The Dower House

by Malcolm Macdonald

  HEYDRICH: Politics may dictate otherwise. Think what a birthday present it would make for the Führer to announce to him that the whole of Germany was Jew-cleansed! A birthday present exclusively from the SS! Come! We’ve kept them waiting long enough. [to Schöngarth, on their way to the chamber] Can you find some occasion this morning to let either Meyer or Liebbrandt know that there will be no detailed protocol and that their report to Frank will be either verbal – and minuted there in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories – or in their words over their own signatures? Frank must understand he is a fully committed party to the Final Solution, not sitting on the fence. You understand?

  SCHÖNGARTH: Perfectly, Herr Obergruppenführer! [They enter the conference room]

  HEYDRICH: Good morning, gentlemen. Heil Hitler!

  ALL: Heil Hitler!

  HEYDRICH: Doktor Kritzinger, may I invite you to sit at the head of the table? We need a wise and experienced head to keep an eye on all these eager civilians! [laughter] The rest of you, please take whatever seat is nearest you, without ceremony. Today we are all on one niveau, united – I trust – in one single task.

  Here Angela had inserted the seating order, with all the top men in the SS (except Himmler himself, of course) ranged down one side and all the second rankers from the civilian ministries and the bureaucracy governing the occupied East facing them on the other, with the veteran Kritzinger at the head of the table. The real powers – Goebbels, Göring, von Ribbentrop, Speer, Bormann, and, of course, the Führer himself – were taking care to be absent.

  KRITZINGER: Am I in the chair? I hope not. It should surely be you, Herr Deputy Reichsprotektor?

  HEYDRICH: It should be, and it is. But our purpose today is for us, of the Schutzstaffel, to tell you, representing all the important ministries and branches of the party and government, what progress we have made in the Jewish Question – specifically, the Final Solution to that question. So . . . to our duties! Herr Gauleiter, State Secretaries, Herr Reichsamtsleiter, Herr Ministerialdirektor, SS comrades – you may remember this meeting was first convened by Reichsmarschall Göring in July last year, but it had to be postponed for various strategic reasons – not least our declaration of war against America last autumn. However, we have not been idle in the intervening months. Last autumn we could only have told you of various promising experiments we were then conducting. Now we can assure you that we have the perfect means to fulfil the Führer’s dream of a Jew-cleansed Europe within a reasonable number of years! [sensation] But I’m getting ahead of myself. A copy of the Reichsmarschall’s letter was enclosed with your invitations today, so I needn’t read it fully now. ‘Berlin, July the thirty-first, nineteen forty-one . . . Reichsmarschall of Greater Germany, Chairman of the Defence Council, to . . . myself . . . Further to . . . etcetera . . . I instruct you to make all expedient preparations of the complete solution to the Jewish Question in Europe . . . produce for me a detailed plan for carrying out the Final Solution . . . as for the other departments of the party and state . . . these should be involved to the fullest extent necessary . . . etcetera, etcetera.’ In other words, gentlemen – you!

  KRITZINGER: Is there to be no protocol of this meeting?

  HEYDRICH: Oberstürmbannführer Eichmann will circulate a general protocol next week – a summary of the main points, only. In half an hour from now, I’m sure you’ll not simply understand this caution – you’ll applaud it. So! I will now ask the Chief of Security Police and the SD in the Generalgouvernement to provide a brief outline of the problem.

  Felix let his eye wander down over Schöngarth’s politically sanctioned version of the Jewish diaspora and Eichmann’s interminable country-by-country listing of Jewish populations – they were, in any case, familiar to him from the ‘official’ transcript. He picked it up again several pages later:

  EICHMANN: Over eleven million Jews! Of which over four and a half million are already under our control.

  FREISLER: Dear God! They breed like lice. The Romans kick a few hundred-thousand out of Israel – and end up making us a gift of eleven million!

  KRITZINGER: How can we resettle even four and a half million? And where?

  LANGE: Some in the earth, some in the sky. [laughter]

  KRITZINGER: Kill them?

  HEYDRICH: What else?

  KRITZINGER: That’s a lot of bullets. My son is serving on the Russian front and has written to me of a shortage of many things – including, at times, ammunition.

