by Alan Gold
Odd; in my hell just beyond the barbed wire, this guard, and all those like him, were gods. I was his object; my life was at his disposal … yet here, on the other side of hell where heaven resides, he was shown by the dismissal of his superior officer to be nothing more than a functionary, a mere cipher in their system, as I was a cipher on the other side, in his world.
I followed the superior officer into the building, my wooden-clogged feet shuffling after the shiny black boots which clicked menacingly on the polished floor. What I noticed most was the activity; people shouting orders, dogs growling, the sounds of typewriters clattering on paper, feet walking hurriedly along corridors; there were people everywhere. But not like the people in the compound, or who crowded ten or twenty deep just to queue up for the gruel which masqueraded as food and where every man of two hundred in a room tried to find even a millimeter of space to call his own, and where we huddled in the dark taking shallow breaths just to stay alive, limbs twitching to scare off the rats; not crowded like in our straw beds, where we slept three to a bunk, and the feel of another person’s warmth was a feeling of life … even though that person was a man.
No, these German Nazi people who ran the camp were efficient and groomed and wore clothes which didn’t smell of the rain and dirt and the fetid, rotting straw in which we slept. The clothes these people wore smelled of cleanliness. Some of the men, I recognised. They were important people, dressed in immaculate black shining uniforms, who were in the parade ground in the evenings to count the inmates. These officers would be standing on trailers or wagons so they could look over the heads of the thousands of inmates and determine how many were still alive that night, and who during the day had perished from exhaustion or disease. There, on the parade ground, they looked like gods, tall and potent. Here, in their headquarters they looked like ordinary people, smaller than I thought. But they gave me contemptuous glances, repulsed by my rags and my smell, irritated that such a piece of vermin as me had infested their place of business, as though I was a bacillus. Didn’t they realise that vermin such as me were their business?
The officer commanded me to sit on the bench and wait until I was called into the adjutant’s office. I sat as I was commanded. The world around me was suddenly frantic. I felt as though I were in the centre of the activity, in the middle of a German maelstrom. Maybe it was my weakness, my lack of familiarity with my surroundings, but everybody seemed to be walking so fast, so purposefully … I was very frightened. People paced quickly passed me, beyond me, raced around the bench on which I sat. My head was light … that I remember clearly. Light from hunger, not happiness. I was terrified by all the business being conducted around me, by the speed with which the world was spinning.
And then I smelled it. An aroma from years past, from the time when I was growing up and was forbidden it. An aroma which started my mind reeling from the potential which it could afford me. The smell of richness, or normality. The smell of cleanliness and mornings …
What was the smell?
Coffee!
Not the ersatz rubbish made from acorns which we were given. This was real coffee, smelling like a ripe fruit, like a freshly mown field, conjuring up erotic and carnal thoughts I hadn’t had since I became a prisoner. My eyes began to water and my throat constricted with the feelings of pleasure and pain. I blinked back the clouds of tears welling up in my eyes and searched the long corridor and reception area, and then I saw it. It was a table, set with a huge silver urn, surrounded by plates of biscuits and sandwiches and cakes. My mind raced back to one of the Sunday morning coffee parties my parents used to organise when entertaining the Jewish elite of Berlin; it was like being a guest in the palm-fringed conservatory of the Hotel Adlon at No. 1, Unter den Linden. I looked at the table in disbelief, and then I saw a couple of men deep in conversation coming down the corridor towards me, walking close towards it. Casually, almost as an afterthought, one of them reached down, and picked up a sandwich, which he started to eat as he listened to the other man, nodding as he stuffed the soft, fresh white bread into his mouth.
In the barracks, it was a cause for joy and celebration if we sometimes caught a dead rat. In the middle of the night, we would skin it, gut it, light a small fire of straw and wood shavings stolen from the factory, and roast the meat, tearing off strips as they charred and became edible. Others in the barracks would shuffle towards the fire, and beg for a bit of rat meat, even a bone to chew on, but whoever found the rat was the one who didn’t go hungry for a couple of days.
