Holocaust (25 page)

Beneath a rocky ledge we rested. She huddled in my arms and cried softly. I kissed her tears, kissed her nose, her mouth. I told her we would not die, that I would not let them kill us.

It was the foolish bragging of youth, but I had no other course but to lie to her, or at least to project a hopeful future.

Soon she stopped crying. She was so small, so courageous, so much a part of me. I have often wondered how so young and frail a girl could be so strong in character, so loving, so full of desire. Her background was humble. The daughter of a shopkeeper, pathetic Zionists, ordinary Prague Jews. But bred in her—how I do not know—was a love and a depth of feeling that reminds me in many ways of Anna, my lost sister.

“I will marry you someday,” I said.

“Rudi, don’t tease me.”

“I mean it. But now, on your feet, little one. Before marriage, we have to start hiding again.”

Kiev
September 1941

Extraordinary how the Jews have cooperated with our orders to pack a bag, bring food for one day, assemble at certain street corners, and be prepared for transport to work camps.

With Colonel Blobel and his aides, we went out to Babi Yar early today to see how the operation is proceeding. Of course, the word has already been broadcast all over Kiev that the Jews blew up the city. Obviously, the Red Army is content to let this story stand. And the Ukrainian civilian population seems almost delighted. Entire squads of them have been enlisted as auxiliaries in the SS.

Through binoculars we looked down to the ravine below, the place called Babi Yar. He laughed: “Just beyond it is the Jewish cemetery of Kiev. Appropriate, don’t you agree, Dorf?”

“I suppose so. Of course, all reports must refer to this as a resettlement.”

“Precisely what they were told, and precisely what they believe. Work camps. For their own protection. Their rabbis and other leaders convinced them to obey.”

“It is astonishing how they cooperate,” I said.

“They’re subhuman. Descendants of another branch of the human race. Himmler is proving it every day. You know that our beloved Reichsführer collects Jew skulls and spends hours measuring them, comparing them to Aryan skulls?”

“Astonishing.”

As we spoke, we could see, beyond the sandy ravine, a vast sea of Jews assembling. They were very orderly.

“By God,” Blobel said. “We expected six thousand or so, and thirty thousand showed up.”

It was fantastic.

“Perhaps they realize,” Blobel said with a grin, “that whatever fate we mete out is atonement. Kiev is still burning from those damned Jew explosions.”

I shaded my eyes and saw thousands of people milling about, or standing quietly in ranks, unloaded from trucks and wagons. Quite literally a lake, an inland sea, of Jews. The undressing had begun. It was strange: in the fore areas, near the ravine, the bodies melded into a great blob of pink-white flesh, while to the rear, the Jews were black-brown, with only the pale faces standing out to afford them a semblance of humanity.

I have developed a crust, an armor around any pity or compassion that might have remained in me. It is no longer so great an effort to keep Heydrich’s words in mind. These are the mortal enemies of Germany, in every way imaginable.

I asked Blobel about the foreign journalists.

“Kept away. They’re being shown the bomb damage and the fires in Kiev.”

“Good. And the Ukrainians?”

“Except for the ones helping us in this action, they’ve been warned off. Not that they give a shit what we do to Jews.”

The first groups of naked Jews were marched in. They were made to kneel in the ravine. One man was holding his hands over his head, whether in prayer or beseechment, I could not tell. A new technique was being used here, perhaps to save ammunition. The Jews were being shot individually, in the back of the neck. SS men armed with pistols simply walked down the line and dispatched them.

“No mass firings?” I asked.

“I’m experimenting. We’ll go back to the machine guns if this takes too long.”

He slapped his riding crop against his boot. “It gets tiresome, Dorf. Let’s leave. This will take several days. I’m going to order them to move the waiting Jews farther away to avoid panic. I also want to try something Ohlendorf’s used. He calls it the sardine method.”

“Sardine?”

“First batch of Jews lies down in the bottom of the pit, side by side. Boom-boom. Dead. Next group lies on top of them, heads facing the feet of the dead. Boom-boom. They’re dead, too. And so on, until the ditch is filled.”

We walked away from the ravine. The shots were more frequent now, as were the moans and shrieks. But still, the place was curiously silent. Guards stood at the nearest road, where our cars awaited.

