Holocaust

by Gerald Green

  Karl had grown tough, stringy, in the camps, even on the dreadful diet, the appalling conditions. A certain recklessness—absent in him as a youth—had crept into his character.

  As Muller walked away, my brother started after him.

  “Don’t, Weiss,” Felsher said. “It isn’t worth it.” “The bastard. He used my wife, the way a man uses a saw, or a paint brush …” “To hell with him.”

  Karl crumpled the letter and threw it to the floor. He sat, silent, at his drafting table, staring at the fake family tree. Felsher retrieved the letter from the floor and gave it to him.

  “Listen, kid,” the older man said. “Nothing’s the way it should be any more. Go on, read it. Be tolerant.”

  Karl nodded. There were tears in his eyes. He opened the letter (for which Inga had paid Muller’s usual price) and read it.

  My beloved Karl, dearest husband,

  I miss you so much. More each day. At least we can communicate now, and that is good, but it makes me yearn for you even more. We must keep hope alive. I have been to several government offices, but they say your case cannot be reopened. I took a somewhat better job, as a secretary to the head of a small factory making farm equipment. It is odd. We have been at war several years, yet the private factories and corporations do not seem to be suffering. Our wages are ample; there is sufficient food; apart from the men at the front, the civilian population lives rather well. People seem a bit disturbed by America entering the war, but the hope is Russia will collapse before they can help; and England will surrender. My boss, incidentally, knows I have a husband in prison, but he is willing to overlook it—apparently I’m listed somewhere as a “race defiler”—since he says I’m the hardest working and least-complaining secretary he’s ever had. (Don’t worry, darling, he’s fat and old and a devout Lutheran.) I wish I had more news of your family. Not a word from Rudi. He’s vanished. Miraculously, an old letter came out of Warsaw a week ago from your mother. They both seem fine, both are working. Life is not easy, but it is bearable, your mother said. Darling, we must never give up hope. I have had to do things to get these letters to you, and I hope you will understand….

  Karl gently folded the letter and put it back in his shirt.

  He and Felsher said nothing for a while. Then the older man said, “I have heard of this Theresienstadt, Weiss. It’s supposed to be a model camp, a real city for Jews. Maybe we’re lucky. Maybe they’ll even let your wife come to see you. Me, I have no family, so one place is the same as another.”

  Karl glared at the genealogical chart he had been painting for Muller with its Charlemagne and Crusaders. He picked up a pot of red paint and hurled it at the painting. Then he bent his head to the table and began to cry.

  Erik Dorf’s Diary

  Berlin

  January 1942

  A few prefatory remarks before I get into the matter of this entry, namely the Gross-Wannsee Conference of January 20.

  Heydrich, some months ago, let drop some information of great importance. Some time in the summer of 1941, when our Einsatzgruppen were cleansing Russia, Reichsführer Himmler summoned a man named Rudolph Hoess, commandant of a relatively obscure camp in Auschwitz, Poland, to his office, and told him: “The Führer has given the order for a final solution of the Jewish question.”

  Himmler reemphasized this a month or so later, in a speech to Blobel, Ohlendorf and the others (I was not present) in which he assured them they bore no “personal responsibility for the execution of the order, that the responsibility was the Führer’s alone.”

  I mention this speech, because I have had a strange feeling, call it an intuition, that if something goes amiss—God forbid, if we lose the war, or our diplomacy fails to split the Allies and they fight on and these camps are discovered, if bodies are dug up—certain rewriters of history will seek to place the blame on us. By us, I mean the determined, devoted men of the SS, the Himmlers and Heydrichs, and yes, the Dorfs.

  The Führer will be depicted as “just another German politician,” unaware of the horrors.

  Yet the curious thing is, that while cunningly never using the exact words such as “murder” or “extermination,” the Führer has made most clear in speech and writings exactly what he wants to do to the Jews. I even get the crazy feeling that the denial of the earth to the Jews is his foremost aim, and transcends the subjugation of the Slavs, the punishing of France, the world rule by Germany. A rather silly notion, I admit, but the emphasis placed on our work, the privileges we get, and the ease with which Himmler has his way lead me to this peculiar conclusion.

