“If you haven’t looked through the peephole, at least you must have seen the Sonderkommandos with their gas masks and their high boots opening the doors afterward and hosing down the corpses to wash the shit and piss and vomit off them before they lift them with their hooks into the carts and roll them off to the ovens. They hook their own wives, their own children; they shovel their relatives and their dearest friends onto the grates and turn up the fires. Why? To survive, my friend. To survive!”
The doctor seemed dazed by the conversation.
“But how can arranging for my transfer possibly help you survive?”
“It’s the first step,” von Schraeder said calmly. His past emotion seemed to have evaporated completely. “I had a professor once when I was in the Technical Institute, a professor in mechanical engineering; as I recall, his name was Werner. If you gave him the correct answer to a problem but omitted any step in the solution, he would fail you. ‘From one step to the next!’ he would scream. ‘First things first, then second things second, all in order, all in order, until the answer comes! No jumps! No skips!’ I thought at the time that he was crazy, a hysterical old man, but he was absolutely right. It’s the secret of engineering; basically it’s the secret of all science. No skips, no jumps. I have a feeling it’s also the secret of survival.”
He looked at the doctor with that cold smile on his lips.
“So the first step was to get out of Maidanek, since being there when the Russians come marching through the gate is certainly no way to survive. With an idiot like Mittendorf in charge, I expect that when the Russians get there they’ll find, not only some of the prisoners, but some of the SS as well. Not Mittendorf himself you may be sure, the pig also has a strong sense of survival, but there will be others. Men the commandant dislikes, men he envies for qualities he lacks. And the commandant would have liked nothing better than to have Colonel von Schraeder numbered among them. It was a chance I did not choose to take.”
“But, me—?”
“You? I did not want to take the chance of losing you. You could have been transferred to some other camp, out of my sight. That was also a chance I did not choose to take.”
The doctor removed his military cap and rubbed his head furiously.
“But the Russians may be stopped before they reach the camp—”
Von Schraeder contemplated the doctor as he would a specimen under glass, foreign and difficult to understand. The doctor’s response had truly surprised the colonel.
“Franz, my friend, if you believe that, you’ll believe anything. The Russians won’t be stopped before they get to Maidanek. They won’t be stopped before they get to Berlin. It’s all over. The war is lost, my friend.”
Schlossberg was truly shocked. His eyes fled to the impassive profile of the driver outside the glass partition. “That’s—that’s treason!”
“He can’t hear us, if that’s what bothers you,” von Schraeder said dryly.
“It’s not a question of whether he can hear us,” Schlossberg said heatedly, his Nazi background compelling him to protest. “Saying the war is lost is nothing but treason!”
Colonel von Schraeder seemed faintly disappointed, as if a favored pupil had failed an easy question on an exam.
“Franz, listen to me. To me, treason is using boxcars wastefully when the army is in desperate need of them. There was a time when we could afford the luxury of using ammunition to shoot Jews, women, children, what have you, but that time is past. Today it is treasonable to waste this ammunition. To me it has been becoming more and more treasonable to kill men who can work in factories and manufacture things we need. My God! We’re like two separate countries working against each other, the country of the Wehrmacht, and the country of the Mittendorfs! We seem to have forgotten the Russians and the British and the French and the Americans! So now we have to pay. The war is lost. That is the payment.”
He stared into the doctor’s eyes.
“Be logical, Franz. You’ve had scientific training. You’re a graduate of Heidelberg with honors; you received your medical training at the Berlin Institute of Surgery; you practiced under the great Dr. Feddermann before the war—” Schlossberg stared in surprise at this knowledge of his background. “Well, then,” von Schraeder went on, his voice friendly, “use that scientific training, or if not, at least use common sense. What can be treasonable—or patriotic, for that matter—in stating a simple fact? You heard Mittendorf announce that our Middle Army Group in Russia had been destroyed, and he cited Guderian as his source. Well, I can tell you we lost twenty-five divisions in that fiasco, more than we lost at Stalingrad. It was a worse loss than Stalingrad, much worse, in every sense. And my source in Berlin is fully as reliable as Guderian!”
