by Gerald Green
Voices drifted up to me. “Don’t carry on, don’t worry,” a guard was saying in Polish. “It’s only a delousing operation. Once you’re out and free of lice, you’ll get your job assignments.”
I stared for a while at a woman holding a child in her arms. Two old people supporting one another. A beautiful young girl with soulful eyes. Suddenly she began to scream at a guard, “I am twenty-two! I am twenty-two!” He silenced her with a blow with a rubber club. I wondered why such a lovely woman had not been pulled out for service in the camp brothel. It is no secret that such an institution is maintained—several, in fact, both for officers and for enlisted men and rankers. But the women are largely Poles and Russians. Himmler is strict about “race defilement,” hence, I suppose, even a Jewish Venus cannot be spared from the fires.
Pfannenstiel wandered off to study the door, to look through the peephole—the chamber was not in operation—and Hoess took me aside. “So Kaltenbrunner got rid of you.”
“That’s not true.”
“I’m told he wants you to get a bellyful of this. I hear your stomach isn’t too strong, too much desk work in Berlin.”
“It is quite strong enough, Hoess.”
“Yes, I imagine it is. You helped us get Zyklon B.”
The professor returned, and Hoess took us into the vast chamber. He pointed out the shower heads, the pipes, the faucets, the tile walls.
“We’re managing twelve thousand a day here, when they’re all going,” he said.
Pfannenstiel was impressed. “Incredible. At Treblinka I’m told you processed a mere eighty thousand in half a year.”
“That lousy carbon monoxide,” said Hoess. “Bad stuff. Slow. Sometimes we had riots. The Jews suspected what was in store for them and raised hell. Here, we get it over fast, and they stay fooled right to the end.”
“Or want to stay fooled,” I said.
“What’s the difference, as long as the job gets done quickly and efficiently.”
He showed us the conveyor belt, the ovens with the gas jets burning inside. There was a charred, sickening odor.
“We run forty-six ovens like this,” Hoess said. “In addition to the outdoor burning pits. So you can see it’s a big operation.”
“How many can this one take?” I asked.
Hoess thought a second. “Top, about twenty-five hundred. Not counting small children. We cram them in pretty well. You’ll see. That is, if you want to see.”
“Where are these people from?” I asked, as we walked back into the chamber. I noticed the gutters along the wall, for drainage of blood and other fluids, I imagined, and for easy cleaning. There was a huge electric fan at one end, which, Hoess, explained, was used to clean the gas out when an operation ended. The Sonderkommandos had to rush in, and using canes and crooked sticks with which they dragged the dead by the chin, load them on to the conveyor.
“They are directly off the trains,” Hoess said. “This morning’s transport. From all over Europe—France, Holland, Poland, Germany. The Führer is getting his wish.”
“And the ones who are spared?” I asked.
“They’ll go eventually. They’re a bit tougher to fool once they’ve been assigned to work in the camp. They know by then, but they go anyway. Life isn’t exactly paradise in the barracks, so I suppose this comes as a sort of relief to them.”
Hoess pointed to an aperture on the roof. “That’s where the crystals are thrown in. A better system than the old diesels.”
Hoess began to complain about his problems in stockpiling Zyklon B. It deteriorates, and a special distribution system has been organized to keep him supplied. He heard about the intricate holding company set up to manufacture, sell and ship the stuff, and he is a bit piqued. He knows huge profits are being made on the sale of Zyklon B and he feels he should have a share. The party bigshots, the industrial moneymen, are reaping profits from the sale of the gas, while he and others like him do the work that creates the demand.
“We’re about ready,” Hoess said.
He led the professor and me to a high point, from which we could see the Jews being herded from the cover of the trees to the open steel door of the big chamber. The music continued in back of us—lilting, gay, as if we were spending a spring morning in the park.
“How wonderfully compliant they are,” Pfannenstiel said. “Almost a religious rite. You know, I am no theologian, but I have discussed this with churchmen and they feel that in a way, the Jews are being sacrificed so that Europe may be saved from Bolshevism. That is to say, they should feel … well, Christlike, holy … for providing this service.”
