by Chris Petit
‘You know who I am,’ Eichmann liked to say. He enjoyed his notoriety. ‘There isn’t much else for him to enjoy’ was Karl-Heinz’s tart verdict. Eichmann talked of the worthwhile work being done by the Red Cross, up to a point. He was annoyed by the establishment of safe houses for Jews at a time when there was a need for ‘more team effort between respective organisations’, with ‘everyone pulling together’. ‘No ambiguity,’ he said on several occasions, giving me a measured look.
Sometimes he seemed surprised by his authority, and then he looked like the travelling salesman he had started out as. He was keen to discuss his transportation problems, which he thought gave us a shared interest. He complained how few people could appreciate the difficulties of his job, and treated me to a cameo of his rage regarding the inefficiency of everyone else. ‘I have made my position quite clear throughout—on behalf of my superiors—yet nobody takes me seriously. How stupid are these Jews? We sat at the same table. Normally they are the first to drive a bargain. And now they are all bleating.’ He put on an effeminate voice. ‘“Please, mister, don’t start the trains again.”’
But the real point of the meeting was to frighten me.
‘Obersturmbannführer Strasse is off somewhere,’ he said, ‘and unless you tell me what he is doing I shall have you on the first train out.’ He grinned at the prospect.
I told him I had no idea where Karl-Heinz was.
‘You must know. You are his spy!’ He looked pleased with himself as he fiddled with his cigarettes. ‘Are you familiar with Kafka’s fable of the cat and the mouse? No? It’s very short, and this is how it goes. “Alas,” said the mouse, “the world is growing smaller every day.”’ He put on a high falsetto for the mouse’s voice. ‘“At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right and the left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap I must run into.”’ He looked at me, relishing his performance, knowing I had his full attention and was uncomfortably aware that the story was of personal significance and had been told by him many times before. ‘Now can you guess the punchline?’ I shook my head. ‘“You only need to change direction,” said the cat, and ate the mouse up.’
Eichmann gave one of his practised thin smiles and insisted we drink a glass of schnapps together. ‘That story always goes down very well with the Jewish Council,’ he said. ‘They seem to appreciate its allegorical significance, its sense of what we might call historic destiny.’
He gave me my schnapps and insisted on touching glasses. Karl-Heinz had always dismissed Eichmann as a lackey and a jobsworth, but that day he seemed like the man with the cards. ‘Cheers! You will be reporting directly to me now. You will inform me of all Obersturmbannführer Strasse’s moves. But the choice remains yours—historical destiny or some maverick who, my spies tell me, can’t find a Jew to talk to. Think of the mouse, think of all the one-way tickets waiting to be issued in this town. So, now you have a personal stake in my delaying the deportations, you and a lot of Jews. Spy well, my friend.’
Karl-Heinz didn’t respond for three days to the message I left with the tailor. In the meantime, I kept thinking I would be lucky to survive the week. I threw myself into my work and at night wandered around town in a funk, drinking too much, looking in vain for Willi. I was angry with Willi. I was sure he was using me against Karl-Heinz, knowing very well what purpose Eichmann had in mind for me, and even discussing it with him (clinking glasses).
Everyone was saying, ‘The war will be over soon. What’s the point of killing all those Jews now?’ An unspoken belief grew up that a collective drunkenness would ward off disaster, that hedonism would subvert totalitarianism. In smart hotels the bar pianists’ requests from customers grew more bittersweet.
My dilemma was how much to confide in Karl-Heinz, how much to trust to him having the upper hand. I only had his word that he had the Reichsführer’s favour. It was possible that he was just another go-between, like me. At last I got word from him to meet him at the Rudas baths where he had bribed an attendant for us to have a room to ourselves, and there in the clammy heat I told him about my summons from Eichmann.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tell him what he wants to hear.’
I found his coolness infuriating. ‘Is that it?’
