Milan
The factory boss is a Nazi sympathizer—or perhaps not even that: just an ordinary person conditioned by that ignoble mentality that exists almost everywhere but which finds its true voice in occupied countries. Deciding that there is perhaps something fishy going on, he forwards the letter to the relevant authority. The Gestapo’s inquiry has stalled so badly that they are desperate for a new bone to chew. They treat the dossier with a diligence all the greater because after making more than three thousand arrests they still haven’t found anything useful. Very quickly, they determine that the letter concerns a love affair: the author is a married man. He probably wishes to put an end to an adulterous relationship. The details of the story are not very clear, but it’s true that certain phrases could be construed as ambiguous. Perhaps this young man even wanted, between the lines, to suggest an imaginary involvement in the Resistance—either to impress his mistress, or to create an atmosphere of mystery so he could break up with her without having to justify himself. Whatever the truth of this, he had nothing to do in any shape or form with Gabčík, Kubiš, and their friends. They’ve never heard of him and he’s never heard of them. But the Gestapo is so desperate for leads that they decide to dig deeper on this one. And this leads them to Lidice.
Lidice is a peaceful and picturesque little village. It is also the birthplace of two Czechs who enrolled in the RAF. This is all the Germans have discovered in the course of their inquiry. Even to them, it is obviously a false trail. But Nazi logic is complex and mysterious. Either that or it’s very simple: they’re out for blood and their patience is running thin.
I spend a long time looking at Anna’s photo. The poor girl is posed as if for a Hollywood glamour shot, even though it’s just an identity photo for her work permit. The more I examine this portrait, the more beautiful I find her. She looks a bit like Natacha: high forehead, well-drawn mouth, with that same look in her eyes of gentleness and love, slightly darkened, perhaps, by a premonition of disappointment.
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“Gentlemen, if you’ll follow me…” Frank and Dalüge give a start. The corridor is perfectly silent as they walk its mazelike turns for I don’t know how long. Holding their breath, they enter the hospital room. The silence here is even more overpowering. Lina is there, hieratic and pale. They approach the bed stealthily, as if fearful of waking a wildcat or a snake. But Heydrich’s face remains impassive. In the hospital they write down the time of his death—4:30 a.m.—and the cause: infection caused by a wound.
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Opportunity makes not only the thief but the assassin too. Therefore, supposedly heroic behavior such as driving around in an open-topped, unarmored car or walking the streets without a bodyguard are nothing but damned stupidity, and are against the national interest. That a man as irreplaceable as Heydrich should expose himself to danger in that way… it’s idiotic and stupid! Men as important as Heydrich should always know that they are like targets at a fairground, and that a certain number of people are constantly watching for any opportunity to shoot them.
Goebbels is listening to something he will hear more and more often until April 30, 1945: Hitler, adopting a sententious tone and lecturing the world, in a vain attempt to keep his temper. Next to him, Himmler listens in approving silence. He is not in the habit of contradicting the Führer anyway, but he, too, is angry—with the Czechs and with Heydrich. Naturally, Himmler was wary of the ambitions of his right-hand man. But without him—deprived of the abilities of this machine of terror and death—Himmler feels more vulnerable. To lose Heydrich is to lose a potential rival, but above all a trump card. Heydrich was his jack of clubs. And everyone knows the story: once Lancelot left the kingdom of Logres, that was the beginning of the end.
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For the third time, Heydrich makes a solemn journey to the castle of Hradčany. But this time he is in a coffin. A Wagnerian setting has been organized for the occasion. The coffin, wrapped in a huge SS standard, is carried on a gun carriage. A torchlit procession leaves from the hospital, an endless line of military vehicles moving slowly through the night. Armed Waffen-SS guards march alongside, brandishing torches, which illuminate the route. Throughout its journey the convoy is saluted by soldiers standing to attention at the sides of the road. No civilians have been authorized to attend, but in truth nobody would want to risk going outside tonight anyway. Among the guard of honor, accompanying the coffin on foot, are Frank, Dalüge, Böhme, and Nebe, all wearing helmets and combat uniform. And so, after a journey that began at 10:00 a.m. on May 27, Heydrich finally reaches his destination. For the last time, he passes through the open gates and enters the walls of the castle of the kings of Bohemia.
