by Gerald Green
“Don’t get caught. Remember what I told you?”
“They’ll torture me, make me tell them where you are.”
“That’s right. Kill yourself if you have to.”
I did not want to get caught; I did not want to kill myself; and for all my bragging to Helena, my insistence that I wanted to get back at them, I was terrified, wondering if I could kill someone. There was hate in me, a great deal of it. But I found there was a lot less courage than I had imagined there would be. In those moments of waiting I felt less contemptuous of those Jews I had seen surrendering quietly, meekly following orders, standing naked, unprotesting, in the ditches.
“How long?” I asked.
Sasha put a finger to his lips. “Ssssh. I hear them.” We heard it also. Boots on the road. A man singing. Voices.
“Germans?” I asked.
“Ukrainian militia,” Sasha said.
“Do we want them?”
“We want their guns and their bullets and their boots, boy. Besides, they’ve killed Jews since the first Germans came here. You know, the bastards have a whole army—an army—fighting for the Nazis?”
I felt my hands tremble around the stock and trigger of my gun. So little ammunition did we have that we could not even have target practice. We pretended, shooting empty guns against paper targets. And I was painfully hungry. We ate very little in the family camp.
Six men in SS uniforms came down the road. They obviously were not in the least expectant of any danger, for they walked in close formation, one man singing, others chatting. Their rifles were slung over their shoulders. One seemed drunk and was being helped by a comrade.
“Fire!” Sasha cried.
I needed a moment to react. It did not seem fair to me. We were killing them the way they killed Jews. Too many soccer matches, handshakes, notions of sportsmanship and such schoolboy ideals, Sasha said later.
We blasted them with our rifles. Three men fell at once. One screamed and began hopping about on one foot. Another ran for cover and began firing a machine pistol at the bushes where we were hidden. The last started to run.
Yuri crawled out. He and Sasha began to circle the man firing with the Schmeisser. Sasha screamed at me, “Get the one who’s running!”
I could see him loping down the road, back to the town. He ran clumsily, weighted down by his gun, his pack. Bullets sprayed and painted yellow streaks in the night. Luckily, the man with the machine pistol—he must have been the squad leader—was preoccupied with his attackers. He could have shot me down in an instant as I ran to the fleeing man.
I knew I would catch him. I could always run. When I was a yard behind him—he was breathing heavily, pumping—I smashed at his back with the stock of my rifle. He went down. He whimpered. I dragged him to his feet and stared at him. A kid. Maybe sixteen. He had fat pink cheeks, stupid eyes, and long hair the color of cornflowers. I dragged him back to the hedgerow. The shooting had stopped. All the other Ukrainians were dead. Yuri and the others were stripping the bodies of guns, ammunition belts, boots and anything else of use.
I disarmed my captive and shoved him toward Sasha. He fell to the ground and reached for my boots. He was sobbing in Ukrainian, but I understood not a word he said.
“Take him in the bushes and shoot him,” Sasha said.
“Shoot … ?”
“I said kill him.”
“Why? He’s a kid. Can’t we send him back?”
Sasha grabbed the rifle from me. “If you don’t, I will. That little shit has killed Jews as if they were flies. You let him live, he’ll go back to the village and bring the SS. Shoot him.”
He was right. We were in a war of annihilation. I dragged the young boy into the woods, shoved him around and muttered something about tying him up. Then I leveled the rifle at his skull and blew the back of his head off.
My hands shook. I began to cry.
Sasha paid no attention to me when I came out of the hedgerow. He was shouting orders at the raiding party, telling them to hurry. “Enough, enough. We don’t want their underwear. Just boots, belts, guns. Let’s move off.”
We ran off the road into the woods, keeping far apart. We walked swiftly. Camp was at least two hours away.
I walked alone, through the dark woods, straggling, stumbling, keeping an eye on Yuri, who was ahead of me. Never had I killed anyone. Oh, I had bragged a great deal, told Helena over and over how much I wanted revenge. But the sight of that stupid boy’s terrorized eyes, the knowledge that he was finished, would never see a sunrise, or a girl’s face, or swim in a clear lake again—all these rattled me, made me wonder if I were the bloodthirsty avenger I’d imagined myself to be.
