by Philip Kerr
“Tell me about him.”
“Frankly, he was lazy. More interested in playing the slots at Monaco. And there was a woman.”
“There’s always a woman.”
“How about you?”
“There was a woman, yes. Elisabeth. She went back to Berlin.”
“What went wrong?”
“Nothing very much. Let’s just say my conversation has ceased to be as stimulating as it used to be. Keeping my mouth shut was once a necessity. Now it’s my defining characteristic. She was bored, poor woman. And she never managed to learn French. She felt isolated down here, I think. So she went back home. Me, I like to read. Play chess—it’s the only game I play. No, that’s not true. I play backgammon and I’ve learned bridge. I like to go to the cinema. Generally I just keep out of trouble. Avoid the police and criminals, although they’re often one and the same on the Riviera.”
“You’ve noticed that, too.” He sat back. “You know, they say that the Swiss make the best hoteliers but that’s only partly true. The best hoteliers are Swiss-Germans. I think it’s the German part which is important. Hotels in Bern and Zurich are much better than those in Geneva. The French are lazy. Even in Switzerland. That’s why I got rid of my concierge. The Adlon is closed for good now. But while it was there it was probably the best hotel in Europe. Maybe I could use some of that German excellence in my hotel.”
I smiled.
“I’m perfectly serious.”
“I don’t doubt it. I’ve seen what you can do with a bronze bust of Hitler.”
“The pay’s good. The tips are excellent. And it’s a beautiful place to work. Of course, you’ll have to wear a tailcoat. But after an SS uniform you can get used to wearing anything, right?”
I smiled patiently. “Right.”
“Come on, Gunther. What do you say? You’d be helping me out of a spot. I’m about to go on holiday and I really need a man to take the job. As soon as possible would be good.”
“Ah, well, there’s the thing you never want to hear. A man who asks you to help him out of a spot. As soon as possible.”
“What are you going to do in La Ciotat until next season starts? Go to the cinema every day?”
“This week I just might.”
“Come on. Say yes.”
“Tell me, I bet you get all sorts of movie stars at your hotel.”
“Oh, for sure. Charles Boyer is a regular. And so’s Charlie Chaplin. Discretion forbids me from naming any other famous names. We guard our privacy very carefully.”
I shrugged. “Well, why not? You wouldn’t be the first killer I’ve worked for, Herr Leuthard. And you may not be the last.” I thought of the lady from Zagreb for a moment and smiled. “It would seem that some of the nicest people in the world are capable of just about anything.”
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
Friedrich Minoux was starving to death when he was released by the Allies from Brandenburg Prison in April 1945. He never recovered his health and died in Berlin-Lichterfelde on October 16, 1945. He was buried in the Alter Friedhof, in Wannsee’s Lindenstrasse.
Walter Schellenberg testified against other Nazis at the Nuremberg trials. In 1949 he was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment, and wrote his memoirs, entitled The Labyrinth. He was released in 1951 because of a worsening liver condition and moved to Switzerland, where he turned to Roger Masson for help. The Swiss intelligence chief tried to help his old friend but was prevented from doing so by Swiss national authorities. After receiving financial aid from no less a figure than Coco Chanel, Schellenberg settled in Turin, Italy, where he died in 1952.
Hans Eggen performed several heroic services for Switzerland at the end of the war, helping to evacuate many Swiss from Germany. Roger Masson invited Eggen to Bern in order to thank him personally. Eggen did not have a visa and was arrested by Swiss police. He was imprisoned in Switzerland until September 1945 and then expelled from the country. Roger Masson was forced to resign as chief of intelligence because of his connections to Schellenberg and the German RSHA. He retired at the age of fifty-three.
Paul Meyer-Schwertenbach continued to write novels as Wolf Schwertenbach. In the 1960s Eggen tried and failed to extort 250,000 Swiss francs from him. Meyer died in 1966. Wolfsberg Castle was sold in 1970 to the UBS Bank of Switzerland, which developed the castle into what it remains today: an executive training and conference center.
I am indebted to Dr. Toni Schönenberger, CEO, Wolfsberg, and Rea Reichen, head of Cultural Affairs at Wolfsberg, for their help with my research, not to mention a delicious lunch in the beautiful castle itself. Walking around what had been the home of another writer, I felt a great affinity with this intensely patriotic and in my opinion quite admirable man. I tried to trace copies of his novels but failed.
The Swiss really did plan to blow up the major mountain passes in order to deny their country to Hitler, who, as late as 1944, still entertained plans to invade Switzerland.