‘Did he start quoting Kafka at you?’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Trust me. It’s the best way. Whatever you do, do not for one second think of throwing in your lot with him. The man’s days are numbered. Do not be afraid of him. Feel sorry for him, if anything. Eichmann is one of the ones who will end up taking the blame. Eichmann is what James Cagney would call the fall guy.’
The next time it was sweet liqueurs in Eichmann’s office. Wisliceny put his head round the door to say hello. Eichmann, pleasantly surprised, asked, ‘Do you two know each other?’ He took it for a good sign. ‘You will feel quite at home here.’
I still was not sure if Karl-Heinz’s diagnosis was correct. It didn’t seem like a good time to bet on either of them.
A city heat wave made Eichmann’s offices uncomfortably sticky. Eichmann removed his jacket, with my permission. He said, ‘I think it is better if ours is an informal relationship. So, have you news for me on what that Jew-fucker Strasse is up to?’
I reported that Karl-Heinz had been in Switzerland pursuing Jewish negotiations through Swiss contacts. He was trying to arrange a lump-sum payment in exchange for Jewish lives. The earlier negotiations in Istanbul had come to nothing after details had been leaked to the London Times.
Mention of the newspaper article threw Eichmann into a tantrum. ‘The article was written by a Jew! It was all lies and inaccuracies. A hundred thousand Jews exterminated? Where do they get their figures? Do they have so little faith in our efficiency? We are talking millions. And I resent this little worm calling me a blackmailer because of my demands, and not even having the professional competence to name me. I am not ashamed. I am an official of the Third Reich undertaking state policies. I am underwritten by the law, and they make me sound like a cheap gangster.’
I told him Karl-Heinz seemed privately gloomy because the Jews were incapable of getting organised.
Eichmann snorted. ‘He doesn’t need to go to Switzerland to find that out. He can come here any day of the week, and I will tell him to his face. The Jews have a death wish, it’s as simple as that. The sooner everyone stops beating around the bush pretending to deny it, the better it will be for us all. What else?’
‘He said there might be a delay of two weeks to the deportations while the negotiations exhaust themselves.’
Eichmann grumbled. ‘Here I am having to rely on you to know my own timetable.’
Karl-Heinz described his trip as a ‘fucking farce’. He had found himself standing in the middle of a border bridge in the rain because the Jewish representative he had been meeting had failed to get him a temporary visa. Swiss customs had refused to let them use their building, and the Jewish representative had declined his offer of the German customs shed, so they had stood out in the open and got wet. The Jewish representative had proceeded to give Karl-Heinz a humanitarian lecture and denied all knowledge of German demands.
‘Standing in the rain, being made a fool of. One, this arsehole was supposed to be negotiating the release of his fellow people. Two, he was meant to bring an American with him so we could start trying to get this war to an end before those megalomaniacs running it bring the whole thing crashing down. And there I am with two other officers—a humiliation you cannot imagine—and three hundred people from the ransom train as a gesture of our good intentions, and this standing-in-the-middle-of-the-bridge arsehole admits he is in no position to negotiate, so I yell, “Then what the fuck are we all doing standing here getting rained on?” And I could see him thinking: big nasty Nazi. He was this little guy from Switzerland who d
id not have even half a clue, so I had to be nice and explain that many, many lives were in the balance, which we were trying to do something about. I gave him a week to go away and come up with some solid proposals. I told him I couldn’t negotiate if he didn’t bring anything to the table, and do you know what the little cocksucker said? “Not to the table, to the bridge.” And I realised he had meant for us to meet there all along! The little fucker was there just to score a point. So I lost my temper again and said if he didn’t come up with something fast, he would have the fate of the Jews of Budapest on his conscience for the rest of his life, which left him with something to think about.’
Karl-Heinz recorded in one of his elegant notebooks: ‘The Rescue Committee was given three months to prepare for these negotiations and has done absolutely fuck-all. Unbelievable! It is not a difficult transaction. I did not tell the Reichsführer what a balls-up it was in the hope that he will still stop the deportations.’
