The Nazi Hunter

by Alan Elsner

“Poor fellow,” I said sarcastically.

  “Can't someone make him?” Lynn asked.

  “I'm afraid not. We in Germany have learned the importance of respecting the law. He has no legal obligations whatsoever. He has paid his debt to society,” said Scharpf. A man who served at Belzec, I reflected, could never pay his debt to society, to history, or most of all to the victims, but I didn't bother saying so. Still, it was a bitter blow. Spengler was the one German witness who had actually served at Belzec. If anybody could have told us whether Delatrucha was there, it was he.

  “Maybe if I talked to him personally.” I said.

  Scharpf shook his head. “He doesn't want to see you. He made me promise to keep you away from him.”

  “And you promised.”

  “Of course.”

  “Now what?” said George.

  “The other two, I guess,” I shrugged. “But not today. We all need to catch up on our sleep.”

  Lynn and I didn't get much sleep.

  Manfred Ruddiger, the second witness, lived in a nursing home just outside Munich.

  “He's very old and quite frail,” Scharpf warned us. “You must be patient and gentle with him.” Scharpf seemed incredibly sensitive to the feelings of these mass murderers.

  Ruddiger had been one of Himmler's secretaries from 1942 to 1944. He was in the second wave of senior Nazi officials tried by the Nuremberg tribunal and received ten years in prison for his role. After serving six, he was released and “denazified.” He had enjoyed a reasonably successful career as a middle manager in a German corporation before retiring in the early 1970s.

  The nursing home was in a pleasant little town on top of a hill. We drove through an attractive central square surrounded by historic buildings and a beautiful Bavarian-style church. “What's the name of this neighborhood?” Lynn asked.

  “Dachau,” Scharpf replied.

  “Like the concentration camp?”

  “The camp is a couple of kilometers from here, just outside the town. Perhaps you would like to visit after our interview, if there's time,” Scharpf said.

  “No, thanks,” said Lynn. “It must be weird living in a place called Dachau. Imagine writing that as your return address.”

  Scharpf bristled. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Why would anyone want to live in such a place? It's infamous.”

  “This place was called Dachau for hundreds of years before Hitler ever built a concentration camp here. It has its own rich history. For years, it was a celebrated artists’ colony. People are proud of the history of their town. What would you have them do?” For the first time in our brief acquaintance, Scharpf displayed real passion.

  “Change the name,” George said. “They'd still have the history. They'd still have the art. Nobody wants to take that away from them. Leaving the name makes it sound as if they're proud of the camp.”

  “And changing it would be taken by people like you as a sign that they wanted to cover up the past. Besides, do twelve years of infamy wipe out centuries of cultural achievement?” Both men were heating up.

  “In this case, yes,” said George.

  “Well, sir, you could just as well say the same about the whole of German history. You could argue that Hitler canceled out Beethoven and Bach and Goethe. You may view it that way, but our people have other ideas. I wasn't born when these things happened. Must I be considered guilty, too?”

  “It's not the same,” said George. “Listening to Bach doesn't remind me of Hitler. Living in a place called Dachau would. I can't see how people stand it. Commuting to work every day from Dachau station. Or taking the bus home to Dachau. But I guess it's none of my business.”

  “Correct,” said Scharpf.

  Was it significant that Himmler's assistant had chosen to retire here, of all places?

  We met Ruddiger in a formal guest room at the nursing home. He looked like a gnome in a wheelchair, in a starched white shirt and polka-dotted bow tie. It was hard to reconcile this shrunken, toothless figure with the commission of the greatest crime in history. His hands trembled, liver spots mottled his skin, but his watery eyes still looked sharp and focused, and his expression was alert. Unlike most of the old men I had dealt with, Ruddiger was a big fish. He had been close to the dark heart of things. He would have known exactly what was going on.

  His nurse said he received few guests. “His children don't come very much, his grandchildren never. They're ashamed of him. He doesn't hear too well, but he still has all his mental faculties. He's amazingly sharp for a man of his age, and he's been looking forward to this. It's a break from his routine. He insisted on wearing his best clothes. He even wanted to put in his false teeth, but they don't fit any more.”

