The Fires of Lilliput

by Michael Martin

“I’m not a Jew,” Jakub said. “I’m Catholic.”

  “Catholic,” Petersdorf repeated. He had been a Roman Catholic seminarian for three years. “Where did they put you?”

  “The infirmary,” von Kempt said.

  Petersdorf looked at the lieutenant, who hadn’t shaved.

  “Take this man back to the infirmary until further notice,” Petersdorf said.

  “When will I be released?” Jakub asked. “I’ve committed no crime.”

  “That’s not for you to ask,” von Kempt said.

  “I don’t make that decision,” Petersdorf said. “The paperwork will take time.”

  Schmidt took Jakub’s arm as von Kempt turned to the door.

  “Leutnant.”

  “Ja, Sturmbannführer.”

  “The next time you present yourself to a superior officer, shave your face.”

  Von Kempt’s face reddened.

  “Ja, Sturmbannführer.”

  The three men left the major’s office.

  Thirty Two

  Heinrich Wilhelm Petersdorf entered the seminary at fifteen, a pubescent boy full of fire from his mother’s unflinching interpretation of the Lord’s call. He dropped out at nineteen, confused, ashamed, and uncertain about the future his mother had seen so neatly lain before him. The Major’s father had been a high ranking general under the Kaiser, but after Germany’s defeat during the Great War, his mother had grown to dislike the sacrifice, the blind obedience, and the bland bureaucracy of military life.

  But Petersdorf, like his father and his grandfather, loved the order, the discipline, and the call to higher purpose. He loved the hegemony that man asserted over his fellow men, his environment, and the general affairs of governance and state. To serve both masters—mother and father—he would be a soldier, but for the Lord. He entered the seminary full of ambition. At the end of his first year, he was the top student. The bishop sent a letter of recognition and congratulations to his parents and his father was happy—his son was excelling—and his mother was happy—Heinrich Petersdorf would be a man of God, specifically ordained.

  He worked and studied constantly. He rarely played and he never drank. He skipped meals. He came home on holiday pale and exhausted. His papers came back with the highest marks, streaked with comments about his promise from both lay and clerical teachers. They saw his interpretations of Thomas Aquinas, the Gospel of John, and the perpetual clash between science and faith as prescient, indicative of the young man’s future scholarship. He would be a teacher someday. There was talk of sending him to Paris and the Jesuits, where he could realize his capacity for learning and sate his hunger for knowledge.

  In Petersdorf’s fourth year, he wrote a term paper exploring the changing dynamics of discovery and discipleship. Could the new physics, Petersdorf asked in his paper, be an attempt to dethrone the Almighty by explaining away the mysteries of Creation, replacing faith with fact? Or could relativity and quantum mechanics coexist with Christian methodology? Could a man be both academic and apostle?

  Petersdorf followed the frontiersmen of physics—Planck, Heisenberg, Bohr, Schrödinger, and most of all, Einstein. He read about the conflict between Heisenberg’s uncertainty and Einstein’s gravity. He tried to understand how light—at one level, a corpuscular sea of probabilistic uncertainty—always moved, no matter what, at a certain constant speed. He saw photos of Einstein, with his white hair, diffident demeanor, and rumpled sweatshirts, pontificating on the designs of a dice-averse deity and explaining that famous equation to one packed lecture hall after the next. This was God’s work, Petersdorf concluded, this bringing together of a pantheon of minds to reconcile mystery and reality. It was as though God wanted these questions asked and answered at this particular moment, for how else to explain such a confluence of brainpower, unprecedented in scope and uncanny in timing? Discovery and discipleship were inseparable, Petersdorf decided, looking at history for examples: Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk who demystified heredity; Berthold Schwartz, the German monk who invented firearms and gunpowder; and Roger Bacon, Petersdorf’s personal hero.

  In Bacon’s footsteps, Petersdorf studied geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy. Bacon received a degree from the University of Paris around 1241. Petersdorf’s professors suggested that he too attend that institution. Petersdorf embraced the idea that, as Bacon had famously said, “Mathematics is the door and the key to the sciences.” Mathematics was not Petersdorf’s best subject, but the one at which he worked the hardest.

