Holocaust

by Gerald Green

  Anelevitz told them that their political beliefs, the beliefs of any Jews, were irrelevant to the Nazis. Calmly, sure of himself, he said that in the long run the Germans would kill all.

  My father had never believed this. Nor had Moses. But they looked at each other with a new understanding. There was something so quietly persuasive, so profoundly sincere in the young man’s manner, that they felt obliged to talk to him.

  “May we … spend some time with you?” Papa asked.

  “Of course. We need council members. We are mostly working people, students, the young.”

  And so my father and my uncle were drawn into the resistance. They wondered at the time why so few had resisted. Why did most of the ghetto Jews act as if life could go on—schools, theaters, religion, jobs—when what faced them was eventual massacre? I am not sure that either he or Moses understood it then; nor am I certain I understand it now. In a strange way, with the psychological power of demons, the Germans had broken their will to live, by making them cling to life.

  And in fairness, Tamar says, the record of resistance among Europeans of far greater strength and numbers was a spotty one. The absolute totality of Nazi terror, the refinements of the police state, the unhesitant use of murder, torture, deceit, deprivation, humiliation, left people without defenses. If one is to be critical of the Jews for failing to fight back as much as they should have, what about entire nations, like France, where resistance was marginal? Not an easy question to resolve.

  But in any case, Papa and Uncle Moses were now committed.

  Erik Dorf’s Diary

  Ukraine

  September 1941

  I am shaking. Still, I must write dispassionately, now. Try to forget; no, to understand. I too, at last, have killed.

  As Heydrich’s “eyes and ears” I am now on the outskirts of Kiev, overseeing the operation of Einsatzgruppe C, under the command of Colonel Paul Blobel.

  I detest Blobel. He drinks too much and runs a slovenly operation. I wonder why Heydrich has let him advance this far. But he apparently enters his assignment with readiness to do the job, and do it quickly. It takes a special breed of German to carry out our mandate; and I imagine that Blobel, for all his failings, is of that breed.

  We stopped first at an enlisted men’s barracks where some new men were being inducted. There are roughly a thousand men in each of the four “Action Commando” teams, these men recruited from the SS, the SD, the Criminal Police, and so on. We also will be using a great many Ukrainians and Lithuanians and Balts, who have no compunction about special handling of Jews.

  “We also drew a lot of fuck-ups and goldbricks,” Blobel said, as we approached the barracks. Men lounged about in their undershirts—the Ukraine can be beastly hot in September—reading, writing letters, cleaning firearms. No one came to attention as Blobel and I and our party approached.

  “They’re tired,” Blobel said. “And they don’t give a shit after a while. Got to keep them going with schnapps.”

  A sergeant got to his feet and saluted lazily.

  “It’s all right, Foltz, rest,” Blobel said.

  “New men today, sir.”

  “Fine, fine, give them the drill.”

  I could hear Foltz welcoming one of the new men—his name was Hans Helms, and he had been in an infantry division—to Einsatzgruppe C.

  “You’ll like it here,” Sergeant Foltz mocked. “No one shoots at you. Regular hours. And we divide up the loot. After the officers get theirs. Don’t look so dumb, Helms.”

  “I’m a combat soldier,” Helms said. “I didn’t ask to join this shitty outfit.”

  “You’ll learn to love it,” Foltz said.

  The new arrival walked off to the barracks. I did not like the tone of Sergeant Foltz’s lecture and I told Blobel so. The man was mocking our mission.

  “Bullshit, Dorf,” Blobel said. “What’s the difference what their attitude is, so long as they do the killing?”

  “Language, Blobel. We do not refer to killings. You know the approved words.”

  His fat, ruddy face stared at me. “Yeah. Your goddam special vocabulary. Special handling. Special action. Resettlement. Executive action. Autonomous Jewish communities. Transport. Removal.”

  I ignored Blobel. I shouldn’t have to explain to this unsubtle and thick-headed man that the code words serve many purposes. First of all, they hide from the Jews the realities facing them. They are quite willing to tell themselves they are being “resettled,” almost more eager to believe than we are to dissemble. Moreover, it makes matters easier within our own ranks and within the ranks of our allies.