  Scharpf introduced all the people in the room. “Herr Ruddiger, we want to film you on videotape,” I told him. “Do you have any objection?”

  His eyes sparkled, and he tried to sit up straight. “Will I be on TV?” he asked, tittering with pleasure. His voice was hoarse, and he slurred his words, making them difficult to understand.

  “No, everything will be kept private.”

  “What?”

  “I said it would be kept private,” I yelled.

  His face fell. “Pity. I like TV. I've been on TV, you know, and in the movies. People find me interesting. Well, never mind, ask your questions.”

  “Herr Ruddiger, tell us a little about yourself, your life today,” I asked.

  “What's that?”

  “Your life here in this home, tell us about it.”

  He looked at the camera and smiled a ghastly, toothless smile. “You call this a life? I watch TV. I eat. I try to sleep. I go to the toilet when I can get this bitch of a nurse to take me. They don't let me drink or smoke anymore, why, I'll never know. What are they keeping me alive for? Is it so important I live to be a hundred? Is that to be my punishment? Let me give you some advice, young man. Don't bother growing old. Do yourself a favor. Die while you can still control your bladder.” He gave a nasty, mirthless laugh, an old man's cackle.

  “Do you believe in a life after death?”

  “What?”

  “Life after death. Do you think there is another world we all go to?”

  “How would I know? When I get there, I'll tell you. Get to the point, young man. I may look like shit, but I'm not a complete block-head.”

  “Very well. Herr Ruddiger, let's go back, if we may, to the year 1943. Perhaps you could tell us what you were doing at that time.”

  “Let's see, ’43, ’43… In ’43, I was still with Himmler, that son of a bitch. He led me a merry dance, I can tell you. I remember one time when—”

  “And in the course of your duties, would you travel to Poland with Himmler?” I cut him off.

  “What?”

  “Did you go with him to Poland?”

  “He was in Poland a few times, I can't remember how many. I would usually go with him. What a shitty country. I hated going there.”

  “Thank you, Herr Ruddiger. And do you remember visiting Lublin?”

  “Who?”

  “Lublin.”

  “Lublin, Lublin… I don't know. I was all over Poland—Warsaw, Kraków, Lemberg—all sorts of places, each one shittier than the last.”

  “Herr Ruddiger,” Scharpf interjected,“please remember you are on the record.”

  “On that what?”

  “On the record. Please use temperate language.”

  Ruddiger snorted in disgust. I shot Scharpf a withering look that signaled him to keep out of it. This was my show.

  “All right, Herr Ruddiger,” I resumed. “We want to ask you about one particular visit, probably in early 1943. Himmler went to Poland. He visited some of the camps and also attended some kind of party or celebration in Lublin. Medals were awarded to people who worked in those camps. Do you remember such an occasion?”

  “There were many parties, young man. We were always having parties. It was one long celebration. That was before everythi
ng went to shit. Those were real affairs, and believe me, Himmler had his own special ways of celebrating. I remember one time—“

  “Herr Ruddiger,” Scharpf warned.

  “All right, all right,” Ruddiger muttered.

  “At this particular party, there was singing,” I said.

  “There was always singing, especially after a few steins of beer. We were always singing in those days.” His voice broke into a quavering, tuneless rendition of “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles.”

  “Herr Ruddiger, really,” Scharpf interrupted in a tone of outrage. Ruddiger stopped singing.

  “We're interested in whether you remember one particular singer. He was an SS officer, and he often sang classical German music—Schubert, Schumann.” I showed him the computer-generated photo of Delatrucha as a young man. “Do you remember such a man?”

  Ruddiger fumbled for a pair of glasses with lenses thick as sandwiches. He stared at the photo for a long moment. His hands were shaking; he dropped the photo and closed his eyes. The nurse hurried to his side, but he waved her away.

  “I'm all right, I'm all right,” he insisted, his voice shaking.

  “Herr Ruddiger, can you continue?” Scharpf asked. The old man didn't respond. We waited. Finally, eyes still closed, he whispered, “You have it all wrong. There wasn't any Schubert at the parties I attended. The atmosphere was not suitable for Schubert.”