I knew something about myself. Killing was indecent, depraved. I would not get used to it. One killed to survive, to keep one’s loved ones alive. No good attached to ending the lives of others. That Ukrainian kid had parents, a family, hopes. Like the millions of us now dying for no reason.
I consoled myself. They were notorious murderers, paid killers, merciless in their hunting down and shooting of Jews. There should have been triumph, exaltation in my heart. But I was no warrior King David, exulting in the slaying of thousands. I was miserable, and cold, and drained. Worse, I began to wonder if there was any point to our resistance, to Sasha’s “family camp,” his hardheaded determination to evade, strike, kill. But there had to be, I decided. We were all marked for death by the Nazis, and the death Sasha had chosen was better than the one they had planned for every Jew in Europe.
Back in the camp, exhausted, I rested on the cot in the hut I shared with Helena and another couple, and stared at the sagging boards in the roof.
“He was a kid, maybe sixteen,” I said again.
“Rudi, don’t talk about it any more.”
“Yuri says he was the kind who kills Jews for pay, for a loaf of bread.”
“Please, please, Rudi … no more.”
“I never killed anyone before.”
“You had to.”
“The back of his head. It sort of floated away. Look. His blood on my tunic.”
She got a damp rag and began to rub the dark stain. “He would have killed you. He’s killed hundreds.”
“Yes. I should be happy. Dancing. But we’re not like them. We can’t do it and be happy. They probably get drunk, and dance and screw after they kill Jews.”
We said nothing. Outside, I could hear Sasha, tireless, driven, taking inventory of our haul from the raid. The big prize was the machine pistols. Now we could go after some Germans.
“My baby, my baby,” Helena said. “Why are we made to live this way?”
“I don’t understand it. My parents didn’t either, and they’re probably dead by now. Maybe Sasha knows. Maybe he’s the only one who understands. Kill or get killed.”
“We want to live, Rudi, that’s all. You’ve said it yourself.”
“It’s not enough. Where will we go? Who’ll want us?”
“Oh, Rudi … to Palestine. Eretz Israel. Mr. and Mrs. Weiss.”
“Me? Picking oranges?”
“I’ll make you do it. I’m your wife. Kiss me.”
“Yes, you are.”
We held each other. She kissed me over and over, eyes, nose, ears, my neck. “Orange groves and cedar trees. And farming villages. And the blue sea.”
“I almost believe you. Not altogether, but almost.”
“You must believe me.”
I sat up. She had, for the moment, made me forget about the boy I had killed. There was laughter outside the hut: Jews with guns. I wanted to be part of them again. Odd, how brief had been my doubts, my fears.
“You saved my life in Prague,” I said. “I owe you a trip to this great Zionist homeland you keep talking about.”
“Not a trip. Our life. Where they can’t jail us, or beat us, or kill us. Or even call us bad names.”
I looked into her dark, slightly slanted eyes. “My small, dark Czechoslovakian wife. Do you remember the first time we made love
in Prague? In that cold apartment?”
“Don’t embarrass me, Rudi. You make me feel like … like a street woman.”
“It was beautiful. The best thing I ever did in my life.”
“For me too, Rudi.”
“Each time we’re together, the wonder of it drives me wild. Two people being close like that. Not just the bodies, Helena, but as if we became one person, I don’t know—God, or nature, or something, deciding that’s the way it should be. The way a flower must bloom at some time.”
“I know, dearest,” she said. “That’s why we won’t die. We’ll never die.”
Erik Dorf’s Diary
Berlin
June 1942
Heydrich died today. June 4, 1942.
My patron, hero, idol. The most brilliant man I’ve ever known. I am shattered, inconsolable.
Six days ago a bomb was thrown under his car by Czech terrorists as he was driving in Prague.