“Your source—?”
“Obviously,” von Schraeder said almost wearily, “I have connections in Berlin or I should not have been able to arrange our transfers. The name von Schraeder still means something to some people.”
“But even if we lost twenty-five divisions—”
“Even if we lost twenty-five divisions? Where are the replacements to come from?” The colonel almost sounded savage. “The war is lost! Reconcile yourself to that fact. To fight on when there is no hope of winning—that, to me, is treason. It is treason to a country and a people who have supported our efforts in every way. It is treason to the soldiers who will be killed needlessly and the civilians who will starve, if they aren’t wiped out in the increased bombings. The war was lost long ago, with the Allied invasion in Normandy; and now with the present Russian advance, I should think the blindest optimist could see it!”
There were several minutes of silence as the doctor sat in stunned consideration of the colonel’s words. The truth was that the war itself had never really interested him; as a good German and a good Nazi he supported it fully, but his own work was of such paramount interest that the war was only the background against which his art was played, first at the Laukhammer Hospital with war wounds, and then at Maidanek with prisoners. Now he was being told his background was to be taken away from him. He looked up, his slightly horse-like face almost pitiable, a child deprived of a favorite toy.
“Do you think we will surrender, then?”
“As long as Hitler is alive, no.”
“As long as Hitler is alive?” Now the doctor was really shocked.
“That’s right. As long as Hitler is alive, we will not surrender. We will fight to the last living thing in Germany, to the last brick in the last factory, to the last shingle on the last shed, to the last tree and the last blade of grass. We will waste everything. But,” von Schraeder added grimly, “they will not waste me!”
“I see.”
The doctor didn’t see at all, nor did he sound as if he did. His mind was whirling. He only knew that the man who had just spoken was a far different person than the stiff colonel he had known in the camp. A chameleon, this Colonel von Schraeder! But the doctor somehow knew instinctively that regardless of the spurious logic with which von Schraeder was attempting to disguise the fact, what he spoke was arrant treason. And to even suggest that the Fuehrer’s death could alleviate Germany’s problems—that was total treason! What of their oaths as Germans? What of their pledges as officers of the Schutzstaffel, personally, to Adolf Hitler? And even if the war was lost—which was far from a demonstrable truth—anyone who would refuse to fight for the Fuehrer and the Fatherland, especially under those conditions, was the most despicable of traitors!
On the other hand, it could well be that the colonel was merely testing his own loyalty, waiting for him to agree to his monstrous propositions in order to denounce him to the authorities. But why would the colonel do that? Why, in that case, would he have offered his friendship? Offered? Almost forced it, first with the girl the night before, then with the transfer, which, if the Russians were really all that close, might well have been a lifesaver. And even Mittendorf had acknowledged that the enemy was closing in.
No, the col
onel was quite serious in his treasonous statements.
But, then, a big question. Why would a man as sophisticated as the colonel, as smart as he was rumored to be in the camp, why would a man like that make statements that left him at the mercy of the person he was speaking to? Why would the sharp and normally taciturn Colonel Helmut von Schraeder volubly place himself at the mercy of ordinary Dr. Franz Schlossberg for possible denunciation to the authorities and almost certain death by hanging?
The colonel was watching the play of expression across the doctor’s face as each succeeding thought registered, one after the other, almost as if they were being projected on a screen.
“No,” he said quietly.
Schlossberg looked up, startled. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said, no. I am as safe in your hands as I was in the hands of my nanny as a child. To begin with, I doubt if your word of this conversation would carry much weight against mine—” The doctor’s face reddened at having his thoughts read so accurately. Von Schraeder continued easily before the doctor could even deny it. “Secondly, do you honestly believe I would speak to you as I have if I didn’t have the assurance of your silence? My dear Franz, I have appealed to your friendship with the girl Sarah and with this transfer, for which I am sure you will eventually be grateful. I later intend to appeal to your greed with offers of money, should the need for your services arise. But at the moment, I merely intend to appeal to your own sense of salvation—”
“My sense of salvation?”
