The Devouring

by James R Benn

  “Barcelona is the only stop Swiss Air makes. Outside of Germany, that is,” she said. “I didn’t think you wanted a flight to Berlin.”

  “An OSS agent will meet you at the airport there,” Dulles said. “You’ll be back in London in no time.”

  “Sounds fine,” I said. “We better get a move on.”

  “Not so fast,” Dulles said, holding up a hand. I wondered if he were about to lower the boom. “There’s one more thing. I want you to know that I appreciate what you’ve done, and the work it took to get here. Not to mention bringing Lasho to us. He’s a valuable asset.”

  “And a decent man,” I said. “I hope you can work some passport magic for him.”

  “When the war’s over we’ll take care of our own, don’t worry. But right now, I have something for you, Baron. You might find it helpful.”

  “Why, thank you, sir,” Kaz said, clearly surprised. “But what about Billy?”

  “This has to do with your visit to the bank the other day. I thought I might be able to help with that.” Dulles gave a nod to Maureen, who left the room and returned seconds later with a familiar guy in tow.

  “I believe you’ve met Hans Bernd Gisevius, the German vice consul,” Dulles said. “Both at the reception and outside my door. So you know not to repeat anything of this meeting.”

  “Of course not,” Kaz said, standing as Gisevius came nearer. He was a tall man and towered over both of us. We shook hands, and I wondered what the hell a German, even one working with Dulles, could do for Kaz.

  “Baron, Allen has told me of your experience at the Credit Suisse bank. He asked me to determine if it were possible to obtain an official death certificate for your father,” Gisevius said.

  “That is very kind of you both, but I doubt it would be possible, given the circumstances,” Kaz said, somewhat stiffly.

  “Yes, I thought so myself. I was prepared to see to a forgery, which would not be terribly difficult. But that was not necessary. Please, Baron, have a seat.” Gisevius gestured to the empty chair and leaned against Dulles’s desk. Kaz looked warily at Dulles and then sat, curiosity overcoming his studied formality.

  “I believe I have news for you. You do know that your family was targeted by the SS, as members of the Polish intelligentsia.” Kaz nodded, his hand clenched in a fist. “But what you may not know is that your father succumbed to a heart attack several days after the invasion of Poland but before the capitulation.”

  “Oh my god,” Kaz whispered. His hand went to his face, and then he quickly recovered. “That means my family was left without him when the Germans came.” I could see the horror in his face, the image of his mother, younger brothers, and sisters alone and at the mercy of the SS. “I always imagined he would have given them strength.”

  “Baron, if my pitiful condolences mean anything, you have them. And the promise that I, and others, are working to bring down this monstrous regime,” Gisevius said, making his own fist and slamming it against his leg.

  “Yes, yes, of course, thank you,” Kaz said, still struggling to take in this new information. “But what does this have to do with the bank?”

  “I was able to secure this,” Gisevius said, withdrawing a document from his pocket. “The death certificate from the hospital where your father died.”

  Kaz took the certificate, his hand trembling as he read it. He didn’t speak. The room went silent as he stared at the paper. Dulles fired up his pipe and looked out the window.

  “There is one other thing,” Gisevius said, his voice nearly a whisper.

  “Dear god, what else?” Kaz said, a sob catching in his throat.

  “Your sister Angelika. I cannot say for certain, but she may be alive. At least, she is not on the list of those who were . . . put to death.”

  “Angelika? She was twelve years old in 1939,” Kaz said, jumping up from his chair. “Is it possible? She is alive?”

  “The SS keeps meticulous records. No other Kazimierz has been taken into custody since those early days. She may be alive and using other identity papers. Or with the underground, the Polish Home Army. I am sorry to awaken all these memories, Baron, but I thought you would want to know.”

  “Yes, I do, thank you!” Kaz said, grasping Gisevius by the hand and pumping it with both of his. No kisses for the German, though. “It does give me hope, and for that I am in your debt.”

  After a few minutes more of chitchat, there wasn’t much left to say except farewell. Maureen bundled us out into her car. Kaz sat in the back, cradling the suitcase and still in a daze.

  “Did you know about all that?” I asked her.

  “Hans came back from Germany yesterday and told us. Quite a surprise, eh?”

  “Yeah, I’ll say. Now what about your idea for the gold?”

  “We’re headed there now. Remember Dr. Veit Wyler? He was with Hans at Huber’s reception,” she said.

  “The lawyer,” Kaz said. “The chap who used the old law about military uniforms to give Jewish refugees sanctuary.”

  “Precisely. He keeps secret bank accounts for Jews who have sent him money instead of the banks. He’ll know what to do.”

  “How secret are they if you know about them?” I asked.

  “Secrets are my business, Billy, dear boy,” she said. “Veit will know what to do.”

