The Kindly Ones

by Jonathan Littell

  Hohenegg got out his Cognac and Weinrowski went to look for glasses; his wife had disappeared into the kitchen. The apartment was dark, with the musty, stale smell of old people’s apartments. I had always wondered where this smell came from. Would I smell that way too, if I ever lived long enough? Strange idea. Today, in any case, I don’t think I smell; but one can never smell one’s own odor, they say. When Weinrowski returned, Hohenegg poured three measures and we drank to the memory of his dead son. Weinrowski seemed a little moved. Then I took out the documents I had prepared and showed them to Hohenegg, after asking Weinrowski for a little more light. Weinrowski was sitting next to his old colleague and commenting on the papers and the charts as Hohenegg examined them; unconsciously, they had slipped into a Viennese dialect that I had trouble following. I settled into my armchair and drank Hohenegg’s Cognac. Both had a rather odd attitude: in fact, as Hohenegg had explained to me, Weinrowski, at the faculty, had seniority; but as Oberst, Hohenegg was superior in rank to Weinrowski, who in the SS had the rank of Sturmbannführer of the Reserve, the equivalent of a Major. They didn’t seem to be sure which of them had precedence over the other, so they had adopted a diffident attitude, with much “If you please,” “No, no, of course you’re right,” “Your experience…” “Your practice…,” which was starting to get rather comical. Hohenegg raised his head and looked at me: “If I understand correctly, according to you, the inmates don’t even receive the complete rations described here?”—“Aside from a few privileged ones, no. They lose at least twenty percent.” Hohenegg resumed his conversation with Weinrowski. “That’s bad.”—“It certainly is. That gives them between thirteen hundred and seventeen hundred calories a day.”—“It’s still more than our men in Stalingrad.” He looked at me again: “What are you aiming for, in the end?”—“The ideal thing would be a normal minimum ration.” Hohenegg tapped the papers: “Yes, but if I understood correctly, that’s impossible. Lack of resources.”—“In a way, yes. But we could suggest improvements.” Hohenegg thought: “In fact, your real problem is the argumentation. The inmate who should receive seventeen hundred calories only receives thirteen hundred; in order for him actually to receive seventeen hundred…”—“Which is insufficient in any case,” Weinrowski interjected.—“…the ration would have to be twenty-one hundred. But if you ask for twenty-one hundred, you have to justify twenty-one hundred. You can’t say you’re asking for twenty-one hundred in order to get seventeen hundred.”—“Doktor, as always, it’s a pleasure talking with you,” I said, smiling. “As is your wont, you go straight to the heart of the matter.” Hohenegg went on without letting himself be interrupted: “Wait. To ask for twenty-one hundred, you would have to demonstrate that seventeen hundred wasn’t enough, which you can’t do, since they don’t actually receive seventeen hundred. And of course, you can’t take the diversion factor into account in your arguments.”—“Not really. Management knows the problem exists, but we can’t get mixed up in it. There are other authorities for that.”—“I see.”—“In fact, the problem is to obtain an increase of the overall budget. But the people who manage that budget think that it should be enough, and it’s hard to prove the contrary. Even if we demonstrate that the inmates continue to die too quickly, they tell us that throwing money at the problem won’t solve it.”—“In which they aren’t necessarily wrong.” Hohenegg rubbed the top of his skull; Weinrowski was silent and listened. “Couldn’t we modify the distributions?”—“Meaning?”—“Well, without increasing the overall budget, favor the working inmates a little more, and the ones who don’t work a little less.”—“In principle, dear Doktor, there are no inmates who don’t work. There are only sick inmates: but if they are fed even less than they are now, they would have no chance to recover and become fit for work again. In that case, might as well not feed them at all; but then the death rate would increase again.”—“Yes, but what I mean is that you must keep the women and the children somewhere? So they must be fed too?” I stared at him without replying. Weinrowski too remained silent. Finally I said: “No, Doktor. We don’t keep the women, the elderly, or the children.” Hohenegg opened his eyes wide and looked at me without replying, as if he wanted me to confirm that I had indeed said what I had said. I nodded. Finally he understood. He gave a long sigh and rubbed the back of his neck: “Well…” Weinrowski and I still remained silent. “Ah yes…yes. That’s rough.” He breathed heavily: “Well. I see how it is. I imagine that, after all, especially after Stalingrad, we don’t have much of a choice.”—“No, Doktor, not really.”—“Still, that’s hard. All of them?”—“All those who can’t work.”—“Well…” He pulled himself together: “At bottom, it’s normal. There’s no reason for us to treat our enemies better than our own soldiers. After what I saw in Stalingrad…. Even these rations are luxurious. Our men survived with much less. And also, the ones who survived, what are they getting to eat now? What are our comrades in Siberia getting? No, no, you’re right.” He stared at me pensively: “Still, it’s a Schweinerei, a filthy business. But still, you’re right.”

