Holocaust (34 page)

Moses lifted the lid. Inside was a single revolver, an old-looking firearm.

“I was told you would have a dozen,” my uncle said.

“One gun. It’s the best we could do.”

“I gave you money for twelve.”

“We’ll owe you the others,” Anton said.

“That is not fair. Give me the rest of the money back. We had an agreement.”

“We still have one. You don’t want the gun, leave it here. My word is good. When we have more guns, you’ll get them.”

Moses knew he had no choice. He threw his arms up. “Why don’t you help us more? We have the same enemy. The Germans have made no secret of their plans for you. You will be their slaves, just a notch higher than the Jews. I know you have not exactly liked us in the past. But surely now …”

Anton said nothing.

Aaron tugged at Moses’ sleeve, as if to say, “There’s nothing to be gained here, let’s go.”

“We will help you fight Germans,” Moses pleaded. “If we get together, we can drive them off, help the Allies.”

Anton looked at him with what seemed almost pity. “But Jews don’t fight,” the Pole said. “You know it’s true. You know how to make money, to run businesses, you pray a lot. But you don’t fight.”

“We will now,” Aaron said. “You’ll see.”

The Pole patted him on the head—the first sign of humanity Moses observed in him.

The older Pole spoke up. “Get out, both of you. The longer you stay, the more danger for us.”

They returned to the ghetto as they had come, in peril every minute. But Aaron knew the secret ways, and they came to resistance headquarters with their single gun.

A few days later, Mordechai Anelevitz assembled a group of resistance people in his secret headquarters. The most important people there were the Zionist youths—boys and girls in their late teens.

The older people—Uncle Moses, my father, Zalman, Eva—sat against the wall and watched. Anelevitz himself was a dedicated Zionist and had been a leader of a group called Hashomer Hatzair for many years. But now he was not interested in anyone’s politics. He wanted to train soldiers, fighters.

With a single gun.

He stood in front of the young people and showed them the workings of the gun. Trigger. Barrel. Chamber.

He then looked at the young boys and girls. “Who wants to be first?”

A boy came forward. He was no more than sixteen.

“It could be Rudi,” Eva remembers my father saying.

On the distant wall was a paper cutout of a German soldier—coal-scuttle helmet, tunic, a large swastika.

Anelevitz turned the boy toward the target and slapped the revolver in his hand. “Sight along the barrel. There is a small sight that should rest right between the V. The top of the sight should touch the target.”

The boy extended his arm.

“Take one deep breath and hold it,” Anelevitz said. “Then, do not jerk the trigger, but squeeze it slowly, as if you were unaware when it will go off.”

The boy followed instructions. Everyone watched
him. He pulled the trigger, and of course there was nothing but a loud
click
. They did not have a single round of ammunition.

But everyone cheered and laughed.

Uncle Moses said to my father, “That is a Jewish army for you. One gun, no bullets, and a lot of opinions.”

“It is a beginning,” my father said.

Auschwitz
October 1942

Since Heydrich’s death, I am somewhat in suspension. Himmler, fearful of creating another rival, has named no successor, and is trying to run everything himself—the transports, the work camps, the new installations.

Today, I was at Auschwitz, the former Polish town of Osweicim. It will be the main arena for the final solution. It is near a rail junction, on a main line. Forests surround it. Many Jewish ghettoes are nearby. And there is a whole complex of war factories around it—I. G. Farben, Siemens, others.

Rudolf Hoess, the commandant, listened attentively as Himmler unrolled a huge diagrammatic map and explained his desires to Hoess.

“Auschwitz will be doubled in size. And these new systems should be expanded at once.”

The systems are ingenious—a waiting area, large tiled rooms for the actual act, conveyor belts to take the bodies to the furnaces. Of course, they were in operation already, but on a small scale.

“Where will the labor come from?” Hoess asked.

“You will get more laborers than you can handle. A selection process must be instituted. Jews who appear capable of work can be spared for labor details—cleanup, sanitation and so on. Any useless ones,
the old, the sick, the cripples, the children, can be sent immediately from the railroad siding to the delousing plant.”

This is another of our euphemisms. Delousing means something else entirely.