Hoess glared at him. “Nonsense. I’m a serious Christian with a Christian wife and children, and what you say is garbage. They are vermin. They corrupt everything. I get my orders and obey them, and there is no theology involved.”
He went on to explain how the Sonderkommandos extract gold teeth from the dead, glass eyes, artificial limbs, shave the women’s hair, before loading the bodies onto the moving belt. They work swiftly, so the next batch can be processed. Twelve thousand a day is a miracle, and Hoess deserves credit.
Below, a sergeant was shoving a group of hesitant older people: “Move, move. Five minutes, and you’ll be out, all nice and clean. Then a warm bed, coffee and cake. Move.”
To my amazement, when the chamber appeared absolutely crammed, the guards began passing small, screaming children over the heads and arms of the people already in. It was as if every last cubic meter of space had to be used.
“It’s important that they all go in,” Hoess said. “We don’t want any of them getting back to the camp with stories that will upset the others.”
The steel door slammed shut. The walls were very thick, and it was almost impossible to hear any sounds from inside the chamber. The music had gotten louder.
On the roof of this chamber were some odd mushroom like contraptions, and a sergeant of the SS was now removing the cap. I had noticed a German army ambulance parked below. Now, a soldier bearing a can—that familiar can like the one I saw in Hamburg not long ago—climbed up the side of the chamber. He tossed it to the man at the “mushroom.”
Hoess nodded at the man. I learned later that this was the famous Sergeant Moll.
Moll twisted the lid off the can and held it away from his face. Then he emptied the bluish crystals into the “stem” of the mushroom, saying as he did, “Okay, give them something to chew.”
We waited a moment—Pfannenstiel, Hoess and myself.
Then a murmuring noise, like a wind rising, a low-pitched howling, seemed to issue from the chamber. Hoess left us to look through the viewing hole. He invited us to go along. Pfannenstiel had already seen what it was like inside. I made some excuse.
“Yes,” the professor said. “It takes about twelve minutes. They claw and scratch and try to get to the door, but it is hopeless. There is often a great deal of blood and feces on the bodies. I would suggest, Major Dorf, you not look, when they open the door. It takes a bit of getting used to.”
He kneeled and put his ear to the roof of the chamber, and smiled. “Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. It sounds like the wailing one hears in a synagogue.”
Berlin
May 1943
In an effort to curry favor with Kaltenbrunner, I arranged a screening for him of some of the operations at Auschwitz.
He seemed pleased with the photographs I had projected in his office, where once Heydrich sat. I told him of Hoess’ excellent administration—assigning the healthy to I. G. Farben, Krupp, and Siemens, where they are worked to death, dispatching the useless to the chambers.
At one point Kaltenbrunner quoted Himmler, after looking at a photograph of the bodies jammed together like a scene from Dante’s Inferno at the door of the chamber. “The boss has said that what people call anti-Semitism is really delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology, it’s a matter of cleanliness.”
The reasons we have for killing Jews are manifold. For Himmler
it is “delousing,” for Heydrich it was a multi-level political tool, and for the Führer it is the be-all and end-all of his world view. So be it. I obey. Thoughts of the naked children being passed over the heads of their parents, and into the chambers, flit through my mind. But to Kaltenbrunner I say nothing. What is there to say once one accepts the need for the program?
When the screening had ended, Kaltenbrunner’s hideous face was actually smiling at me. “Dorf, you’ve taken to your new assignment with your usual dedication,” he said.
“Thank you, General.”
“You can go now.”
I paused. “I meant to talk to you about this new job. It keeps me in motion all the time—Poland, Russia. I had hoped for a permanent assignment to Berlin. To make your job easier.”
“No, no, Dorf. I want you in Poland. I want you close to the camps. There are reports the Jews are getting fractious, rebellious.”
Again, I hesitated. I feared him. “It’s the problem of my wife, General. I hate to bring it up.”
“Ah. A little cheating while Papa is away?”