  In 1257, after a long stint at Oxford, Bacon entered the Order of Friars Minor, the Franciscans. Petersdorf would enter the Jesuit Order, the Society of Jesus. Unlike Bacon, however, Petersdorf’s peers and superiors encouraged him. Communicating his interest in the sciences, first with the Holy Pontiff in Rome, and second to his students, Bacon upset his Franciscan superiors, who imprisoned him in 1278 on a charge of suspected novelties in his teachings, a heresy. Science and religion were then a new and uncomfortable alliance.

  When Petersdorf read this part of Bacon’s story, he decided he could better the great man because times today were different. In modern religions, heresies no longer existed. Modern universities encouraged freedom of thought and inquiry. Germany herself had benefited greatly from the progress of science and though she had lost the war, she would always be remembered for producing many of the twentieth century’s finest scientific minds. Look at Einstein, Petersdorf argued in his fourth year term paper. For those who understood tensor calculus, the mathematics behind the equations of General Relativity, beholding Einstein’s miraculous feat—a description of gravity as a kind of geometry—was to behold a work of art, a masterpiece of mathematical logic. One could actually see the hand of God writing Einstein’s equations across the heavens. Faith and science could not be more perfectly united.

  The modern seminary greeted Petersdorf’s term paper with a barely passing grade, a few non-committal comments, and nary a word about his future in the Society of Jesus. What on Earth had happened? Stymied and confused, Petersdorf took the case and his paper to his father, preferring not to disturb his mother’s comfortable preconceptions.

  “It’s an excellent piece of work,” his father told him, flipping through the pages. “Well argued, reasoned, very detailed. Especially for nineteen.”

  The son looked at his father quizzically.

  “Looking past, of course, the real problem.”

  Petersdorf felt a knot in his stomach.

  “Einstein is a Jew,” his father said. He looked at his son. “But it’s only one paper.” He handed back the tainted treatise. “All you can do is soldier on.”

  FOURTEEN YEARS LATER, HITLER HAD HARNESSED GERMAN anti-Semitism into a bitter enterprise. Here was Petersdorf again, confronting the same issue as second in command of a facility dedicated to the ultimate expression of Jewish antipathy.

  “Einstein is a Jew,” his father had said, and now the question of who was or was not a Jew had become the soul of a soul-less directive, a single-minded pursuit mindless in its destructive intent.

  Petersdorf pulled open a desk drawer and took out a stained rag. He slipped off his brass belt buckle and sat behind his desk. He opened his mouth and breathed on the buckle and polished it with the rag.

  “Schütze!” he called between breaths.

  Private Höfstaller entered.

  “Ja, Herr Sturmbannführer.”

  “What’s for lunch today?”

  “They’ve shipped us Spam, Herr Sturmbannführer.”

  “Roosevelt Sausage?”

  “Three pallets.”

  “Yum.”

  Heinrich Petersdorf had soldiered on.

  Thirty Three

  A heavy fog squatted over the camp. Strauss gazed out a window as he lit a cigar. He drew on the cigar and turned to the visiting Major Bunger and his other guests.

  “Well?” Bunger asked.

  “I’m not really a cigar smoker,” Strauss said.

  “You will be,” Bung
er said. He drew on his own cigar. “In time you’ll be a connoisseur.”

  A kapo laid a tray with a brandy decanter and five glasses on a low table centered in a circle of large, plush chairs.

  “Gentlemen.” Strauss indicated the chairs. Chief physician Joachim Hehl joined Bunger, Petersdorf, and von Kempt as they sat. The servant poured each man a brandy with a shaky hand. She stood.

  “Danke,” Strauss said and waved her off.

  Bunger sipped. “You thank these miserable creatures.”

  “I have no quarrel with them,” Strauss said.

  “I wasn’t suggesting you did,” the major said. “Only that thanking them seems a waste.”

  “I agree,” von Kempt said.

  “Have you heard from Gretty?” Petersdorf said.

  “As a matter of fact,” Strauss said, “I haven’t.”

  “Really?” Major Bunger said. “Trouble?”

  “No trouble,” Strauss said. “Just busy. We visited last month.”

  “She likes Vienna?” Bunger asked.

  “Very much. No way she’s coming to live here.”

