Accidental Saviors

by Jack A Saarela

  Kersten couldn’t picture Himmler telling a joke, much less delivering a funny punchline. But his own spirits rose as he thought about planting his feet on Finnish soil again. They sagged almost as quickly, however, when he realized that there was no secure way, from the Ukrainian forest, to contact Ambassador Mäki in Berlin to confirm the rumor. He wanted to give him a heads-up.

  “You don’t look especially pleased or excited, Doctor. Is there something wrong?”

  “No, Herr Reichsführer.” He fumbled a bit to invent something to say. “It’s just that you caught me quite by surprise. Of course, I’m pleased to be going.”

  “I have other news for you, Kersten, which I think you will consider good. We finally caught up with your elusive countryman, the smuggler, the guy with the name Niska.”

  “Algot Niska?”

  “Yes, that’s the one, the one I asked you about a few years ago. He had been smuggling Jews out of Germany and Austria and slipped away right under our noses.”

  “And you say, you caught up with him? That’s good news for you and The Reich, but I fail to see how that’s good news for me as a Finn.”

  “Or as a fellow Jew-lover, I’d say. Anyway, we caught up with him, but he managed to give us the slip again. Not on his own, mind you, but rather with the help of that shifty government I am going to talk with.”

  “Oh?”

  “The SS tracked him down to a seaside cabin on one of the small islands off the Finnish west coast. General Buschenhagen ordered them to apprehend him and ship him back to Germany. A military tribunal would try him and sentence him to one of our camps.”

  Himmler paused to let this sink in Kersten’s consciousness. Kersten tried not to let his grave sense of disappointment be obvious. He maintained a stoic face.

  “But the Finnish High Command intervened on the bastard’s behalf. ‘This stalwart man fought bravely in the Winter War against our common enemy, the Russians,’ they boasted. ‘Now that together we have signed a memorandum of understanding to continue to fight this mutual enemy hand-in-hand and side-by-side, we cannot and will not release him into your custody. Besides, isn’t Herr Niska on your side now after our agreement?’

  “Such naïve drivel! So as not to get our agreement off to a bad start, however, Buschenhagen had no choice but salute, turn around and come back to headquarters in Helsinki empty-handed.”

  The thought that the SS now had headquarters in the capital, Helsinki, was beyond repugnant to Kersten. “No doubt, uttering a few choice German words under his breath as he did so,” he said while was sporting a secret expansive smile on his heart.

  “The Führer has given me a lengthy agenda. I am tempted to register a protest about this with Field Marshall Mannerheim of the Finnish High Command, however. But since he and I have to put our heads together about coordinating our joint advance into Russia, I’ve got to swallow my pride and let go of that idea. The Führer is mad as hell at you Finns. We could penetrate Leningrad and wipe it off the face of the earth if you obstinate Finns would just do as he asks and deliver artillery and ammunition from Karelia across Lake Ladoga to our forces outside the city when we have it in the palm of our hands.”

  “Herr Reichsführer, let me remind you that the Finnish government agreed to accompany German forces only as far as the Karelian-Russian border, no farther. We are your cobelligerent, not your ally, and in this specific conflict only. There’s a difference. Finland isn’t crazy enough to trespass into Soviet territory. That would be suicide. That’s for your Wehrmacht to attempt.”

  “Yes, I know what the agreement was. But the Führer wants to re-negotiate that part of the memorandum of understanding. I’m sure the powers-that-be in Finland will see the wisdom in acquiescing to Germany’s revised wishes.”

  Once again, Kersten was irritated at the arrogance of the Nazis. Revised wishes! But he had made his point. He held his tongue.

  “But the most important part of the agenda is to talk over the Jewish Question with President Ryti.”

  There it is again. The Germans and their damnable obsession with the Jewish Question.

  “I’m not the president, of course,” Kersten said. “But I think you need to be prepared for some resistance when discussing that matter.”

  Himmler’s body straightened noticeably. The blood rushed to his face.