  In half an hour we were seated in Veit Wyler’s office, sipping coffee. The suitcase sat on the floor by his desk, unopened. He’d felt its weight and had been impressed.

  “No record of the accounts that were drained by this Hannes creature?” Wyler asked.

  “None,” Maureen said. “He covered his tracks well. And you know the banking community.”

  “Ah yes, the famous Swiss sphere of secrecy. Bank records are sacrosanct. Unless you’re a Nazi and the account holder is Jewish,” he said.

  “You maintain accounts for many people, I understand. Do you have any ideas?” Kaz said.

  “Miss Conaty told me of your problems at Credit Suisse, Baron,” Wyler said. “There will be many others after the war, when surviving family members make their way here. Perhaps we could set up a fund for those who have some proof, but not enough for the banks.”

  “That would be perfect,” Kaz said. “We will leave the gold with you, to use as you see fit.” Wyler looked at Maureen, who nodded her approval.

  “Very well. Thank you for your trust,” he said.

  “Tell me, why do you do it?” I asked. “For people you don’t know.”

  “I am Jewish myself, so I must help my own people, mustn’t I? Also, I believe that where you find a lack of human kindness, you must make up the deficit yourself. So I do what I can. I hold the repository of hope for those who have none. As Miss Conaty knows, here, hidden among my law volumes, are the ledgers of accounts I hold in trust.” Behind his desk were rows and rows of legal books, hiding the secrets of the oppressed in plain sight.

  I watched Kaz tap his fingers on his knee, a nervous habit I’d seen before. His gaze darted from the law books to Wyler, then back again. The drumming fingers relaxed.

  “Dr. Wyler, we do not have much time,” Kaz said, withdrawing the death certificate from his jacket pocket. “I would like a power of attorney document drawn up, with you as my agent.”

  “What do you wish me to do, Baron?” Wyler said, taking a fountain pen and starting to make notes.

  “Bring this death certificate to the Credit Suisse bank and establish access to my late father’s account there for myself and one other person,” Kaz said, placing the paper on Wyler’s desk.

  “The other person’s name?”

  “Angelika Kazimierz. My sister, whom I hope is alive, somewhere in occupied Poland.”

  Hope. Love. The lights that illuminate the darkness of war.

  I left Kaz to finish the paperwork with Wyler and walked outside, feeling the sun on
my face, breathing the clean, crisp air. I sent up a quick prayer to Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, that one day I’d see Kaz reunited with his sister.

  My prayer felt empty. Mere Sunday school words against the onslaught of this war with all of its mechanized terror and the evil men who served it on the battlefield, in concentration camps, government offices, factories, and even in the quiet marble corridors of Swiss banks.

  The devouring was upon us. It sought Lasho, Angelika, and all those who struggled to survive until the war burned itself out. It sought our bodies, killing and maiming with industrial efficiency.

  It sought our souls, leaving us killers as we drew breath at the end of the day.

  “Let’s go, Billy,” Kaz said, appearing silently at my side. “I’m finished here.”

  “That was a good idea, Kaz. Angelika will be well taken care of if she makes it here,” I said as we descended the steps.

  “Do you think there is a chance she’s still alive?” Kaz asked. His voice broke and he halted, turning his face away, feigning a sudden interest in the white clouds drifting across the sky.

  “Sure,” I said, putting my arm around his shoulders. “She’s a Kazimierz, of the Augustus clan. She’ll make it.”

  If the devouring could be kept at bay.

  Author’s Note

  Switzerland maintained a stance of armed neutrality during the Second World War, but it was tilted in favor of Nazi Germany. The leader of the nation’s armed forces during the war, General Henri Guisan, is revered today by the Swiss for his leadership and determination to resist any foreign invasion.

  But Switzerland was far too valuable to Adolph Hitler as a neutral state. An invasion, even if it succeeded militarily, would do far less for Nazi Germany than Switzerland could as a sovereign nation. Swiss banks accepted and laundered looted gold from the capitals of nations the Germans conquered, and turned a blind eye to the other source of gold provided by the SS: gold fillings and jewelry delivered from extermination camps. The triangle system, as described in this book, was a reality of wartime dealings for Swiss banks. Looted gold from Germany was sold to the banks for Swiss francs. The Germans then used that currency to purchase war materials from other nations, and those countries would then use the Swiss francs to buy the gold of uncertain provenance.

  The Swiss profited greatly from World War II, having taken in, by Allied estimates, more than seven hundred eighty-one million dollars in Nazi gold, of which five hundred seventy-nine million dollars had been looted from the victims of Nazi aggression.