“Not at all, sir. Mrs. Dorf is ill. She’s had a weak heart for some years. These prolonged absences of mine are having an adverse effect on her. Food shortages, the bombings …”
“Take her to our hospital. A vacation. Nothing is too good for the wives of SS officers.”
“That’s kind of you, sir. But she needs me … here.”
Kaltenbrunner swung his huge legs around, got up. He towered over me. “You astonish me, Dorf. Our armies are being bled white at Stalingrad. The whole Russian front is blazing. The Allies are working their way up Italy. And you complain about a sick wife.”
Once more I appealed, and once more Kaltenbrunner rebuffed me. He referred to the rumors about me—my alleged left-wing connections, enemies I’d made. I tried to defend myself, but he had no further need for me. Briefly I felt like Hamlet, comparing his dead father to Claudius—like Hyperion to a satyr. So was my fallen chief to this brute, this dull-headed glandular savage.
Tonight there was more than the usual tension between Marta and me. Since Heydrich’s death (it’s already a year ago), she has sensed in me a fear, an uncertainty, a loss of the surefootedness I enjoyed while he lived.
I have begun to drink a bit. I’m no drunkard, but a few glasses of cognac at night help to relax me. Tonight Laura was asleep. Peter was off at a training camp. (There are rumors that fifteen-year-olds will be organized into “wolf pack” defense battalions if the Russians ever breach our lines defending Germany.)
Suddenly Marta opened a manila folder and began to read aloud. I knew at once what she had—copies of letters I had written to camp commandants. I made no effort to stop her, kept drinking, and listened.
Her voice was mocking, edged with a sneer. “‘All corpses buried at Babi Yar must be dug up and burned. Not a trace is to remain. Blobel, your work was sloppy and left vast areas untreated. This is highest priority.’”
“You had no right to look at those.”
“I like this,” she went on. “To Hoess. ‘I am not satisfied with the system for taking the burned remains to the mill for grinding into ashes. Can we not develop a furnace that destroys everything? And how long can the Sola River absorb these tons and tons of ashes?’”
“Stop.”
“Or this,” Marta went on. “‘Better control must be exercised over the medical experiment programs. I realize the Reichsführer’s fascination with twins, but I am told some non-Jewish sets of twins have been used by the doctors. This is bad policy. I also would like a full report on the sterilization-by-injection experiments, as well as the program to sterilize Jews by X-ray. Why all this fuss over a sterilization program, when their eventual fate is known to all by now?’”
She slapped the letters down.
“Those were not for your eyes, my dear,” I said wearily.
“Oh, I’ve suspected for a long time. All that talk about executing spies and saboteurs, controlling disease behind enemy lines.”
I was too exhausted, mentally and physically, to talk to her. Finally I said, “And now you are disgusted with me.”
“No. I want to help you.”
I had no idea what she meant. I assembled the carbons of the letters and replaced them in the folder, making a mental note not to keep such documents in the apartment any more.
“What did Kaltenbrunner tell you today?” she asked.
“I go back to Poland tomorrow.”
“You didn’t stand up for yourself? After all you have done for them, Erik?”
I poured another cognac. “It doesn’t matter where—Poland, Russia, here. The walls will soon tumble.”
She sat next to me on the sofa. We have acquired, through Eichmann’s generosity, a marvelous collection of fine furniture from his warehouses in Prague. They go well with the old Bechstein.
“It does matter,” Marta said. “Kaltenbrunner must sense this … this … air of defeat in you when you speak to him. No wonder your career is at a dead end. You are lucky Heydrich promoted you before he died. These letters … the tone in them … it sounds as if you are revolted by your work, ashamed of it.”
“Perhaps I am at times.”
Her voice rose. She grabbed my wrist. “You can’t be! You must go on! If you—if we—stop now, the world will assume we are guilty. But if we go on, and explain what we are doing, we’ll succeed!”
I leaped from the sofa, spilling cognac over the Turkish rug. “Good God, Marta, how I misread you! Gentle Marta!” I began to laugh. “And I thought you were furious with me because I am up to my neck in the blood of Jewish children!”