  HEYDRICH: Yes, we agree entirely. Bullets are not the answer – as Sturmbannführer Doctor Lange will describe next. First, I must explain that we have since 1939 liquidated hundreds of thousands of Russian, Baltic, and Polish Jews – often with the enthusiastic support of their fellow non-Jewish citizens. [applause] This has been achieved by using mobile Action Groups [Einsatzgruppen], sweeping across the country in a systematic way, leaving the land cleansed of Jews behind them. The Führer told me he sees himself as a political Robert Koch, killing off harmful germs to save the body politic. And Comrade Lange has been the Führer’s medicine – the silver bullet. His part has been truly heroic. [applause]

  LANGE: It is not difficult if we apply ourselves with true German thoroughness. There are four Action Groups. I command one of them. Each has a thousand men, or, I should say, a thousand personnel, of whom about two dozen are women. They are drawn from the SS-Reserve, the Waffen-SS, the Gestapo, Security, and the Criminal Police. But they are all united in one purpose. An Action Group works from day to day, splitting up into Commandos whose size depends on the terrain, the cooperation we receive from the local population, the density of the population, and so on. Rounding up the Jews is almost always the easiest part. They live among people who covet their houses and whatever small bits of property we are careful to leave behind. If they are reluctant to cooperate, we can usually find a priest who will remind them that when the Jews chose to crucify Christ and set Barabbas free, they said, ‘On our head be it, and on the heads of our children for ever.’ In one case we even found a rabbi who made the same point for us! [laughter] We then send the able-bodied men and boys out to dig a mass grave. When they’ve finished, they strip naked and jump into it – after some encouragement – and are shot. We then make the remainder – the women and children, the old ones, the sick, and so on – we make them run out to the graveside, strip off their clothes . . . and then they join their menfolk in the grave. We try to make it with a hundred bullets to every hundred Jews.

  KRITZINGER: So you do use bullets, after all!

  LANGE: No. It is true that we have rid the world of tens of thousands of Jews in this way, but all—

  KLOPFER: But how do you make sure that all of them are dead? People survive shootings every day.

  LANGE: We pile the earth back on top of them. One way or another they die.

  FREISLER: And they never try to run away?

  LANGE: Only if they’d prefer to have their throats ripped out by a dog. But I was going to say that despite all our efforts – and successes – all we have proved is that this can never be the way to liquidate Jews by the million. Apart from the fact that it’s wasteful of ammunition that belongs in Russian flesh, it is sadly the case that even the most ardent Jew-hater is affected by having to look thousands of Jews in the face – especially the women and children, and the old ones – and then shoot them. Day after day after day. I assure you, it is no easy matter to force a mother and two screaming children into a pit full of corpses and then machine gun them. We would not be a civilized people if we could remain unaffected by such things. You can tell yourself a thousand times that today’s sweet little Jewish child is tomorrow’s full-grown filthy Jew, but it doesn’t make it any easier for our people. What all-too-often happens is that they drown their finer feelings in vodka and schnapps. Even so, many are burned out after just eight weeks. In fact, we have found that Slav collaborators – and Slavs, as we know, are racially backward compared to us Aryans – they can stand it much bett
er than most Aryan Germans. It’s not a pleasant thing to confess but it’s a fact. We do it out of duty, determination, and the iron will of the Führer. They do it because they don’t think it’s any different from shooting pigeons or hares.

  MÜLLER: I think I can reveal – in this company – that the Reichsprotektor himself was physically ill when he witnessed an experimental gassing of only forty prisoners at Chiemnitz, a gassing that went wrong and left almost a dozen still clinging on to life. But he is adamant that our finer feeling should not compromise our duty. He said it proved that we are human beings with all our civilized feelings intact despite the unpleasant things we have to do. He also said that we must keep this extermination campaign secret – to avoid panic among the victims and to avoid a hypocritical outcry from other nations, who will secretly applaud and thank us even while they publicly condemn us in the same breath.

  KRITZINGER: I’m glad to hear that bullets are ruled out because, as I said—

  HEYDRICH: Except in small-scale mopping-up operations, where it is unreasonable to spare transport to move the Jews to the facilities we’re about to describe. Their development has been led by Gruppenführer Müller – assisted by many of the others you see on this side of the table. Comrade.