  I had been right, too, to ask his opinion: Hohenegg had understood right away what Weinrowski couldn’t see, that it was a political problem, not a technical one. The technical aspect had to serve to justify a political decision, but couldn’t dictate it. Our discussion that day reached no conclusions; but it made me think, and in the end I found the solution. Since Weinrowski seemed incapable of grasping it, to keep him busy I asked him to develop another report, and turned to Isenbeck for the necessary technical support. I had underestimated this boy: he was very keen and turned out to be fully capable of understanding my thinking, and even of anticipating it. In one night of work, alone in our big office at the Ministry of the Interior, drinking coffee brought to us by a drowsy orderly, we sketched the rough outlines of the project together. I started with Rizzi’s concept, setting up a distinction between skilled and unskilled workers: all rations would be increased, but just a little for the unskilled workers, while skilled workers could receive a whole series of new advantages. The project didn’t deal with the different categories of inmates, but allowed, if the RSHA insisted, for the categories meant to be disadvantaged, such as the Jews, to be assigned solely to unskilled jobs: in any case, the options remained open. Starting from this central distinction, Isenbeck helped me define others: heavy labor, light labor, hospitalization; in the end, it formed a scale to which we merely had to index the rations. Instead of struggling with fixed rations, which in any case could not be guaranteed because of restrictions and difficulties in obtaining provisions, I asked Isenbeck to calculate—based on standard menus—a daily budget corresponding to each category, then, in addition, to suggest various menus that would correspond to these budgets. Isenbeck insisted that these suggestions also include qualitative options, such as distributing raw onions rather than cooked ones, because of the vitamins; I agreed. At the bottom line, there was nothing revolutionary about this project: it took the current practices and modified them slightly to try to produce a net increase; in order to justify it, I went to find Rizzi, explained the concept to him, and asked him to write an economic argument for me in terms of output; he immediately agreed, all the more so since I readily attributed authorship of the key ideas to him. For myself I reserved the drafting of the project, once I had all the technical elements in hand.

  The important thing, I saw clearly, was for the RSHA not to have too many objections; if the project was acceptable to them, Department D IV of the WVHA couldn’t oppose it. So I called Eichmann to sound him out: “Ah, my dear Sturmbannführer Aue! Meet with me? It’s just that I’m absolutely snowed under at the moment. Yes, Italy, and something else too. Tonight, then? For a drink. There’s a little café not too far from my office, at the corner of Potsdamerstrasse. Yes, next to the U-Bahn entrance. Till tonight, then.” When he arrived, he flopped onto the banquette with a sigh and threw his cap on the table, massaging the bridge of his nose. I had already ordered two glasses of schnap
ps and I offered him a cigarette, which he took with pleasure, leaning back in the banquette with his legs crossed, one arm thrown over the back. Between puffs he chewed his lower lip; his broad bare forehead reflected the lights of the café. “So, Italy?” I asked.—“The problem isn’t so much Italy—well, we’ll get eight or ten thousand of them there, of course—it’s mostly the zones that they occupied: with their imbecilic policies they’ve become paradise for Jews. They’re everywhere! In the South of France, the Dalmatian coast, the Italian zone in Greece. I sent teams right away pretty much everywhere, but it’s going to be a big job; with the transport problems on top of that, it won’t get done in a day. In Nice, with the benefit of surprise, we managed to arrest a few thousand; but the French police are becoming less and less cooperative, and that complicates matters. We lack resources terribly. And also Denmark is worrying us a lot.”—“Denmark?”—“Yes. It should have been quite simple, but it’s become a real mess. Günther is furious. Did I tell you I sent him there?”—“Yes. What happened?”—“I don’t know exactly. According to Günther, it’s Dr. Best, the ambassador, who’s playing a weird game. You know him, don’t you?” Eichmann emptied his schnapps in one gulp and ordered another. “He was my superior,” I replied. “Before the war.”—“Yes, well, I don’t know what’s on his mind now. For months and months, he’s been doing everything he can to get in our way, under the pretext that it’s going to…”—he made a repeated gesture from top to bottom—“interfere with his policy of cooperation. And then in August, after the riots, when we imposed a state of emergency, we said, fine, let’s do it. On-site, there’s a new BdS, Dr. Mildner, but he’s already overwhelmed; what’s more the Wehrmacht immediately refused to cooperate, that’s why I sent Günther, to get things going. So we prepared everything, a boat for the four thousand who are in Copenhagen, trains for the others, and then Best keeps creating difficulties. He always has an objection, the Danish, the Wehrmacht, e tutti quanti. What’s more, this was supposed to stay a secret, so we could round them all up at once, without their expecting it, but Günther says they already know everything. It looks like it’s off to a pretty bad start.”—“So where are you at now?”—“It’s planned for a few days from now. We’ll do it all at once, there aren’t all that many of them anyway. I called Günther and said to him, Günther, my friend, if that’s the way it is, tell Mildner to move the date up, but Best refused. Too sensitive, he had to talk some more with the Danes. Günther thinks he’s doing it on purpose so it’ll fail.”—“But I know Dr. Best well: he’s anything but a friend of the Jews. You’d have a hard time finding a better National Socialist than him.” Eichmann made a face: “Mmmh. You know, politics change people. Well, we’ll see. Me, I’m covered, we prepared everything, planned everything, if it goes wrong, it won’t fall on my shoulders, I’m telling you that right now. But how about your project, how’s that going?”

