Pursuit

by Robert L. Fish

  “And the women you sterilized by burning their ovaries with high doses of x rays? Without, I might mention, bothering to anesthetize them, even locally?”

  “We were following orders! We were only doing our duty!”

  “You mean, befehl ist befehl? An order is an order? My friend, believe me when I tell you they won’t hang you one inch less high for having done your duty.”

  Schlossberg stared at his fingers as if seeing them for the first time, for the first time aware of the power their talent had to get him in trouble, possibly even to get him hanged.

  “But I am telling the truth,” he said, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “I did it for my country and for the Fuehrer, whether they laugh or sneer at that explanation or not, or whether they accept it or not. But,” he added under his breath, still speaking to himself, “I hated it. I always hated it!” He looked up. “I wasn’t like the others. I am a doctor, a surgeon. At Laukhammer I saved many, many lives! It’s true, it’s on the record! I’m not like the others! Hirt isn’t even a doctor. I hate to give pain. If a patient was in pain—”

  “You injected him with carbolic or evipan out of humanitarian principles, of course,” von Schraeder said smoothly.

  “It’s true! I have done it!” Schlossberg turned on the colonel, his eyes blazing, his control slipping. Von Schraeder watched him with amusement. “It’s true! I’m not like you! You’ve killed hundreds of thousands in your gas chambers, and you talk of me! I know all about you! Before you came to Maidanek you were at the front for a year, killing, killing, killing! You like killing!”

  Von Schraeder nodded calmly.

  “Do you expect me to deny it? I liked being at the front and seeing a man die under my bullet. All men like killing. If they didn’t, there would be no wars. Why do men hunt? Because they enjoy killing; in fact they call it a sport, a blood sport. Really, you know, it’s the opposite side of the coin of survival. How can one enjoy sweet if he has never tasted sour? Or enjoy pleasure if he has never known pain? And how can a man enjoy the feeling of being alive if he has never seen others die and imagined what it must be like? How can a man feel the power of life if he has never enjoyed the power of death?”

  Dr. Schlossberg was staring at him in disbelief. Von Schraeder shook his head a bit impatiently.

  “My dear Franz, do not look at me as if I were insane. I’m only being honest. If it comes to war-crimes trials, do you think the men who hang us will not enjoy it? Oh, they’ll make very pious speeches about our monstrous crimes, but the truth is they would enjoy hanging their own judges just as much. It makes a man realize how very much alive he is, to walk out of a room where someone has just been hanged by the neck. He is walking out and the other is gone, dead, never to walk anywhere again. Just to be buried. Hidden.”

  He stared from the window and went on.

  “But the gassing of people in the camp was not like this,” he said, almost to himself. “That was simply an engineering problem. There was none of the pleasure of battle in it. There was no satisfaction, other than in having done a necessary job as well as it could be done. Do you understand?” He turned from the window, looking across the car at his companion. He sighed. “No—I suppose not.”

  The doctor might not have been listening to him, for Schlossberg said quietly, “Why are you threatening me?”

  Von Schraeder looked honestly surprised.

  “I’m not threatening you,” he said patiently. “I’m trying to tell you how to survive. When and if the time comes.”

  “Which you hope will not.”

  “Which I hope will not—but greatly fear will. Then I will tell you where to go and whom to see to get you out of the country and save your neck.”

  “I see.” Schlossberg nodded. “After which you will die. Of typhus.”

  Von Schraeder smiled, a humorless smile, and leaned back. “Now you understand.”