  “Your president should not forget that our part of the bargain with Finland is that we will supply adequate foodstuffs and fuel. My intelligence sources report that their stocks of bread and grain have dwindled to the point that they have only three or four weeks’ supply remaining. The president will have to choose between hunger for his nation and delivering up their Jews to us.”

  Kersten was moved by his own anger to respond and let the chips fall where they may. He took a deep breath, and then raised the volume of his voice and took a bold step in Himmler’s direction.

  “Is this the way your Führer treats a brother-in-arms?”

  “We will abide no allowances. Finland must do as the Führer wishes.”

  Kersten was ready to risk pushing Himmler’s ire even further.

  “Let me remind you,” he replied, gritting his teeth, “that according to the memorandum of understanding, Finland remains an independent state. You can’t treat us like the Poles or Ukrainians. We agreed only to fight the Russians by your side as a sovereign nation. We will do in our own country as we like.”

  Himmler’s back was up. Kersten noticed that Himmler’s eyeglasses were beginning to fog up.

  “Don’t talk horseshit, Kersten! The independence of Germany’s neighbors and associates, whatever the agreement, only lasts as long as it suits the Führer. Finland is no different.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Vinnitsya, Ukraine: July 21, 1942

  Kersten was dangling between excited anticipation and nervous apprehension about the mission to Finland. He had to wait in any case until Himmler had returned from a quick trip to Poland.

  Himmler was gone almost three days. Kersten was anxious for his return because their scheduled departure from Berlin to Finland was less than a week away. The way Kersten discovered that Himmler had arrived back at the field headquarters in the Ukraine was that a breathless SS private had knocked on his cottage door, interrupting his nap.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Dr. Kersten. But the Reichsführer is in great distress. He wants you at his quarters as soon as possible.”

  Kersten suspected than that whatever the purpose of Himmler’s trip to Poland, it had triggered another relentless attack in his abdomen.

  Kersten could hear Himmler’s moaning in pain even before he took the three small steps up to his cottage. Once he opened the door, the groaning was as loud as Kersten had ever heard coming from Himmler.

  “Kersten! I thought you’d never get here. What took you so long? I’m the one who had to travel the kilometers from Poland.”

  Kersten made no effort to protest that he had come as quickly as he could. “Well, I’m here now.”

  Kersten rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and launched into another massage session. Within seconds, it seems, Himmler’s groans softened into whimpers.

  “I should have taken you along with me to Poland,” Himmler managed to say. “I don’t know why I didn’t.”

  “I’m all ears, Herr Reichsführer. But let me say first, welcome back.”

  “It’s the Führer, of course, who dispatched me to Poland. He wanted a first-hand report on the conditions in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw and our progress in cleansing it.”

  “Cleansing? Whatever do you mean?”

  Kersten was well aware that Himmler didn’t mean the SS were sweeping the streets and washing the gutters.

  “The Führer believes the time has come to tear it down and liquidate the population of that cesspool. And I tend to agree.”

  “Liquidate them? That’s over 450,000 people.”

  “450,000 Jews, Kersten, not people.”

  Kersten was speechless. H
e knew better that to object at this time.

  “Our German industrial leaders like Többens and Schultz couldn’t depend on the ghetto Jews as workers in their plants and factories any longer. It’s as though the Jews were working slowly very deliberately. They’re truly such a lazy bunch. A stiff-necked race, as their own God himself calls them in the Bible.”

  Kersten was both incensed and horrified. He decided to maintain a diplomatic silence, however.

  “When I arrived in Warsaw, my usually dependable and efficient SS boys were having difficulty getting the Jews to cooperate in gathering at the Unschlagplatz to be marched to the trains for resettlement in a camp a little northeast of the city.”

  “The camp named Treblinka, by any chance?”

  “Yes. That’s one of our newer resettlement camps. State of the art. You know about it, do you?”

  Kersten brought back to mind the revealing, horrific photos by the two Swedish journalists of the work camps just a half-year earlier. He was leaning toward giving credence to the rumors that the Treblinka camp, like Auschwitz and Birkenau, was of an altogether higher order of brutality than even the worst of the others.