  MÜLLER: Our valuable experience with the Action Groups persuaded us that we had to find another way. We needed to be able to liquidate Jews at the rate of not hundreds a day but thousands a day. Perhaps even tens of thousands. To handle four and a half million Jews even at the rate of five thousand a day would still take three years. Everything flows from that – and from one key sentence in Mein Kampff! It’s on page 772 if – like me – you have the first edition. There – after describing the treason of the Jews – the Führer writes that it would be better to take the entire Hebrew nation and poison them with gas. Poison them with gas, gentlemen! His precise words! The Jews of Europe are about to learn to their cost that it does not pay to ignore the words of the Führer – he means them! Every single one! Literally!

  NEUMANN: What gas? Is this going to demand a diversion of industry into manufacturing large volumes of—

  MÜLLER: No, not at all. But what if it did?

  NEUMANN: The Reichsmarschall charged me specifically today to object to anything that might divert industry from the war effort.

  MEYER: Is this the same Reichsmarschall who has convened this meeting and charged us to approve a Final Solution? He pats us on the back and then trips us up!

  MÜLLER: Fortunately, it’s not an issue here. One small canister of gas can liquidate four-thousand people at a single time – at least, it will be able to when we have finished building the necessary facilities. Let me describe what will happen from the point of view of Abraham and Sarah and young Aaron and Little Hymie and Baby Rebecca – because that way you’ll see it isn’t a simple matter of putting them in a railway wagon and killing them when they arrive at the end of the line.

  The next few pages brought it home to Felix that the extermination system was already old by the time he was thrown into its maw; vicious dogs and whips had greeted him at the railhead but here was Müller describing arrivals in an apparent resettlement camp whose cheerfully bright walls were decorated with soothing posters of faraway places, all suggesting an imminent departure to a place of one’s choice . . . the Ukraine, the Black Sea, Turkey-in-Asia. Was anyone ever really fooled by it?

  What followed the idyll was also detailed by Müller: the ten-thousand-a-day target, the selection for immediate ‘processing’ or for slave labour; the quick and the slow death; the commercial value of human hair, false teeth, gold teeth, spectacles, shoes, clothing. (At one point Heydrich said, ‘My next birthday present to my wife will be a doormat made from shaved-off Jewish hair no longer required by its original owner.’)

  The entire process was described in detail . . . the arrival, the undressing (‘Tie your shoes together by their laces and note the number above your peg for when you come back.’), the head-shaving, the ‘showers’ where they were gassed 4,000 at a time, and the crematorium ovens – all performed by a Sonderkommando of Jews, who, as Lange said, ‘will do anything to snatch just one more day on earth. Sell you his own grandparents.’

  Heydrich suggested a short break to toast the success of the Final Solution. ‘You will find the brandy served in this establishment has improved enormously since we have consolidated our hold on France,’ he said.

  There followed fragments of conversation picked up by the microphones while the waiters served the brandy. Stuckart thought they were losing the important distinction between quarter- and half-Jews, which he had defined in the Nuremberg race laws. Meyer wondered how he could get his east-European Jews at the head of the extermination queue. Kritzinger told Neumann their Blitzkrieg success in the East had led to a bureaucratic nightmare; they were nowhere near ready for such a bold and visionary scheme as this. Neumann thought it all a terrible waste of potential slave labour. Some of his words were dignified with an exclamation mark, no doubt added by Marianne when this document had been in her possession:

  NEUMANN: The trouble with them all – from my point of view – is that they can never decide between using the Jews as unpaid workers and liquidating them. I was talking with Speer the other week. He thinks that a man who lets a Jewish worker die of disease or starvation or overwork is in the same class as a driver who never maintains his vehicle and has a breakdown in the middle of a battle. Both of them should be shot. Unpaid Jewish workers – and Polish and Russian . . . any of them – they’re an incredibly valuable resource when you think that we’re now fighting the two biggest empires and the single richest country in the world. It’s sheer lunacy.

  HEYDRICH: Prosit, gentlemen! To the Final Solution of the Jewish Question!