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I’d like to spend my days with the parachutists in the crypt, reporting their discussions, describing how they live from hour to hour in the cold and the damp, what they eat, what they read, what rumors they hear from the town, what they do with their girlfriends when they visit. I would like to tell you about their plans, their doubts, their hopes, their fears, their dreams and thoughts. But that isn’t possible, because I know almost nothing about any of it. I don’t even know how they reacted when they heard about Heydrich’s death, although that ought to make one of the best bits of my book. I know the parachutists were so cold in the crypt that, when night fell, some of them took their mattresses to the gallery that overhung the nave because it was slightly warmer. That’s not much, is it? I also know that Valčík had a fever (probably as a result of his injury), and that Kubiš was one of those who tried sleeping in the church rather than the crypt. Or that he tried it at least once.
On the other hand, I have a colossal amount of information about Heydrich’s funeral, from his body being taken from the castle in Prague until its burial in Berlin, including the rail journey in between. Dozens of photos, dozens of pages of speeches made in praise of the great man. But that’s too bad, because I don’t really care. I am not going to copy out Dalüge’s funeral eulogy (although it is quite amusing, given that the two men hated each other), nor Himmler’s interminable encomium for his subordinate. I think I’ll quote Hitler instead, because at least he kept it short:
I will say only a few words to pay homage to the deceased. He was one of the best National Socialists, one of the most ardent defenders of the idea of the German Reich, one of the greatest opponents of all the Reich’s enemies. He is a martyr for the preservation and protection of the Reich. So, my dear comrade Heydrich, as head of the Party and as Führer of the German Reich, I award you the highest decoration that it is in my power to bestow: the medal of the German Order.
My story has as many holes in it as a novel. But in an ordinary novel, it is the novelist who decides where these holes should occur. Because I am a slave to my scruples, I’m incapable of making that decision. I flick through the photos of the funeral cortege crossing the Charles Bridge, going back up to Wenceslaus Square, passing in front of the museum. I see the beautiful stone statues on the balustrade of the bridge with swastikas beneath them, and I feel slightly sick. I think I’d rather take my mattress to the gallery in the church, if they’ve got a bit of room for me there.
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Evening, and all is calm. The men are home from work, and in the little houses the lights are going out one after another. The houses still exhale the pleasant smell of dinner, mixed with the slightly acrid stench of cabbage. Night falls on Lidice. The inhabitants go to bed early because, as always, they’ll have to get up early tomorrow to go to the mine or the factory. Miners and steelworkers are already sleeping when a distant sound of engines is heard. The sound gets slowly closer. Covered trucks move in single file through the silence of the countryside. Then the motors are silenced, and a continuous clicking sound is heard. The clicking extends through the streets like liquid rushing through tubes. Black shadows spread all over the village. And then, when the silhouettes have congregated in compact groups, and when everyone is in position, the clicking stops. A human voice rips open th
e night. It’s an order shouted in German. And so it begins.
Torn from sleep, the inhabitants of Lidice understand nothing of what’s happening to them—or they understand all too well. They are dragged from their beds, they are driven from their houses with rifle butts, and herded into the village square, in front of the church. Nearly five hundred men, women, and children, dressed hastily, stand there dumbstruck and terrified, surrounded by the uniformed men of the Schutzpolizei. They cannot know that this unit has been brought here specially from Halle-an-der-Saale, Heydrich’s hometown. But they do know that nobody will be going to work tomorrow. Then the Germans begin to do what will soon become their favorite occupation: they divide the group in two. Women and children are locked up in the school, while the men are led to a farmhouse and crammed into the cellar. Now they must wait, interminably, the anguish etched into their faces. Inside the school, the children weep. Outside, the Germans are let off the leash. Frenetically but conscientiously, they pillage and ransack each of the ninety-six houses in the village, plus all the public buildings, including the church. All books and paintings, considered to be useless objects, are thrown from the windows, piled up in the square, and burned. Anything considered useful—radios, bicycles, sewing machines—is taken away. This work takes several hours, and by the time it’s finished, Lidice is in ruins.