  Surely Hitler is not aware of every Jew we shoot or hang; he may not even know the precise statistics on the reduction of Russian ghettoes. But he knows, he knows. He has said many times that nothing happens without his knowledge. Yet I am certain that in years to come, lesser figures will be painted as the chief engineers of this awesome work, and certain scholars will try to remove him from it.

  Hitler’s closest aides also know what is going on. A few weeks before the invasion of Russia, last year, Goering wrote to Heydrich and assigned to him the job of “carrying out a solution of the Jewish problem as advantageous as possible.” I don’t think this meant settling them on farms and in villages. Goering wants, a full report on “an overall plan concerning the organizational, factual and material measures necessary for the accomplishment of the desired solution of the Jewish question.”

  (Another aside: For years, many influential Jews have regarded Goering as a possible mediator for them, a fellow who is “soft” on anti-Semitic measures, and will keep Himmler and the other racial intransigents from carrying out these policies. How surprised they would have been to have read his communiqués to Heydrich!)

  Of course there has never been any doubt in anyone’s mind what a “final solution” means—although we rarely talk about it. Only fools like Hans Frank go around babbling about how they will annihilate Jews the way they would lice. But we have effectively reduced his areas of responsibility in Poland, so that he is now nothing more than a figurehead, a creature of the SS. We’ve taken over; we will fulfill the Führer’s desires, as quietly and efficiently as possible.

  In any event, the events described above, and other interesting developments, such as the building of certain secret camps at Chelmno and Belzec in Poland, where unique new systems for solving the Jewish problem were being tested, led to the meeting at Gross-Wannsee on January 20.

  Besides Heydrich and myself, there were thirteen men present at the meeting. It was held in the offices of the RSHA—the Reich Security Main Office—which Heydrich heads, and which deals directly with Jewish matters, in the Berlin suburb of Gross-Wannsee.

  What interested me, as the men assembled and made small talk, was that not only top police and SS officials of Germany were present, but also five civilian Undersecretaries. It was quite clear what Heydrich had in mind. No branch of the German government, civilian, police or military, was to be kept in the dark about our plans. (I wondered as I looked at these civilian chaps what excuses they were already preparing in their crafty brains, should questions be asked at some later date.)

  Eichmann was present. We are fairly good friends by now. My strained relations with some of the Einsatzgruppen chiefs—notably that boor Blobel, and the sneak Artur Nebe—make me more than willing to seek out Eichmann’s support, since I have always found him rational, gracious and of an open mind.

  “Ah, Dorf,” he said, after asking about Marta and the children. “New developments in the wind. The Auschwitz business.”

  “So I hear.”

  “I was there recently. Himmler’s given Hoess a green light. I’m trying to coordinate train schedules and so on with Hoess.”

  “Why Auschwitz?”

  “Oh, it’s got a fine rail setup. Lots of space for ensuring isolation. Lots of Jews around it. Poland is our real problem. All these new places—Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor—they’ll all be in Poland.” He bent to me and whispered. “The Führer do
esn’t want the holy soil of Germany contaminated with Jewish blood, you know.”

  “Understandable.”

  I was surprised by my cool reaction to this information. The SS, including the RSHA, being the coiled, tangled nest of competitors that it is, Himmler sometimes goes around Heydrich, or keeps him in the dark, and although I knew of these new camps, I was not absolutely certain what is taking place there. My primary area of responsibility has remained the Russian campaign.

  Hans Frank saw me entering the conference room and grabbed my arm, steering me away from Eichmann. “New camps, I heard that. Don’t look so dumb, Dorf. Try sniffing a little gas, get a taste of it.”

  I shoved his hand away, and heard him mutter to one of his aides: “What a meeting—Heydrich, a part-Jew, and Dorf, a Berlin shyster.”

  The conference got underway.