  After all, we remain a Christian nation, and there is always a chance that well-meaning but misguided churchmen (like Lichtenberg) will raise a hue and cry. The Vatican is sympathetic to our crusade against Bolshevism in Russia. Why muddy this relationship by shouting that we intend to shoot several million Jews? Then, there is the matter of final judgments, once we rule Europe. We can always say that some Jews perished while being resettled, died of their own filthy habits, their tendency to spread contagion, or were executed for sabotage and spying.

  Blobel led me across a meadow to a wooded area. In front of a grove of tall birches and elms, a wide ditch had been recently dug. The piled earth behind it still looked damp. I estimated this ditch to be about ten feet wide and four feet deep. It was quite long, fifty or sixty feet.

  “We make them dig it themselves,” Blobel said. “Right to the end they think it’s a work detail.”

  In front of the trench were two wooden tables. On each was a light machine gun and ammunition belts. There were also bottles of cheap Russian cognac, glasses, boxes of cigarettes. Behind each weapon was a three-man team, members of Blobel’s SS Einsatzgruppe.

  They appeared to me rather slovenly—collars open, boots unpolished. Two men were smoking, and one was sipping cognac. Hardly a military-looking unit. I complained to Colonel Blobel about their appearance, and made an invidious comparison to the army, where soldiers were expected to be trim and neat, even when going into battle.

  In typical crude fashion, Blobel made an insulting remark about the army, and reminded me I was an SS officer, and we made our own rules. He referred to a “chickenshit” army major who had complained about “un-German” activities by the SS; Blobel had put him off with a few choice curses.

  In the distance I saw the Jews. A group had been halted at the edge of the ditch. Under the prodding of SS guards, they were being made to undress. Clothing was being neatly stacked. People were being searched for valuables—watches and the like.

  The fascination some of the guards showed for the nude and semi-nude women was totally uncalled-for. Women stood about in undergarments—slips, bloomers, garters—and were stared at. I could hear lewd comments. When they were at last naked, the women tried vainly to cover their breasts and pudenda. Some of the women held children in their arms. There were ancient crones barely able to stand, and one old woman who had to be carried by two men.

  These were Jews from a village near Kiev, I had been informed. Many were Orthodox, with long beards, curling earlocks, and a lost, soulful look on their fleshy faces. No wonder Himmler and my other superiors have concluded that these are a subhuman species. One has only to see them naked, exposed, their white soft flesh tormented by the hot Ukrainian sun, to know they are unlike other people.

  It is odd. I feel no hatred for them, but my awareness that they are indeed alien from us, and that they are plotters and connivers who, from the time of Christ to the present, have been history’s great betrayers, makes it easier for me to accept what I witnessed for the first time.

  “Go on, Foltz,” Blobel said and grinned at me. “March ‘em in. Don’t overload the trench.”

  Orders were shouted below. About fifty of the naked Jews were prodded and clubbed, made to walk into the trench and face the two tables on which stood the machine guns. To my amazement, there was no resistance, just some slowness on the part of the older people
. The Orthodox among them seemed to be praying. A woman crooned to the child in her arms. A child kept asking when he could go home. I could swear a girl of about twelve was asking if she would be able to do her homework from school that night.

  It was over in seconds.

  At a signal from Sergeant Foltz the guns chattered, short bursts of orange flame. The acrid stench of powder clogged my nose.

  Through the haze I saw the Jews fall in shapeless heaps. Their bodies were stitched with small red holes.

  The little girl who had just asked if she could do her schoolwork was lying across her mother’s body. In death, they were embracing.

  I half-heard Blobel saying, “Two bullets per Jew, my ass. Let that bastard Von Reichenau come out here and count the holes in them if he wants.”

  Quickly I put a clear plastic shield over my eyes. I was crying. Not, I realized, out of sympathy for the Jews. They died so easily, so quickly, so uncomplainingly, that it is difficult to accept that it was death at all. But out of some vague, imperfectly understood perception of the awful dimensions of our job. Heydrich has convinced me, beyond any doubt, that we are forging a new civilization. Hard and cruel deeds are necessary. I have now seen one.

