? In his hand. In his left hand. He held them tight in his left hand and looked down at them occasionally. Then they were discarded. Face down. He turned them over at the end of a series of questions and placed them face down on the table.
“You discarded the pages face down on the table when you finished each area of questioning, Herr Deschler.”
Deschler leaned closer to Meyer, his eyes betraying a smile that did not sit on his lips.
“Turning over a page and placing it face down puts a full stop on a series of questions. The jury will naturally see that gesture as the end of something. It helps them to understand that you have made your point. That there is nothing else that could possibly be understood from any further questions on that particular subject,” explained Deschler in a whisper.
“Use this technique when you can. If y
ou are lucky, and this is luck, the prosecutor may also unconsciously see this as an end to questioning and be unable to formulate any further questions of his own,” he continued.
“Unfortunately, in this case, Herr Fuhrmann does not allow such things to trouble him.”
The clerk of the court brought Dieter Färber to the witness box and reminded him that he was still under oath.
Deschler stood and smiled at Dieter Färber. This time his eyes showed no smile. The smile that sat on Deschler’s face was a lie.
Auschwitz, 24th July 1943
AFTER being photographed and catalogued, Meyer followed Kapo Langer to his hut and stood outside, along with the other men. The Kapo turned and stood with his arms folded, barring the way in through the door.
“This is hut number seventy-two,” he said as he pointed to a faded number '7' and an almost imperceptible '2', both painted in what would once have been blood red but was now a rusty brown, flaked and nearly impossible to read.
“This is my hut. It was built for a hundred men. It holds four times that number and is now your home.” He turned and pushed open the door, beckoning the men to follow him inside. The air was stifling in the summer heat. The smell of sweat and urine was oppressive and spilled from the wooden building to cover the waiting disinfected men with its putrid stench, making Meyer turn his head to try to get a lungful of cooler air.
He took a deep breath and forced himself inside with the others. Sweat began to form on his forehead immediately, and he let out the spent air from his lungs and tentatively took a short breath. He could taste the filth.
The wooden walls inside the hut had faded to grey, and mould and dirt covered the glass panes that remained in the windows, most of which were boarded up or cracked. The floorboards were filthy with dried mud and dust, and dirt lay in piles against the skirting. The ceiling was the direct underside of the roof and was stained from rainwater; white clouds from salts which had leached from the wood, and with fingers of black mould. Filling the room were stacked sets of wooden bunks. Most were three bunks high but some had four.
Langer held out his arms, and with them outstretched and his index fingers pointing, he slowly turned, as if proud of the dirty, decrepit building.
“This is my hut. Where you sleep and where you will probably die. I will outlive all of you. But, I will try to keep those who help me and, how can I put this, ‘work with me’, alive as long as possible.”
He dropped his arms and looked at the men before him.
“You get up at four am. You go outside no matter the weather and line up. This is for my roll call. Once I have a list of all those present I check the hut for those not there. I mark the sick and the dead.
“You stay standing in line until the SS do their roll call. They have the dead and the sick removed from the hut. We don’t see them again. Ever.
“You then get water to drink and are split into working parties by me. You go and do your work and return at a time determined by the guards. You go to the mess hut. Eat, drink. Come back to the hut and sleep.
“Then the same the next day. And the next day. There is no day off. There is no Sabbath.”
Langer looked from one face to another. This was a little speech that he liked giving. There was something powerful in telling men that they would live in misery and that this is where they would die. It was the most power he had ever enjoyed.
“You go now to the mess hut and pick up a bowl and a cup. Wait in the queue with these. No cup, no water. No bowl, no food.”
One of the other men spoke up.
“Which of these are our bunks?”
Langer’s brow deepened and his eyes darkened.
“You call me ‘sir’ when you speak to me.”
The man who had spoken stepped forward, and for a moment Meyer thought that he was going to challenge Langer’s authority. But instead he apologised for his disrespect and asked his question once more, this time adding ‘sir’ to the end of the sentence. This placated the Kapo and he laughed as he answered.
“Where are your bunks?” repeated Langer, and pointed around him, laughing.
“You can sleep where you want but you might need to do a bit of negotiation with the man who feels that you are sleeping in his bunk.”
Still laughing, he walked out of the hut in to the relatively cool air outside. “Come with me,” he commanded, “I will take you to the mess hut.”
His band of new inmates followed him.
“The first of the work parties will be back now. Let them eat first. Then you get your cups, bowls and meal. If I see any of you jumping the queue...” and Langer drew his finger across his throat.