“Exactly. My dear Franz, I have planned this quite carefully, I assure you. I have in my possession papers clearly indicating you are a member of a group actively plotting against the Fuehrer’s life …”
“I? Me?” The doctor’s face was ashen as he listened to the monstrous fabrication. “I never! It’s a lie! It’s a horrible lie!”
“I believe you,” von Schraeder said calmly, “but who else will? The papers appear quite authentic, I assure you …”
“I—” The doctor fell silent, as recognition of his position slowly came to him. Oddly enough, the actual realization of his terrible state somehow seemed to calm him. He considered the colonel with almost fatalistic detachment.
“Why?”
“I thought I had explained that. Because there is a good chance that I will need your professional help, and when the time comes—if it comes, which I hope it will not—then I should not like to have a great many discussions about the matter. There very well might not be time.”
“And when the time comes, if the time comes—which you hope it will not—exactly what service will you wish me to perform that you don’t want any discussion about at the time?”
Von Schraeder laughed.
“You know, Franz,” he said amicably, “we may end up being friends, yet. When the pressure is on, you come together nicely. I always thought you would have to, in your profession.” His laughter disappeared as quickly as it had come; he suddenly looked grim. “You are being transferred to Ward Forty-six at Buchenwald. I am going there as assistant deputy commandant. Isolation Ward Forty-six at Buchenwald handles all typhus and virus research. When the time comes—if it comes which I sincerely hope it does not—what I will want from you is very simple. I expect you to help me die. Of typhus.”
The doctor stared. Von Schraeder smiled faintly.
“I think we had best get some rest. It’s a long way yet.” And he leaned back in his corner and closed his eyes, the faint smile still on his lips.
They had passed Radom some time before. At Piotrkow-Tribunalski the chauffeur turned to intercept the highway from Lodz to Breslau at Lask, turning into it, heading south. Here, as both von Schraeder and the chauffeur had anticipated, the road was crowded with the movement and sound of war. Although the day had warmed considerably, the car windows were now kept shut against the dust. Troop carriers edged past in the opposite direction, the soldiers on them leaning forward, their rifles pressed tightly against the floor for balance, their faces a mixture of too young and too old, dulled with the boredom of their seemingly endless journey, being carried to Warsaw and the Vistula, the new front. Other troops on foot slogged wearily toward the rear, toward a rest camp, a hospital, or some restaging area. Their faces spelled their ordeal; they paid little attention to the carriers with the fresh troops, or to the chauffeur-driven limousine with the SS flag on the fender and the two officers seated in comfort as it edged past them. Tanks clanked along the road, heading to the east, diverted from other fronts, forcing vehicular and foot traffic to the shoulder. High in the sky unidentifiable planes seemed to wander about as if lost.
At Kepno they paused for lunch and von Schraeder roused himself from his nap. They pulled several hundred yards from the crowded main road along a deserted cart path, and their taciturn driver brought a hamper from the trunk, rummaged in it for his share, and went to sit under a tree to eat, apart from his superiors. Von Schraeder and Schlossberg took their meal inside the car, the doors open to catch some breeze, watching the troops on the road.
They know, von Schraeder thought; they know the war is lost. They must know, those innocent young faces, those old lined faces. A few months ago the young ones were still in school, waiting impatiently to graduate and take their place in the brave new world we were winning for them; the old men were sucking their pipes around the fireplace of the nearest tavern, off duty from spotting planes or growing victory gardens. Now they are decked out in ill-fitting uniforms after a hasty training with broomsticks. They must know the war is lost, yet they still march to their annihilation, like ants on a trail. Or, more aptly, like steers in an abattoir, to their death. And what does this do to your theory of survival? he asked himself, and satisfied himself with his answer: there will always be lemmings. But none, he added with satisfaction, named von Schraeder.
