The Zone of Interest

by Martin Amis

  Roland Bullard received a bullet in the back of the neck on May Day.

  Fritz Mobius suffered a fatal heart attack towards the end of a nightlong interrogation on June 1.

  Boris Eltz – six weeks later, on July 12 – was killed on the climactic day of the German defeat at Kursk: an engagement of thirteen thousand tanks on a battlefield the size of Wales. His frenzied Panther was just a ball of fire by the time he rammed it sideways into two charging Russian T-34s; and he was posthumously awarded the pour le mérite.

  Wolfram Prufer, along with two other SS, got beaten to death with rocks and pickaxes in the Sonderkommando revolt of October 7, 1944.

  Konrad Peters was among the approximately five thousand suspects arrested in connection with the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944; he was also among the approximately twelve thousand prisoners who died of typhus, in Dachau, during the first four months of 1945.

  Uncle Martin, Martin Bormann – well, it was several years before the facts were finally verified. He was wounded by a Russian artillery shell (and then took cyanide) as he tried to flee the Chancellery in Berlin in the small hours of May 1, 1945 – after the joint suicide of the newlyweds and their subsequent immolation, which (with Goebbels) he oversaw. He was condemned to death in absentia on October 1, 1946.

  Ilse Grese was hanged in Hamelin Prison in the British Zone on December 13, 1945. She was twenty-two. All through the night she loudly sang the ‘Horst Wessel Lied’ and ‘Ich Hatt’ einen Kameraden’; her last word (spoken ‘languidly’, according to her executioner, Pierrepoint, who also dealt with Lord Haw-Haw) was schnell. Quick.

  Paul Doll was demoted sideways in June 1943 to a clerical post at the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, in Berlin (which was being bombed nightly, and then daily as well as nightly), and subsequently reinstalled as Commandant in May 1944. He was captured in March 1946, tried at Nuremberg, and delivered to the Polish authorities. As part of his final statement Doll wrote, ‘In the solitude of my cell I have come to the bitter realisation that I have sinned gravely against humanity.’ He was hanged outside Bunker 11 in Kat Zet I on April 16, 1947.

  Professor Zulz and Professor Entress were among the Nazi doctors put on trial in the Soviet Union in early 1948 and sentenced to ‘the quarter’ – twenty-five years in the slave camps of the Gulag.

  Thirteen IG Farben executives and managers (not including Frithuric Burckl) were convicted at Nuremberg in July 1948. Suitbert Seedig was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment for slavery and mass murder. Rupprecht Strunck, called out of early retirement (which began in September ’43), was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for plunder and spoliation, slavery, and mass murder. Not a kilogram of synthetic rubber, nor a millilitre of synthetic fuel, was ever produced at the Buna-Werke.

  Alisz Seisser contracted tuberculosis of the hip, and in January 1944 was transferred to the (very occasionally Potemkinised) camp of Theresienstadt, near Prague. There is a better than even chance that she survived the war.

  The fate of Esther Kubis is unknown, at least to me. She won’t go down, Boris used to say. She’s rash, but in the end her spirit will refuse to give them the satisfaction. And he often cited the first thing she ever said to him. Which was I don’t like it here and I’m not going to die here . . .

  I last saw her on May 1, 1943. We were in a sealed Block together, just the two of us. I was about to be carted off to some other camp (Oranienburg, it turned out); Esther was serving the final hours of a three-day confinement (without food or water) for not making her bed, or for not making it properly – Ilse Grese was very particular when it came to the making of beds.

  We talked for almost two hours. I told Esther about the promise Boris extracted from me (to do everything in my power for her), a promise I was no longer able to keep (I had nothing to give her, not even my wristwatch). She listened to my urgings with real attention, I thought – because I was now so clearly on the wrong side of the Reich. Nor did I correct her silent inference that Boris too, perhaps, was not all he seemed.

  ‘Esther. This insane nightmare will end,’ I concluded, ‘and Germany will lose. Be alive to see it with your own eyes.’

  Then I dozed, having had a long and repetitive but not especially brutal night underneath the Political Department. For the first six hours I was joined by Fritz Mobius who, despite a lot of incredibly vociferous shouting (and it wasn’t simulated, it wasn’t an act, the millennial German anger), used no force. As the shift changed at midnight, Paul Doll looked in. To me he seemed transparently haunted and furtive; but he managed to slap my face a few times, as if in spontaneous patriotic disgust, and he punched me in the stomach (quite feebly hitting the bony ridge just above the solar plexus). From then until dawn it was Michael Off, who did a bit more of exactly the same; it appeared that someone had told them I was not to be marked.

