Kurt walked a very dangerous line. He had to pretend to be brutal toward his friend when other guards were around. If just one senior officer suspected that he actually liked the young Jewish violinist, he’d be transferred to another camp or, worse, to the Russian front. He took Simon on a work detail to the farthest corner of the camp and they swapped stories of their childhoods and families. He was the son of a prominent doctor from Düsseldorf and had an older brother in the Luftwaffe Ministry in Berlin. They’d both played piano as children and Kurt had learned the cello, so they argued good-naturedly about which instrument was harder to learn. Kurt admitted that he missed his dog, an Alsatian called Meister, more than his family and talked of his passion for football, ice-skating, and fencing.
Simon told him about Levi, who’d set out so bravely for London but had never been in touch after that night in 1938. And about his mother and sister, left behind outside their house in Berlin in 1939, four years ago.
Despite their envied position as musicians to the officers, Simon and Benjamin still had to work in the armaments section. The extra food gave them strength, and the music gave them something to think about while they completed the repetitive tasks. Simon had considered suggesting that they find some more musicians among the prisoners, audition them, and request instruments for a special string quartet or even larger. Then he realized that the amount of food wouldn’t multiply in proportion and they’d end up getting less to eat. And he doubted the officers would be prepared to go to all that trouble. The violin, and the reward and respect it helped them to gain, had become the whole point to their existence, and they weren’t prepared to share.
One afternoon in December, Benjamin was carrying a box of antiaircraft shells from one side of the room to the other when an unidentified foot shot out between the machines and tripped him. He fell heavily, and the shells went rolling all over the floor. The guards pounced on him and dragged him to his knees. They yelled at him to pick them all up, but before he could finish the task the SS-obertsturmführer blew the whistle for a shift change.
By chance, Kurt was about thirty yards away, escorting a work party to the nearby building site and saw the obertsturmführer and a guard dragging the struggling old man through the snow, followed some distance behind by a younger inmate whom he recognized instantly. He must have broken rank and followed them.
“Simon!” he murmured in horror. He sprinted across the open ground and reached Simon just before he caught up with the trio. “No!”
Simon was completely focused on getting to his father and hadn’t heard or seen Kurt’s approach. The tall man launched himself at Simon and pushed him into the side of the building, pinning him there with his body. The obertsturmführer threw Benjamin down into the snow. “Kneel, you filthy piece of scum,” he yelled.
Kurt pushed Simon even harder into the wall.
“Don’t move an inch, leave it to me,” he whispered into Simon’s ear. He pulled himself upright and walked over to the group.
“What is this?” he asked, as casually as he could.
The guard had pulled his revolver from its holster, cocked it, and had it pointed at Benjamin’s lowered head.
“Stupid old fool, he ruined a whole box of shells.”
“Before you do that, you should know that he’s a master violinist, the major’s favorite.”
Kurt’s voice was icy cold. The older man glanced at him.
“You mean those Jews who come and play in the mess? I never stay. I can’t stand to breathe the air when they pollute it.”
“Still, I wouldn’t kill him before checking with the major. You wouldn’t want him to be furious, and it’s not like he can pluck another violinist out of the night.”
The guard shrugged, started to turn away, thought better of it, and with one flowing movement turned back and fired a single shot at Benjamin. The old man pitched forward into the snow, a large red stain spreading from beneath his face.
“Too late.”
Kurt met Simon’s body hurtling forward toward the assassin. They collided and went flying into the snow. Kurt landed on top of him and stayed there.
“What are you doing?” The obertsturmführer sounded amused and surprised.
Kurt looked up. “Nothing, sir. Just disciplining a man who should be working faster and I fell over him. I’ll deal with it.”
He struggled up and pulled Simon to his feet.
“Don’t say a word,” Kurt snarled as he dragged Simon around the corner. Once out of sight of the guards, he let him go and the young man slumped to the ground.
“I’m sorry, Simon, I had to stop you. He would’ve shot you. What good would that have done your father? I’m going to take you back to the plant and tell them that I called you away but you’re ready for your work detail now. They won’t punish you. Do you understand me? You must work.”
Kurt put his face very close to Simon’s, and there was desperation in his expression.
“If you don’t carry on, Simon, I can’t help you.”
“I was supposed to keep him safe,” Simon mumbled.
“This wasn’t your fault. He made a mistake and they punished him. You must believe in heaven; you must believe he won’t suffer anymore?”
Simon didn’t answer him.
“Come on.” Kurt hauled him to his feet. “It’s too cold out here, and you must go back to your shift. I’ll take care of him, I promise.”
Simon’s world had come to an end. He seesawed between rage and numbness and accepted the condolences of his friends with a blank expression. That night he lay with his face buried in his filthy mattress and cried silent tears of pain and fury. He’d seen the terror in his father’s body replaced by calmness as he’d accepted his fate and said his silent prayers. His papa was dead. After so much suffering and with a half life that was almost bearable, one mistake, one lapse in concentration, and he was gone. So was he the last one left? Or were Simon’s mother and sister still out there, waiting for all this horror to end? Where was Levi? Where was God, for that matter?
