For those who didn’t enjoy the binges at the Deutsches Haus, distractions were rare in Lublin. In my spare time, I visited the old town and the castle; at night, I had my meal served to me in my room and I read. I had left Best’s Festgabe and the volume on ritual murder in Berlin, on my bookshelf, but I had brought along the collection by Maurice Blanchot that I had purchased in Paris, which I had started again at the beginning, and after days of difficult discussions, I took great pleasure in plunging into this other world, all made of light and thought. Minor incidents continued to eat away at my tranquility; in this Deutsches Haus, it didn’t seem it could be otherwise. One night, somewhat agitated, too distracted to read, I had gone down to the bar for a schnapps and some talk (I knew most of the regulars now). Going back upstairs, it was dark, and I mistook the room; the door was open and I went in: on the bed, two men were copulating simultaneously with a girl, one lying on his back, the other kneeling, the girl, also kneeling, between them. I took a minute to understand what I was seeing, and when, as in a dream, things finally fell into place, I muttered an apology and tried to go out. But the kneeling man, naked except for a pair of boots, withdrew and stood up. Holding his erect penis in one hand and stroking it gently, he pointed, as if to invite me to take his place, to the girl’s buttocks, where the anus, surrounded by a pink halo, gaped open like a sea anemone between two white globes. Of the other man I saw only his hairy legs, testicles and penis disappearing into the tufted vagina. The girl was moaning feebly. Without a word, smiling, I shook my head, and went out, gently closing the door. After that, I was even less inclined to leave my room. But when Höfle invited me to an outdoor reception Globocnik was giving for the birthday of the commanding officer of the district garrison, I unhesitatingly accepted. The party took place at the Julius Schreck Kaserne, the HQ of the SS: behind the mass of an old building a rather beautiful park spread out, with a very green lawn, tall trees at the rear, and flowerbeds at the sides; in the distance, you could see some houses, then countryside. Wooden tables had been set up on trestles, and the guests were drinking in clusters on the grass; in front of the trees, over some pits that had been dug for the purpose, a whole stag and two pigs were roasting on spits, supervised by a few enlisted men. The Spiess who had escorted me from the gate led me straight to Globocnik, who was standing with his guest of honor, Generalleutnant Moser, and some civilian officials. It was barely noon, Globocnik was drinking Cognac and smoking a fat cigar, his red face sweating over his buttoned collar. I clicked my heels in front of the group and saluted, and then Globocnik shook my hand and introduced me to the others; I congratulated the General on his birthday. “So, Sturmbannführer, your investigations are going forward? What have you found?”—“It’s a little too early yet to draw conclusions, Gruppenführer. And also the problems are rather technical. What is definite is that in terms of exploitation of labor, we could conduct some improvements.”—“We can always improve! In any case, a real National Socialist knows nothing but movement and progress. You should speak to the Generalleutnant here: he was complaining just now that we took some Jews away from the factories of the Wehrmacht. Explain to him that he just needs to replace them with Poles.” The General interrupted: “My dear Gruppenführer, I wasn’t complaining; I understand these measures as well as the next person. I was simply saying that the interests of the Wehrmacht should be taken into consideration. Many Poles have been sent to work in the Reich, and it takes time to train the remaining ones; by acting unilaterally, you are disturbing the war production.” Globocnik let out a burst of crude laughter: “What you mean, my dear Generalleutnant, is that the Polacks are too stupid to learn how to work correctly, and that the Wehrmacht prefers Jews. That’s true, the Jews are cleverer than the Poles. That’s why they’re more dangerous too.” He stopped and turned to me: “But, Sturmbannführer, I don’t want to detain you. The drinks are on the tables, help yourself, have fun!”—“Thank you, Gruppenführer.” I saluted and headed to one of the tables, which was groaning beneath the bottles of wine, beer, schnapps, Cognac. I poured myself a glass of beer and looked around. More guests were flowing in, but I didn’t recognize many people. There were some women, a few employees of the SSPF in uniform, but mostly officers’ wives, in civilian clothes. Florstedt was talking with his camp colleagues; Höfle was smoking alone on a bench, elbows on the table, a bottle of beer open in front of him, with a pensive air, lost in the void. In the spring, I had recently learned, he had lost both his children, twins, carried off by diphtheria; at the Deutsches Haus, they said that at the funeral he had collapsed, raving, seeing divine punishment in his misfortune, and that since then he was no longer the same man (he would in fact commit suicide twenty years later, at the remand center in Vienna, without even waiting for the verdict of the Austrian court, certainly more clement than God’s, though). I decided to leave him alone and joined the little group surrounding the Lublin KdS, Johannes Müller. I knew the KdO Kintrup by sight; Müller introduced me to his other interlocutor: “This is Sturmbannführer Dr. Morgen. Like you, he works directly under the Reichsführer’s orders.”