And here, just a quarter of a kilometre away from thousands of people starving to death, was a table set with the food of the gods, where any casual visitor could simply pluck nectar while he passed, as though this table were a tree from the Garden of Eden, heavily laden with impossibly wonderful fruits. No fights, no threats, no frantic grabbing or punching, not rats’ meat, nor the thin gruel and soup which was given to keep us alive so that we could work … Here was just fresh food always available. I was in heaven.
I felt myself standing. I didn’t even think about the possibility of punishment. I began a painful walk to the table. I didn’t see people looking at me, or hear someone barking an order for me to sit down. My ears were throbbing with the noisy sound of blood rushing through them. My stomach was making noises which deafened me to the threats; my eyes were dimly focussed on the cornucopia before me and they were blinded to the danger.
I remember staggering towards the table, too weak to run. The table and the food loomed nearer as I approached it. It was all so perfect, like a beautiful painting … fresh bread with lashings of yellow butter, seductive red jams and brown honey, delicate porcelain cups and saucers just waiting for someone to pour first milk, then tea from a silver teapot. Of course, it was all in my mind, because on the table were only bread and margarine and honey, but my eyes were seeing a picture of a time before I was sent to the camps, and I was fantasising in the world of memory.
And then I vaguely heard the sound of feet stomping towards me, and men growling like dogs and I remember stumbling before I reached the table and suddenly there was no table, only the wooden slats of the floor, and the sight of boots. On the floor, I could see the underside of the table. My head throbbed from where I’d been struck by a baton. But that was all I can remember because the throbbing stopped when I blacked out with an SS officer’s boot hitting my head.
The next thing I knew, I was slumped on the carpet of the adjutant’s office. All I heard was the noise of pounding in my head. Then, above the pounding, the words,
‘What is your relationship with this mechanic?’
And then I knew I was dead. A memory of food. Of sitting on top of a boiler and smiling. Of breaking the law. Found out! Punishment. Death. Relief.
‘Can’t the fucking Jew understand German. I need to know what was the bond between this mechanic and this Jew.’
Somebody else spoke. Some other voice. ‘As far as I know from the reports left by this Wilhelm Deutch person, this Jew Gutman is skilled at mechanics and he’s needed in Auschwitz.’
‘Absurd. Can’t this mechanic Deutch find somebody else? Surely in the whole of Poland there’s somebody who can turn dials and fiddle with machinery. Why send some Jew who’s about to die all the way to Poland?’
‘I don’t know why you’re arguing. The orders are quite specific. This Jew Gutman must have some special skills.’
A long, drawn-out silence. A rustling of papers. A curt, ‘Very well. Send him by the next transport east.’
A click of heels. A ‘Jawohl!’ And I knew I would live.
The Subsidiary Courtroom of the Palace of Justice
Nuremberg, Allied Occupied Germany
June, 1946
It was the second day of Wilhelm Deutch’s trial, and three people had already given evidence. The previous day, under an almost respectful cross-examination by Theodore Broderick, a twenty-year-old woman, Rosl Lieber, told the court of how she had worked from dawn to dusk in the Daimler-Be
nz factory for over a year, making cables and lamps. She showed the court her scarred hands and the burns on the skin of her arms and shoulders from the hot machinery which she was forced to use with no safety equipment. The judge, who a month beforehand had stood in the gallery and listened to his brother judges trying and sentencing to hang the members of the death squads called Einsatzgruppen for crimes against humanity, was not unmoved … yet it couldn’t be said that he was overly empathetic. The testimony of a slave labourer was hideous, especially a young woman starved and worked almost to the point of death, but it was not in the same league as evidence of the creation of a mobile gassing van which drove in the rear of the army to round up and murder Jews and Gypsies and others who had escaped death by gun or bomb. The evidence this young woman gave would have disgusted him if he’d been presiding in an American court, but he was almost ashamed to admit that it wasn’t unduly discomforting when put into the context of this pantheon of evil.
‘And did you see the defendant Deutch while you were working in the factory?’ asked the prosecutor, William Sherman.