  ALL: The Final Solution!

  The conference resumed. The next section was already familiar to Felix from the ‘official’ protocol – an explanation by Eichmann of how they would clear the Fatherland of all its Jews first, as a birthday present to the Führer, followed by the Atlantic seaboard – which brought objections from the delegates from the east, who wanted their territory judenrein first. But Eichmann pointed out that when the Allies invaded France, as they inevitably would some day, no one wanted guerrilla bands of Jews there ready to help them, stabbing the Wehrmacht in the back.

  He pointed out that the goods wagons that brought food and requisitioned machinery from the occupied land to the Fatherland would return to the east filled with Jews who had no more need of either.

  The meeting dissolved in happy laughter. It was by no means the end of the conference but they were now to enjoy a buffet. But Felix was riveted by what he read next.

  [Fragments of simultaneous conversations during this interval]

  FREISLER [to LUTHER]: I’ve been admiring this painting. It’s the Wannsee as seen from the lawns outside, I imagine . . . somewhere near here, anyway.

  LUTHER: It’s by Billy Breit. Admiring it, you say?

  FREISLER: Very much. It’s surely in the approved style?

  LUTHER: You should be careful. It shouldn’t be hanging here at all, especially in the German headquarters of Interpol! Our dearly beloved Obergruppenführer obviously doesn’t know that old Billy Breit was a Jew!

  FREISLER: Really? No – surely you’re mistaken? He was a famous anti-Semite.

  LUTHER: Of a Jewish mother and a Jewish father – Hannah and Benjamin Breit. He was baptized Solomon.

  FREISLER: Du liebe Zeit! I never heard that.

  LUTHER: Nor had I – until Gestapo D4 sent a list of French Jews and decadent intellectuals, communists, and so on that they intended rounding up on the twentieth of . . . my God! Today! That’s what Müller was talking about of course. Anyway, there were some German émigrés among the decadents and they were asking the Reich Main Security Office to run a check on their racial history. I was kept informed because there will certainly be international repercussions.

  FREISLER: But . . . Billy Breit? I mean, he’
s not still alive, surely?

  LUTHER: No, but his grandson is. [laughs] I wonder if he even knows he’s quarter-Jewish? Almost certainly not, I’d say. Well! He’s in for a big shock today!

  FREISLER: You mean Felix Breit? The sculptor? There’ll be quite an outcry if they arrest him.

  LUTHER: I certainly hope so! My advice to D4 was to let the protest run for twenty-four . . . forty-eight hours and then release him with a great fanfare as a gesture of goodwill – him and a couple of other scribblers – the French love their scribblers. Meanwhile it will have taken the limelight off the arrest of the others, rich nonentities, mostly. The usual parasites.

  FREISLER: We can always pick him up later, I suppose.

  LUTHER: From the Foreign Ministry’s perspective, I’d prefer it if someone helped him escape to Switzerland. He’s less than a half-Jew and these highly publicized arrests of distinguished people do not help the cause of the Reich among neutral nations and the churches. Some of our best people never raise their eyes to look beyond their own immediate occupations. This pâté is superb.

  He set himself to read the rest of the protocol but again and again it dissolved into a blur as his mind kept returning to that exchange. They had played god with his life! Of course, they had played god with every single life in Europe – and he had been part of that, too – but they had done it with him in particular, by name, ordaining his release even before his arrest! He could not explain, even to himself, why it rankled so much but it made him impatient with the rest of the protocol, with Stuckart banging on about half-Jews and Kritzinger tut-tutting about the lack of bureaucratic rigour and Hofmann pointing out that the Jews were no longer useful as bargaining tools now that America had joined the war at last, and everyone worried about the Red Cross and Eichmann assuring them that Theresienstadt – the ‘holiday camp’ KL – would take care of them . . . and Liebbrandt teasing the SS, pointing out that once the whole of Europe was judenrein, it might be expedient for the rest of the Reich to make them scapegoats and have them all liquidated, too, to appease foreign criticism . . . and – good heavens! – here were the first inklings of a rift between Luther and his boss, von Ribbentrop, which ended in Luther being sentenced to a KL himself!