It was five days before he was summoned to play in the mess again. There was only one case on the table, the violin his father had played. He gave them Mozart, Brahms, and a piece of Bach his father had loved, the allegro from the Concerto in E. He played as if by remote control and thought of nothing as the music poured out of him. Afterward the major came over to him and said it was unfortunate his father was no longer able to play. It was the closest an officer of the Third Reich was ever going to come to saying he was sorry the man had been killed. Simon knew the major could’ve been court-martialed for apologizing to a Jew so he accepted the statement with a nod and a “thank you, sir.” Kurt escorted him back to his barracks in silence. At the door Simon turned to him.
“Can you tell me? Was the man who shot my father punished? Did it anger the major?”
“Very much. He would court-martial him if he could, but the army wouldn’t allow it. But he gave him some private justice, I believe, and his justice is legendary. I think he would’ve preferred the court-martial.”
Chapter 27
Dachau
April 29, 1945
Some photographs are deafening. Years later, the American first lieutenant would study the black-and-white photograph taken the day that he, and his fellow soldiers, liberated Dachau and relive the noise and the stench and the horror of it all and how it mingled with that peculiar sense of indescribable joy. He spoke German so he understood more of what had happened, and more quickly, than the others.
It had snowed the night before, and a dusting of white lay over everything, like fine confectioner’s sugar. The sun shone brightly but it was cold, an early spring day, Sunday, April 29, 1945. He knew that, like all the men of the Forty-Fifth Infantry Division, he was battle hardened. He’d been in combat with a ruthless enemy for over two years, but nothing he’d so far endured or observed could’ve prepared
him for the vision of hell that lay behind the electrified barbed-wire fence.
The first thing his division came across was a railway spur off the main line leading into the camp. There were over forty open boxcars sitting motionless, in complete silence, seemingly empty. It wasn’t until they got up close that they saw them, over two thousand emaciated bodies, both men and women, who’d been shipped from camp to camp in the last days of the German stand, with no food or water. Some had been shot in the back of the head with pistols, but most had simply died of starvation, thirst, and cold. Now they lay, mute in their agony, covered by a smattering of pure white snow. Later the soldier described their arms as being broomsticks tipped with claws.
Then they moved on, past the imposing homes of the camp directors and through the large gates decorated with the German imperial eagle. The highest-ranking officers had fled, melted into the general public, but the lower ranks were still armed and in the watchtowers. The first lieutenant watched while a German guard, in full military regalia, a recent arrival from the war on the Russian front, saluted an American officer, barked out a “Heil Hitler,” and handed over his pistol as a mark of surrender of the camp. The officer looked around him at the huge piles of bodies and spat in the German’s face, calling him a “schweinehund.” The German was taken away, and some time later the first lieutenant heard a pistol shot.
He remembered chaos more clearly than anything else, chaos and a dawning sense of horror. Slowly the living skeletons started to emerge from the long wooden buildings. Some were waving tattered Allied flags, symbols they’d pieced together from rags and patches of cloth. As word spread among the terrified populace that the Americans were there, the numbers grew quickly; eventually there’d be more than thirty thousand prisoners to account for. The walking dead became a milling, pressing crowd of cheering, groaning, shrieking humanity who were desperate to touch their liberators, climbing over one another to kiss arms and legs and touch the jeeps.
He found the approaches frightening at first, but then he realized that once they’d touched him, kissed him, shook his hand, they moved on to someone else. Those who weren’t able to walk crawled toward the soldiers, and he picked some of them up and carried them to safety so they wouldn’t get trampled on.
Reinforcements from the Forty-Second and Forty-Fifth Infantry Divisions began arriving. They, too, had encountered the boxcars in the railway spur first, and with a roar they ran into the camp on the double, their rage obliterating the usual concern for having adequate cover and concealment.
A full tour of the camp revealed all to the first lieutenant. A room no bigger than his mother’s kitchen housed fifty men dying of typhoid who could do nothing more than smile at him. Kennels were filled with large German shepherds with their throats slashed and their heads crushed. And the dogs weren’t the only ones to feel the vengeance of the imprisoned; guards had been stripped naked to prevent them melting away in civilian clothing. Some lay where they’d been drowned in the moat that ran through the camp; others were torn apart or shot while resisting arrest. Everywhere there were mounds of bodies, stacked up against buildings and spilling out of open doorways, and the stench of decaying flesh permeated his uniform through his skin to his very bones.
Next he came across the evidence he later feared would send him insane, in a brick building across a bridge, separate from the rest. First, he encountered a room full of clothing: shoes, pants, shirts, and coats. Then he came upon an area with tables covered in lines of soap and towels and an entryway into a shower room. And last he found the massive ovens, standing open, their contents spilling out onto the floor, mountains of ash, pieces of bone, bodies waiting to be fed into the yawning abyss.
He stumbled into the weak sunlight and gripped the wall while he emptied the contents of his stomach onto the ground. Everywhere around him his fellow soldiers were reacting the same way, and as they gasped for breath all they could almost taste was the sickly, sweet aroma of burned human beings. Blindly, with rage tearing at his heart, he made his way back to the open parade ground. Part of him wanted to just run and not stop until he was miles away; the rest of him knew he could never leave—it would haunt his dreams until he died.