At one such roadblock, a tall man in a civilian topcoat, evidently a German, was showing papers to an SS corporal and protesting that he wanted to enter the area.

“I’m under special orders from Field Marshal Von Brauchitsch,” the man was saying irritably. “Here are my papers. Here’s his letter.”

“Sorry, sir, no one allowed past this point.”

The civilian looked up, angry, frustrated, and I saw that it was my Uncle Kurt. “I’m in charge of the road-building teams in this area. The ravine was to be surveyed today.”

“Sorry, sir. Security area.”

I walked up to Kurt and said, “He’s right, Uncle Kurt. The area’s closed.”

Kurt looked up, puzzled, then smiled. We hugged one another. I was genuinely glad to see him. One gets lonely for reminders of home and family; I see Kurt perhaps once a year, but he is a good and faithful relative, and was close to my poor father.

“Erik!” he cried. “I heard you were in the Ukraine! I spoke to Marta before leaving, but she said she had no idea exactly where. How good to see you!”

I introduced him to Blobel, who did not seem impressed, but did invite me to his office for a drink later when the “tally” came in.

“Tally?” asked Kurt.

“Oh, a military exercise,” I said.

Blobel’s staff car drove off.

Kurt was admiring my uniform. “My goodness. Brother Klaus’ little boy. And look at you. One of the
Reich’s fire-eaters. A major, no less, in the feared SS. Can’t believe it, Erik.”

“War changes us.”

“I don’t think you’ve changed. You still look like a handsome eighteen-year-old.”

I have never been an especially vain person, I can honestly state, but my Uncle Kurt’s comments pleased me. If I maintained the outward mien of a young innocent, so much the better. The steel that has been forged in my character is
internal
. The man who now can stoically observe mass shootings, can himself fire a bullet into the head of a young girl, shows no superficial changes. My wife will see no scar on me, sense none of the hardness I feel within.

Oh, I have changed a great deal. But Kurt could not see it. I am a soldier, a front-line warrior in Germany’s march to conquest. But I am lucky enough (unlike the drunken Blobels and sycophantic Nebes) to keep up the appearance of a clean, intelligent, manly young officer, peaceful in intent, compassionate and just.

So we chatted about the campaign in Russia, how well the armies were doing, the expectation, that with virtually all Europe under our rule, England might sue for peace. There is rumored to be a strong faction in the British government that favors the destruction of Bolshevism, to be followed by an Anglo-German agreement.

I offered Kurt a ride back to Kiev in my car. When we had exchanged some more small talk—Marta, my children, Kurt’s work for the army, he asked, “That place Babi Yar. What was going on?”

I paused a moment. I could tell him some of what was happening, without lying. “Executions,” I said.

“Ah. That would be your responsibility. Behind-the-lines security. Who were the … victims?”

“Oh, a mixed bag. The usual scum. Spies, saboteurs, anyone involved in the bombings and fire in Kiev. Common criminals. Black marketeers.”

“Jews?”

“Yes, some.”

“Some?”

“We don’t keep count. Anyone who resists us is done away with.”

Kurt stroked his chin. “I’ve been in the Ukraine several weeks, and these Jews seem the least likely of resisters. The ones I’ve seen act as if they can’t do enough to oblige us.”

“They’re tricky people, Uncle. Actually, we are resettling many of them. Keeping them away from the rest of the population.”

“Resettling?”

“Yes. A sanitary measure, so to speak. So the war can proceed.”

“Of course.” He looked at me with a new intensity. “You were once one of the shyest boys I ever saw. Now look at you. Giving orders. Running resettlement programs. Changing the face of Europe.”

“You credit me with too much power, Uncle. I merely obey orders.”

Kurt laughed. “Don’t we all.”

At this point my car was blocked by another endless, snakelike column of Jews. More and more, they were answering our summons to Babi Yar. They moved slowly. In the front rank were several bearded men, possibly rabbis or teachers, chanting and rolling their eyes.

“My God,” Kurt said. “More of them. Some more of your saboteurs. All headed to that ravine.” “And other places.”

“Ah,” Kurt said. He did not sound as if he believed me. “To be resettled?”

“Yes, some of them. There’ll be a triage of some kind, a selection process. The criminals among them will be shot.”

