Europe Central (80 page)

And then we turn on the light—

What’s that? Now, have you met Haupsturmführer Professor August Hirt? I don’t give a shit about most of those eggheads, but Professor Hirt is a real down to earth, Volkish sort of fellow. Just duck when he shoots his jargon at you. You should meet him, Gerstein. He’s just started a Jewish skeleton collection . . .

20

After the collapse of Fortress Stalingrad, the mood became even fiercer, the zealots more numerous, just as in the course of certain diseases the blood’s thrombocyte content actually increases after bleeding. It was necessary to proceed with the most radical measures. Those who knew us best, namely, our fiendish enemy on the Ostfront, characterized the German temper as wandering between the antipodes of
bitter resistance, bordering on unthinking rashness; and timidity shading into morbid cowardice.

The way I look at it, said
-Obersturmführer Kurt Gerstein, leniency in dealing with the Jews would be as fatal as hesitation in eliminating a Russian bridgehead.

Well spoken, young man!

As a matter of fact, no matter how eloquent this Gerstein might be, some of us were beginning to follow a different line now. Exterminate the Jews? By all means! But first let’s squeeze some cash out of them. Soon Auschwitz would begin to turn a profit.

It was at this time that the Dutch engineer H. J. Ubbink visited Gerstein’s apartment in Berlin and took the tale of Belzec to London. No one would believe it. Even Ubbink himself no longer believed it and took to referring to Gerstein as “the holy fool.” So another German summer came unmolested, and the holy fool, whom “Clever Hans” Günther now dispatched on an inspection tour of Chelmno, escaped by the slenderest margin being compelled to take his place on the wide-spaced line of
-men shooting down Jews, while sunshine consecrated the shooters’ toadstool-helmets. Thanks to their hard work, there’d never again be a Poland.—This mass butchery is against German tradition, said Dr. Pfannenstiel, who was there for his own research. Thank Heaven for the gas chambers!—The shooters narrowed their eyes at that. The gas chambers were out of order that day, and they felt overworked. One fellow named Sorli had to make do with a misfiring Nagant; he could have done the job faster with his leather whip! Dr. Pfannenstiel exasperated him. He didn’t much like the look of Kurt Gerstein, either, not that Gerstein had even said anything, but when there’s a war on one gets pretty good at sizing up one’s fellow man: Is he steely enough for our time? Sorli told Gerstein right to his face that he must be one of those rear echelon assholes who expect other people to get their hands dirty. (Dr. Pfannenstiel was of a similar opinion, but the way he put it was more literary: In our national epic, Siegfried won Brunhilde for Gunther and some say even deflowered her for him, so weak was the latter king. We truehearted workers are Siegfrieds, not Gunthers! Isn’t that correct, my dear Gerstein?) By then the entire squad was of the opinion that maybe Eichmann should be informed about Kurt Gerstein’s attitude. With healthy fanatical race-hatred, Gerstein, laughing as loudly as he could, started kicking the face of a dead Jew. He said: Looks like that Yid fell downstairs!—That appeased them; he’d kept the faith. Sorli liked him then. They all drank schnapps afterwards. Sorli bragged about this and that—more grist for Gerstein’s indictment. Sorli was also a man of culture; he couldn’t stop talking about the time he’d seen Lizzi Waldmüller back in 1930; it had been “Traum einer Nacht” at the Nollendorfplatz. Then it was time to shoot another batch of Jews. Surely this time at least Kurt Gerstein would show his truehearted metal! . . .

How could Gerstein go on? And yet the blond man is said to have secretly flown to Finland to inform people there of the Final Solution. He returned exhausted and terrified to that office of his with Hitler’s likeness on every wall,
Signal
magazine on the coffee table, and on his desk a small photograph, inscribed by its subject to
Kurt Gerstein, in brotherhood,
of
-Oberdienstleiter Viktor Brack, whose grey, abnormally lean face displayed both the misery of old age and a certain native stoniness; Brack was a very decent man, really, a correct man, and a go-getter, too; he if anyone was the genius of Operation T-4, which was why the Americans would hang him on 2.6.48; Gerstein had told him once, at crazy, suicidal risk to himself: Herr Oberführer, something about you, your smile actually, reminds me of my late sister-in-law . . .

