by Gerald Green
“So Berlin can say we did it, they didn’t know a thing that was going on. Like that” asshole Hans Frank. When the Russians captured him, he said he never had a thing to do with it, never killed a Jew. It was us, the SS, the RSHA.”
I began—I don’t know why—to pull open the Auschwitz files and throw folders into the blazing fireplace. I ripped papers apart, heaped them high in the flames, while Kramer mocked me.
“You’d be better off burning more Jews, Dorf.”
“No. No. Berlin says move everyone west. Himmler is convinced the allies will understand. Britain and America will be sympathetic to us. It’s the Russians we have to avoid. Himmler wants to negotiate with the Americans. He—”
Kurt Dorf suddenly entered the room. My uncle saw me dashing about, pulling open desk drawers, ripping file cabinets apart, stuffing the fireplace with the documentation of Auschwitz.
My uncle watched me for a few seconds. “It’s useless, Erik. Katowice has been evacuated. The Volksturm is melting away. The Red Army will be here in a day or two.”
“And you will cheer their arrival?”
He did not answer, merely shook his head. “I understand, Erik, that there are seven tons of human hair, neatly bagged and labeled, in the warehouse. Should not someone be assigned to burn it?”
I paid no attention, but kept burning papers. Himmler may be smarter than any of us. We can play the Russians off against the allies—explain our motives—the Führer was right, we are saving the West, saving civilization. We didn’t want this war—the Jews forced it on us, and we had to make them pay.
Kramer was on another phone. I must say that although he was planning a fast departure, he was following some of my orders. He was telling his subordinates to march out the 58,000 remaining prisoners—in freezing weather—and keep them marching west.
Kurt stopped me, grabbing my arms. He is much older, but stronger. “Dear nephew,” he said, “didn’t you once tell me that we should make our glorious deeds public? That we should boast to the world how we had solved the Jewish problem? Why this change of heart? Amazing how an artillery barrage can change a man’s mind.”
I tried to tear away, but he shoved me against one of the filing cabinets I had been trying to empty. “You sneaking liar. You bloody coward. Do you honestly think you can now hide the murder of six million people?”
Kramer shouted from his phone, “I don’t fear anyone, Russians, Americans, any of them. I did a job. I obeyed orders. I am a soldier.”
“So am I,” I said.
Kurt shoved me away. “You know, you may just manage to cheat the hangman with that kind of logic. But I hope to God you don’t.”
Kramer came to my defense. “Oh, who the hell are you to lecture us? You built roads and factories with slave labor, Jews included.”
“Yes, you are right,” Kurt said. “I watched, and knew, and said or did nothing. And when I did it was much too late. I prolonged the lives of a few, when I should have talked, fled, let people know.”
I slumped into a chair. Where to? What next for me? All my despair, disgust and hatred was directed at my uncle. “I should have had you shot long ago,” I said.
Now the artillery barrage is louder. The bursts are more frequent. Distantly I hear them, the Soviet bombers.
Alt-Aussee, Austria
May 1945
Here, in a hidden valley of Austria’s Salzkammergut, many of us, in civilian clothing, are in hiding.
We try to avoid one another. Blobel is around, an embarrassment to all with his drunken blabbering. Eichmann has been seen at various places, but in the past few days has mysteriously vanished. Kaltenbrunner holds court at an old castle; he is convinced nothing will happen to us. Yet why do we hide like this?
A word about Kaltenbrunner. It is rumored that he has been desperately trying to contact the International Red Cross and prove that he acted humanely and decently to Jews. Indeed, that his main concern toward the end was to liberate the Jews of Theresienstadt.
And there are two even more astonishing stories making the rounds.
On April 19, in a farmhouse outside of Berlin, Himmler is alleged to have met with a certain Dr. Norbert Masur, a Swedish Jew and an official of the World Jewish Congress. Himmler himself requested the meeting, which was conducted in secrecy. Indeed, the Reichsführer had to excuse himself from Hitler’s birthday party to keep the appointment. (This was eleven days before the Führer took his life.)