  Heydrich made clear to everyone present—especially the civilians, who included such eminences as the Undersecretaries for Foreign Affairs and the Interior Ministry—that he, Reinhard Heydrich, was the Führer’s chosen instrument for “the final solution of the Jewish question.”

  “All areas?” someone asked.

  “All.”

  “Ah … that is to say, in Germany, and all conquered areas?”

  Heydrich’s response was that all the Jews of Europe, which he estimated at eleven million—he included English and Irish Jews—were to come under our eventual jurisdiction, and would suffer the same fate.

  He never defined in so many words what this “final solution” was, though not a man present at the meeting misunderstood him. We knew.

  “Emigration has been a failure,” my boss went on. “No one wants these Jews, not America, nor England, nor anyone else. Besides, the logistics of getting them, especially the Eastern European Jews, out of their diseased villages and cities are too much for us, or for anyone else. So there will be a stepped-up evacuation of the Jews to the east—largely Poland.”

  On a chart, Heydrich showed how all European Jews—French, Dutch, English, Italian—would be sent “east.”

  “What happens then?” asked Hans Frank. “After you’ve dumped them on me?”

  Heydrich ignored him. “The Jews will form labor units. Natural decline through disease, hunger, the attrition of hard work for which Jews are unsuited, will take its toll. There will be, of course, a hard core of Jewish survivors, the tenacious and strong ones.”

  “And what happens to them?” Eichmann asked.

  “They will be treated accordingly.”

  People smiled, shifted in their seats. Two of the civilian ministers, like proper schoolboys caught smoking with the village ruffians, snickered, nudged one another.

  “Could the general expand on that?” asked Gauleiter Meyer.

  “Well, first let it be understood that these surviving Jews will represent a direct threat to Germany. They can rebuild Jewish life. Natural selection will make them strong. So—they will have to be dealt with accordingly.”

  “Goddammit, there are over three million Jews in Poland now,” Frank roared. “Gluttons, parasites, full of disease, leaving their shit all over Poland. Well, I can tell you, as I told my division chiefs, we can’t shoot or poison three million kikes, but we shall find some way to exterminate them.”

  “May I remind the governor-general to be careful of his language?” I said.

  Frank pounded the table. “Dammit. You are talking annihilation. I’m sick of these fucking code words, these substitutes for the real thing.”

  Heydrich eyed him coldly, and if I were Frank, I would have feared that icy stare.

  Eichmann, ever the diplomat, tried to divert the discussion. He asked whether the Einsatzgruppen would be expanded, to which Heydrich responded in the affirmative. And would new methods be considered? asked Eichmann.

  “The use of gas is being considered,” Heydrich said.

  A high-ranking civilian official—I forget who—acted surprised. Heydrich told him tests were being made under laboratory conditions. Behinds shifted, noses were rubbed. Men stared at the lofty ceiling.

  Dr. Luther, representing the Foreign Office, pointed out that the clergy had protested some years back when the “useless” were subjected to mercy killings by gas. I made some offhand comment to the effect that that should not deter us. Luther turned on me and cited protests from the Vatican, and the Protestant churches, how the Führer himself had backed down.

  “Well?” Heydrich asked.

  The other civilian was equally distraught. “It can happen again. The mass shooting of people in a war, that’s one thing. There are always excuses that reasonable men, churchmen included, will accept. But gas! On women, children, the old! We can’t get the churches angry at us again. Heydrich, this bloody business is getting out of hand.”

  “Calm yourself,” Heydrich said. “These are Jews we will be dealing with.”

  Luther was furious. “Yes! Controlling the banks, the press, the stock exchanges, the Communist apparatus in Russia! Whispering in Roosevelt’s ear!”

  Heydrich leaned forward. “Take my word for it, doctor. No one will lift a finger to protect Jews.”

  Eichmann nodded his agreement.

  It seemed a good point at which to support my chief. “Besides, we’ll be on firm legal ground. We will be executing—no matter what the means—enemies of the state, spies, terrorists. Such acts are permissible in a war.”