  “Treblinka is really a camp for extermination, isn’t it?” Kersten asked accusingly, “For ‘liquidation’ as you call it?”

  “We have installed gas chambers there, yes. But this new method of liquidation is so much more humane than the crude practice before it of lining the Jews up on the edge of a pit, shooting them in the back and watching them fall on top of one another at the bottom of the pit.”

  “I should be gratified and comforted by that?”

  “Kersten, I don’t want to debate the merits or drawbacks of extermination with you right now. I know full well what you think of it. I want to get back to my experience in Warsaw.”

  Kersten reined in his anger and resumed his neutral professional demeanor. “My apologies. Please, continue.”

  “So since my men were not succeeding with the obstinate Jews, I decided to order them to set every single block on fire immediately—every last one. Before too long, one block after another was blazing hotter than hell. I’ll tell you, Kersten, that got the Jews to scamper out of their hiding places and dugouts like the rats they are. It was quite a show. Some were jumping out of the third and fourth story windows to escape the smoke and flames.”

  Kersten gave no visible indication on his face but his insides were sickened to the core.

  “You know, Kersten, the will to live even among Jews is astounding to me. Some of those who had jumped from their flat, their bones undoubtedly broken, still tried to crawl across the street to the blocks of buildings that hadn’t yet been set aflame, or were just partially burned. It was a pathetic sight.”

  Kersten could hardly stand to hear any more of this depraved abuse of life. But he knew better than to get up and leave in the middle of Himmler’s monologue. As painful as it was to listen, there might be some suggestion of diagnosis and treatment hidden in all the drivel, some constructive reason to justify sitting through it.

  “Our SS men shot them before they could get to the other side.”

  Kersten closed his eyes slowly in sorrow.

  “I left the ghetto in short order and went to observe the loading of the Jews onto the railcars at the siding.”

  Suddenly, Himmler’s voice became less strident and confident. He took a deep breath before he continued.

  “The Jews who had obeyed the original order to gather at the Platz were carrying small suitcases with clothes they would need as they were being resettled. Of course, we knew that they might have stashed whatever valuables they had left in the suitcases. They were ordered to put all the suitcases in one car on the train.”

  “They were told, no doubt, that they could retrieve their luggage when they arrived at Treblinka?” Kersten commented sadly.

  “Well, yes. To be truthful, though, they wouldn’t need their suitcases when they got to Treblinka.”

  Kersten was sure he detected a definite note of wistfulness, a hint of shame even, in Himmler’s voice. Strange.

  “I watched the whole process impassively in my official capacity. I was making sure that the men were performing their duty properly and efficiently. The Jews being loaded onto the train were just pathetic faceless, nameless specters to me…But Kersten, I must have been exhausted doing my duty. Because what I saw next affected me in a way very few incidents in this war have.”

  Himmler was no longer giving an objective official report to Kersten. His monologue was edging toward painful personal disclosure.

  “Oh? Can you say more about what you saw?” Kersten had to avoid getting too close to Himmler’s emotions too quickly lest he panic and shut down completely.

  “I saw a young woman, a teacher no doubt, lead a group of little boys to the railcar. I assumed they were her students. She stood by the open door of the car and smilingly supervised as each boy laid his book bag or knapsack carefully, almost lovingly, onto the floor of the railcar.”

  It was curious to Kersten that Himmler should choose to describe this particular scenario in detail.

  “Kersten, the scene brought me back to the closing day each year of the Catholic school in München where I was a teacher before I joined the party. Suddenly, I started to feel the same melancholy as I did every summer when my pupils were leaving for holidays. Imagine that. Right there, at the edge of the notorious ghetto, I was reminiscing about my little male students who are undoubtedly grown up by now, maybe serving in the Wehrmacht or maybe even the SS.”

  Himmler’s eyes were beginning to dampen. His thin lower lip was quivering.