  This was curious: in his appearance Doll made me think of a coal miner coming off shift. His tunic and jodhpurs minutely glinted with specks of light, and on his back there was a shard the size of a coin. It was mirror glass.

  Mobius, Doll, Off – they all yelled, they all hollered fit to kill. And I vaguely and confusedly wondered if the story of National Socialism could have unfolded in any other language . . .

  When I woke up Esther was standing in front of the window, with her forearms flat on the sill. It was an exceptionally clear day, and I realised she was gazing at the mountains of the Sudetenland. She had been born and raised, I knew, in the High Tatras (whose peaks were perennially capped with gleaming ice). Seen in profile, her face wore a frown and a half-smile; and she was so lost in memory that she didn’t hear the door as it creaked open behind her.

  Hedwig Butefisch came into the Block. She paused, then bent her knees, almost to a crouch; she moved quietly forward, and delivered a pinch to the back of Esther’s thigh – not viciously, not at all, but playfully, just hard enough to give her a fright.

  ‘You were dreaming!’

  ‘. . . But you woke me up!’

  And for half a minute they wrestled, tickling each other and yelping with laughter.

  ‘Aufseherin!’ shouted Ilse Grese from the doorstep.

  At once the two girls recollected themselves and straightened up, very sober, and Hedwig marched her prisoner out into the air.

  2. GERDA: THE END OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM

  ‘Try and drink some of this, my dearest, my darling. I’ll hold it. There.’

  ‘. . . Thank you, Neffe. Thank you. Neffe, you’re thinner. Though I’m one to talk.’

  ‘Ah but I’m like the troubadour, Tantchen. Famished for love.’

  ‘Pass me that. What did you say? . . . Oh, Neffe – Boris! I wept for you, Golo, when I heard.’

  ‘Don’t, Tante. You’ll start me off.’

  ‘Wept for you. More than a brother, you always said.’

  ‘Don’t, Tante.’

  ‘At least they made a nice big fuss about him. Well, he was so photogenic . . . Is Heinie all right?’

  ‘Heinie’s fine. They’re all fine.’

  ‘Mm. Except Volker.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Volker was her ninth child (if you included Ehrengard), and a boy. ‘Volker’s a little out of sorts.’

  ‘Because this is such an unhealthy place!’

  The place was Bolzano, in alpine Italy (and the time was the spring of 1946). My remaining Bormanns had met an unlikely fate: they were in a German concentration camp (it was called Bozen from 1944 to ’45). But there was no more slave labour, no more flaying and cudgelling, no more starvation, and no more murder. Full of DPs, POWs, and other internees awaiting scrutiny, it was Italian now, with unabundant yet appetising food, reasonable sanitation, and many cheerful nuns and priests among the helpers. Gerda lay in its field hospital; Kronzi, Helmut, Heinie, Eike, Irmgard, Eva, Hartmut, and Volker were in a kind of military marquee nearby. I said,

  ‘Were the Americans beastly to you, Tante?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, Golo, they were. Beastly. The doctor
, the doctor – not me, Neffe, but the doctor – told them I had to have an operation in Munich. Every week there’s a train. And this American said, That train’s not for Nazis. It’s for their victims!’

  ‘That was cruel, dear.’

  ‘And they think I know where he is!’

  ‘Do they? Mm. Well if he made it out he could be anywhere. South America, I’ll bet. Paraguay. Landlocked Paraguay, that’d be the one. He’ll send word.’

  ‘And Golo. Were they beastly to you?’

  ‘The Americans? No, they gave me a job . . . Oh. You mean the Germans. No, not very. They were dying to be beastly to me, Tante. But the power of the Reichsleiter held good to the end. Like your lovely parcels.’

  ‘Perhaps it isn’t the end.’

  ‘True, dear. But it’s the end of all his power.’

  ‘. . . The Chief, Neffe. Killed as he led his troops in the defence of Berlin. And now it’s all gone. The end of National Socialism. That’s what’s so impossible to bear. The end of National Socialism! Don’t you see? That’s what my body’s reacting to.’

