Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (16 page)

“It was a beautiful spring day,” Stangl remembered. “The grass was very green, the trees in bud and there were new flowers everywhere. I came upon Globocnik sitting by himself on a bench about ten metres away from – and with his back to – the building. There was a lovely view across lawns and trees to buildings far away.

“The general greeted me warmly. ‘Sit down,’ he said, patting the space next to him. ‘Tell me all about yourself.’ [Once again Stangl had fallen into the provincial Austrian vernacular which from then on, except when talking about his wife, he was to use whenever he quoted conversations or described particularly disturbing events.] He wanted to know all about my training in the police, my career, my family – everything. I realized that this was in the nature of a ‘test’ to ascertain whether I was really suitable for whatever assignment I was to have.”

“
You mentioned, of course, your work in the Euthanasia Programme?
”

“I said that I had been attached to the ‘Foundation for Institutional Care’,” he said tersely.

“
Who else was there?
”

“I saw no one at all. The park seemed empty too. It was very quiet and very beautiful. When I finished he said that no doubt I knew that the army had just had some major setbacks in the East. The
SS
was going to have to help. It had been decided, he told me, to open a number of supply camps from which the troops at the front could be re-equipped. He said that he intended confiding to me the construction of a camp called Sobibor. He called an aide – who must have lurked somewhere nearby – and told him to bring the plans.”

“
To the bench?
”

“Yes,” he shook his head. “It really was very odd. The plans arrived and he spread them out on the bench between us and on the ground in front of us. They showed a design for a camp: barracks, railway tracks, fences, gates. Some of the buildings – bunkers they were – were crossed out with red ink. ‘Don’t worry about those,’ he said, ‘concentrate on getting the rest done first. It has been started but they’ve got Poles working there. It’s going so slowly I think they must be asleep. What the place needs is someone to organize it properly and I think you are the man to do it.’ And then he said he’d arrange for me to leave for Sobibor the next day – that was all.”

“
How long did this conversation last?
”

“About three hours.”

“
And during those three hours – all on that bench in the park – did he ever hint at what the real purpose of Sobibor was? Did he mention the Jews?”

“Not with one word. I had no idea whatever. He did ask me whether I’d like to go and visit Christian Wirth. But I said, ‘Brigadeführer, excuse me for saying so, but Wirth and I don’t exactly see eye to eye. I’d just as soon not see him any more than necessary.’ ”

“
Did he say where Wirth was and what he was doing?
”

“No, only that he was stationed not far away.”

There appeared to me to be two improbabilities raised by this story: first, was it likely that a comparatively junior officer would have been received so informally by the general, and second, would Stangl still have been left in ignorance of the purpose of the work to which he was being assigned (given that he
was
ignorant) at this stage?

On the first point Franz Suchomel, who read my conversations with Stangl in the German newspaper
Die Zeit
, was highly sceptical. He wrote me saying, “It sounds like a fairy tale. Globocnik was
General of the Police and
SS
Obergruppenführer
[his emphasis] – there could never have been such a comradely tone between them except possibly during a drinking session.” On the other hand, Dieter Alters, better qualified, I think, to evaluate this encounter, sees the interview as “quite possible”. Since, however humble Stangl’s rank then was, he was being appointed to a key job at the start of a very difficult operation, it was, he thought, not unreasonable to assume that the man in charge would want to assess his calibre personally (just as Brack had previously done with all new T4 personnel).

In March 1972 I succeeded in finding the building in Lublin Stangl had described to me. It is now being used as a school for domestic science. Although it has none of the style and grandeur of “a palace”, it is a big place and could well have looked imposing to him. The young headmistress sent for older colleagues likely to be better informed about that period than herself, and they confirmed that during the occupation the whole neighbourhood had been strictly off-limits to anyone but the ss; and three of them, who had lived nearby at the time, said that the building was definitely “Governor Globocnik’s seat”. They said that the garden used to be quite big and that thirty years ago the view from near the house over a vista of trees and lawns was probably unimpeded. And near the house, at just the distance described by Stangl, there
was
a wooden bench, facing away from the house, which looked as though it could have been there for decades. My visit coincided with the time of year of Stangl’s interview with Globocnik, and it seemed far too cold for sitting out of doors; but my informants said that the coming of spring in that part of Poland varies a great deal from year to year, and that it was perfectly possible that in 1942 (which was to turn into one of the hottest summers on record) the trees could have been in bud and flowers could have been in bloom.

Suchomel’s scepticism, significantly enough, referred to the “comradely” tone of the interview, and not to the other points of doubt: Stangl’s description of where this conversation had taken place and his claim that he was not told the true purpose of the camp he was to construct. The Düsseldorf court certainly did not believe Stangl on this, but I consider it at least possible that he was telling the truth, and not only because I questioned him about it closely and repeatedly, and found him always consistent in his replies however I turned and changed the questions.

In the early spring of 1942 the planned physical extermination of the Jews was known to comparatively few people even amongst the highest party echelons, and the population of Germany – there can be no doubt of this whatever now – was at that time, though not later, in total ignorance of these intentions. Victor Brack testified at his trial in Nuremberg that when he was originally requested to send euthanasia personnel to Lublin and put it at the disposal of Globocnik, neither he nor Bouhler had “any idea” that they were to be used in the mass extermination of Jews. He claimed that it was only in June 1942 that Globocnik took Philip Bouhler (chief of the Führer Chancellery) into his confidence, whereupon, according to Brack, Bouhler protested that if his men worked on “
such an inconceivable assignment
” they would not be fit to be employed subsequently in mercy-killing.