  Chapter 4

  Buchenwald concentration camp lay a few miles north of the town of Weimar, laid out in uneven clearings spread across the desolate wooded slopes of the Ettersberg. The neat officers’ homes with their gardens were built along Eicke Street on the more protected southern flank of the mountain, while the prisoners’ barracks were in a wire-enclosed area on the more open upper slope. Beyond the narrow two-story gatehouse with its motto “Right or Wrong—My Country” lay the roll-call area, a barren yard that was a dust bowl in the dry days and a sea of mud in the rain. Then came the barracks, row upon row, fanning out from the roll-call yard, wooden buildings without windows, stretching up the slope almost to the summit. Unlike Maidanek or Auschwitz or the majority of the German concentration camps in Poland, Buchenwald was not an extermination camp but had been built in the early days of the Nazi regime as a detention camp for dissenters, and had later been expanded to furnish labor to the Gustloff Armament Works and the German Armament Works, both built on the outskirts of the camp. In addition, the camp furnished labor for any other endeavor in the area that was recommended to the SS, from the railroad to Weimar that was never used because of its poor construction to the huge riding hall that had been constructed to satisfy the whim of the wife of the ex-commandant, Frau Iisa Koch, and which had been used only half an hour a day for her horseback exercises.

  To Colonel Helmut von Schraeder, the camp was a disgrace. For one thing, for a camp dedicated to furnishing labor and not to extermination, the pair of ovens in the crematory behind the high wall in the southeast corner of the prisoners’ area seldom lacked customers—while at the same time half the machines at the Gustloff and German Works were idle for lack of proper personnel. Still, he could hardly be surprised; an organization run by a bureaucracy that would criminally misuse boxcars would certainly not be intelligent enough to properly use labor.

  The camp also lacked order, lacked that discipline the colonel’s engineering soul demanded. Prisoners would rip out electric wires when the night food containers arrived, and in the darkness fight savagely and even kill to get an extra ration of food, while the Kapos and barracks orderlies would mill about helplessly, unable to control their charges. And inmates too weak or too crowded in their tiered bunks to climb down and make their way to the latrines would relieve themselves into their mess gear instead, or climb to the barrack roof, removing planks and tar paper, and then defecate onto the roof itself, or foul the beams and often the prisoners below.

  But it was not the fighting for a scrap of food, or the filth in which the men lived, or the pile of corpses that were deposited daily outside the barracks and had to be removed that bothered the colonel. These were, after all, animals, and nothing more could be expected of them. What bothered von Schraeder was the waste. Even the small amount of food the inmates received, even the small amount of space they occupied, should have been repaid by having some useful labor extracted from them. If Colonel von Schraeder had been running the camp, the prisoners would have been separated into two groups: those able to work and those unable to work. The first group would have been given sufficient rations to sustain them, enough room on the tiers to get proper rest, and they would have the duty to keep the Gustloff and the German Armament Works functioning. If they did not, they would instantly join the second group and go to the gas chambers, which would have been the first thing constructed.

  He would sit in his office in the command barrack with little to do, leaning back and consuming cigarette after cigarette, constantly analyzing his alternate plan, should Valkyrie fail. It was at these moments that the barren camp, its stench and drabness, its filthy prisoners, and its constant outpouring of skeletal bodies for the furnaces would disappear, and in its place would come a vision of his plan. And with it would come a gentle chiding of himself for worrying about the operation of the camp. What importance could one give, at this moment in time, to the armaments Gustloff produced or did not produce, or the food the prisoners ate or killed to eat or did not eat at all, or where they chose to shit or upon whom? All this minutiae were of no concern to h
im; his concern was the survival of Helmut von Schraeder and nothing else.

  At such moments he was thankful that his mother was dead and there was nobody alive to concern him. The aunt who had raised him in Hamburg after his mother’s death had gone up in the fire storm that swept the city after the Allied bombings; he had been fortunate in never having any woman make a claim on him for anything beyond the moment’s pleasure. As for his father—he had never been sure about his feelings toward his father. As a child he had wept uncontrollably when he learned of his father’s death; the heavy man with the rough tweed clothing who smelled of tobacco and brandy and shaving lotion who would toss him in the air and catch him, and kiss him, nuzzling his thick beard against his face. And when he was older, old enough to understand, and had learned that his father’s death was a suicide, he could not recall his first reaction. He knew he felt it wrong for a general in the Kaiser’s army to commit suicide, regardless of the reason. There had been the loss of the estates; he remembered vaguely driving away from them, his aunt holding his hand tightly, leaning back to watch them disappear, the stable the last thing he had seen before the trees and a curve in the road blocked them from view. But he had heard that there were debts, run up and owed to Jews; and there had been the persecution, he had also heard, by the Communists who ran the Weimar Government in the twenties, before Hitler. But still, should a general have succumbed to any amount of pressure, to the extent of surrendering to death before death had won with its own weapons? No!