  The next night she said with a vexed look,

  ‘Golo, are you still rich?’

  ‘No, darling. That’s all disappeared. All but about three per cent.’ Which was actually far from nothing. ‘They took it.’

  ‘Ah well, you see – once the Jews get a whiff of something like . . . Why the smile?’

  ‘It wasn’t the Jews, my dearest. It was the Aryans.’

  She said comfortably, ‘But you’ve still got your paintings and objets d’art.’

  ‘No. I’ve got one Klee and one tiny but very nice Kandinsky. I suspect all the rest found their way to Goring.’

  ‘Ooh, that fat brute. With his three chauffeurs and his pet leopard and his bison ranch. Mascara. Changing his clothes every ten minutes. Golo! Why aren’t you more indignant?’

  I shrugged lightly and said, ‘Me, I’m not complaining.’ Of course I wasn’t complaining, about that or about anything else: I didn’t have the right. ‘Oh, I’ve been very lucky, very privileged, as always. And even in prison I had lots of time to think, Tantchen, and there were books.’

  She worked her shoulders up the bed. ‘We never doubted your innocence, Neffe! We knew you were completely innocent.’

  ‘Thank you, Tante.’

  ‘I’m certain your conscience is completely clear.’

  In fact I did feel the need to talk about my conscience with a woman, but not with Gerda Bormann . . . The thing is, Tantchen, that in my zeal to retard the German power I inflicted further suffering on men who were already suffering, suffering beyond imagination. And dying, my love. In the period 1941–4, thirty-five thousand died at the Buna-Werke. I said,

  ‘Of course I was innocent. It was the testimony of just one man.’

  ‘One man!’

  ‘Testimony extorted by torture.’ And I reflexively added, ‘That’s medieval jurisprudence.’

  She slumped back, and went on in a vague voice, ‘But medieval things . . . are meant to be good, aren’t they? Drowning . . . throttled queers . . . in peat bogs. That kind of thing. And duels, Neffe, duels.’

  This wasn’t wild talk, about duels (or about peat bogs). The Reichsfuhrer-SS did briefly reintroduce duelling as a way of settling matters of honour. But Germans had already got used to living without honour – and without justice, freedom, truth, and reason. Duelling was re-illegalised after the first Nazi bigwig (an outraged husband in this instance) was briskly shot dead (by his cuckolder) . . . Now Tante suddenly opened her eyes to their full extent and cried,

  ‘The axe, Golo! The axe!’ Her head sank downwards into the pillow. A minute passed. ‘All that’s meant to be good. Isn’t it?’

  ‘. . . Rest, Tantchen. Rest, my sweet.’

  The next night she was weaker but more voluble.

  ‘Golo, he’s dead. I can feel it. A wife and mother can just feel it.’

  ‘I hope you’re wrong, dear.’

  ‘You know, Papi never liked Papi. I mean, Vater never liked Uncle Martin. But I stuck to my guns, Neffe. Martin had such a wonderful sense of humour! He made me laugh. And I wasn’t much of a laugher, even as a child. When I was very young I always thought, Why’s everyone making that silly noise? And even later on I could never see what people found so hilarious. But Papi, he made me laugh. How we laughed . . . Oh, talk to me Golo. While I rest. It’s the sound of your voice.’

  I had a flaskful of grappa with me. I took a swallow and said,

  ‘He made you laugh. And did you always laugh at the same things, Tante?’

  ‘. . . Always. Always.’

  ‘Well here’s a funny story Uncle Martin told me . . . There once was a man called Dieter Kruger. I don’t want to patronise you, my angel, but it was a long time ago. Do you remember the Reichstag Fire?’

  ‘. . . Of course I do. Papi was so thrilled . . . Just go on talking, Neffe.’

  ‘The Reichstag Fire – three weeks after our assumption of power. Everyone thought we’d done it. Because it was made in heaven for us.’ I took another swallow. ‘Anyway, we didn’t. Some Dutch anarchist did it. And he was guillotined in January ’34. But there was another man called Dieter Kruger. Are you awake, Tante?’

  ‘. . . Of course I’m awake!’

  ‘And Dieter Kruger, Dieter Kruger had a hand in one of the Dutchman’s earlier arsons – a welfare office in Neukolln. So he was executed too. For good measure. Kruger was a Communist and a—’

  ‘And a Jew?’

