Voices of the Dead

by Peter Leonard

  “Heil Hitler,” the Master of Ceremonies said, raising his arm in the Nazi salute.

  The room erupted, Blackshirts screaming, “Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler,” standing, arms raised, ax handles banging on the wood floor like thunder.”

  “Who is he?” Harry whispered.

  “I don’t know.” Colette whispered back. She raised her camera and took a couple shots.

  “I appreciate your enthusiasm.” The MC paused, waiting for the noise to die down. “It is now my pleasure to introduce our distinguished guests. These men are the true heroes of the Reich, men of conviction, men of character. And now, without further ado, let me present Otto Reder, Unterscharführer at Sobibor.”

  Reder, the first man at the table on the MC’s right, stood and took a bow. He was tall, distinguished-looking. The Blackshirts cheered, banged their beer mugs on the table, their ax handles on the floor.

  “Wilhelm Hoffman, Sturmbannführer at Buchenwald.”

  He was on the left, stood and gave the Heil Hitler salute and the skinheads went crazy.

  “Gerhard Ulmer from Gusen, Emil Drescher from Treblinka, Kurt Kretschmer from Mauthausen and Ernst Rohm from Auschwitz.

  The Blackshirts were standing, shouting: “Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil.”

  The six Nazis on the dais sat. The cheering stopped, and then it was quiet.

  “There’s someone else on the right side of the dais,” Harry said. “You see him?”

  “There, in the corner,” Colette said.

  “Like he wants to see what’s going on but doesn’t want to be seen. Get him, will you?”

  “I’ll try but I’m not promising much. I need a longer lens.” Colette aimed her camera, took a couple shots.

  “In their day,” the MC said, “these men did their job and did it well. And now we have to do ours. We are the new rat catchers. The new exterminators. The new patriots. We have to take back the Fatherland.”

  The cheering started again.

  “Bitte, bitte,” the MC said. He waited till the room was quiet.

  “I am going to be counting on each one of you to do your duty for the New Reich.” More cheers, a standing ovation. “Now I want to show you something.”

  On cue two Blackshirts appeared from behind the dais, escorting a man in a striped concentration-camp uniform, hands tied behind his back, black hood over his head.

  The MC said, “Do you know what this is?”

  The Blackshirts yelled, “Jew, Jew, Jew.”

  “Better hold onto your wallet.”

  The hall erupted in laughter.

  “That’s right. He wants your money. He wants your car. He wants your house. He wants everything you own. Are you going to let him take it?”

  “Nooo,” said the Blackshirts, on their feet again.

  Colette balanced her camera on top of the railing and pressed the button on the speed winder, taking more shots.

  “Who do you think the prisoner is?”

  “An actor. Harry, this is drama. They’re doing it for effect.”

  Then the Blackshirts were on their feet, singing:

  The street free for the brown battalions,

  The street free for the stormtroopers,

  Millions full of hope look up at the swastika;

  The day breaks for freedom and for bread.

  “What’s that?” Harry said.

  “The ‘Horst Wessel Song,’” Colette said. “It’s the Nazi theme song.”

  “It’s catchy.”

  “Harry, we have to go. They always sing it at the end.”

  They went back downstairs through the kitchen, Blackshirts banging their ax handles and cheering. The smoker had returned, standing just outside the door. They crouched behind a stainless-steel counter. Harry could hear the MC wrapping it up. “I want to thank you for joining us tonight…”

  Colette looked worried. “Harry, we have to do something. They’ll be coming out any minute.”

  He glanced around the kitchen, got an idea. Moved to the industrial range against the wall, picked up a heavy cast-iron skillet. Harry moved to the door, went out and hit the Blackshirt on top of the head. He dropped to the ground. Harry tossed the skillet in the dumpster. They dragged the Blackshirt into the parking lot and left him next to an Opel. First impression, he was drunk. It might buy them a little time. Then he heard voices, turned and saw Blackshirts coming out of the hall.