“That is the latrines,” said Langer, as they passed a brick building from the days when this had been a Polish barracks. “Working there is a punishment. Being in this camp is a death sentence, but the only thing that will kill you faster than working in the latrines is an SS bullet.”
Langer took them across the dusty compound to the location of the mess hut. A line of grey-striped men stood waiting for their food. There was an eagerness behind the sunken eyes and dirty faces as they all stared at the queue in front of them as it slowly moved forward. Those at the front scurried off like rats to corners of the yard to eat their only meal of the day.
The new men were ignored with only a cursory glance as they were led to the back of the queue by Langer, who then walked off to the brick buildings near the entrance gate.
None of the men talked. There was no chatting. No jokes. No laughing. Only the occasional cough or sneeze broke the silence of the men. And forward they slowly but surely moved, one eager step after another as they got one place closer to the front of the queue and food.
Meyer moved forward one step, sometimes two or three steps at a time, until he reached the table with the piles of tin bowls and cups. Each man picked up one each and resumed their slow march to their edible reward for a hard day’s work.
Slowly, they shuffled forward and the dust from the camp settled on Meyer’s prison uniform. With every speck of grey he lost some colour. He could see it happening before his eyes. He wondered how long before he looked like the rest of the prisoners.
Meyer finally made it to the front of the queue and held out his tin bowl. The prisoner behind the counter poured a ladle full of thin soup into it, and a piece of black bread was unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the bowl, splashing some of the soup onto Mayer’s wrist. He then copied the man in front and filled his cup from the top of an open water barrel.
Meyer then found a corner to sit in before quenching his thirst with the cool water. He then devoured the thin soup and black bread. It was insubstantial, but he hadn’t eaten for so long that to Meyer it tasted like food at the best restaurant in Berlin. It did not take long before it was finished. He looked into his empty bowl and ran his finger around the edge to pick up any of the watery soup which had stuck to the metal. He sucked his finger, enjoying the faint taste of salt and perhaps chicken. He surprised himself, feeling his heart fill with joy as he spotted a reasonable size crumb of black bread which had stuck to the underside of the lip of his bowl.
Once he was certain that every single morsel of food had been consumed, he then made his way to the back of the mess hut and dropped his empty plate and cup into a pile of dirty crockery as he had seen the other prisoners do and started to make his way back to the only place he could imagine going in this hot dismal place, hut seventy-two.
Berlin, 18th November 1929
KURT Deschler took his time before asking Dieter Färber his first question. “Herr Färber, it must have been a terrible shock finding your parents in their home in that manner.”
Färber agreed that it had been terrible, and that it was something which would stay with him for the rest of his life. Deschler declared his deepest sympathy for him and continued with his questions.
“You lived with your parents, Herr Färber?”
“Yes.”
Deschler frowned and
pointed to one of Meyer’s piles of papers, which Meyer diligently handed to Deschler.
“But I have it here,” said Deschler, pointing to the top paper, “that you were married two and a half years ago. Is this not the case?”
Färber looked confused and, in an embarrassed voice, admitted that he was married but that his wife had left him.
“What is your profession, Herr Färber?”
“I work in the meat factory, bringing in the carcasses from the wagons.”
Deschler nodded.
“That would explain your powerful frame, Herr Färber.”
“You need to be strong to carry in that meat.”
“Your father was also of a strong build, was he not? Being in the same trade,” asked Deschler.
“That is correct,” replied Färber. “Even though he was twenty years my senior, he was a very fit and strong man.”
“So it would have taken a particularly strong man to have been able to...” Deschler made a show of searching for the correct words. “Disable him?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Perhaps not someone with a withered arm?”
“We have already heard from you about that dreadful moment in your parents' house, and I do not wish for you to have to relive it, but can you explain to me when you saw the defendant?”
Färber looked up to the vaulted ceiling and closed his eyes in thought.
“It was as I was about to leave the house. He was at the front door, opening it to escape. I tried to shout but I am ashamed to say that nothing came out.”
“Did the defendant see you?”
“I don’t think so, but he left very quickly.”
Deschler pointed to one of Meyer’s piles of papers. Meyer handed it over. Deschler picked one paper out and handed the rest back to Meyer.
“I have here the description of the defendant that you gave the police. Let me read this to you. ‘A Gypsy with black hair, pulled back into a ponytail. A black moustache, bushy eyebrows above brown eyes, a long nose, pierced ears and swarthy skin. He wore a black leather waistcoat, a patterned kerchief around his neck, a red shirt and black trousers’.”
A Murder in Auschwitz Page 4