Our car found a way through the mass of Jews. They seemed to give off an odor of filth, fear, old unwashed bodies, feces.

“A cruel business,” Kurt said.

“Any war is.”

“But … so many civilians? Is it really necessary … ?”

I offered him a cigarette and we smoked. I did not
want to talk about Babi Yar or any other aspect of our work.

“Tell me again about Marta, Uncle Kurt,” I said. “I can’t wait to get back to Berlin to see her, to see the children. Believe me, without them to inspire me, I don’t know if I could go on.”

He said nothing, but his pale eyes looked at me with a profound, sad, questioning quality.

For a moment I was disconcerted. Kurt’s eyes were at that moment the eyes of my father. The look in them was precisely the look he fixed upon me when I had lied, or done something dishonorable. I was such an obedient dutiful child that these occasions were rare indeed. Which made it so much the worse, for I would experience not only guilt over having stolen a pencil, or cheated on an examination, but also a wasting sadness for my father. He was bedeviled by his failing bakery and his poor health, and I found it painful to make him also suffer my small sins.

Kurt’s eyes now revived all these boyhood memories. I was being reprimanded. But for what? Kurt probably suspected what many of my duties were. One could not hide all the evidence. But what right had he to censure me—if I read his eyes correctly?

I am committing no sins. I am being obedient, following the rules, laws and destiny of the nation, of our leaders. Someday I will have to explain it to Kurt. I do not look forward to meeting him again. Nor to having to justify any of my actions to him. Nor to seeing my father’s doleful face in the face of his brother.

The guards did not follow us into the woods. We hid in the forest for some hours, then forded a shallow stream, always listening for the sound of trucks, wagons, or marching feet.

At length, on this hot, parched day—it was the 29th
of September, 1941—we climbed a mountain and found ourselves overlooking a vast ravine, the Babi Yar of which the man on the truck had spoken.

Jews were being shot to death by the hundreds.

I was glad we were far enough away so that we could not see their faces or hear their voices. The pistol and rifle shots (later, machine guns were used) sounded like children’s toy popguns. The victims fell noiselessly, almost in slow motion, into the sandy earth.

“Rudi, Rudi, so many of them,” Helena wept. “The children, the babies …”

I held her closely, wondering where we would go, how we could avoid the SS patrols. The cities meant doom, death. Our only hope was wandering across the countryside. Surely some Jews had escaped. Some of the native population would have pity on us.

“I want to die with them,” she wept.

“No, no, dammit,” I said. “You’ll stay with me. We don’t die standing up, naked, shamed. We’ll kill some of them when we die.”

She began to scream. “No more! No more!”

I pulled her to me and slammed my hand over her mouth. She would have to learn not to scream, not to shriek, not to risk giving us away. She would also have to learn to hate, to want revenge, to realize that there was no way out for us except to run, to hide, and to try to fight. I would have to tell her worse things, too. That we would have to be ready to die, but to die in a brave and resisting way. I was sick of people placidly lining up, making excuses to themselves, following orders, and going to their death.

All day long the shooting continued. Files of Jews kept being marched into the marshaling area behind the ravine. The earth turned dark with Jewish blood. The Nazis understood something that it took the world a long time to learn. The bigger the crime, the less will people believe it happened. But I saw it happening. I would never be the same; nor would Helena.

Berlin
October 1941

Today Heydrich and I looked at the
official
photographs of the operation at Babi Yar.

I told him that although Blobel is a problem, he did deliver. We resettled exactly 33,771 Jews in two days. And he’s still at it. The way the Jews oblige us, we may resettle close to 100,000 before the Babi Yar program is concluded.

“The bodies?” Heydrich wanted to know.

“Blobel will cover them with earth. Bulldozers, tractors. He estimates that a mass-burial pit about sixty yards long and eight feet deep will be needed.”

We discussed the success of the other Einsatzgruppen in dealing with our mission. There are varying degrees of efficiency. Ohlendorf, our distinguished Doctor of Jurisprudence, economist, lawyer, our “house intellectual,” is proving particularly thorough. His group, designated D, in charge of the Crimea, is well on its way to dispatching its 90,000th Jew. I mentioned that I much preferred Ohlendorf’s cool efficient manner to Blobel’s drunken blustering, but Heydrich did not seem interested.