Some measure of order was being imposed, and finally the message was getting through to the dazed prisoners. They’d have to stay here while they were processed and they couldn’t eat anything until food could be found that they could digest safely: dried bread, crackers, and chocolate soup. Over to his right he saw a tableau of three people frozen in a motionless standoff and within a second had assessed the situation. A tall, well-built man stood holding a white flag. He wore only trousers but was unmistakably an SS officer. There were cuts on his face and arms, and blood ran down to the fingers clenched around the stained flag. Two feet away an American corporal pointed a pistol at the German’s head, and the fury on his face was gut-wrenching. The young man had probably never felt this enraged in his life.
At his feet knelt a small, skeletally thin figure, covered in dirt and wearing rags that barely hid a fraction of his body. Beside him on the ground was an object so incongruous it seemed to shine like a lantern. It was a violin case. The first lieutenant strode toward the group.
“What’s happening here, Corporal?”
All three men looked at him. There were tearstains on the American’s square face.
“I can’t let him live, sir. They’re animals, all of them.”
The small figure on the ground began to plead in German.
“No, please. No, please. Don’t shoot him.”
Gently the lieutenant knelt down beside him.
“What are you saying?” he asked in German. The old man’s face lit up with recognition.
“Please stop him, sir. Don’t let him shoot, please, sir.”
“But it’s over. You don’t have to be frightened of him anymore; it’s time for him to pay for all this.”
“He’s my friend. I’d be dead but for him. He isn’t a bad man, he kept me alive. Please, sir, don’t kill him.”
There was a note of hysteria in his voice. The officer straightened up and stared into the German officer’s face. His eyes were very blue, and he had a bright red scar down one cheek. He returned the gaze calmly; he clearly wasn’t afraid to die.
“Name and rank.”
“SS-Untersturmführer Kurt Walder.”
“Is it true? Are you friends?” he asked skeptically.
“Yes, sir. This prisoner had special privileges, and he played the violin for us. I saw that no harm came to him. Gave him food.”
“What’s his name?”
“Simon Horowitz. He comes from Berlin.”
He looked from the German to the pleading face below him. The eyes were very black in their sunken hollows but clear and bright, and the face was filthy, lined, exhausted, but the emotion was real.
“Very well. Take him away, Corporal.”
The other man hesitated and then holstered his pistol.
“Yes, sir,” he replied with obvious reluctance.
“He’s your prisoner, Corporal. On my orders, see no harm comes to him.”
“Yes, sir.”
The corporal saluted, then stepped away. The SS officer bent down and helped the old man to his feet. They embraced, then the officer was pulled away and marched off across the square. The first lieutenant picked up the violin case and held it out to the old man, who was watching the figure disappear across the parade ground. When he turned back, there were tears in his eyes.
“Thank you, sir. I pray that he survives,” he said softly.
“How long have you been here?”
“Since November 1939, sir. What is the date?”
“Good God! 1945. How did you survive this?”
“I don’t know. I played my violin.”
A sudden thought seemed to occur to him, and he smiled at the American.
He looked stronger than many, still terribly thin and small but not diseased and with a straighter stance and more fire inside. The officer studied his face again and realized, with a sudden shock, that he wasn’t elderly at all. He was an exhausted, lined, bald, filthy man of no more than twenty-five, clutching a violin case.
Chapter 28
Vermont
August 2008
They expected him to say something. The silence had gone on for some time and hung around the table like a curtain of uncertainty. Rafael gazed at the photo in his hand, the smiling, confident boys holding two large violins. When he looked up, the old men were waiting patiently, their faces impassive, understanding in their eyes.
“It’s an amazing story. Thank you, thank you so very much for sharing it with me.”
It seemed inadequate, but he suspected that anything would. He was looking at Simon, and the small man shrugged his shoulders.
“The most important thing to remember, Maestro, is that surviving the camp doesn’t make you better than all those who died. It just means you were lucky and, perhaps, you had something more to live for. On one level it was about a strange kind of fate, an arbitrary and completely unpredictable sort of . . . karma.”
Rafael nodded his understanding.
“I have some questions, and if I don’t ask them, I will wonder forever. Do you mind?”
“Ask away. I’ll answer them if I can.”
“What happened to Kurt? Did he survive?”
Simon paused before he began his answer.
“I wrote to his father about ten years after the war and I asked him if he could give me Kurt’s address. His father was a doctor in Düsseldorf. For a whole year, I hear nothing. Then one day I get a letter, from his brother, Carl. He said both his parents were dead, of guilt and shame, and that Kurt had not returned from the war. They’d been told he was killed at the very end of the war, perhaps even after the surrender. He was an SS officer, very unpopular job. So I wrote back to him and told him that I had been in Dachau and his brother was a very brave man, a good man, and that I owed him my life more than once. He should honor his brother’s memory. He was very grateful for that and wished his parents had been able to read it. He didn’t say as much, but I have always suspected that his father committed suicide. We keep in touch from time to time.”
Keeper of Secrets (9780062240316) Page 16