  “So you don't remember this man,” I said.

  “I didn't say that.”

  “So you do remember him.”

  “I didn't say that either.”

  He knew something he wasn't saying.

  “What is it that you do remember?”

  Long pause, wheezy breathing. “I remember the singing, but it wasn't at any parties. It was somewhere else.”

  “Where did you hear it?”

  I leaned forward to hear him whisper—

  “In hell.”

  19

  The beast I'm hunting is death.

  —“THE FAVORITE COLOR” BY WILHELM MÜLLER, MUSIC BY FRANZ SCHUBERT

  RUDDIGER FELL SILENT AGAIN. I stared into his rheumy eyes. He tried to avoid my gaze, but I held up the photo in front of him. “This is the man you heard, wasn't it?”

  Head bent, he nodded, and quietly, he began to cry.

  “Are you sure you can continue?” Scharpf asked again.

  “Of course he can,” I snapped. “No more interruptions.”

  Ruddiger looked back at me, his Adam's apple bobbing in the wattle of loose flesh at his neck. “There are so many things I've forgotten,” he sniffed. “I'm an old man, a very old man. Old men are supposed to forget.”

  “Not everything. Not this,” I said.

  “But not this,” he agreed. “Not the singing. I want to, but I can't. Weeks, months, years even will go by, and I won't think about it, and then one night I'll close my eyes, and I'll be there again.”

  “Where?”

  “I don't know. I don't remember the name of the place. I only know what I saw and what I heard. I didn't do anything, I swear. I wasn't a participant. I was just an observer.”

  Across the room, my father was translating quietly for Lynn.

  “Very well, you were an observer. What did you observe?”

  “I remember this man. And all that was happening around him.”

  “You said it was ‘hell.’ Are you referring to one of the camps in Poland where Jews were being killed?”

  There was a long silence. Ruddiger slumped back in his wheel-chair. I waited. The only sound in the room was his labored breathing. He lifted his head again and whispered,“Yes, it was at one of the camps.”

  “Tell us what you remember.”

  “Above all, I remember the smell. What a smell, what a terrible, awful stench! Indescribable. The stench of death, thousands of rotting human bodies—maybe tens of thousands—and shit and filth and vomit and piss.”

  He swallowed hard. We all waited, even Scharpf, whose lips had pressed into two white, bloodless lines of disapproval.

  “It was the smell of hell. If there is a hell, that's what it will be like. Perhaps that's where I will go—perhaps that's what awaits me. Even now, I sometimes smell it in my nose. I who can no longer smell my own dinner—I remember the smell of that place, and I want to vomit; it was an odor so foul all you wanted to do was escape from it. That's what I remember.”

  “But you remember more than just the smell, don't you, Herr Ruddiger?”

  “Yes, there was more.”

  “The singer, what did he do?”

  “It was a visit to observe the way the operation was proceeding.”

  “The operation?”

  “The operation to cleanse the land of Jews. We were touring the camp, in the middle of that foul stench, and out of the blue we hear singing. But not just any singing. It was beautiful. Ach, if you could have heard it. What a voice, what a wonderful voice.” He paused, wheezing. No one spoke. Ruddiger looked at Lynn for a second, grinning a humorless smile, and continued.

  “We heard him before we saw him. We stopped to listen. Himmler was charmed—and it took a lot to charm that revolting old boor.‘Who's that?’ he asks. We move towards the voice, it's coming from around a corner—and then we see him, under the ramp at the entrance to the Schlauch, the tube that leads to… to the…to the gas.” I could feel my heart thumping. I couldn't breathe for fear of breaking the spell.

  “He stands tall and proud in his uniform; he's the very picture of young Aryan manhood, except that he had dark hair, as I recall. His uniform is impeccable. The prisoners—the Jews—they're listening to him as well.” Ruddiger blew his nose.