  I ordered another round: I had already had a chance to notice that drinking tended to relax Eichmann, to arouse his sentimental, friendly side. I wasn’t trying to con him, far from it, but I wanted him to trust me and see that my ideas weren’t incompatible with his vision of things. I gave him a rough outline of the project; as I had foreseen, he scarcely listened. One single thing interested him: “How do you reconcile all that with the principle of Vernichtung durch Arbeit?”—“It’s very simple: the improvements relate only to the skilled workers. It will be enough to make sure that the Jews and the asocials are assigned to heavy but unskilled labor.” Eichmann scratched his cheek. Of course I knew that in actual fact the assignments of each individual worker were decided by the Arbeitseinsatz of each camp, but if they wanted to keep skilled Jews, that would be their problem. Eichmann, in any case, seemed to have other concerns. After a minute of thought, he said abruptly: “Fine, that’s okay,” and began talking about the South of France again. I listened to him as I drank and smoked. After a while, at an opportune moment, I asked him politely: “To come back to my project, Obersturmbannführer, it’s almost ready, and I’d like to send it to you so you can study it.” Eichmann waved his hand: “If you like. I already get so much paper.”—“I don’t want to bother you. It’s just to be sure you don’t have any objections.”—“If it’s as you say…”—“Listen, if you have the time, look at it, and then send me a little letter. That way I can show that I took your opinion into account.” Eichmann gave an ironic little smile and waved a finger at me: “Ah, you’re a clever one, Sturmbannführer Aue. You have to cover your tracks too.” I kept my face impassive: “The Reichsführer wants the opinions of all departments involved to be taken into account. Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner told me that for the RSHA, I would have to see you. I find it normal.” Eichmann scowled: “Of course, I’m not the one who decides: I’ll have to submit it to my Amtschef. But if I give a positive recommendation, there’s no reason he’ll refuse to sign it. In principle, of course.” I raised my glass: “To the success of your Danish Einsatz, then?” He smiled; when he smiled that way, his ears seemed to stick out, and he looked more than ever like a bird; at the same time, a nervous tic deformed his smile, making it almost into a grimace. “Yes, thank you, to the Einsatz. To your project too.”

  I drafted the text in two days; Isenbeck had meticulously prepared handsome detailed charts for the annexes, and I used Rizzi’s arguments without altering them too much. I hadn’t quite finished when Brandt summoned me. The Reichsführer was going to the Warthegau to deliver important speeches there; on October 6, a conference of the Reichsleiters and Gauleiters was taking place, at which Dr. Mandelbrod would be present; and the latter had asked that I be invited. How far was I with my project? I assured him that I had almost finished. I just had to present it to my colleagues before sending it to the relevant offices for approval. I had already discussed it with Weinrowski, presenting Isenbeck’s scales to him as a simple technical elaboration of his ideas: he seemed to think it was fine. The general meeting went off without any hitches; I let Rizzi do most of the talking, and contented myself with stressing that I had secured the verbal agreement of the RSHA. Gorter seemed satisfied, and just wondered if we had gone far enough; Alicke seemed unable to follow Rizzi’s economic arguments; Jedermann grumbled that it was still going to be expensive, and where would we find the money? But he was reassured when I guaranteed that if the project were approved, it would be financed through additional allocation. I asked each person for a written reply from his Amtschef for the tenth, counting on being back in Berlin by then; I also forwarded a copy to Eichmann. Brandt had let me know that I could probably present the project to the Reichsführer in person, once the departments had given their agreement.