“Don’t say it! Don’t!”
“And all that outraged you is that I’m not prouder, not more energetic in my labors!”
She was shrieking at me. “You must be! Do what you are told, to the very end! That will convince people that what you are doing is right! Obey, obey, like Hoess, like Eichmann. But every time you look doubtful, or question something—like these experiments—you help dig our graves!”
I laughed again, collapsed on the sofa.
“And don’t laugh at me!”
“I’m not. I’m amused by my own stupidity. Of course. I must enter my work with more eagerness, more enterprise.”
For some moments she stared at me. Then she turned down the overhead light. The only illumination in the room was from a fine cloisonné lamp, courtesy of Eichmann. Marta kneeled in front of me, rested her golden head in my lap, put her arms around my waist.
Her voice was ghostly. “Erik … sometimes I am afraid we will be punished.”
“Punished?”
“All of us.”
“You’ve done nothing at all. And I have been a good soldier. Un bon soldat, as Eichmann would say.”
“Those letters. The ovens. The pyres. The experiments. A river full of ashes.” She looked up at me. Her eyes were dry. Her lips looked drained of blood. “That’s why they must all die. So no one knows. So no one is left to tell. So that no one can tell lies about you. Do you understand?”
I stared at her, drew her close. But our bodies were cold, and we could not make each other warm.
Rudi Weiss’ Story
All through the latter part of 1942, the ghetto was drained of Jews—to Treblinka, Auschwitz, other death camps. And still the people went in silence, with only minimal acts of resistance.
Dr. Kohn, the most cooperative of the council, had taken his own life with a cyanide pill. He did so after Hoefle, the SS commandant, had increased the daily quota from six thousand to seven thousand.
As yet, no resistance could be mounted against the Germans. There were simply not enough guns, virtually no ammunition.
But my father continued his little deception at the rail station clinic, saving a dozen people now, a half-dozen later, convincing the authorities that his “branch” of the hospital had been authorized.
One day, he and my mother looked from the draped window. The Nazis had a new tr
ick. People were offered a loaf of bread and a tin of marmalade as an inducement to board the trains. They stood dumbly, weary, confused, waiting to board—clutching their precious bread and jam, hopeful to the end.
That day, Zalman had been ordered to the train. My Uncle Moses boldly plucked him out of the crowd, explained to a kapo that the man was terribly ill, and walked him into the clinic.
“Go to the sink,” my father ordered. “Vomit. Jam your finger down your throat.”
Zalman looked worried. “They were eyeing us. Hoefle’s out there.”
“I’ll handle them,” my father said.
Moses, standing watch at the window, now saw Hoefle and a man named Karp, the ghetto police chief, approaching.
“They’re coming,” Moses said.
“Berta, leave by the rear door,” Papa said. “Go to the school. Better hide with someone. Zalman, go with her.”
The two left. Almost the instant my mother and Zalman had departed, Hoefle and Karp entered. The latter was a tool of the Nazis, a converted Jew who had earned the hatred of everyone in the ghetto.
Karp barked, “Everyone on their feet!”
Papa protested. “These people are ill.”
“Shut up, Weiss. On your feet in front of Major Hoefle.”
The half-dozen people in the small room got to their feet.
“What in hell is going on here?” asked Hoefle. He and his officers rarely set foot in the ghetto. They governed through underlings—noncoms, Ukrainian militia, ghetto cops.
“A branch clinic of the hospital, sir,” my father said.
“They don’t look sick to me,” Karp said. “Where’s the written authorization for all this?”
“It exists,” my father said. He struggled to control himself. “I can’t help it if your office is inefficient.”
The ghetto police chief and the SS officer wandered around the clinic—picking up the bottles on Uncle Moses’ tiny dispensary table, inspecting under beds.
“What kind of racket are you running here, Weiss?” Karp asked.
“I am Dr. Weiss, Karp.”
Hoefle smiled at this: Jew against Jew.