I offered to fly down at once to be at his bedside, but Himmler dissuaded me. The office had to be kept running. Heydrich’s spine was severed, and he died in extreme agony. A rumor is going around that on his deathbed he expressed deep contrition for his deeds.
Himmler has wasted no time in punishing the guilty. Over 1,300 people have been summarily executed in Prague and Brno to avenge our fallen leader. And a village called Lidice has been razed, all of its inhabitants have been killed or imprisoned. Goebbels (never a close associate of my late chief) had 152 Jewish hostages in Berlin shot. The resettlement program for Jews henceforth will be known as “Operation Reinhard” in his memory.
So shattered have I been by this event, that I have been unable to keep my memoirs for several days. They have named no successor to Heydrich (who could fill his shoes?), and with the enemies I have made in various branches of the service, always secure in Heydrich’s patronage, I am now worried about my future.
On the day on which Heydrich was attacked—May 29—Marta and I had a painful scene. Things have become strained at home. She is devoted, loving … but she has always felt that I am not ambitious enough. And I must confess my sexual appetites, my attentions to her, have diminished. A psychologist perhaps could explain it. But I have seen so many naked bodies—disgusting, wasted, dirty, doomed Jewish bodies—alive one minute, dead and bloodied the next, that in some strange way I am revolted by the very thought of the body, anyone’s. Is life perhaps more important in the abstract, in our minds and our souls? Were not the venerable saints and hermits who ignored their bodies nearer to some great truth?
And so, on that warm May night before I got the news, I was sitting up in bed, smoking, unable to sleep, thinking of those heaped corpses, the way the Jews fell on one another in Minsk, Zhitomir, Babi Yar, a hundred places.
Marta awakened. “Erik? Is anything wrong?”
“No, darling. I’m sorry my smoking bothered you.”
“You don’t sleep well. Not since that last trip to the east.”
“There is nothing wrong with me. Just a little tired. It’s you, sweetheart, who must preserve your health. For the children.”
“I’m fine.” She rested her head on my chest. An arm embraced my loins. I felt revulsion, but I did not move.
“You mustn’t hide it. Marta, ever since that day in the doctor’s office—what, seven years ago—I knew you were ill. You’ve always minimized your illness, and I admire you for it. You’re braver than your husband with his black uniform and Luger.”
“How can you say that? With all the dangerous jobs you’ve had? All the important things you’ve done for Heydrich?”
I took her arm from me, sat on the edge of the bed, lit another cigarette. “Marta, I’m afraid the war is lost. Maybe it was lost the day the Americans came in. Their industry, their armies will be the end of us. They will supply the Russians, and the Russians will show us no mercy.”
“No. I don’t believe it.”
“I’ve heard the bigshots. They’re talking of deals already—playing the west against the Soviets. But it won’t work.”
“We are going to win.”
“Darling,” I said, “think that, if it will make you feel better. But I see what is happening.”
“Erik, you must never talk this way.” She is made of forged steel.
“Listen to me, Marta.” I put the cigarette out and turned to face her. Then I stopped talking.
A week ago, I had seen some of Nebe’s men shove a young Jewess into the gassing van. She was blond, fair, more beautiful than my wife. She had refused to undress. They had torn the clothes from her body, then kicked her in the buttocks as if she were an animal, and driven her with their rubber truncheons into the death wagon. For a second, I saw this woman’s face instead of my wife’s.
“Listen to me,” I went on. “Some day people may tell monstrous lies about us. What we did in Poland, Russia. Lies, all of them.”
“I will not listen to them.”
“They will try to force you to listen. When they do, you must tell the children that I was always a good and honorable servant of the Reich, that I do nothing more than obey orders like a combat soldier … orders from the very top.”
“I won’t let anyone lie about you.”
Nebe … Ohlendorf … Eichmann … Blobel. Their faces loomed in front of me. Sure of themselves. No apologies, no doubts. They took orders, carried them out. Someone jokingly asked Colonel Biberstein, our former cleric, whether he sometimes said prayers for the Jews about to be shot, and he responded, his eyes merry: “One does not cast pearls before swine.”