  Luther, having been silenced on this subject, then raised some minor points. In some countries, notably Norway and Denmark, it was doubtful that the civilian population will co-operate in the program. The Italians aren’t very cooperative either. They shrug, make excuses. Mussolini hasn’t got his heart in it. And even Franco—of course, he’s neutral—has been hiding Jews, letting them sneak into Spain. Wherever the SS has met strong resistance from local Christian populations, they have suddenly become less than vigorous in handling the Jewish problem. Of course in the long run, Luther said placatingly, there should be no real difficulties in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, where feelings against Jews are rather strong.

  Some other civilians were obviously upset; yet they remained silent. No one else seemed to have anything left to say. Frank finally blurted out that Heydrich’s theory of “working” Jews till they dropped was nonsense. Most of the Jews in Poland were so starved and diseased as to be beyond productive work.

  “That is why new camps are being built,” Eichmann said gently.

  “Yes, and I know what for!” Frank bellowed.

  He is the same weakling I faced down in Warsaw a year and a half ago. On the one hand, he still muses over the beauty of the law, the abstract notion of justice. On the other, he is determined to prove himself as tough as any of us.

  “Remember what the Führer once told a group of lawyers, and you’ll feel better,” Heydrich said and smiled.

  “I don’t recall,” Frank grumbled.

  Heydrich turned to me. “Dorf?”

  I knew the quotation. “‘Here I stand with my bayonets and there you stand with your law, and we’ll see which prevails.’”

  It was a good note on which to end the meeting at Gross-Wannsee.

  Later, a select few of us sat in Heydrich’s private office, watched the flames flicker in a huge logfire, drank French cognac and smoked.

  Eichmann, Heydrich and I sang old songs and proposed toasts, first standing on the floor, then on chairs, then on a table, rising higher and higher with our glasses. Heydrich said it was an old North German custom.

  The chief dozed at the fireplace, and Eichmann and I discussed the decisions made that day.

  “Momentous, truly momentous,” Eichmann said. “The world really doesn’t understand our aims.”

  “Maybe they don’t want to,” I said.

  “Oh, we’ve done a superb job of camouflage. No one believes us, and many don’t want to believe. Not even the Jews.”

  I leaned forward. “Tell me, Eichmann, as an old friend, do you ever have second thoughts? Ever?” />
  “Of course not.” He didn’t even hesitate. “We’re obeying the Führer’s will. We’re soldiers. Soldiers obey.”

  “But the way the Führer himself never appears at these meetings … the way his orders to Himmler and Heydrich seem to, well, waltz around the heart of the matter.”

  “Means nothing. He’s said it over and over. He’d hang every Jew in Munich, he said in 1922, then start on the other cities. Remember, Dorf, our only law, our only constitution, is the will of our Führer.”

  He was right, of course. “I suppose he’ll know about this new program.”

  Eichmann drained his cognac. “The details won’t interest him. He’s running a two-front war. But he’ll want the job done. And he’ll approve. You know what he said years ago—‘Nothing happens in my movement without my knowledge and approval.’”

  I rather admire Eichmann. He has a clear if relatively untrained mind, and he has a way of putting things in order, like a good office manager. He has told me over and over that he bears no malice toward Jews. Indeed, from a historic viewpoint Eichmann finds them fascinating—the founders of the world’s great religions, eminent in science, art, all forms of scholarship. He boasted again about his time in Palestine as an agent, his familiarity with Hebrew. (“A difficult tongue, Dorf,” he said, “an absolutely staggering grammatical system.”)

  With his usual charm, Eichmann then changed the subject to my wife and children, whom he remembered from that lovely day when he hosted us in Vienna. His own family was thriving, he said, in spite of annoying wartime shortages, occasional acts of sabotage.

  I felt mellow, fulfilled, and I said, “No question, Eichmann, it is for our wonderful families, our wives and children, we perform these hard jobs. They give us courage and determination.”

  He agreed.

  “We owe something to the next generation of Germans. The decisions we made today—terrible as they may seem—are an absolute necessity to preserve the purity of our race, the survival of Western civilization.”