At five in the morning, the soldiers come back to get them. The inhabitants find their village turned upside down and filled with running, shouting policemen who continue to plunder everything they can find. The women and children are taken in trucks toward the neighboring town of Kladno. For the women, this is the first stage on their journey to Ravensbrück. The children will be separated from their mothers and gassed in Chełmno—with the exception of a few judged suitable for Germanization, who will be adopted by German families. The men are assembled before a wall where the mattresses have been dumped. The youngest is fifteen, the eldest eighty-four. Five are lined up and shot. Then five more, and so on. The mattresses are there to prevent the bullets ricocheting. But the men of the Schupo are not as experienced in such matters as the Einsatzgruppen, and—with all the pauses for carrying away the corpses and forming new firing squads—it takes forever. Hours pass while the men await their turn. To speed the process up, they decide to double the rate and shoot them ten by ten. The village mayor, whose job it is to identify the men before their execution, is among the last to be killed. Thanks to him, the Germans spare nine men who are not from the village but simply visiting friends and trapped there by the curfew or invited to stay the night. They will, however, be executed in Prague. When nineteen night workers return from their shifts, they find their village devastated, their families vanished, the bodies of their friends still warm. And, as the Germans are still there, they, too, are shot. Even the dogs are killed.
But that isn’t all. Hitler has decided to vent all his frustrations on Lidice, so the village will serve as a means of catharsis and as a symbol of his avenging rage. The Reich’s inability to find and punish Heydrich’s assassins provokes a systematic hysteria beyond all human bounds. The order is that Lidice must be wiped off the map—literally. The cemetery is desecrated, the orchards destroyed, all the buildings burned, and salt thrown over the earth to make sure that nothing can ever grow here. The village is now nothing more than a hellish furnace. Bulldozers have even been sent to raze the ruins. Not a single trace of the village must remain, not even a hint of its former location.
Hitler wants to show people the price to be paid for defying the Reich, and Lidice is his expiatory victim. But he has committed a serious error. It is so long since Hitler and his colleagues lost touch with reality that they do not anticipate the worldwide repercussions that will be provoked by news of the village’s destruction. Up to now, the Nazis, if somewhat halfhearted in the concealment of their crimes, have nevertheless kept up a superficial discretion that has enabled some people to avert their gaze from the regime’s true nature. With Lidice, the scales have fallen from the whole world’s eyes. In the days that follow, Hitler will understand. For once, it is not his SS who will be let loose but an entity whose power he does not fully grasp: world opinion. Soviet newspapers declare that, from today, people will fight with the name of Lidice on their lips—and they’re right. In England, miners from Stoke-on-Trent launch an appeal to raise money for the future reconstruction of the village and come up with a slogan that will be echoed all around the world: “Lidice shall live!” In the United States, in Mexico, in Cuba, in Venezuela and Uruguay and Brazil, town squares and districts, even villages, are renamed Lidice. Egypt and India broadcast official messages of solidarity. Writers, composers, filmmakers, and dramatists pay homage to Lidice in their works. The news is relayed by newspapers, radio, and television. In Washington, D.C., the naval secretary declares: “If future generations ask us what we were fighting for, we shall tell them the story of Lidice.” The name of the martyred village is scrawled on the bombs dropped by the Allies on German cities, while in the East, Soviet soldiers do the same on the gun turrets of their T34s. By reacting like the crude psychopath that he is (rather than the head of state that he also is), Hitler will suffer his most devastating defeat in a domain he once mastered: by the end of the month the international propaganda war will be irredeemably lost.