  “There was one particular boy. I could hear him asking his teacher if he’d be able to get his notebook of drawings back after the train ride. ‘I’m sure you will get it back when we get to our new home. We’ll have a school there just as we did here,’ I heard the teacher answer. She was trying her very best to sound reassuring and cheerful, but I could tell from the pained look on her face that she knew she was telling him a white lie. The boy seemed satisfied, so much did he trust his teacher.”

  “I suspect that the teacher knew that his was not to be any customary relocation out into the country,” Kersten added.

  “Yes, I suspect so, too. What a sacred thing it is, Kersten, this innocent trust of a pupil for his teacher…I was so very moved...so very moved.”

  Kersten sensed that silence would encourage Himmler to say more.

  “This little boy, he looked almost like one particular boy named Rolf that I had as a pupil one year. Rolf was so bright-eyed, so smart and curious, so respectful that it would have been hard for any teacher not to love him.”

  “And you did?” Kersten asked.

  “Yes,” Himmler said sadly. He turned and looked away from Kersten, as though in shame like a little boy himself, confessing some petty act of disobedience to a parent.

  “I approached the boy and his teacher near the railcar and lifted him into my arms. He made no effort to resist. ‘I will personally see to it that you get your drawing notebook back,’ I told him.”

  “And did you?” Kersten felt like adding, “Did you tell the boy a white lie, too?” but resisted the temptation to rub Himmler’s nose in it.

  “Unfortunately, I could not,” Himmler confessed on the verge of tears. “I couldn’t go ahead and meet the train at Treblinka, of course. Besides, I noticed that at that moment all eyes were on me. Globocnik, my appointee to supervise the resettlement, the SS who were loading the Jews onto the train, even the Kapos; they all stopped what they were doing and watched me in silence, as if transfixed by disbelief at my actions for a time that felt like an hour.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I gave the Heil, Hitler salute and turned and left. I felt thoroughly humiliated by what I had done. They all saw me reveal weakness, their notorious leader having an emotional meltdown.”

  Kersten delayed saying anything. Then he asked, “Reveal weakness? Or was it love and
empathy instead?”

  “Love is for the bedroom, Kersten, and empathy is for the priests. I’m the head of the SS. In any case, what I felt in Warsaw was not as harrowing as what I experienced after I arrived back here last night.”

  “Oh?”

  “I didn’t sleep a wink. It was one of the few times I regretted that I abstain from alcohol. Perhaps some Schnapps might have helped me to sleep…Kersten, I couldn’t purge from my brain or my eyes, even when closed tight, the haunting image of the boy being told by his teacher at Treblinka that he was going with the others to the bathhouse to get cleaned up after the train journey with a shower.”

  Tears erupted from Himmler’s eyes and flowed down his waxen cheeks. Kersten nudged his chair closer to Himmler’s quietly, careful not to distract Himmler and perhaps short-circuit his confession of regret and shame.

  Himmler continued tearfully. “Kersten, the boy went into the shower chamber trusting and believing the teacher. That’s sacred. I can’t burn from my mind the vision of the boy when he discovers that there is not just water coming from the shower, and his gradually collapsing to the hard concrete floor. Oh, my God! I wept most of the night. Oh, Rolfie! I’m so sorry.”

  Kersten asked softly, “And do you wonder if he ever asked his teacher where his drawing notebook he had been promised was?”

  Himmler was absolutely silent for a moment. Then he almost whispered, “Yes, I do wonder.”

  Kersten intuited that he and Himmler had arrived at a holy moment, and that it was most fitting and prudent to honor it with a respectful silence.

  Himmler raised both hands to cover his face. His body was shaking from his weeping, which was almost uncontrollable now. Kersten had seen Himmler in pain many times, but never so vulnerable as now. Perhaps even some purported to be monsters can feel remorse. Kersten took the risk to rise quietly from his chair, approach the trembling body of Himmler, and gently wrap both arms around him. To Kersten’s pleasant surprise, Himmler didn’t flinch or resist. He lowered his hands from his face, took out a handkerchief, and wiped his eyes.