  Sergeant Foltz was walking along the edge of the ditch, his Luger drawn. Three times he kneeled and fired shots at short range.

  “Why is he doing that?” I asked Blobel.

  “Sometimes they aren’t dead,” he answered. “Act of mercy. Better than burying them alive. But that happens also on a busy day.” He squinted at me, as if suspecting that I had been crying. But he said nothing.

  His bluff obscene manner serves him well in his work. And I will have to cultivate a similar defense. I can be frank about it in these pages. Ohlendorf, I have been told, another Einsatzgruppe chief, is capable of intellectualizing his work. A professor, expert on trade, doctor of jurisprudence, he sees the elimination of Jews as a social and economic necessity. I am surely as bright and as brave as Ohlendorf; I will take a page from his book.

  A thought occurred to me right after the shootings: there is no future for the Jews in Europe. They are universally despised, for whatever reasons. We are solving a problem of almost worldwide dimensions. Our means and our ends are identical. In denying them the earth, we do mankind a great service. “Armed Bohemians” a critic of our movement once called us. I am glad to be one.

  I also learned at that first shooting—after I gained my composure—that by asserting my considerable authority, acting the part of “Heydrich’s man,” I can stifle feelings of pity that might surface. For example, I noticed that there were civilians watching the executions, and that at least two men, one a soldier, were taking still photos and motion pictures. A civilian in a dusty trenchcoat was writing notes in a small book.

  At once, to divert my own mind from the corpses—swarms of flies settled on them swiftly—I began to bawl out Blobel for running a public show. The civilians, he said, were Ukrainian farmers who enjoyed watching their lifelong enemies being executed. The photographers were taking pictures for their own amusement. Nothing official. The fellow in the trenchcoat was an Italian journalist.

  I ordered Blobel to chase them away. There would be no picture-taking, no journalists present. To my gratification, I found that by immersing myself in these niggling duties, I could overcome any residual feelings about the victims. They soon appeared to me as mere casualties, by-products of our campaign. The war, as Hitler said, will be unlike any other war in human history, “not fought in knightly fashion.”

  A second group of Jews were now marched in. This time, they were less compliant. Several women were screaming, tearing their hair out. One threw herself at an SS guard, embraced his boots and tried to kiss his hands, his feet. He had difficulty in kicking her away from him.

  “Heydrich will get a full report on this sloppy operation,” I said. By giving orders, making myself part of the chain of command, I could detach myself from the people in the ditch. Some old men, looking like bearded prophets, were intoning prayers in Hebrew. An alien, wailing noise arose. Jews have had a lot of practice in dying, in serving as sacrificial victims. They have a routine for it, some kind of Talmudical procedure. Eichmann has often expatiated on this. It makes it easier for them to die.

  Blobel walked away from me. “Foltz!” he shouted. “Give the order!”

  Once more the machine guns stuttered. They sounded to me like the cracking of the earth under the impact of a meteor.

  The Jews fell again, on top of the bodies of those who had died a few minutes earlier. In the distance, a third group—naked, shiveringly quiet—were being marched toward the trench. And farther in the distance, army trucks were unloading more Jews.

  By now, I was pretty much in control of myself. The sheer magnitude of the operation—and I know there are hundreds like it, from the Baltic to the Black Sea—made me overlook what might be conceived of as cruelty. These people have to be our enemies, our racial rivals, people whose progeny could destroy Germany, whose wiles and wealth and evil notions could doom Aryan civilization.

  It took me some time to realize the absolute truth of Heydrich’s convictions, derived from the Führer and from Himmler. But they have to be the truth. A talented, energetic, intelligent, artistic people like our Germans could not take part in such acts unless what they did was ordained, obligatory, healthful for the future of the nation.

  Fortified by these realizations, I confronted Blobel. “I am submitting a critical report on you, Colonel,” I said.

  “You’re what?”

  “You will clear the area of civilians. There will be no pictures taken by SS men or anyone else. Understood?”

  To one side of the machine guns, some SS men, including Foltz, were picking through the clothing. One man, guffawing, was holding up an oversized pair of women’s bloomers, waving them in the air.