He finished his bottle of wine and tossed it negligently from the car, almost as a symbol of his nonreturn. Their driver had come to his feet and was brushing crumbs from his uniform, preparing to return to the car and the resumption of their journey. Schlossberg dumped his rubbish out of the car door and closed it, leaning back in his corner, closing his eyes, as if by doing so he could shut away the thoughts in turmoil in his head. Von Schraeder closed his door as well, leaning back, glancing at the doctor. The conversation before had gone well, he thought. He had given the doctor the stick; now perhaps a return to the carrot was in order.
The car was put in motion; they bumped their way back to the main road, waited for a break in the endless traffic, and joined the parade, speeding up a bit whenever possible, passing ambulances and troop carriers and lines of men marching single file on the shoulders of the road, lines that stretched for miles. A fog had fallen shortly after they regained the road and now it began to drizzle, although the increasing downpour seemed to make little difference to the weary men trudging dispiritedly back down the road to Breslau. Von Schraeder cleared his throat.
“Doctor—”
Schlossberg’s eyes flew open. “Yes?”
“When I was in Berlin last week there was quite a bit of discussion about Allied leaflets that had been dropped from planes. Talk of war-crimes trials. They call Hitler a war criminal, of course, as well as Goering and Himmler, Goebbels, and—”
“Of course they would consider our leaders to be war criminals!” Schlossberg said bitterly. “It’s to hide their own crimes and the crimes of the Jews! What about the torture of our prisoners in their prisons? What about the Russians raping women and killing children in Poland when they retreated to Stalingrad last year? Do they think nobody knows of those things? What about the murders they committed in bombing Hamburg, an unarmed city? What of the fact that they bomb civilians everywhere, even their own allies, just because there happens to be some German troops in the area? What about those things?” He turned to look from the car window, dismissing the discussion.
“Yes,” von Schraeder said quietly, “but that was not my point. The leaflets also speak of searching out
and hanging some of the SS men who mistreated prisoners—”
He smiled faintly at the thought, although his slate-blue eyes were cold and grim. Mistreated prisoners? What would they do and say when they uncovered places like Maidanek, or Auschwitz-Birkenau, or Sibibor, or Treblinka, or Ravensbrook, or Sachenhausen, or Dachau, or all the other hundreds of camps? Possibly the world might think for a while that the horror stories were merely atrocity scares, but the war-crimes justices would know better. He glanced over at Schlossberg; the doctor seemed disinterested.
“—as well,” von Schraeder continued, “as searching out and hanging a few doctors.”
“Doctors?” Schlossberg swung around, his attention captured. “Why?”
“They mention some names in particular—Professor Hirt, for example, late of Buchenwald, now at Natzweiler, I believe. Vaernet, and Haagen. Also Mrgowski was mentioned, as I recall—and a certain Dr. Franz Schlossberg …”
The doctor stared; he looked as if he might begin to cry. He wanted desperately to deny the charge, or believe the colonel was only saying it to disturb him, but he was sure the colonel was telling the truth. As the colonel was, indeed. Franz Schlossberg had made it to the atrocity list.
Schlossberg was almost wailing, “But, why? Why?”
“Well, they mentioned experimenting on human beings without benefit of anesthetics, for example. They speak of the removal of healthy organs, or arms and legs. They say something about inducing diseases, such as typhus, purposely—”
“They have no right to talk of punishing us! We were only doing our duty!”
Von Schraeder nodded as if in complete agreement.
“Yes, but your duty to whom? Hippocrates? Humanity? The men you wrapped in sheets so they couldn’t move, last winter, when you soaked them in water and put them outside to freeze—?”
“It was a scientific experiment,” Schlossberg said hotly. “We tried to revive them afterward and even saved a few. Our fliers face being forced down in the North Sea during winter—”
Pursuit Page 5