  Von Schraeder would feel a rare and unwanted prickling behind his eyes when these thoughts came; he would crush out his cigarette and wave a hand to dissipate the smoke, blinking rapidly. How did he really feel about his father? He told himself repeatedly he really didn’t know. When the general had been found with a gun in his hand, a bullet in his brain, and an apology to his family on his desk, Helmut had been too young. But he remembered many things. He remembered the mustiness of the study, always a forbidden place to play, with the ancestral pictures on the wall and the huge fireplace lit only on important occasions, the patterned carpets, the furniture upholstered in thick velvet, shiny with age, the heavy drapes, his father’s massive desk, the endless bookshelves, and the all-pervading odor of pipe tobacco. Why? Why? A general should be stronger. A von Schraeder should be stronger! The general should have been a survivor, as his son was determined to be!

  And how could a father have deserted a small boy, a small helpless imaginative son, who needed him …?

  Von Schraeder shook his head, clearing it of the unpleasant recollections, and glanced at his desk calender. July 16, four days until the Valkyrie plan was to go into effect. And after that, one way or the other, all this would soon be memories: the camps, the war, the barracks, the entire business. A trip to Switzerland to collect from his numbered account, held in a name no one knew but him, and then—where? He suddenly realized he hadn’t considered that phase at all as yet; it had always seemed too far in the future. But the decision would have to be made; the planning would have to be gone into. Assuming that Valkyrie were to be successful and a general amnesty granted—in itself a doubtful assumption—would he care to remain in Germany? No. Even with amnesty Germany was not the place he wanted to be. The country would take years to recover and rebuild, and would demand sacrifices during that period. Sacrifices were for people without money; he would not fall into that category. The United States? Probably not. Admittedly the life was easy in America, but the Jews, even though a tiny minority, seemed to run the place. South America? Again a possibility, but the weather, he had heard, was a bit unpleasant. Remain in Switzerland once he was there? Another possibility. He leaned back in his chair, fingering his cigarette holder, feeling expansive. With money, the possibilities were endless.

  He smiled as he thought back on his conversation with Franz Schlossberg in the car that day, driving from Lublin to Weimar. Undoubtedly the good doctor had managed to convince himself by now that the conversation had never taken place at all, or if it had, that he must have completely misunderstood the colonel. It would be so like Schlossberg. They saw each other occasionally in the mess hall or in the canteen in the evenings, but on those occasions the doctor would turn his head resolutely, as if fearing he might be drawn into conversation. An idiot, von Schraeder would think indulgently, a man with a God-given talent in his fingers and cotton in his head. Ah, well—very shortly he might have to remind the good doctor of their conversation, although in all honesty, he hoped not.

  Four more days to Valkyrie.

  Hitler’s headquarters at Rastenburg in East Prussia, the famed Wolfschantze, or Wolf’s Lair, was set in a thickly forested area within three concentric protected rings, each thoroughly defended by pillboxes, mine fields, electrified barbed-wire fences, and heavily armed and dedicated SS troops. To enter, a special pass was required, good for just one visit, and the visitor also had to pass the personal inspection of SS Oberfuehrer Rattenhuber, Himmler’s chief of security for the area.

  On the morning of July 20, Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg, accompanied by his adjutant, Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, easily passed the three checkpoints and entered the main area, their papers quite in order. In addition to their passes, Field Marshal Keitel had informed the gates of the coming presence of the colonel, so no trouble had been expected, nor was any forthcoming.

  In von Stauffenberg’s briefcase, in addition to the report on the new Volkgrenadier divisions on which he was to speak to the conference in the early afternoon, there was a time bomb, carefully wrapped in a shirt. The mechanism of the bomb was simple; it was set off by breaking a small glass vial which would release acid to eat through a thin wire, releasing the firing pin against the percussion cap. The time required to complete this cycle was determined by the thickness of the wire. Today the wire was as thin as the makers of the bomb considered safe for the deliverer of the weapon. It was estimated it would take no more than ten minutes for the wire to eat through and the bomb explode.