  They crouched and ran to Colette’s car and got back to her apartment at 10:38. She had a darkroom and was anxious to develop some of the film. Harry made himself a drink, sat at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper.

  Half an hour later Colette came out of the darkroom with four still-wet eight-by-ten photos. She put them on the table, each showing part of a face.

  “I had to enlarge them four hundred per cent to get anything, that’s why there’s so much grain.” Colette took out scissors, trimmed off the excess and fit the quadrants together on the kitchen table. “Recognize him?”

  “Ernst Hess,” Harry said.

  “Why would he be at a Blackshirt rally?”

  “My guess, he’s sympathetic to their cause, but with his Christian Social Union affiliation he can’t take the chance being seen endorsing them.”

  “How do you know about the CSU?”

  “It’s in the paper. Right here.” He turned the article around to show her. “They’re having a board meeting tomorrow at nine a.m.”

  She glanced at him and smiled.

  “I’ve seen that look before. You have something in mind, don’t you?”

  Harry spent the night at Colette’s again. In the morning they drove to Hess’ apartment building, arriving at 7:30, parked across the street between two Volkswagens and waited. “Why’re you so sure he’s here?”

  “He was at the rally until after ten last night, and he has to be downtown at nine o’clock. If you had a morning appointment, would you go all the way to Schleissheim, or stay in the city?

  “Makes sense,” Harry said.

  “After the meeting there will be a press conference, so they can tell the media what they talked about, what decisions were made. Hess will be gone for hours.”

  “How do you know somebody else isn’t in the apartment?”

  “If somebody is we’ll deal with it.”

  “I like your confidence.”

  “Harry, if you don’t take risks you don’t get a story.”

  “How do we get in?”

  “That, I am not sure.”

  “It’s an important detail, don’t you think?”

  Colette had brought a thermos of coffee, poured them each a cup and handed him a piece of strawberry-cheese strudel on a napkin. They ate breakfast, watching the building.

  At 8:20‚ a black Mercedes sedan pulled up across the street from them. Harry recognized the driver, Hess’ bodyguard, and ducked down in his seat. Rausch got out of the car, closed the door, and took his time scanning the the cars parked on both sides of the street. He went in the building and came out ten minutes later, Hess behind him, the big man’s eyes moving, alert. He opened the rear door for Hess, then walked around the car, got in behind the wheel and drove off.

  Harry sat up, glanced at Colette. “You ready?”

  They stood in front of the building. The door was locked. Harry studied the directory. Hess was in apartment 4B. Colette pushed the button, heard the buzzer, but nothing happened, maybe proving that no one was in the apartment. But that didn’t help them much.

  “How’re we going to get in?”

  Colette said, “Wait here. I have an idea.” She headed down the sidewalk.

  “Hey, where’re you going?”

  She turned the corner and disappeared.

  Colette circled around to the rear of the six-storey building that took up a quarter of the block. She went in the employees’ entrance and down a staircase into a subterranean room, huge furnace glowing hot, the smell of fuel oil, and a network of pipes. It was dark but she could see a man in a green c
ustodial uniform, wrench in his hands, working on a leaking pipe. She surprised him. Doubted many of the high-rent tenants wandered down into the bowels of the building.

  “May I help you, Fräulein?”

  He was short, stocky, about her age. Needed a bath and a shave.

  “I am looking for the engineer.”

  “I am the engineer.”

  “I have a problem,” she said, pausing for effect. “I locked my keys in the apartment along with an important file.”

  “What number?” He seemed shy but willing to assist a woman in distress.

  “4B. I work for Herr Hess. He is giving the presentation in one hour. If I don’t get it—” She let the custodian imagine what would happen to her. “Do you have a key?”

  “Have you talked to the manager, Herr Steiger?”

  “This is the second time I have done this. I am embarrassed.” She looked at him and smiled. “Could you help me, please?”