My understanding is that Himmler was polite, cordial and rational with this Dr. Masur. He explained that the camps were all like Theresienstadt—nice little communities run by the Jews. He and his dear friend Heydrich had wanted these camps to function as proper Jewish communities all along, but were sabotaged by the Jews themselves.
As Masur questioned him about death camps, gassings, ovens, and so on, the chief calmly explained that this was “horror propaganda,” circulated by ungrateful Jews and the Russians. A burning American tank had caught fire at Buchenwald, some prisoners died, and the world press distributed photos claiming prisoners were burned by the guards. Lies, lies.
He also told Masur that the Jews were notorious spies and saboteurs and spreaders of disease, especially in Eastern Europe, and hence there was no choice but to lock them up in camps. How, Masur asked, could they commit espionage and sabotage if they were all in camps or walled-in ghettoes? Himmler did not concede the point; Jews were clever and resourceful and would find ways.
We’ve discussed this interview and find it hard to believe. Himmler has, of course, vanished. He, like us, is wandering, hiding, in civilian clothing. Evidently nothing came of his talk with Dr. Masur.
No less extraordinary is the report that Eichmann, before he wandered into Alt-Aussee and then wandered out again, invited one M. Dunand of the Red Cross to Prague, and at a rather formal dinner, backed him into a corner and explained that the Jews in Theresienstadt were better off than the poor Germans in Berlin and elsewhere.
One thing I am certain of. There will be no contrition on my part, no begging for mercy, no attempts to explain away our deeds.
I won’t be a Heydrich, asking forgiveness on his deathbed; or a Himmler, currying favor with an important Jew; or an Eichmann, making excuses to the Red Cross.
Should I be captured, I will be as courageous as the Führer, and tell my captors that I am an honorable German officer, who obeyed orders, followed my conscience, and believed deeply in the acts I was ordered to commit—because I had nothing else to believe.
There’s still hope for us. We will be able to make a logical case for Auschwitz. As a lawyer, I know that any action can be defended.
I admired Himmler far more when he spoke to us at Posen, and said that true bravery was in seeing hundreds of thousands of dead, and not flinching, being true to ourselves. Now he babbles on about “Autonomous Jewish cities.” A pity.
My thoughts often turn to Marta. She was, in a sense, the engine behind my career. When I faltered, she buoyed me up. When I had doubts, she dispelled them. We should have loved each other more. We have not slept together these last few years.
I’m drinking a great deal more than is good for me. I long, perhaps for just a day, to be with Marta and the children. Perhaps in a park, a visit to the zoo. They will say a great many terrible things about us. But they can never besmirch our basic decency, our love of family, homeland, the Führer.
[Here the Dorf diaries end.]
Rudi Weiss’ Story
I have selected two letters, from among hundreds I received in the course of tracking down the fate of my family, to include in this narrative.
The first is from a man named Arthur Cassidy, a former captain in United States Army Intelligence, now an associate professor of Germanic languages at Fordham University, in New York City.
March 15, 1950
Department of Languages
Fordham University,
Bronx, N.Y.
Mr. Rudi Weiss
Kibbutz Agam
; Israel
Dear Mr. Weiss:
First, let me say how much I admire your ingenuity in finding me. Although it was only five years ago that I interviewed the late Major Erik Dorf, the army has a way of losing track of these things, especially after someone returns to civilian life.
Yes, I was the intelligence officer who conducted the interview with him. Dorf was picked up for routine questioning in the town of Alt-Aussee, which was a hideout for SS officers, much in the way that Hot Springs, Arkansas, in our country is said to be a “cooling off” place for Mafia criminals.
I did not participate in his arrest, but I understand he had no identification on him, was in civilian clothing, and at first denied any complicity in the death camps, or the SS. What trapped him were the pages of a diary, sewn into his jacket lining. He later admitted that the bulk of this diary, kept over a long period of years, was in a metal box in Berlin, in his apartment.
This was not an unusual circumstance among these men. Frank, the governor of Poland, kept thirty-eight volumes of detailed notes on his activities, tried to hide them, and wept like a child when he learned they had been discovered.