  “And there will be no more of that,” I said. “Any property left by the resettled Jews belongs to the state.”

  “Save that bullshit for your meetings.”

  “Your language will also be reported. Heydrich ordered me to check up on the Einsatzgruppen. Yours fails miserably to meet standards that were set.”

  His choleric fat face was turning scarlet. The piggish features were splotched with red. “I fail, do I? Let me tell you something, Dorf. Ohlendorf and Nebe and the rest of us have our eyes on you. We know a spy when we see one.”

  “Don’t try to undercut me, Colonel. I talk to Heydrich every day.”

  He sputtered something, could find no words. Just as the Jews can be made to fear, to have their wills destroyed, their spines cored, so even a Colonel Blobel can be rendered fearful—if the threat of humiliation, exposure, even death, hangs over him. Our men in the field know what kind of a man Heydrich is. He fears no one, nothing. And I, as his emissary, bask in that power.

  Sergeant Foltz had marched fifty more Jews into the ditch. Below, the gunners were sipping their cognac, smoking leisurely.

  This time, my lecture had its effect. Blobel ordered the sergeant to clear out the Ukrainians, to chase the journalist, to stop the picture-taking.

  The guns fired again; the Jews fell. The pile was now rather high, and I imagined that after a few more groups had been added, tractors would be used to cover the remains, work parties of Jews with shovels would be forced to bury their own dead.

  Blobel suddenly reached into my black leather holster and took out my Luger, which I had fired but once, on the SS indoor range in Berlin.

  “What are you doing?” I protested.

  “There’s a few still moving down there,” he said. He laughed. “Go on, finish them off yourself. You know the old street tradition. You aren’t a man until you’ve killed your Jew.”

  I told him to put my gun back. Instead he slammed it into my right hand. “Desk soldier. Paper captain. Fucking office boy. Go down there and shoot a few.”

  “They all seem to be dead.”

  “Can’t be too sure. Jews are l
ike rubber balls. They bounce back. Go on, I see a few moving.”

  What else could I do? There was no personal danger to me. The Jews surely would not hurt me. They had died like sheep, like unprotesting kittens. Heydrich’s words helped sustain me as I descended the sandy hillside toward the foul pit. Judaism in the East is the source of Bolshevism and therefore must be wiped out in accordance with the Führer’s aims.

  “It’s like eating noodles,” Blobel yelled at me. “Once you start you can’t stop.” His underlings sniggered. “Ask my men what it’s like, Captain,” he shouted. “You shoot ten Jews, the next hundred are easier, and the next thousand are even easier than that.”

  Sergeant Foltz preceded me into the pit. We threaded our way through the naked, bloodied bodies. They seemed stitched with red holes. It is astonishing how little is needed to kill a man. Dead, the Jews seemed, in a way, more natural to me than alive, standing, waiting, praying, accepting their doom.

  “One there, sir,” Foltz said.

  He pointed to a young woman with long brown hair. Her eyes were pleading. The bullets had entered her shoulders, leaving bloody gouges, but had apparently not touched any vital organs.

  She held one arm up to me, a long, well-formed arm—and I had a sudden vision of Marta’s smooth arms—and her half-open eyes stared at mine.

  “It’s an act of kindness to end the poor bastards’ suffering, sir,” Sergeant Foltz said. “She ain’t more than twenty.”

  I hesitated. Again, I saw Marta, so clearly I almost called her name. My eyes were hazed, and I saw the entire scene-the party of SS executioners above me, the silent guns, the men sipping cognac, the verdant meadow, the groves of trees, the wide bloody ditch, now giving off the metallic odor of blood, the swarms of savage flies—I saw all of this as if underwater, as if I were on some other planet, living a life that was not mine.

  “Shoot, Dorf,” Blobel shouted.

  The woman’s eyes sought mine. She was almost dead. Yet some stirring of life must have remained in her. She could not raise her arm again. Her eyes were dark, slanted. The long brown hair reminded me of a girl I had once known in high school. Why these random thoughts? The conviction overpowered me. The terribleness of our acts justifies them. One cannot do these things unless they are, in and of themselves, worthy deeds, parts of a great plan, a world-shaking idea.