  “They've just climbed out of the train. Imagine: those people who are about to die, men, women, children, with their suitcases, all listening. You have the year wrong, by the way. This would have been 1942. It was summer. Swarms of flies buzzing everywhere. I remember the flies. Beelzebub, the devil, is the Lord of the Flies.”

  Lynn was pale, and she half suppressed a shudder. Ruddiger's eyes had shut tight. He was there again, not doing anything, not participating, just observing. He licked his dry, cracked old lips.

  “Please continue.”

  “The Jews were hungry, thirsty. They'd been in those cattle cars for hours, maybe days. Many had died in there. The rest were smeared with their own excrement. They cradled their children; they were frightened, so very frightened. Most of them knew they were going to die. And then they heard the singing. He had a little orchestra behind him, maybe three or four musicians, prisoners I think. One of them was a pretty young girl, a violinist I believe. The people hear the music, and they relax and smile at one another because suddenly there is hope. Schubert! Schubert means this is a place of culture, despite the guards and snarling dogs. It means life. It means nothing terrible is going to happen. So when the guards tell them to undress for the showers and delousing, they obey. One or two even approached the singer to congratulate him, and he smiled back—a sweet, trusting smile—and he told them to hurry and get cleaned up.”

  “So he was not just an observer, this man. He was a participant.”

  “Yes. In fact, the camp commandant told Himmler afterward how much easier the singer and his music had made getting the people through the tube and into the chamber.”

  Now the crucial question. “What was his name?”

  “I don't know. I never asked.”

  Damn! “After you saw him sing, then what happened?”

  “Himmler spoke to him. I didn't follow. I think I found a quiet corner to throw up in. Later, we watched those same people from the train… inside the… inside the chamber. They held a little demonstration for us. Himmler wanted to see a gassing. I would have paid all the money I had not to see it, but I could not say anything. There was a small window. We saw them all… saw them all die. Oh, my God, my God.”

  Lynn was weeping openly. My father had never looked so grim. The video recorder whirred on, capturing the moment. We had
just created an important, historical document. I collected myself; we needed to finish the interview.

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “Who?’

  “The singer.”

  “I don't know. Himmler may have brought him back to Germany, but I never saw him again. Nurse, give me a handkerchief, for God's sake.”

  “And you're sure you don't remember the name of the camp?’

  Ruddiger seemed to have shrunk inside his clothes. He blew his nose, shaking his head.

  “Was it Treblinka?”

  “I don't know. I don't think so.”

  “Belzec?”

  “Maybe. I'm not sure. I don't remember anymore. I'm sorry. Now I must rest.” He gestured to the nurse to take him away.

  As she grabbed the handles of his wheelchair, Lynn called out, “What was he singing? Ask him what he was singing.”

  I translated.

  “Schubert. I've already told you. Nurse… “

  “Ask him which song,” Lynn said.

  “How do I know which song? Nurse, please…”

  “Was it ‘The Trout’?”

  “What's that? What did she say?”

  “Was it ‘Die Forelle’?” I asked and sang the first few bars in my squawky tenor. Ruddiger's snivels turned to wrenching sobs.

  “Stop it, stop it, for heaven's sake. How much must I endure? I'm an old man,” he cried. “Nurse, take me away.” I tried to feel compassion for him, but I couldn't. My grandparents had walked down that ramp, down that tube. The nurse wheeled him away. I hope he would remember that stench every day that remained to him. We don't believe in a hell where the wicked suffer eternal punishment, but if there were such a place, he would find a place of honor within in.

  As an observer, of course, strictly as an observer.

  That evening, the four of us went for a walk around Munich. I wanted to be a tourist, just for a night. The old man's slurry voice echoed in my head, and I could tell the others were deeply affected, too. My father wanted to eat sausages and sauerkraut with fried potatoes. “It's the best in the world. You can't come to Munich and not taste the sausages,” he said.

  I had a salad.

  Back in the hotel, Lynn and I made love with a kind of desperation, as if we could blot out with our bodies the horrible things we had heard. This case was like sailing through fog toward a huge iceberg. The nearer we came, the more awful it became, looming out of the mist, massive and ugly. And I had a horrible feeling that most of the truth was still submerged.