Dorf was a man in his early thirties, slender, well built, nice-looking. He did seem a bit haggard and nervous at first, but as soon as he discovered I was fluent in German, he relaxed, smiled and was altogether charming and approachable. Hardly one’s notion of a man involved in mass murder.
He was one of scores of war criminals I interviewed, and I of course kept records of these conversations. They probably exist in some file somewhere, and had Dorf ever come to trial you probably would be able to track down my interview. But I will do my best to reconstruct the trend of our conversation.
We had a file on Major Erik Dorf, and his name was on numerous letters and memoranda concerning the Jews, especially when he was an aide to Reinhard Heydrich. So we knew he was no mere bystander.
Dorf kept insisting to me that he was nothing more than a glorified clerk, or courier. He claimed he knew nothing of any so-called atrocities and mass killings, but that, of course, as a fellow officer I would understand that spies and saboteurs and criminals were often put to death.
I then confronted him with several dozen photographs of the death camps, and asked him to tell me about them. You have seen these photos, I am certain, and you know what they look like—bodies stacked like cordwood, the mountains of ashes, the naked people lined up outside the chambers, the mass hangings. He professed no “direct” knowledge of them. He kept insisting that the dead were probably guerrillas, bandits, people who were marked for death by reason of their activities, not their racial origin.
Dorf said—several times, I recall—that he bore no personal malice against Jews, and in fact had once patronized a Jewish physician in Berlin, and had rather admired the man.
I then asked him if he was aware that when the last Sonderkommandos began cleaning up Auschwitz, they discovered that one of the open burning pits was coated with eighteen inches of human fat. He shook his head. All sorts of queer stories come up, he seemed to be saying.
His manner remained affable, cordial, that of an educated man—he stressed to me that he had a law degree—and he kept insisting he merely transmitted orders and that “others” made policy regarding the Jews and other minorities.
Finally, while showing him photographs of a group of dead Jewish children, evidently shot by the Einsatzgruppen and piled into a mass grave, I informed him we had testimony from twenty-four people, Germans and non-Germans, who had seen him present and acting in an official capacity at the gas chambers, at the ovens, at mass shootings. One witness even claimed to have seen Dorf himself kill a Jewish woman in the Ukraine, after being challenged by Colonel Paul Blobel. (I should say the late Blobel, since he was executed some years ago.)
At this point Dorf’s cool manner seemed to leave him. He started a lengthy explanation about how the Jews had to be destroyed since they were Christendom’s old enemies, the agents of Bolshevism, Europe’s deadliest enemies, a virus, and so on.
“The children, Major,” I said. “Why did you murder the children?”
He replied that regrettable as it may have been, if the children had been allowed to live, they would have formed the nucleus for a new attack on Germany. The Führer had explained it all. (If you are familiar with some of the testimony at Nuremberg, you’ll recall that Otto Ohlendorf, also a charming, intelligent, educated fellow, freely admitted that he ordered the annihilation of ninety thousand Jews in the Crimea and used the same reasoning.)
I informed Major Dorf that if I had my way I would gladly put a bullet in his head that moment, giving him as much chance as he gave the Jews. He turned white. But I quickly added that we were a democracy and did not do things in that manner. However, his confession and any information he could give us about his labors for the SS and the RSHA would be useful, and might serve him well when he came to trial, which I saw as inevitable.
I gave him another batch of photos to look over, and also some copies of his correspondence with people like Rudolf Hoess, Artur Nebe, Josef Kramer and other functionaries of the final solution. Then I made the mistake of going to the door and calling for a stenographer. (I had been making brief notes up to now, but I wanted a full transcipt.)
Somehow, even though he had been searched, Dorf had managed to hide—or had had sneaked to him—a cyanide capsule. He bit it, the instant I reached the door. He was dead by the time his body hit the floor. Like so many of his kind, he preferred this way out to facing up to the monstrous crimes he had committed. And yet—what a damned charming young man he was!
I am truly sorry about the fate of your family. If I can help you in any other way in your research, let me know.