‘Yes, many times. He would walk up and down and make sure that our lathes and the other equipment we used were in good working order. And when our equipment worked by using some hydraulics, he would regularly come around and check the gauges.’
‘Did the defendant ever speak to you?’
‘No. Never.’
‘Did he acknowledge you, ask how you were feeling, offer to make the machine you were working on safer, test it to ensure that it was not dangerous?’ asked the prosecutor.
‘No. He treated me as if I was dirt. He sneered whenever he came near me and the others.’
‘Did he ever attack you, mistreat you …’
‘Your Honour, while I appreciate the difference between a military tribunal and a court of law, I believe that the rules concerning leading a witness should be obeyed,’ said Broderick.
The judge didn’t have time to respond because Sherman acknowledged the point and continued, ‘Did he appear to be friendly with the guards, as though they were in some way …’
Again, Broderick jumped to his feet. ‘Objection, Your Honour. The prosecutor cannot surely ask the witness what might or might not have been in the defendant’s mind.’
The judge thought for a moment and then said, ‘Mr. Prosecutor, I suggest you simply stick to the facts of the case, rather than wondering about the state of mind of the defendant at the time of these offences.’
After a dozen or more questions, the prosecutor ended his cross-examination. This was the first of ten witnesses he would call. Her testimony was the weakest, but he wanted to build a case so that surely, inexorably, the judge would see that slave masters were in the same league, albeit a notch or two down, as the mass murderers; that evil was a continuum and that no matter where one was placed along it, the actions were still evil and damnable and the perpetrators deserved the severest condemnation.
The other witnesses the prosecutor would call had worked directly for Deutch, and would testify that, while he hadn’t been a monster in his personal treatment of them, he had participated in a slave labour program, and by association was as guilty as those guards who set dogs on Jews or beat them to death.
Broderick stood and politely said, ‘Miss Lieber, it is not my intention to cause you any further distress by asking you to relive the horrors which you have already suffered. So I’ll confine my questions to your observations of Mr. Deutch, and what actually was his standard of behaviour towards you and other workers in the slave labour factory in Auschwitz …’
An hour later, Broderick and his client were sitting opposite each other, the interviewing table between them.
‘And so it starts …’
Broderick nodded thoughtfully. ‘How do you feel, listening to what they’re saying about you? Does it hurt?’
Deutch looked at the lawyer in amazement. ‘You know, you still refuse to accept my version of the events of the war, don’t you? Week after week, I’ve told you what amounts to the same thing, and yet you still look for a story which will satisfy you.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Yes, you do. You understand perfectly well. You’re waiting for contrition, for an apology. For me to burst into tears and rip off my clothes and try to hang myself. Then you can go home to your comfortable and safe lifestyle, and tell the world that you got the Nazi to see the error of his ways.’
Broderick was shocked. ‘Not at all. I’m here as your lawyer, representing …’
‘Rubbish! Look, Professor. I like you. I respect you. At first, I was very suspicious of you and this whole court procedure. I thought it was just a mockery of justice. But now I know I was wrong. Sure, I’ll hang, but not because of this court. I’ll hang because I was part of something which history will judge as monstrous. But that doesn’t mean for one moment that I’m going to lie down and beg for my life. And nor does it mean that, at the time, in the middle of a war, I did the wrong thing. You’re not here to represent me. You’re here because everything about me and Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring is so alien to you, so utterly contrary to everything you’ve taught your students all your life, that you just had to come over to Germany and convert at least one German. You’re like a Jehovah’s Witness. You want to convert me to being sorry for what I did, and then you can die happy as one of the chosen ones. Am I right?’
He loathed admitting that his client—a mechanic and a Nazi who left school at fifteen—might have a better insight into his motivations than all the American lawyers and all the Allied justices with whom he had spent the past six months.
‘No, that’s not right. I’m here in order to ensure that even those who have committed the basest acts against humankind in a thousand years are afforded the benefits of Western justice.’