“I shall have to fight with I. G. Farben for workers,” Hoess said.

“They will do as they are told. This work takes priority over any manufacturing process.”

“Even of war materiel?” he asked.

“Yes. Eichmann regularly takes trains from the army for transports, and the army does not object.”

“Hoess,” the Reichsführer said. “We are moving toward a grand destiny, something fate, or God, or history has ordained us for. I’m told your family wanted you to study for the priesthood, so this should be something you can understand.”

“I won’t disappoint you. From my childhood, Reichsführer, I have been taught to obey.”

They talked about Heydrich’s death, the tragic loss to the party. All agreed that an efficient, productive operation of an expanded Auschwitz, together with the centers at Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor, would be fitting memorials to that great man.

Himmler suddenly looked up from the vast map, the diagrams on the table. His small nose quivered, like a rabbit’s, and his scholarly pince-nez jiggled.

“The stink,” he said. “From the chimneys. Hoess, see if something can be done about it. After all, as noble as our work is, we want it played down. It is for our own knowledge alone.”

I was tempted to laugh. How does one annihilate eleven million people—as Hitler and Himmler have ordered—and keep it secret?

Once more, Inga lost track of Karl. She knew he was in Theresienstadt, the so-called “Paradise Ghetto”
in Prague, but she had no way of reaching him.

She refused to communicate with Muller, or to see him when he came to Berlin. He bragged that he was instrumental in having Karl sent to Czechoslovakia, to what he called “a vacation resort” for Jews; but he had no way of getting mail to him now. Inga would no longer give her body to Muller, whom she detested.

But on his visits to Berlin, he invariably came to her apartment, pleaded with her, vowed his love for her, and when she tried to leave, followed her to the street.

One day, as she was entering St. Hedwig’s Cathedral—she was not an observant Christian, but she felt the need to talk to Father Lichtenberg—Muller accosted her.

“I told you not to follow me,” she said.

“I’m trying to help you. Praying won’t do you any good.”

She hated him. But Inga was determined and resourceful. “What will? Can you get Karl out of that other camp?”

“No. I won’t lie to you.” He seized her hand. “I love you. I am entitled to your love.”

“Let go of me.”

“You can divorce him. He’s an enemy of the Reich. He’ll be worth nothing when they let him out of Theresienstadt—if they ever do. You are a Christian, an Aryan, you can get rid of him now. Listen to me. Since those times in my barracks … I can’t stop thinking of you. I do love you.”

She yanked free. “Get away from me. Don’t come near me again.”

“You used to beg me to get letters to him. Now I am begging you.”

Inga said, “I hate you. I hate all of you. You’re incapable of love. All you know is brutality, how to inflict pain. You glory in it. And the worst of it is, we have let you take us over, willingly. A whole nation, my nation, finding joy in hurting people, in causing pain and death. Muller, I am as evil as you are.”

“No, no. This is a war. Sure it’s cruel. People get
hurt. I had nothing against Karl. I have nothing personal against Jews.”

“Leave me alone. Go away.”

She walked into the cathedral. Muller watched her, but did not follow. He waited.

As I have said, Inga was not a regular communicant. She and Karl practiced no religion. But she had remembered Father Lichtenberg’s sermons of two years ago, and she wondered if he could give her some advice.

In the rear room she found the old sacristan she remembered from some years back. He was lighting candles. It was dusk.

“Yes, miss?” he asked.

“Is Father Lichtenberg here?”

“Oh, no, miss. The father is gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes. They took him away.”

“They?”

He whispered. “Gestapo. They warned him to stop talking about the Jews all the time. It was none of his business. They searched his room and found sermons he was going to give about the Jews, saying how they shouldn’t be hurt.”

“Where did they take him?”

“Place called Dachau.”

“Oh, dear God. That good man.”

The sacristan turned his back, as if the matter were closed, and kept lighting candles, muttering as he did. “I warned him myself, but he kept saying someone had to talk about it. But why him? Other priests and ministers were smarter. Kept their mouths shut. Why, I hear up in Bremen, they’re dedicating churches in the Führer’s name. And it’s no secret we’re all praying for the army to beat the Bolsheviks. So why not forget this Jewish business?”