The character of Dalia Dresner is based on two UFA stars: Pola Negri and Hedy Lamarr. Anyone who doubts that a UFA starlet might also have been a talented mathematician should read Lamarr’s biography. She was the coinventor of a technology that has become a key component of all modern wireless data systems. At the time, the U.S. government deemed Lamarr’s invention to be so vital to the national defense that scientific publication was forbidden her. She tried to join the National Inventors Council but was told that she could better use her celebrity status to sell War Bonds.
The character of Colonel Dragan/Father Ladislaus is based on two or three real figures in the Ustaše. Peter Brzica was a student at a Franciscan college in Herzegovina and one of the guards at Jasenovac; he won a contest there for being the person who could dispatch the highest number of victims in one day with a Srbosjek, the curved reaping blade described in the book. His fate is unknown. Miroslav Filipovic was a Roman Catholic military chaplain of the Franciscan order and was a monk at the monastery described in the book. He excelled in sadism and was also known by inmates as “the devil of Jasenovac”; Croatian troops called him “the glorious one.” He was hanged wearing the robes of the Franciscan order after his conviction by a Yugoslavian civil court, in 1946. Though he was expelled from the Franciscan order, he was never excommunicated. Another Franciscan priest, Zvonimir Brekalo, helped Filipovic with the killings; on one occasion these two Catholic priests set about the murders of fifty-two young children. Between eighty thousand and one hundred thousand Jews, Serbs, and Gypsies were brutally murdered at Jasenovac. It was not a concentration camp, or a death camp like Auschwitz, but a murder camp where sadists like these three priests could refine their cruelty. Jasenovac is now a memorial open to the public with a visitor center. Of the camp there is nothing to see except the train that brought these poor people to their deaths. However, close to the border of Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina is the site of the Stara Gradiška sub-camp where many people died, and which provides a much more atmospheric place of contemplation. I’m not sure if I should want to live in the block of flats that also exists there.
In Croatia I was patiently and bravely assisted by the indefatigable Zdenka Ivkovcic of whom I cannot speak highly enough as a guide and as a translator. The site of Zagreb’s mosque can still be seen today; it’s a Croatian cultural center. You can also visit the Petricevac Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity, in Banja Luka, although when I turned up they didn’t come out.
Kurt Waldheim became the United Nations secretary-general.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was a nasty piece of work. In February 1943, when an initiative of the Red Cross made possible the evacuation of five thousand Jewish children to Palestine, Haj Amin al-Husseini strongly advised Himmler against this; the children were taken to Auschwitz and gassed. The Grand Mufti held the rank of SS-Gruppenführer.
Regarding the Handschar—the 13th Mountain Division of the Waffen SS—I should
like to mention the fact that most of these young men were from poor homes and were reluctant “volunteers,” and that many of them were not in the least anti-Semitic. In September 1943, at Villefranche-de-Rouergue in France, a group of Muslim officers and NCOs staged a mutiny against their German SS masters; the revolt was suppressed and as many as 150 shot or executed afterward. Eventually more than eight hundred Bosnians were removed from the division and sent to Germany as slave labor. Two hundred and sixty-five of these refused to work and were sent to the Neuengamme concentration camp, where many of them died. Not all Muslims hate Jews.
There really was an international crime commission conference held at the villa in the summer of 1942—just a few months after the more famous conference presided over by Heydrich to decide the fate of Europe’s Jews.
Anyone wishing to visit the villa should take the S-Bahn to Wannsee Station. Better still, hire a bicycle and carry it onto the S-Bahn. From the villa I easily cycled to the house of the Grand Mufti on Goethestrasse, and to the studios at UFA-Babelsberg, which are still making excellent films. As always I stayed in Berlin at the superb Hotel Adlon and would like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful Sabina Held from the Kempinski Hotel Group for all her continued kindness.
I also need to thank Ivan Held at Penguin Putnam for actively encouraging me to write The Lady from Zagreb. After ten “Bernies” I sometimes think that maybe people have had enough of this character, but Ivan was adamant that this is not the case and strongly persuaded me to pick up my pen once more. To him this book is dedicated for that reason. I should also like to thank my editors Marian Wood and Jane Wood (no relation), my resourceful and always genial publicist Michael Barson, my agents Caradoc King, Robert Bookman, and Linda Shaughnessy, and my excellent lawyer in Munich, Martin Diesbach. I should also like to thank my wife, the author Jane Thynne, for her help with the research.
For anyone who cares about such things, Bernie Gunther will return in 2016, with The Other Side of Silence.
Philip Kerr, London, October 2014
*Author’s own translation of Rilke’s poem Schlussstück.
*After 1956, the ICPC became better known as INTERPOL.
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