Cordially,
Arthur Cassidy
A second letter bears on this story of my family, and I present it here. It is from Kurt Dorf, the uncle of Major Erik Dorf. I had less trouble finding him. He was a witness for the prosecution at Nuremberg. His name is memorialized in the Yad Vashem, as one of Europe’s “Righteous Christians.”
Bremen, Germany
July 10, 1950
My Dear Mr. Weiss:
Your informants are correct. I am the uncle of the late Major Erik Dorf of Berlin. I don’t know what I can add to your search for the fate of your late family. To say I am sorry, that I offer my condolences would be senseless. How does one apologize for a crime unprecedented?
You know of my testimony at Nuremberg. I have been vilified and condemned for it, and my work as a professional engineer curtailed. It is my hope to emigrate to the United States within the next six months. Some Jewish friends are arranging it.
Erik Dorf committed suicide on May 16, 1945, during an interrogation by U.S. Army intelligence. This was precisely a week before his chief, Himmler, committed suicide, in the identical manner, after being arrested by British authorities in Lüneburg.
On learning of my nephew’s death, on my next trip to Berlin, I called on his widow and children. Frau Dorf showed me an unsigned letter from “a comrade” saying that Erik Dorf had died a hero’s death in defense of the Reich. I could not let the matter stand, and I told them the truth—that Erik Dorf was a criminal, a mass murderer, a participant in the most appalling crime in human history. I regret to say that neither Marta Dorf nor her children accepted this, and I was told to leave—indeed, called a “traitor” by Peter Dorf, the Major’s fifteen-year-old son.
As for your father, I did know him at Auschwitz. He and a man named Lowy were members of my road-building team. You have read my testimony and you know that I made repeated efforts to save Jews from the gassings by selecting certain men and more or less sequestering them from the SS. I regret that I could not protect your father longer than I did. I suspect my nephew, with whom I had been at odds for some time, had something to do with his consignment to the chambers.
Your father appeared to me a man of great kindness and dignity and I am numb with shame and guilt that I was part of the
nation that destroyed such people. That is why I have chosen to speak out and be heard. For what little consolation it is, he went to his death with courage and even, as I recall, a touch of humor. In my hazed mind, I seem to recall him joking the prisoner named Lowy as they were marched off.
No, I did not know your mother or your brother. They both seem to have been wonderful people, and again I am left with that dread, drained, defeated feeling as I look back on the destruction we visited on so many people in those nightmare years.
In my own defense—-weak as it is—I still had four hundred Jews working for me, saved from the chambers, at the time Auschwitz was liberated.
Please feel free to write to me again if I can be of help. That I am numbered among the “Righteous Christians” of Europe is an honor I am not certain I merit. But I accept it humbly. Perhaps someday we will meet in Israel.
Most truly yours,
Kurt Dorf
On May 11, 1945, I rode into Theresienstadt with a Czech brigade. Many of the soldiers were Jews. There was even a man from Helena’s street in Prague, who had known her, and known her parents. He told me they were long dead; he didn’t know the details. In turn, I told him very little about Helena. Yes, we had been married. My silence told him something about me—an odd duck, this Berliner, ex-partisan.
I still did not cry. I tried not to think of her. I had loved her too much, too intensely. In danger all the time, we had clung to one another. We had lived several lifetimes in our years together. Now she was gone. I was isolated, cold. I had trouble listening to people talk. They wore me out with their stories. There had been too much suffering, too much misery. I found that I wanted to sit alone, lapse into silences, make no attachments.
On my way back to Czechoslovakia, I wandered through Auschwitz and learned from some survivors that both my parents and my brother had died there. Of course there was no trace of them.
Later, at a camp called Gross-Rosen, I ran into this man Hirsch Weinberg, the tailor who had known Karl in Buchenwald and had seen him again when he was dying in Auschwitz. Weinberg told me about the last picture Karl ever drew. That strange, crude thing—the hand reaching out of a swamp. Weinberg told me he also had reason to believe that my sister-in-law Inga was still in the camp.