  The day of our departure, at the end of the afternoon, I went to the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais. Brandt had invited me to attend a speech of Speer’s before joining Dr. Mandelbrod in the special train for the bigwigs. In the lobby, I was welcomed by Ohlendorf, whom I hadn’t seen since he left the Crimea. “Dr. Aue! How nice to see you again. I hear you’ve been in Berlin for months. Why didn’t you call me? I would have been happy to see you.”—“I’m sorry, Brigadeführer. I was terribly busy. You too, I imagine.” He seemed to be radiating intensity, a dark, concentrated energy. “Brandt sent you for our conference, isn’t that right? As I understood it, you’re looking into questions of productivity.”—“Yes, but only in matters concerning concentration camp inmates.”—“I see. Tonight we’re going to introduce a new cooperation agreement between the SD and the Armaments Ministry. But the subject is much vaster; it will also cover the treatment of foreign workers, among other things.”—“You’re in the Ministry of Economics now, Brigadeführer, isn’t that so?”—“That’s right. I’m wearing several hats these days. It’s too bad you’re not an economist: with these agreements, a whole new field will open up for the SD, I hope. Well then, let’s go up, it’s going to start soon.”

  The conference took place in one of the great oak-paneled halls of the palace, where National Socialist decorations clashe
d somewhat with the eighteenth-century woodwork and gilt candelabra. More than a hundred SD officers were present, among them a number of my former colleagues or superiors: Siebert, with whom I had served in the Crimea, Regierungsrat Neifend, who had worked in Amt II but had since been appointed Gruppenleiter in Amt III, and others. Ohlendorf had his seat near the rostrum, next to a man in an SS-Obergruppenführer’s uniform, with a broad, bare forehead and firm, set features: Karl Hanke, the Gauleiter from Lower Silesia, who was representing the Reichsführer at this ceremony. Reichsminister Speer arrived a little late. He struck me as surprisingly young, even though his hair was starting to recede, slim, vigorous; he wore a simple twill suit, with the Gold Badge of the Party as sole decoration. Some civilians accompanied him, and took their seats on chairs lined up behind Ohlendorf and Hanke, while he stepped up to the podium and began his speech. He spoke, in the beginning, in an almost gentle voice, precise and polished, which emphasized rather than masked an authority that Speer seemed to draw more from himself than from his position. His dark, keen eyes remained fixed on us and left our faces only occasionally, to look at his notes; when they were lowered, they almost disappeared under his thick, bushy eyebrows. The notes were just there to serve as pointers for his speech; he hardly consulted them at all, and seemed to take all the figures he ticked off directly from his head, as he needed them, as if they were constantly stored there, ready for use. His statements were brutally and, to my way of thinking, refreshingly frank: if total military production was not rapidly implemented, the war was lost. These weren’t Cassandra warnings; Speer compared our present production with the estimates we had of Soviet and especially American production; at this pace, he demonstrated, we wouldn’t hold out for a year. But our industrial resources were far from being fully exploited; and one of the major obstacles, aside from the problems of manual labor, was the obstruction, at a regional level, by private interests: it was especially for that reason that he counted on the support of the SD, and that was one of the main subjects of the agreements he was going to conclude with the SS. He had just signed an important agreement with the French Economics Minister, Bichelonne, to transfer the majority of our production of consumer goods to France. That would certainly give a considerable commercial advantage to postwar France, but we didn’t have a choice: if we wanted victory, it was up to us to make sacrifices. This measure would allow us to transfer an additional million and a half workers to armaments. But we could expect a number of Gauleiters to oppose the necessary closures of firms; and this was one particular area where the SD could intervene. After this speech, Ohlendorf got up, thanked Speer, and swiftly presented the terms of the agreement: the SD would be authorized to examine the conditions of recruitment and the treatment of foreign workers; similarly, any refusal by the Gauleiters to follow the minister’s instructions would be subject to an SD investigation. On a table set up for this purpose the agreement was ceremoniously signed, by Hanke, Ohlendorf, and Speer; then everyone exchanged a German salute, Speer shook their hands, and left. I looked at my watch: I had less than forty-five minutes, but I had brought my travel bag. In all the milling around, I slipped next to Ohlendorf, who was talking to Hanke: “Brigadeführer, excuse me. I’m taking the same train as the Reichsminister; I have to go.” Ohlendorf, a little surprised, raised his eyebrows: “Call me when you get back,” he said.