  As the colonel and Field Marshal Keitel left the field marshal’s quarters to walk to the conference, Stauffenberg suddenly paused.

  “Sir—”

  “Well, what?” It was Keitel’s usual bark.

  “My belt—my cap—” Without another word Stauffenberg turned and hurried back to the anteroom of the field marshal’s quarters. There he quickly opened his briefcase and activated the bomb by breaking the glass capsule. He was in the process of closing the briefcase when Keitel’s angry bullying voice could be heard.

  “Stauffenberg!”

  “Coming, sir!”

  He seized his cap and belt and hurried outside. Keitel, never known for his patience with subordinates at any time, was glaring at him.

  “What have you been doing in there? We’re going to be late! Idiot!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He caught up with the field marshal and marched with him across the area to the conference room. As they entered, he looked around and then took his seat, leaning down to place the briefcase on the floor between General Korten, Air Force Chief of Staff, and Colonel Brandt, Chief of Staff to the Chief of Operations, General Heusinger. Heusinger was speaking in a droning voice. Stauffenberg looked around. He had hoped the conference would take place in the underground rooms, where the effect of his intended explosion in the confined space would be greater; this room had ten windows and they were all open to catch a bit of air. Still, it was his hope that the conspirators had constructed a bomb with sufficient potency to overcome the lack of confinement.

  He glanced surreptitiously at his wristwatch. Four minutes had elapsed since he had broken the glass vial. There were six minutes remaining. He wet his lips and wondered what would happen if for some reason he were stopped from leaving the room before the bomb went off, for there was no preventing its exploding now. And then he consoled himself with the thought that if he went up with the bomb, at least others would go with him, which would be worth it. Others including Keitel, the loud-mouth, as well as
the target, the Fuehrer, sitting two seats down.

  He listened a moment longer, and then while General Heusinger was in the midst of a long report on the breakthrough on the Russian front, Stauffenberg murmured something unintelligible in the form of an excuse to his unlistening neighbor, and came to his feet. Everyone was paying attention to Heusinger. Stauffenberg was out of the room in seconds.

  Keitel, frowning blackly, looked around for the colonel; after all, Stauffenberg’s report, sponsored by Keitel, was next on the agenda, and while Heusinger was long-winded, he wouldn’t talk forever. Wondering where the colonel could have gotten to, Keitel slipped from the room and looked around. Stauffenberg was nowhere to be seen. The sergeant at the telephone switchboard said the colonel had just hurried from the building. Keitel fumed. He swore to himself he would have the colonel’s shoulder patches for this bit of work! What was it now, for God’s sake? If it was a matter of weak kidneys, there was a toilet in the conference-room area! He turned back to the conference room as Heusinger continued his report.

  “The Russian is driving with strong forces west of the Duna toward the north. His spearheads are already southwest of Dunaburg. If our army group around Lake Peipus is not immediately withdrawn, a catastrophe—”

  And the bomb went off.

  July 20 passed as every other day had passed since von Schraeder’s arrival at Buchenwald; the radio in the command barrack was tuned, as always, to the Berlin station that furnished classical music. Von Schraeder found himself staring at the speaker of the radio, willing it to interrupt the Brahms they were playing, and get on with the dire announcement. But the radio remained true to its classical commitments. At five-thirty in the afternoon, the last to leave, he turned the set off and walked down to his car, frowning. Valkyrie had been postponed, that much was evident. Or, very possibly, it had come off and the authorities were keeping it quiet until they could figure out what to do. That, of course, was a distinct possibility, and one that made him feel better. On the other hand, Gehrmann could have gotten the date wrong, which would not be surprising. He would call Gehrmann at the War Ministry in the morning and see what information he could obtain. It would have to be done with a certain amount of circumspection, and Gehrmann would be nervous as the devil, but this did not bother von Schraeder. He had to know, one way or the other.