• • •
Eichmann, greedy for scraps, kept summoning me to his downtown office. One time there was a big panic going on, with secretaries rushing in and out, and Eichmann taking several calls during which I had to leave the room. Eichmann under pressure, secretaries whispering in the outer office. I gathered there was a military flap and the Hungarians were being difficult about starting the deportations. Eichmann, enraged, came out of his office shouting that if no immediate action was going to be taken, then they might as well all pack up and go home. Seeing me, he screamed: ‘Out! And count yourself lucky.’ Then to the secretary: ‘Get me Veesenmayer. Get me Wisliceny.’ Then, as I was leaving: ‘Your friend Strasse won’t be having his way for much longer if I have anything to do with it!’
The military development became clear. The Soviets had broken through German-Romanian lines, and the Romanian government had declared an armistice and kicked the Germans out. As a result, the Hungarians were refusing to authorise the deportations. Eichmann could not act without their approval. Karl-Heinz filled in the gaps. Eichmann, emboldened, had dispatched Wisliceny to Berlin with an ultimatum to Himmler saying he should be recalled if no immediate action was to be taken.
On the day the deportations were due to recommence, a message reached me from Karl-Heinz saying the order had been rescinded. Himmler had finally acted.
Through September the mood lightened. On the streets people clung to the semblance of normality. Food had got scarcer, but most people had country relations. Geese, eggs, cheese, and vegetables made their way into the city. The black market was a source of everything from forged papers to apartments. Pistols (Lugers) could be bought at the eastern railway station from soldiers back from the front. Characteristic Hungarian pessimism, a form of double bluff—expecting the worst while enjoying the best—became both more complex and straightforward. The general gloom was countered by people drinking in private to peace in the hope that civilisation would prevail. An architect explained his theory to me in a bar. The city was conditioned by the feminine curve of the river that ran through it: Budapest was ironic and civilised; Budapest got on with life regardless of government.
When Eichmann’s department was disbanded there was a real feeling that the Germans had been seen off and the city would be safe. It became fashionable to be pro-Jewish.
Karl-Heinz, that astute reader of character, recommended Eichmann for an Iron Cross, to distract him from his sulk. Meanwhile, Karl-Heinz’s Swiss negotiations dragged.
Elsewhere warning signs were there for those who wished to take note. Despite the recall of Eichmann’s department, Wisliceny and the Gestapo had remained, and Eichmann hovered close to the Hungarian border as houseguest in a friend’s castle. The petty bureaucrat grown used to high living, awaiting recall.
I am aware now of searching for evidence of some grand design, evidence, if you like, of Dulles in the ruins of history. Himmler and Dulles, it seemed, had vaulted ahead, abandoned the immediate unfolding for the endgame. Perhaps only Eichmann had the figures in his head and was keeping score. Himmler was playing for something else by then, with Karl-Heinz the adventurer still operating in the belief, just, that at some stage he could turn the situation to his advantage.
And Willi. I grew to see Willi as a projection of my own darkest imaginings. Of all of us, he seemed most suited to those times. Willi fraternised with everyone, a man of many performances, who had stolen something from all our souls. Black marketeer. Emissary, for whom and what, nobody was sure. Leather-company representative. Ladies’ man in his slim-waisted double-breasted suits, drinking cocktails. (Willi in Budapest: Magritte’s portrait of a young man looking in the mirror, seeing not his face but the back of his head.) Rogue. Spy. Double agent. Bon viveur. Jazz fan. A symbol, to me at any rate, of the sophistication of duplicity, my own efforts gauche by comparison. Willi always the better company. Willi’s moves more glamorous than mine. Willi had a Hungarian countess for a lover. Willi rising to the challenge. I granted him a sense of purpose lacking in myself. Willi understood the text of which I was only the messenger.
The biggest shock was seeing him one day leaving David’s hideaway, hat set back on his head, Dulles style. He didn’t see me, or gave no sign if he did. My first thought was that his presence there had something to do with a betrayal of David by Dulles.