  Harry waited a few minutes, no idea what happened to her. Went back to the car, sat in the driver’s seat, not sure what to do. And then the door to the building opened, Colette standing there looking for him. Harry got out of the car, crossed the street.

  She led him to the elevator and up to the fourth floor. The door to Hess’ apartment was unlocked. “How’d you do it?”

  “I turned on the charm.”

  Harry grinned. She had it to turn on.

  The interior was big and spacious, professionally decorated, with views of the ancient spires of Altstadt on one side and the modern glass office buildings of downtown Munich on the other. They walked through the apartment. There were two bedrooms, one larger than the other, an office, kitchen and living room.

  Harry checked the closets and drawers in the bedrooms, looking for a gun, a Nazi uniform, but didn’t find anything incriminating. Colette checked the other rooms, went through the utility closet, refrigerator, oven. Nothing. They met in the office. It had a sleek desk with a black granite top on a chrome frame. Behind the desk was a credenza with a matching top and custom wooden file drawers, two banks of three. The drawers on the left were unlocked. Envelopes, stationery, stamps, letter opener in the first one. Pens, paper clips, tape, stapler in the second drawer, and files in the deep third drawer.

  The drawers on the other side were locked. He took out the letter opener, jammed the tip in the lock and tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t budge. Colette walked out of the room without saying anything, came back a few minutes later with a hammer and a screwdriver.

  “Let me try.” She got on her knees and pounded the screwdriver into the lock, gripped the handle, turned left and it opened.

  Harry said, “Where’d you learn that?”

  “A few years ago I wrote an article on how to pick a lock.”

  He opened the first drawer and found a box of 9 mm Parabellum cartridges. Now they were getting somewhere. The next one was filled with a strange assortment of things. He reached in, taking the stuff out, putting it on the desktop: a couple pairs of eyeglasses, woman’s suede gloves, gold Star of David, watches, bracelets, women’s panties, necklaces, a diamond ring, a wedding ring, silver locket.

  “Harry, what is all of this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Colette opened the third drawer, took out a file folder with several cracked sepia-tone photographs, shuffled through them.

  “Harry, look at these.”

  The first one was a young SS officer in uniform, posing, blank expression. Harry recognized him immediately. Took out the mug shot Taggart had given to him and unfolded it. Now he could see the young Nazi in the older man’s face.

  “Harry, who is that?”

  “Unterscharführer Ernst Hess,” Lisa said.

  Harry was in her office at the ZOB. He’d dropped Colette off and come right over. Why didn’t he recognize Hess before? Sitting across the table from him at Les Halles. Harry showed her another shot, Hess grinning, dead bodies behind him, piled up in a mass grave. “I remember the look of satisfaction on his face,” Harry said, “after shooting my father and eleven others with a machine gun, saying, ‘This is how you kill Jews.’”

  “He looks so ordinary,” Lisa said. “He could be a plumber or a taxi driver.”

  “What did you expect?” Harry said. “He’d have horns and a tail?”

  “Hess was only there for a short time,” Lisa said, “a few weeks, touring Dachau and its sub-camps.”

  Martz turned his head a couple times left to right and rubbed his neck. “Harry, don’t get old. It’s no fun.” He paused. “It was very unusual—I would say unheard-of for the SS to murder Jews en masse outside the camp. Why go to the trouble? They would just shoot us in the yard, the Schiesstand, sending a message, scaring the hell out of those who saw it or heard about it.”

  “Maybe they were experimenting,” Lisa said. “Dachau was the prototype for other camps, the training ground for the SS. Many well-known Nazis learned their trade there.”

  “There have been no corroborating accounts that Hess was a mass murderer until now,” Martz said. “The voices of the dead can’t speak, Harry, but you can.”

  “What do you know about him?” Harry said.

  “His father was a career soldier. His mother was a music teacher,” Lisa said. “He was raised in a strict German household. His middle name is Tristan after Wagner’s opera.”

  “Seems appropriate when you realize Wagner was an anti-Semite,” Martz said.