  “My wife was the same way,” Bunger said. “We made it work, but she hated every minute of it.”

  “What about you?” Hehl asked. “Did you hate it?”

  Bunger thought. He puffed his cigar. “I did. Until I discovered these.” He looked at the cigar.

  “I don’t understand what’s to hate,” Hehl said. “You keep order, you keep it sanitary, organized. Everything runs smoothly.”

  Bunger chuckled. “You wait,” he said.

  Petersdorf looked at him quizzically.

  “They start you out slow—they do that with every camp,” Bunger said. “First year, maybe year and a half, steady work load, nothing too overwhelming. Then.” He puffed his cigar.

  “More work?” Hehl said. He leaned back. “We can handle it.”

  Bunger smiled, with the cigar between his teeth.

  “We have capacity,” Strauss said.

  “Nein,” Bunger said. He puffed again. “I’m talking about boxcars crammed so goddamned full you have to pull the fucking doors off with a truck. I’m talking about something so foul, so fucking foul you can’t get near enough to it to kill it. I’m talking about a fucking tidal wave, and not only one, but one after the other after the other, day in, day out. You think you’re ready, you’re never ready. Not for anything like that.”

  The officers tried not to look at one another. No one spoke for a while.

  Then Hehl: “They increase our workload, they have to increase our supplies and manpower.”

  “Have to?” Bunger said. “They don’t have to do shit. You, on the other hand, have to do the work. You, on the other hand, have to understand that you don’t mean a fucking thing to them. You’re just here to clean up a mess.”

  Petersdorf drew on his cigar. “Who made that mess, as you see it, Sturmbannführer?”

  Bunger sipped his brandy and leaned forward. He lowered his voice. “A bunch of thugs.”

  Von Kempt cleared his throat. “Thugs?”

  “Thugs. They’ve fucking destroyed Germany.”

  Von Kempt stood awkwardly and rubbed his bad leg. “Sorry—it gets numb when I sit.”

  “You make an interesting point,” Petersdorf told Bunger. “My father has said something along the same lines.”

  “A retired general, right?”

  “Ja,” Petersdorf said.

  “A general ought to know,” Bunger said. “They all hate Hitler.”

  “Capone robs banks and Hitler robs states—that’s what my father said.”

  “The biggest heist of all,” Bunger said. “And we’re the ones holding the guns.”

  “And taking the hostages.”

  “I’m not helping any crooks,” Hehl said. “I did that once. I’ll never do it again.”

  “Of course you will and of course you are,” Bunger said. “Rounding up all these Jews, separating them from their money.”

  “They’re the enemy,” Petersdorf said. “We’re at war.”

  “It’s an interesting theory,” Strauss said. “And we could be shot for talking about it.”

  “Hitler’s too busy planning his end game to bother with us,” Bunger said. He looked at the others. “Stalin,” he said.

  “The Führer has games on several fronts,” Petersdorf said.

  “Games he has played half-heartedly at best, pathetically at worst,” Bunger said. “Look at England—a few quick bombing raids, some saber rattling, and game what? Over? On hold? Lost?” Bunger drew on his cigar. He blew smoke into the air. “He won’t get away with it in Russia.”

  “Why does he care about Russia?” Petersdorf said. “It’s cold. It has Siberia.”

  “What does a thug hate more than anything else?” Bunger asked.

  “The police,” Strauss said.

  “A rival thug,” Bunger said. “They obsess about each other. Hitler and Stalin. Al Capone and Pretty Boy Floyd. Always preparing for the final turf war that decides who takes all.”

  Von Kempt set down his drink and grimaced.

  “Wage—you all right?” Hehl asked.

  “My leg is killing me,” von Kempt said. “I’m afraid I have to ask my leave.”

  “Of course,” Strauss said. “By all means, go take care of yourself.”

  Von Kempt gathered his hat and coat. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Good evening.” The lieutenant brought his leg around and unsteadily departed.

  “I hope I didn’t offend him,” Major Bunger said.