I wanted to tell her about my comrades, but I could only choke out some disjointed phrases about Hans Frank boasting of the millions he would take care of, of Hoess, dutifully obeying orders, building this processing factory at Auschwitz.
“You must be dutiful also. That is how you get ahead.”
“Yes, yes. Hoess, incredible fellow. Spent eight years in jail for murder. In the party’s interest, of course. He was framed by Jews. He adores his wife and his children, a naturalist, loves animals. An ideal German. And yet what he’s doing now—”
“Stop! I don’t want to hear about them. You’re better than the lot. You’re educated, refined, intelligent. Better even than the ones at the top!”
Abruptly, I began to shiver, and I asked her to hold me. We nestled together in bed for a few minutes. She seemed to be excited sexually, but I could not respond.
“Oh, Erik, my child, you are trembling.”
“Hold me, Marta.”
“You must never doubt yourself. Never doubt what you are doing.”
How much does she know about my work? Some of our wives know all—Hoess’ lives right at Auschwitz. Others remain good ignorant German Hausfraus—church, kitchen, children—and ask no questions.
At that point the phone rang. It was Heydrich’s office with the news that he had been severely wounded in an assassination attempt and was in a Prague hospital. I was needed at headquarters at once.
I expected Marta to weep, or scream, but instead she grabbed my shoulders and said, “Be aggressive, be bold. This is your chance.”
As I dressed, I said nothing. I refused to believe that Heydrich would die. Not that creative, vibrant man.
“You can succeed him!” Marta cried.
Hitler calls Heydrich’s death “a lost battle.” But there are suspicions that Reichsführer Himmler is secretly relieved. Himmler gave the eulogy at the funeral and was full of praise. He called him noble, valiant, honorable, a master, an educator. He followed the coffin, right behind Heydrich’s widow, and held Heydrich’s sons by the hands. Later, Himmler supposedly told someone he “felt a bit funny holding two mongrels by the hand”—a reference to the rumors of Heydrich’s Jewish blood.
And now I have no protector, no patron. It was believed in many circles that once the war was over, and at a time when Hitler was ready to step down, Heydrich would have been a logical successor—so superior in intellect and imagination was he to the others. Now
all that is over; and I am afraid all is over for Germany also.
Rudi Weiss’ Story
Slowly, the Jewish Fighting Organization was being formed in Warsaw.
My Uncle Moses was now in the thick of it. He was one of the older men, in his early fifties, never very daring, quietly humorous, but he threw his lot in with the younger people, the Zionists and political activists. My father, telling my mother little, also gave his support to the resistance fighters.
Earlier in this account I mentioned a boy named Aaron Feldman, a student of my mother’s in the ghetto school. This boy, about thirteen, wiry, small, fearless, had been an expert smuggler, and he too now joined the resistance. His knowledge of tunnels, alleys, holes in the wall, the timetables and characters of various guards—ghetto police, Polish police, SS—proved invaluable.
A prime need of the resistance was guns. And so contact was made with Polish resistance groups outside the wall to see if they could be of help.
Uncle Moses volunteered to follow young Feldman into the “Aryan” side to buy the first guns, contact having already been made through messages. (If you were caught outside the wall, punishment was immediate death by firing squad.)
Moses carried a package of drags—his excuse would be that he was on an errand of mercy, delivering pharmaceuticals to gravely ill friends. It would not have saved him, but it was better than no excuse.
My father tried to dissuade him. “You’re too old for this.”
“Too old for almost anything else,” Moses said. “If I’m lost, the only loss will be to modern pharmacy.”
“Move out,” Zalman said.
And so Moses followed the boy into the night.
They climbed stairways, came out on rooftops, descended down ladders, hid behind trash bins. At one point, they halted while the daily death cart rumbled by—a flatbed loaded with a dozen skeletal corpses. Food was running out. People looked after themselves. Who could blame them? The Germans had imprisoned half a million people in an area of Warsaw intended for 25,000. They lived nine and ten to a room, caught typhus and cholera from one another, waited for death.