Inga paused in front of an altar, kneeled, crossed herself. On it, on either side of a crucifix, were two photographs—one of Father Bernard Lichtenberg and the other of Pope Pius XII.

Muller had not left. “Can I walk you home?” he asked. “Maybe after your prayers you will feel more charitable toward me.”

As Inga told me later, the idea struck her suddenly, like a flash of summer lightning. If the brave priest could suffer the fate of the Jews, so would she.

“You can do more than walk me home,” she said.

“Good. If this is what church does for someone, I may become a believer myself.”

“That isn’t what I mean.”

“Inga, my darling, you know how I feel. I would do anything for you.”

She stopped. “Denounce me. Turn me in to the Gestapo. You have a thousand excuses—defaming the Führer, aiding Jews, spreading lies about the war effort.”

“You’ll be imprisoned.”

“That’s what I want. I want to be sent to Theresienstadt. I understand they have a section for Christian prisoners there, that they are not all Jews.”

Muller stopped, as if stunned by a brick. He could not comprehend the deep impression that Father Lichtenberg’s fate had made on her. The notion had struck her almost at once. Some Christians would have to make a stand, demonstrate their support of the Jews. She thought of that kind, gray, intelligent priest, consigned to a concentration camp, for nothing more than living his faith as he saw it, for speaking words of mercy. She would do the same.

Her life had become unbearable without Karl. She was truly alone now. There was no communication with her family. She had become mechanized, indifferent—apartment, job, shopping, sleep. A life without love—even in a prison barracks—would be preferable to the life she now led.

“Lichtenberg was an old fool,” Muller said. “You’re trying to be as foolish. I warn you, Inga, the best of those camps, like Theresienstadt, is no beer garden. They get sick and starve and die there. You’ll be marked as worse than a Jew.”

“I don’t care. I have made my mind up.”

“You’ll give up your freedom for Karl Weiss?”

“Yes.”

Muller tried once to reach for her waist, but when she drew away, he stopped. He said nothing. Only stared at her, then nodded slowly.

Hamburg
January 1943

Under orders from my new chief, Ernest Kaltenbrunner, who has been appointed Heydrich’s successor, I have been sent here on a most important mission.

Hoess is building Auschwitz with great speed, expanding it into the largest facility of its kind in the world. I don’t mean the usual barracks, the factories, the workrooms, and kitchens. I mean the centers for special handling. (I might as well call them what they are—
factories for mass killing.)

Hoess has erected, in addition to the makeshift early chambers, with their limited capacities, two vast complexes, containing anterooms, the actual chambers for the gassing and the ovens for final disposal. The famous Erfurt construction firm, Topf, specialists in the building of ovens, are putting up the crematoria. The biggest private corporations and engineering firms are aiding Hoess in his work, and, I might add, are making handsome profits.

I’ve seen diagrams and plans. The most impressive is the underground chamber, or
Leichenkeller
, complete with an electric elevator for hauling the dead to the furnaces.

Hoess is also anxious to keep observers—Poles, locals, anyone not connected with the work—away from these units. Therefore he has had an attractive landscaped “green belt” of tall trees built around them.

But there remains a very real impediment to the implementation of the final solution.

It concerns the agent. Carbon monoxide is proving inefficient. It takes too long. The bodies are badly mangled, making the shaving of heads and extraction of gold difficult.

Hence, I was sent to the Hamburg firm of Tesch & Stabenow to look into something more efficient. There have been experiments on a limited basis with an agent called Zyklon B, which is largely hydrogen cyanide and is simple to use.

Mr. Bruno Tesch took me into his small laboratory, explaining as we entered that his firm is largely a retailer and distributor, and that a vast cartel called Degesch, formed of several private firms, actually manufactures the material, and developed its use for large-scale fumigation against rats, lice and other vermin.

We walked among the crucibles, retorts and Bunsen burners, among the white-coated chemists. Tesch told me that Zyklon B has a prussic-acid base. He held up a can about the size of a large tomato tin, explaining that it had to be kept tightly sealed, not only because of its lethal nature, but because it vaporized the instant it struck the air.