—“Excellent. In what capacity?”—“Dr. Morgen is an SS judge, attached to the Kripo.” Morgen continued the explanation: “For now, I head a special commission appointed by the Reichsführer to investigate the concentration camps. And you?” I explained my mission to him in a few words. “Ah, so you’re also concerned with the camps,” he commented. Kintrup had wandered off. Müller patted my shoulder: “Meine Herren, if you want to talk shop, I’ll leave you. It’s Sunday.” I saluted him and turned to Morgen. He examined me with his keen, intelligent eyes, slightly veiled behind thin-rimmed glasses. “What exactly does your commission consist of?” I asked him.—“It’s essentially an SS and police court ‘for special tasks.’ I have direct authority from the Reichsführer to investigate corruption in the KLs.”—“That’s very interesting. Are there a lot of problems?”—“That’s an understatement. The corruption is massive.” He signed with his head to someone behind me and smiled slightly: “If Sturmbannführer Florstedt sees you with me, your own work won’t be made any easier.”—“You’re investigating Florstedt?”—“Among others.”—“And he knows it?”—“Of course. It’s an official investigation, I’ve already questioned him several times.” He was holding a glass of white wine in his hand; he drank a little, and I drank too, emptying my glass. “What you’re talking about interests me enormously,” I continued. I explained my impressions to him about the gaps between the official dietary norms and what the prisoners actually received. He listened, nodding his head: “Yes, definitely, the food is looted too.”—“By whom?”—“By everyone. From the lowest to the highest. The cooks, the kapos, the SS-Führers, the warehouse managers, and the top of the hierarchy too.”—“If that’s true, it’s a scandal.”—“Absolutely. The Reichsführer is very troubled by it personally. An SS-Mann should be an idealist: he cannot do his work and at the same time fornicate with the prisoners and fill up his pockets. But that happens.”—“And are your investigations succeeding?”—“It’s very difficult. These people stick together, and resistance is enormous.”—“But if you have the Reichsführer’s full support…”—“That’s quite recent. This special court was created scarcely a month ago. My investigations have been going on for two years and I have encountered considerable obstacles. We began—at the time I was a member of the SS and Police Court Twelve, in Kassel—with KL Buchenwald, near Weimar. More precisely with the Kommandant of that camp, a certain Koch. The investigations were blocked: Obergruppenführer Pohl wrote a letter of congratulations then to Koch, where he said among other things that he would step in as a shield whenever an unemployed lawyer should stretch out his hangman’s hands again to grasp the white body of Koch. I know this because Koch circulated this letter widely. But I didn’t let him go. Koch was transferred here, to command the KL, and I followed him. I discovered a network of corruption that covered all the camps. Finally, last summer, Koch was suspended. But he had also had most
of the witnesses assassinated, including a Hauptscharführer in Buchenwald, one of his accomplices. Here, he had all the Jewish witnesses killed; we opened an investigation into that too, but then all the Jews in the KL were executed; when we tried to react, they pleaded superior orders to us.”—“But such orders exist, you must know that.”—“I learned it then. And it’s clear that in that case we have no jurisdiction. But, still, there is a distinction: if a member of the SS has a Jew killed in the context of superior orders, that’s one thing; but if he has a Jew killed to cover his embezzlements, or for his own perverted pleasure, as also happens, that’s another thing, that’s a crime. Even if the Jew is to die anyway.”—“I entirely agree with you. But the distinction must be hard to make.”—“Legally, yes: you can have doubts, but to charge someone, you need evidence, and as I’ve told you, these men help each other out, they make witnesses disappear. Sometimes, of course, there’s no ambiguity: for instance, I’m also investigating Koch’s wife, a sexual deviant who had tattooed prisoners killed in order to remove their skin; she used the tanned skins for lampshades or other things like that. Once all the evidence is gathered, she’ll be arrested, and I don’t doubt she’ll be condemned to death.”—“And how did your investigations into Koch end?”—“They’re still under way; when I’ve finished my work here and have all the evidence in hand, I plan on arresting him again. He too deserves the death penalty.”—“So he was let go? I’m not following you very well.”