When the translator had finished his words, Deutch burst out laughing. ‘Really. A thousand years? Why not since the time of Christ? Or the Egyptians? Tell me, Mr. Professor. Why do you think that the Nazis were any worse than the British in Africa? Or the Spanish in South America? Or the Turks when they invaded Europe? Or the Arabs when they conquered North Africa and Spain? They were all barbarians. We were merely following their example. Do you want me to tell you the stories of how the Mongol hordes raped and pillaged; heard the stories about how, after they’d raped a woman, they’d slit open her belly and sew in a live cat?’
Broderick winced in pain. ‘Enough! Why are you trying to justify your behaviour?’
‘Because we weren’t the first, and we weren’t the worst. But Western civilisation has caught up with us, and now we’re to be made scapegoats for what all other nations have been doing throughout the ages.’
Broderick took out his handkerchief to wipe his forehead. In all his conversations with Deutch, they had both avoided discussion of Nazism; it was as though all the facts about the atrocities were known, and now the job was to establish that Deutch hadn’t been as complicit as all the others. But now that the trial had started, and the lid had been removed from the festering jar, evil things were again forcing their way into the light of day. He bunched the handkerchief up in his fist and squeezed it hard.
‘Mr. Deutch. You’re an intelligent man. Do you seriously expect me to sit here and accept what you’re saying? Of course there were evil deeds perpetrated by people in the past. I’m a student of history; I know perfectly well the barbarity which ordinary humanity has been forced to suffer in the name of nationalism, or tribalism, or religion, or whatever other philosophy drives madmen on. But how can you use the past to justify your actions today? Just because the Tartars and the Turks and the Spanish conquistadors were the epitome of evil, why does that justify building concentration camps?’
As if to prove his point, Deutch barely concealed his smile when he said, ‘But surely you realise that Adolf Hitler learned about the benefits of concentration camps from the British and the Russians … your noble Allies. You say you’re a student of history, Professor. Then r
ead of the treatment of the Boers by the British in South Africa. Read of the treatment of the political prisoners in Russia. You’ve read the testimony which was given in the recent trials here, haven’t you? They said that in 1922, Russia had twenty-three concentration camps. Millions and millions died in Siberia. We in Germany didn’t start building our camps until the Allies had perfected them!’
Allied Occupied Germany, 1946
From the memoirs of Joachim Gutman:
My first view of Auschwitz was from the long cattle train to which we’d been driven by truck from Sachsenhausen. The journey started when the lorry deposited us in a railway siding in the middle of nowhere. There seemed to be no reason for us to be there. One minute, we were bouncing along in the back of the lorry, desperately trying to stand or to sit, anything to prevent our being thrown around like sacks, and the next moment, the canvas flaps of the lorry were thrown open, and we were ordered to step down on to the cinders of this railway siding. I looked around. There were no houses, no buildings. Just the junction of two long tracks, one seeming to come from the south and the other from the west. They met and blended into one, which disappeared as parallel lines pointing towards our certain death in the east … in Poland … in Auschwitz.
The wind howled like a banshee. It was all so cold and empty and desolate. There were no leaves on the trees, there was no grass in the empty brown fields. The dirty sludge, the remains of the snows of the previous week, was still in the hard-caked winter furrows in the fields. The wind bit into my thin pyjamas, opening the buttons, and touching my skin like a knife. For a moment, I yearned for the comfort of the hut in which, up until last night, I’d lived with a couple of hundred other men. How silly!
And then in the distance, there was a whistle. We all looked to the western track. We saw a small cloud of smoke, rising from the tiny train which was approaching us. Another blast of the whistle. As a child, I remembered, I’d once stood on the running board of my father’s Mercedes as it waited at a level crossing for a train to arrive. I recall the thrill of seeing the smoke from the engine; then feeling the ground and the air vibrate as the massive train approached. I jumped down from the running board and ran to the gated level crossing. I climbed on to the wooden slats and screamed in fear and pleasure as the huge and overwhelming monster thundered past me. My mind spun with wonders … Where was it going … would I get to ride inside it one day … could I be in control of it when I grew up?