David refused to take my warning seriously. He bought Willi absolutely and stifled my objections. He knew Willi was almost certainly a double agent but believed he would not betray him. I was also aware of no good reason why David should trust me any more than Willi. Word was going round that I was Eichmann’s spy.
Willi was providing David with ready-stamped residence forms, which bypassed the law of registering any change of address with the police. He was also offering copies of something called the Order of Heroes, which precluded Jewish membership, and therefore granted any holder obvious exemption from the roundups. But these turned out to be poor forgeries, so it was possible that my misgivings had been correct and that Willi was handing them out knowing their holders would be detained. Willi Schmidt was emerging as a bad puzzle with lots of bits that didn’t fit.
On the morning of 15 October the radio gave out repeated announcements that the Hungarian government would be seeking an armistice with the Allies and the Germans would leave.
The streets were full of people. You could see where the Jews had torn off their yellow stars. It was the most beautiful of days, crystal clear, the likes of which happen only a few times a year. People’s faces had a radiance. Everyone remarked on the weather as the quickest way to show the joy they felt. ‘What if it had been raining?’ a woman remarked.
I went round to David’s place. It was already full, an open house with any pretence of security abandoned. As a man grown too used to false hope, David grinned with caution while all around him others got drunk and kissed and, in the case of one impulsive couple, fucked on the floor. I wondered what Dulles would make of such spontaneous exuberance. Dulles and his shadowy moves, Dulles behind closed doors, working his paper trail; Dulles dry and untactile. Even Willi was there in spirit. Some of his jazz records had found their way to David’s apartment. ‘Black Bottom Stomp’ on the turntable, played over and over. A young woman danced a crazy Charleston, and I imagined Karl-Heinz packing impeccably laundered shirts, prior to a quiet departure. We celebrated while history made its moves.
• • •
Nobody wanted to believe that evening’s first broadcasts, not when they were so drunk and disinclined to let anything spoil their fun. Maybe fifty people were crammed into the apartment. Someone came in with a special edition of the paper with the news that there had been a coup d’état. Hungarian fascists had taken over. The Nazis would stay.
Everyone stood around in shock, drunk, hungover, and crying all at once. Five minutes later they were all gone. David said to me, ‘Eichmann will return. Save as many lives as you can.’
Outside, the streets were deserted, in forlorn contrast to that morning. I avoided main thoroughfares except
to cross them. Each provided an illustration of the day’s brutal change: on one a German convoy of tanks, with trucks of troops massed down side streets; on another two straw-haired teenagers with rifles and bandoliers, representatives of the new order, clubbing passersby. One stopped me, wanting to know where I was going. I could smell the drink on him.
This was how it would end, I thought: some last act of absurdity at the hands of a near-child. I wanted to kill those boys more than anyone. I fired off a stream of German invective at one of them, which knocked the cockiness out of him, and cuffed his ear, a measure of my recklessness. The boy burst into tears while his friend gripped his rifle tighter. Any other day I believe he would have shot me.
The encounter was made even more unreal for happening in a busy street. Until then Budapest’s terror had been largely invisible and orchestrated to take place offstage. This new reign, administered by conscienceless, misfit children was a sign of things to come. They were representatives of a hitherto unimaginable level of infestation.
Embarrassment was the underlying mood of the next few days, each of us privately ashamed for having dared hope. The weather reflected the turn of events by becoming bitterly cold. The new regime dispensed its thuggery. Corpses floated in the Danube outside the Ritz. Any sense of Nazi protocol—of the masked brutality at which they were so adept—was abandoned.
At the Red Cross office Dufy was in charge of organising the Jewish safe houses. He had us working twelve- and fifteen-hour shifts preparing for the worst. Most of the rich young men who had signed on for the petrol ration could still be found in the city’s smarter cafés with their cars parked outside. Dufy said, ‘The rats are out from under the floorboards.’