—“He was acquitted in February. But I wasn’t in charge of the case anymore. I had problems with another man, not a camp officer but a Waffen-SS officer, a certain Dirlewanger. A raving lunatic, at the head of a unit of reprieved criminals and poachers. In 1941, I received information that he was conducting so-called scientific experiments, here in the GG, with his friends: he was killing girls with strychnine and watching them die while he smoked cigarettes. But when I wanted to prosecute him, he and his unit were transferred to Byelorussia. I can tell you that he benefits from protection at a very high level of the SS. Finally I was demoted, relieved of my functions, reduced to the rank of SS-Sturmmann, and sent to a field battalion, then to the SS-‘Wiking,’ in Russia. It was during that time that the proceedings against Koch collapsed. But in May the Reichsführer had me recalled, appointed me Sturmbannführer of the Reserve, and assigned me to the Kripo. After another complaint from the authorities in the district of Lublin, about thefts of property belonging to prisoners, he ordered me to form this commission.” I nodded admiringly: “You’re not afraid of trouble.” Morgen laughed dryly: “Not really. Already, before the war, when I was a judge in the Landgericht in Stettin, I was demoted because I disagreed with a ruling. That’s how I ended up in the SS-Gericht.”—“Can I ask you where you studied?”—“Oh, I moved around a lot. I studied in Frankfurt, Berlin, and Kiel, then also in Rome and in The Hague.”—“Kiel! At the Institute for World Economics? I did some of my studies there too. With Professor Jessen.”—“I know him well. I studied international law with Professor Ritterbusch.” We chatted for a while, exchanging memories of Kiel; Morgen, I discovered, spoke very good French, and four other languages besides. I returned to the initial subject: “Why did you begin with Lublin?”—“First of all to corner Koch. I’m almost there. And also the complaint about theft in the district gave me a good pretext. But all kinds of bizarre things go on here. Before I came, I received a report from the KdS on a Jewish wedding in a work camp. There were more than a thousand guests.”—“I don’t understand.”—“A Jew, an important kapo, got married in this Judenlager. There were astronomical quantities of food and alcohol. SS guards took part. Clearly, there must have been criminal infractions there.”—“Where did that take place?”—“I don’t know. When I arrived in Lublin, I asked Müller; he was very vague. He sent me to the camp of the DAW, but there they didn’t know anything. Then they advised me to go see Wirth, a Kriminalkommissar, you know who he is? And Wirth told me it was true, and that it was his method for the extermination of the Jews: he gave privileges to some, who helped him kill the others; then he killed them too. I wanted to learn more, but the Gruppenführer forbade me from going into the camps of the Einsatz, and the Reichsführer confirmed this prohibition.”—“So you have no jurisdiction over the Einsatz?”—“Not on the question of extermination, no. But no one forbade me from looking into what’s happening with the confiscated property. The Einsatz is generating colossal sums, in gold, currency, and goods. All that belongs to the Reich. I’ve already gone to see the warehouses here, on Chopin Street, and I count on investigating further.”—“Everything you say,” I said warmly, “is hugely interesting to me. I hope we can discuss it more in detail. In a certain sense, our missions are complementary.”—“Yes, I see what you mean: the Reichsführer wants to put his house in order. And maybe, since they don’t mistrust you as much, you’ll be able to dig up some things that are kept hidden from me. We’ll see each other again.”
For some minutes, Globocnik had been calling the guests to sit down to lunch. I found myself opposite Kurt Claasen, a colleague of Höfle’s, and next to a very talkative SS secretary. She immediately wanted to tell me about her tribulations, but fortunately Globocnik began a speech in honor of General Moser, which forced her to wait. He ended quickly and everyone there got up to drink to Moser’s health; then the General said a few words of thanks. The food was brought over: the roasted animals had been expertly carved, the pieces piled on wooden trays spread out on the tables, everyone could serve himself as he pleased. There were also salads and fresh vegetables, it was delicious. The girl nibbled on a carrot and straight away wanted to go on with her story: I listened to her with half an ear while I ate. She talked about her fiancé, a Hauptscharführer stationed in Galicia, in Drohobycz. It was a tragic story: she had broken off her engagement to a Viennese soldier for him, and as for him, he was married, but to a woman who didn’t love him. “He wanted to get a divorce, but I did a stupid thing, I saw that soldier I broke up with again, he’s the one who asked to see me but I said yes, and Lexi”—the fiancé—“knew it, and it discouraged him because he wasn’t sure about my love anymore and he went back to Galicia. But fortunately he still loves me.”—“And what is he doing, in Drohobycz?”—“He’s in the SP, he’s playing general with the Jews on the Durchgangstrasse.”—“I see. And you see each other often?”