Brack, according to the record, was involved in the planning of the death-camps in the East as early as the autumn of 1941, so it is unlikely that his denial of knowledge on behalf of himself and Bouhler corresponds to the truth. But Bouhler’s expression of anxiety as to the effect of the work on the “staff”, as he quoted it, rings true as an indication of the nervousness felt by those administering the extermination programme. There must have been considerable uncertainty about the men; even for the Nazis there must have been an enormous difference between the – as they claimed – carefully controlled mercy-killing of the incurably and often miserably sick, and the systematic and brutal murder of thousands upon thousands of healthy men, women and children. There must inevitably have been some doubt as to whether the men sent to Poland to launch the project would, when it came to it, be capable of carrying it through. And such doubts may well have suggested that a policy of gradual initiation – or perhaps sudden initiation, but
at their actual place of work
– would be wiser than giving them full information from the start. There was also the very real danger of leaks. No one who has gone into these matters can continue to believe that
SS
men never told their wives about their activities.

One example of this is Gustav Münzberger, who was at the Sonnenstein euthanasia institute before he went to Treblinka. “Well,” Frau Münzberger told me, “I knew after a while what he was doing. He wasn’t supposed to say of course, but you know what women are,” and she smiled comfortably. “I probed and probed and finally he told me. It was awful of course,” she added, just as comfortably, “but what could
we
do?” The fact is that by no means all German women would have been so accommodating, particularly not if they had known the nature of their husband’s work
before
they were involved in it. For the Nazi hierarchy the spreading of information in this way could have been a very real danger. And the possibility that wives would stop their husbands from accepting such assignments was another.

There is the further point that the administration needed to have a strong hold over these men. To order a man to some nebulous “strictly secret duty” in the East was one thing; to keep him at it once he realized what was involved was possibly quite another. I do not believe that these particular men were not carefully evaluated before they – just
they
out of the 400 T4 personnel – were offered the assignment to Lublin. But it is quite likely that it was decided to keep the majority of them in relative ignorance of exactly what this assignment entailed until they actually reached their final destination,
saw
what it was, and by seeing became implicated and aware of the danger their knowledge represented.

I did not readily believe Stangl’s account of his introduction to his death-camp commands; I shall always have my doubts about it. But like many other things which would not have happened under normal conditions and to normal people – it is not impossible that it was true.

Stangl told me about his first visit to the Sobibor site on two occasions, a month apart. During our second series of talks I repeated several questions (all on matters about which I had doubts). His story started the same way both times, but differed slightly in some respects later on.

“I spent that first night in an officers’ billets in Lublin,” he said.

“
Did you go sightseeing?
”

“No, I was tired. I was going to make an early start the next day and went to bed early. The next morning a car with a driver picked me up and we drove first to Cholm [Chelm – but he always called it either Cholm or Colm] where Globocnik had said I was to introduce myself to the surveyor, Baurath Moser, who was in charge of the materials I would need for Sobibor.”

“
Did this Baurath Moser tell you anything about Sobibor’s ultimate purpose?
”

“No. But then, I didn’t ask him; it never occurred to me. Globocnik’s instructions had been quite clear: Sobibor was a supply camp for the army. The surveyor and I only discussed materials.”

“
How far was Chelm from Sobibor? And Sobibor from Lublin?
”

“Colm was about thirty kilometres from Sobibor: Sobibor about no kilometres from Lublin [about forty-five and 160 in fact]. Baurath Moser suggested we make a round of the camps he supplied in the district. The first camp I saw was about half-way between Colm and Sobibor, a farm called Griechhof [this camp was actually called Kirchhof]. It employed two to three hundred Jewish women, mostly German or at least German-speaking. I went in there to look around. There was nothing – you know – sinister about it: they were quite free, if you like; it was just a farm where the women worked under the supervision of Jewish guards.”

“
What do you mean by ‘Jewish guards’?
”

“Well, I suppose you could call them Jewish police. As I say, I looked around and the women seemed quite cheerful – they seemed healthy. They were just working, you know.”

“
Were these ‘guards’ armed?
”

“They were armed with
weissen Schlagmitteln
[a really extraordinary word, in literal translation meaning ‘white implements for beating’].”

“
What do you mean by that? Clubs? Whips?”

He shrugged his shoulders: it was a question he wouldn’t answer. “We got to the village of Sobibor around supper-time. In the middle of the village there was another work camp. The man in charge carried a gun and wore a blue uniform I wasn’t familiar with; he took me to a barrack where we had supper – Jewish girls served us. During the meal he described the work that was being done there: it was mostly drainage.”

“
And who was doing the work?
”

“Jewish prisoners.”

“
Well, had you expected to find all this? Or did you now begin to ask questions?
”

“No, I didn’t. It was just a work camp in the middle of a Polish village using Jewish labour. There wasn’t anything special about this: foreign labourers were being used everywhere.” It was confirmed to me in Poland that these two camps were indeed labour camps for Jewish women, mostly from Czechoslovakia and Austria, who apparently lived there under comparatively humane conditions and worked on drainage projects.

From this point on, for reasons I never quite understood, Stangl presented two different versions of his first sight of Sobibor camp.

“I asked where the Sobibor camp-site was,” he said on the first occasion, “and they wouldn’t tell me, they just said it was too late to go there that night and that we would spend the night in the village. We went the next morning – it turned out to be only six kilometres away.”

During our second series of talks he mumbled something about a bridge having come down and a river flooding, and said they went back to Chelm for the night and he returned to Lublin in the morning, going to Sobibor three days later with six other men including his friend Michel, who had been stationed with him at Hartheim. He told me later that Michel – about whom he gave me three different stories – had fled to Egypt at the end of the war and was presumably still there.