But on June 10, 1942, neither he nor anyone else is aware of all this—least of all Gabčík and Kubiš. The news of the village’s destruction plunges the two parachutists into horror and despair. More than ever, they are wracked by guilt. No matter that they have fulfilled their mission, that the Beast is dead—no matter that they have rid Czechoslovakia and the world of one of its most evil creatures—they feel as if they themselves have killed the inhabitants of Lidice. They also fear that, as long as Hitler does not know them to be dead, the reprisals will continue indefinitely. Enclosed in the crypt, all of this churns over and over in their heads, until—exhausted by the nervous tension—they reach the only possible conclusion: they must turn themselves in. In their fevered brains they imagine asking to see Emanuel Moravec, the Czech Quisling. When they see him, they will hand over a letter explaining that they are responsible for Heydrich’s assassination; then they will shoot him, and kill themselves in his office. Lieutenant Opalka, Valčík, and the other comrades in the crypt need all their patience, friendship, diplomacy, and persuasiveness to convince the guilt-ridden parachutists not to go through with this insane plan. First of all, it’s technically unfeasible. Second, the Germans will never take them at their word. Finally, even if they managed to carry out their plan, the terror and the massacres had begun long before Heydrich’s death, and would continue long after their own. Nothing would change. Their sacrifice would be completely in vain. Gabčík and Kubiš weep from rage and powerlessness, but they end up being convinced. All the same, no one ever manages to persuade them that Heydrich’s death was good for anything.
Perhaps I am writing this book to make them understand that they are wrong.
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CONTROVERSY ON THE CZECH NET
An Internet site designed to get young Czechs interested in the history of the village of Lidice, which was utterly destroyed by the Nazis in June 1942, is offering an interactive game, the goal of which is to “burn Lidice in the shortest possible time.”
(LIBÉRATION, SEPTEMBER 6, 2006)
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The Gestapo is so short of leads you might think they’d given up looking for Heydrich’s assassins. They need a scapegoat to explain this incompetence and they think they might have found one. He is a civil servant for the Ministry of Work, and on the evening of May 27 he authorized the departure of a train full of Czech workers going to Berlin. Given that the three parachutists still haven’t been found, this lead seems as good as any other—so the Gestapo “establishes” that the three assassins (yes, the inquiry has made some progress—they now know that there were three of them) were on board the train. The men from Peček Palace are even in a position to give some surprising
details: the fugitives hid beneath their seats during the journey and got off the train while it made a brief stop in Dresden, where they disappeared into the countryside. It’s true that the idea of the terrorists leaving their own country to take refuge in Germany seems rather daring, but you have to be more daring than that to escape the Gestapo. Unfortunately, the civil servant is not prepared to be the scapegoat, and his defense takes them by surprise: yes, he authorized the train’s departure, but only because he was told to do so by the Air Ministry in Berlin. Göring, in other words. Not only that, but the meticulous bureaucrat has kept a copy of the authorization, stamped by the Prague police services. So if there’s been a mistake, the Gestapo would have to accept its own share of the responsibility. The men from Peček Palace decide not to pursue this particular lead.
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The idea that finally solves the problem comes from that old soldier Commissioner Pannwitz, clearly a fine connoisseur of the human soul. Pannwitz begins with this observation: the climate of terror deliberately created since May 27 is counterproductive. He has nothing against terror, but in this case it’s inconvenient because it scares off those who might otherwise be tempted to inform. More than two weeks after the attack, nobody is going to risk trying to explain to the Gestapo that they know something but that, up to now, they haven’t admitted it. The Gestapo must promise—and deliver—an amnesty for anyone who comes forward of their own free will and provides information on the assassination, even if they themselves are implicated.
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