  AFTER MAJOR BUNGER FORECAST THE FATE of the camp, Dr. Hehl became obsessed with order. Wherever he—as the camp’s chief sanitary and hygiene officer—had kept one page of records, he now kept two. Ledgers that detailed the height, approximate weight, age, and sex of the inmates now documented tattoos, scars, birthmarks, deformities, moles, baldness, sexual orientation (where it could be reasonably ascertained), education, ethnicity (Jew, non-Jew, gypsy) and religion (Jew, non-Jew).

  One page supply requisitions became three pages of justifications following two pages of over ordering. The camp’s fifty-page directive governing sanitation and hygiene became Joachim Hehl’s one hundred and thirteen-page preparation bible detailing every way he could think of to minimize waste and maximize value to Berlin.

  If the Reich needed money for the war effort, Joachim Hehl would provide it. First, he made inquiries of markets around the world, typing the name “Hehl and Co., Exporters” with an address in Melinka at the top of his letterhead. He wrote to wig and toupee makers; leather exporters; cloth and rag dealers; gold and silver smiths; dental laboratories; opticians; and medical schools. To the promising replies, Hehl responded with entrepreneurial gusto, reorganizing the camp’s resources and profiting from a pillage of the mundane.

  He ordered the pile of red, brown, blond, gray, white, and sandy-colored hair standing forty-two feet high burned. Complaints about the horrific smell continued, but in the pile’s place Hehl erected an enclosed warehouse with bins organized by hair color and sex. Women’s black hair for black wigs; women’s red hair for red wigs; men’s brown hair for toupees. Curly hair, white hair, gray hair, hair of mixed colors and children’s hair, Hehl ordered to the incinerator (not enough demand).

  Also replaced—the tower of shoes that sat in rain one minute, sun the next, snow in winter, and in summer housed bugs that ate holes in cloth and spiders that nested in dark leather toes. Hehl constructed a second warehouse, then agonized over how to divide the shoes. By size? By sex? By type? Women’s size three, high-heel dress shoes. Men’s size seven loafers. Boots, sandals, galoshes. What about color? Brown, black, red, gold, silver. Material? Soft leather, patent leather, calfskin, alligator, cloth. Tassels, laces, slip on, buckles, straps. And so many. So many, many, shoes. Hehl decided he needed more market research.

  Other clients had simpler needs. Gold and silver fillings went into gold and silver bins under 24-hour armed guard for dental labs and assayers. Eyeg
lasses, divided by sex, went to German charities. Coats, shirts, trousers, and underwear Hehl ordered piled in boxcars and shipped out. Cloth went to rag merchants. Leather, fur, diamonds, watches, and precious jewelry went to the Reich’s Central Supply after the bureaucrats sent Hehl a letter warning him not to resell these items lest they end up back in the hands of Jews. He wondered if the Reich stored the loot, or if senior officers gave it to their wives or girls, a practice he thought atrocious yet likely, especially for the larger diamonds, which he was tempted to pocket himself.

  On the side of disorder stood Klaus von Kempt, looking all a cluttered Quasimodo with his gimp and his over large face and his thick, coarse bush of a head, Beethoven, without music. Loopy from morphine when he stood with Dr. Fiddler at the ramp, von Kempt selected four pregnant women with promises of care and midwifery, and lined them up a few buildings away. Then he ordered them to the infirmary. They walked, but he yelled “run.” The women looked puzzled but thinking the lieutenant drunk and seeing the sidearm in his hand, they ran. “Faster,” he cried. “Raus!” One woman fell. The lieutenant shot her. The other women froze until the lieutenant walked up to their fallen companion and rolled her with his foot. One of the women fainted, the second threw up, and the third cried and crumpled.

  The lieutenant played another game at the infirmary. He sent kapos in to announce the village needed seamstresses and tailors. Hands went up across the floor.

  “Line up, line up,” the kapos said. But to a few people who began to stand, Jakub Chelzak crawled and pulled them back down. Other people who started to stand saw him and stayed down. The white van with a big red cross outside the infirmary, rigged with tubes from the carbon monoxide exhaust for death before cremation, went empty to the crematoria, where the lieutenant waited.

  Von Kempt limped up to the driver. “What’s this?”

  The driver shrugged.

  Two days later, Hehl received word of the lieutenant’s antics. “Wage—you have to quit this shit.”

  “It’s the morphine,” von Kempt said.