  ‘No. That’s not important, Tante. What’s important is that he was a published political philosopher and a fervent Communist . . . So the night before the execution Uncle Martin and a few of his friends went down to death row. With several bottles of champagne.’

  ‘What for? The champagne?’

  ‘For toasts, Tante. Kruger was already a bit bashed about, as you’d expect, but they stood him up and ripped his shirt off, and cuffed his hands behind his back. And in a mock ceremony they awarded him all these medals. The Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. The Order of the German Eagle. The Honour Chevron of the Old Guard. Et cetera. And they pinned them on his bare chest.’

  ‘. . . Yes?’

  ‘Uncle Martin and his pals gave speeches, Tantchen. They eulogised Kruger as the father of fascist autocracy. Which is how he went to his death. A decorated hero of National Socialism. Uncle Martin thought that was very funny. Do you think that’s very funny?’

  ‘. . . What? Giving him medals? No!’

  ‘Mm. Well.’

  ‘. . . He started the Reichstag Fire!’

  On my last night she made an effort and rallied. She said,

  ‘We have so much to be proud of, Golo. Think of what he achieved, Uncle Martin. I mean personally.’

  There was a silence. And an understandable silence. What? The intensification of corporal punishment in the slave camps. The cautious dissent on the question of the cosmic ice. The deSemitisation of the alphabet. The marginalising of Albert Speer. Uncle Martin wasn’t at all interested in the accoutrements of power, only in power itself, which he used, throughout, for unswervingly trivial ends . . .

  ‘How he took on the question of the Mischlinge,’ she said. ‘And the Jews married to Germans.’

  ‘Yes. And in the end we just let them be. The intermarried ones. Pretty much.’

  ‘Ah, but he got his Hungarians.’ She gave a soft gurgle of satisfaction. ‘Every last one of them.’

  Well, not quite. As late as April ’44, with the war long lost, the cities razed, with millions of people half starved, homeless, and dressed in singed rags, the Reich still felt it made sense to divert troops to Budapest; and the deportations began. You see, Tante, it’s like that man in Linz who stabbed his wife a hundred and thirty-seven times. The second thrust was delivered to justify the first. The third to justify the second. And so it goes on, until the end of strength. Of the Jews in Hungary, two hundred thousand survived, Tantchen, while close to half a million were deported and mu
rdered in ‘Aktion Doll’ in Kat Zet II.

  ‘Mm,’ she said, ‘he always insisted that that was his greatest accomplishment on the world stage. You know, his greatest contribution as a statesman.’

  ‘Indeed, Tante.’

  ‘. . . Now, Neffe. What’ll you do, my love?’

  ‘Go back to the law, in the end, I suppose. I’m not sure. Maybe keep at it as a translator. My English is getting quite decent. I’ve improved it by hook or by crook.’

  ‘What? It’s a hideous language, so they say. And you shouldn’t really work for the Americans, you know, Golo.’

  ‘I know, dear, but I am.’ OMGUS, the American Office of Military Government, and the five Ds: denazify, demilitarise, deindustrialise, decartelise, and democratise. I said, ‘Tante, I’m trying to find somebody. But the thing is – what’s her maiden name? I never asked.’

  ‘Golito . . . Why couldn’t you find a nice single girl?’

  ‘Because I found a nice married one.’

  ‘You look pained, dearest.’

  ‘I am pained. I feel I have the right to be pained about that.’

  ‘. . . Ah. Poor Golito. I understand. Who is the husband?’

  ‘They’re separated, and she won’t be using her married name. He’s being tried by the IMT.’

  ‘Those swine. Jewish justice. And was he a good Nazi?’

  ‘One of the best . . . Anyway. I’m getting nowhere. There’s nothing left you can look up.’ By which I meant that every file, every folder, every index card, every scrap of paper connected to the Third Reich was either destroyed before the capitulation or else seized and sequestered after it. ‘There’s nothing left you can look up.’

  ‘Golito, put a notice in the press. That’s what people do.’

  ‘Mm, I already tried that. More than once. Here’s a discouraging thought. Why hasn’t she found me? I wouldn’t be hard to find.’

  ‘Maybe she is trying, Neffe. Or I tell you what – maybe she’s dead. So many people are these days. And anyway, it’s always like that, isn’t it? After a war. Nobody knows where anybody is.’