—“When we have leave. He wants me to come live with him, but I don’t know. Apparently it’s very dirty there. But he says I won’t have to see his Jews, he can find a good house. But if we’re not married, I don’t know, he’d have to get a divorce. What do you think?” My mouth was full of venison and I merely shrugged. Then I talked a little with Claasen. Around the end of the meal an orchestra appeared, set up on the steps that led to the garden, and began a waltz. Several couples got up to dance on the lawn. The young secretary, disappointed no doubt by my lack of interest in her sentimental misfortunes, went to dance with Claasen. At another table I noticed Horn, who had arrived late, and got up to exchange a few words with him. One day, noticing my leatherette satchel, he had offered, as a way of showing me the quality of his Jews’ work, to have one made for me in leather; I had just received it, a beautiful morocco portfolio with a brass zipper. I thanked him warmly, but insisted also on paying for the leather and the labor, in order to avoid any misunderstanding. “No problem,” Horn agreed. “We’ll send you a bill.” Morgen seemed to have disappeared. I drank another beer, smoked, watched the dancers. It was warm out, and with the heavy meats and the alcohol I was sweating in my uniform. I looked around: many people had unfastened or even unbuttoned their tunics; I opened the collar on mine. Globocnik didn’t miss one dance, each time inviting one of the women in civilian dress or a secretary; my lunch companion also ended up in his arms. But not many people had his spirit: after several waltzes and other dances, they had the orchestra change its music, and a choir of Wehrmacht and SS officers gathered to sing “Drei Lilien, kommt ein Reiter, bringt die Lilien” and other songs. Claasen had joined me with
a glass of Cognac; he was in shirtsleeves, his face red and swollen; he was laughing mechanically and while the orchestra played “Es geht alles vorüber” he intoned a cynical variation:
Es geht alles vorüber
Es geht alles vorbei
Zwei Jahre in Russland
Und nix ponimai.
“If the Gruppenführer hears you, Kurt, you’ll end up a Sturmmann in Orel and no more nix ponimai.” Wippern, another department head in the Einsatz, had come over and was scolding Claasen. “Listen, we’re going swimming, are you coming?” Claasen looked at me: “Will you come? There’s a pool in the back of the park.” I took another beer from an ice bucket and followed them through the trees: in front of us, I heard laughter, splashing. On the left, barbed wire ran behind the pines: “What’s that?” I asked Claasen. “A little camp of Arbeitsjuden. The Gruppenführer keeps them there for maintenance work, the garden, the vehicles, things like that.” The pool was separated from the camp by a narrow rise; several people, including two women in bathing suits, were swimming or sunbathing on the grass. Claasen stripped down to his boxer shorts and dove in. “Are you coming?” he shouted as he resurfaced. I drank a little more, then, folding my uniform next to my boots, got undressed and went into the water. It was cool, somewhat the color of tea; I did a few laps and then stayed in the middle, floating on my back and contemplating the sky and the trembling treetops. Behind me, I heard the two girls chatting, sitting by the edge of the pool, paddling their feet in the water. A quarrel broke out: some officers had pushed Wippern, who didn’t want to get undressed, into the water; he was swearing and raging as he extracted himself from the pool in his soaking uniform. While I watched the others laughing, maintaining my position in the middle of the pool with little hand movements, two helmeted Orpos appeared behind the rise, rifles on their shoulders, pushing in front of them two very thin men in striped uniforms. Claasen, standing by the edge of the pool, still dripping in his boxer shorts, called out: “Franz! What the hell are you up to?” The two Orpos saluted; the prisoners, who were walking with their eyes to the ground, caps in hand, stopped. “These Yids were caught stealing potato peelings, Sturmbannführer,” explained one of the Orpos in a thick Volksdeutschen dialect. “Our Scharführer told us to shoot them.” Claasen’s face darkened: “Well, you’re not going to do that here, I hope. The Gruppenführer has guests.”—“No, no, Sturmbannführer, we’ll go farther away, to the trench over there.” A vivid anguish seized me without any warning: the Orpos were going to shoot the Jews right here and throw them into the pool, and we would swim in the blood, between the bodies bobbing on their stomachs. I looked at the Jews; one of them, who must have been about forty, was furtively examining the girls; the other, younger, his skin yellowish, kept his eyes riveted to the ground. Far from being reassured by the Orpo’s last words, I felt an intense tension, my distress only increased. When the Orpos started moving again I remained in the middle of the pool, forcing myself to breathe deeply and to float. But the water now weighed on me like a wet woollen cloak, suffocating me. This strange state lasted until I heard the two gunshots, a little farther away, scarcely audible, like the pop! pop! of Champagne bottles being opened. Slowly, my anguish ebbed away and then disappeared altogether when I saw the Orpos return, still walking with their heavy, steady steps. They saluted us again as they went by and continued on to the camp. Claasen was talking with one of the girls, Wippern was trying to dry out his uniform. I let myself go and floated.
The Kindly Ones Page 70