  Switzerland also provided war materials directly to Nazi Germany, which they manufactured on neutral ground safe from Allied bombers. Railroad traffic through the Swiss Alps was also a much safer means of travel to and from Italy than the routes through Austria. While such transit was supposed to have been limited to nonmilitary supplies, there were a number of witnesses who testified to seeing slave laborers, prisoners of war, and other victims herded into cattle cars and transported through neutral Switzerland, as shown in this narrative.

  The aluminum-producing firm Alusuisse, which was bought out by the Canadian firm Alcan in 2008, did purchase Ukrainian slave laborers from the SS for their plant in Singen, Germany. Max Huber, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, was chairman of Alusuisse during those years.

  The Gestapo did resort to the kind of trickery practiced by the character Georg Hannes, who is based on the real-life Georg Hannes Thomae, a Gestapo agent who was able to penetrate the vaunted “sphere of secrecy” and discover secrets about Germans who illegally maintained Swiss bank accounts. As far as I have been able to determine, Thomae suffered no fate as rewarding as the one meted out to Hannes in these pages.

  Operation Safehaven was a real effort by the US Treasury Department and the Office of Strategic Services to contain and control the vast riches built up by the Nazis and deposited in neutral nations. While Safehaven did identify a great deal of looted wealth, it was never able to secure all questionable accounts in Swiss hands. Swiss banks stonewalled efforts to determine the extent of holdings, and the controversy continued for decades.

  The description of conditions at the Wauwilermoos prison have been taken from historical records. The treatment of Allied prisoners was much worse than that of German fliers who were downed over Swiss airspace. The sadistic commander of that prison, Captain André Béguin, was finally arrested by Swiss authorities in September 1945. A Swiss military court called Béguin a “crook, embezzler, con-man and inhuman.” He was convicted of dishonoring Switzerland and its army, administrative misdemeanors, embezzlement, and abuse of authority. He served three and a half years in prison. The italicized passages in Chapter 23 are taken from an actual report from the International Committee of the Red Cross following an inspection of the camp.

  Moe Berg, “the smartest man in baseball,” is a fascinating historical character. His spy career began in 1934, when as part of a baseball team (which included Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig) on a good-will tour of Japan, he slipped away to film home movies from the top of the tallest building in Tokyo. That film was used by the military in planning the famous Doolittle raid on Japan in 1942.

  Berg was assigned to attend the lecture in Switzerland given by Werner Heisenberg in 1944. He was the only OSS spy smart enough, and fluent enough in German, to get away with it. Not only did Berg get into the lecture, he befriended Heisenberg and joined him for dinner that night. After an evening’s conversation, Berg let him live, confident that Germany was nowhere near the development of an atom bomb.

  The record of Switzerland and refugees during the Second World War cries out for comment. Almost 30,000 Jews were turned back at the border, where they could expect to be sent to concentration camps. About 25,000 were allowed entry. Switzerland levied a tax on their Jewish citizens to help pay for Jewish refugees, a burden not imposed on any other group. In addition, Jews who escaped across the border and were arrested often found themselves charged for transportation back to the border crossing, where they were handed over to the Nazis.

  Dr. Rudolph Moret is based on the experiences of Dr. Rudolf Bucher, a Swiss Army medical officer who went on a medical mission to the Eastern Front in 1941–42, and witnessed the atrocities described by the fictional Dr. Moret. Bucher suffered the same fate, stripped of his commission and ostracized for the crime of speaking the truth.

  The Roma (Gypsy) genocide during the Second World War, also known as the Porrajmos, was part of the plan to exterminate Jews, Gypsies, and other “enemies of the race-based state” by the Nazis. Historians do not agree on the number of Roma killed; estimates range from 220,000 to 1.5 million. Roma were systematically turned away at the Swiss border during the war and left to make their way in German-occupied France.

  The character of Maureen Conaty is a stand-in for the real-life Mary Bancroft, who was an OSS spy and one of the many real-life mistresses of Allen Foster Dulles. Maureen Conaty won a character naming at the Murder and Mayhem in Milwaukee mystery conference, and therefore got to play the role of Mary Bancroft. Those were tough high heels to fill.

  Bancroft worked closely with Hans Bernd Gisevius, who provided her with information concerning the anti-Nazi July 20 plot to kill Hitler. Bancroft and Gisevius also had an affair, making Bern a hotbed of espionage in more ways than one. Gisevius survived the war, going into hiding after the failed July 20 plot and fleeing to Switzerland in 1945.

  Finally, gays and lesbians served and fought in all theaters during the Second World War. Theirs was a secret struggle, even as gay soldiers went into combat with the same fears and bravery as their heterosexual comrades. Their story deserves to be told, even though after decades of hidden secrets, many accounts may be lost forever. For readers wishing a more in-depth look, I heartily recommend Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two, by Allan Bérubé.

  sp; James R. Benn, The Devouring