  Lisa said, “Hess fell out of a tree when he was a boy of nine or ten. His mother heard him crying and beat him with a stick for being weak. Later, a doctor came to the house, examined him, and discovered he had broken his leg.”

  “Well you can begin to understand why he turned out the way he did,” Harry said, moving his chair back from Lisa’s desk so he could cross his legs.

  “So if you have a bad upbringing murder is justified?” Lisa said, raising her voice.

  “My dear, think how sensitive it is for Harry,” Martz said. “He is a civilized man, showing compassion.”

  “The hell I am. He killed my parents,” Harry said. “And my daughter. I’m going to get the son of a bitch.”

  Martz said, “What do you mean, your daughter?”

  Harry told them what happened to Sara.

  “Harry, I’m so sorry,” Lisa paused, eyes holding on him.

  “I am, too,” Harry said.

  “I can’t imagine—”

  “Tell me more about Hess,” Harry said, changing the subject.

  Lisa glanced at the open binder on her desk. “He joined the SS in 1939 at age twenty-two. He was on a fast track, an up-and-comer. Everyone thought he was related to Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy. It helped his cause until May 10th, 1941, when Rudy flew a plane to Scotland to negotiate peace with the British. Then, of course, Ernst tried to distance himself from his famous namesake.” Lisa took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes. “After Dachau, he was transferred to Berlin. Assisted Adolf Eichmann in organizing the Wannsee Conference. Reinhard Heydrich brought top Nazi leaders to a villa in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin. He wanted their buy-in on deporting all the Jews of Europe to extermination camps like Auschwitz.” She paused, put her glasses back on. “After the war he started a construction company to rebuild the cities that were bombed by the Allies.”

  “And profited handsomely,” Martz said.

  “He sold the company in 1967 for thirty-six million marks,” Lisa said. “And then bought an airship factory, started building Zeppelins.”

  Harry said, “Tell me more about this Dachau survivor.”

  “She saw an SS officer murder dozens of Jews. That’s why she’s anxious to talk to you.”

  “Where does she live?” Harry said.

  “Palm Beach, Florida,” Lisa said. “I’ll set up a phone call for today at 5:30. We’ll do it at the house. Harry, can you be there?”

  “Of course.”

  “With the photographs and your testimony we have a strong case against Hess.”
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  “Harry, do you remember where they took you in the forest the day of the massacre?” Martz said.

  “It was a few miles outside Dachau.”

  Martz looked at him. “Do you think you could find it?”

  “I don’t know,” Harry said. “It’s been a long time. I don’t know if I can trust my memory. Let me think about it.”

  Martz dabbed his wet eyes with a Kleenex.

  “Were you at the camp during the liberation?” Harry said.

  “I had been transferred to Ampfing to work in the munitions factory, but was brought back to Dachau in the autumn of 1944. I was in a barracks with Léon Blum.”

  “The premier of France?” Harry said.

  “The very same,” Martz said. “The Americans liberated us on April 29, 1945. They were so horrified by the conditions, they made the citizens of Dachau feed and clothe us. Made them come to the camp to see the naked, emaciated bodies of the dead piled up in the mortuary room next to the crematorium.”

  “What did you do after?”

  “I went home,” Martz said. “Whoever had been living there was gone.”

  Just then, a bear of a man, mid-thirties, came in the room. He had dark curly hair and a full beard. Wore black horn rims and a white yarmulke.

  “What did I miss?”

  “Meet Harry Levin, Dachau survivor. Harry, this is Leon Lukiski, our other partner.”

  “It’s an honor, sir,” he said.

  “Harry has identified Ernst Hess, and has agreed to help prosecute him.”

  “Great news,” Leon said. “Mazel tov.”

  “I’ll fill you in,” Lisa said. “Harry, is there anything else?”

  “Yeah. Do you have a shovel I can borrow?”

  Harry went back to his hotel, showered, changed and called Cordell.

  “Yo, Harry, where you been at? Thought the ’shirts came back for a three-peat.”