The telephone was about to ring. The telephone would send him off to Auschwitz. He opened the new issue of
Signal
and read an article about conditions in America: Negro schoolchildren were intimidating their teachers in several larger cities. Even the Americans were beginning to see that measures might be necessary. In the courtyard,
were shouting and then another truckload of prisoners went clattering away over the cobblestones as the typist from the motor pool brought him his ersatz coffee. There was no air raid today. Right there in front of her, he prayed.

He tried to telephone Baron von Otter, who was in Romania again, they said. What about Bishop Dibelius? He was a moderate man; he advocated only the exclusion of the Jews from our economic life. Trembling, Gerstein ran downstairs.

He must have looked a sight, but the swastika-lapeled porter opened the door for him with an imperturbable
Heil Hitler!
Where could he go? He needed to walk and walk, to cool his head . . . On the Kurfürstendamm, a reddish-blonde woman on a bicycle was pedaling with long pink legs; everything about her was pink; that reddish-blonde hair of hers resembled the “good red gold” which ancient Norsemen prized. Why wasn’t she working in a munitions factory? She must be the wife of someone important. Nothing was wrong. In the Tiergarten, a policeman on a brown horse passed slowly by, half visible between trees . . .

The telephone rang. It summoned him to Bohemia. Clever Hans had some surplus Jews.

One eyewitness claims (this I can hardly believe) to have seen him enter the Castle of Prague, residence of our Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, where under the guise of inter-district cooperation, he is supposed to have questioned
-Oberstgruppenführer Daleuege’s personal staff about certain secret actions carried out against the Czechs in revenge for Heydrich’s assassination. A parade of Nazi nurses was passing outside. Through the open window he heard them screaming:
Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil!
Daleuege’s assistant was saying: Something about you smells, Herr Gerstein. I’m going to report you.—Gerstein stood up tall, slapped his face, smiled (deliberately showing off the missing three teeth), and said: Go ahead and report me, you pasty-faced little kike! Now, Berlin wants to know whether this office has been
hard
enough, whether measures have been taken. For instance, it’s alleged that the female inhabitants of Lidice are still alive. I’m going to tell Berlin that you’re not men here, that you’re just a bunch of soft-shelled Jewish creeps.—In the end, because he acted so crazy that he must really be from Berlin, they allowed him to read the file on Lidice: one hundred and seventy-three men shot in the village, nineteen more liquidated in detention, seven women rendered harmless, two hundred and three others sent to concentration camps, a hundred and five children either deported or Germanized, the village razed, all with the approval of our Führer himself. To Gerstein that was the next horror, the next iron-ringed vault now opened within him: He had always known that the sleepwalker knew, but that knowledge had been kept secret from himself, like a skeleton in a forest, like something silver on black.

He went back to Berlin and from memory wrote down the statistics on Lidice. American bombs were falling on the Reich Chancellery again. Someone he’d never met was shouting; he was supposed to go to the air raid shelter. Coldly, he replied that he was busy. At that moment, the Kaiserhof Hotel got smashed by the planes. He heard our antiaircraft guns firing, and then the all-clear. Then he tried once more to telephone Baron von Otter. The line was out. When service was restored, he telephoned three half-strangers, all of whom hung up quickly and quietly. Then the typist from the motor pool came in with ersatz coffee. Very gently she said to him: Excuse me, Herr Obersturmführer, but what you are under the uniform is nobody’s business.

21

He dreamed that he was digging in the earth, and turned up a golden skull with rubies for eyes—a death’s head both beautiful and terrifying, like the uniform he wore; as he awoke he had a dissolving vision of holding the skull up to the sunlight.

22

Prague called him once again on the telephone; he took the express. “Clever Hans” Günther was waiting at the office.

More secret business for you, Gerstein. Most secret.

By your order, Herr Captain.

Take this suitcase to Herr Lang at the Reichsbank and tell him that this is from me. You’re not to ask for a receipt. Do you understand?

It’s all clear, thank you, Herr Captain.

Gerstein, I’m very pleased with your work. You’re an outstanding young man. That’s all. Heil Hitler!

Heil Hitler!

What a heavy suitcase! He knew all too well what was in it; Clever Hans’s trust in him was now proven. He sat gazing out the window of the Berlin Express, watching the summer scenery. Hour upon hour the other passengers in his compartment sat in silence, too terrified to look at him. An old woman coughed. Flicking a fingernail across the death’s head on his cap, Gerstein turned slowly toward her, fixing a stony expression on his face. The woman lowered her head. Then the conductor came. Gerstein thrust out his ticket, staring the man down. He lit a cigarette. Now came the long tall facade of the Reichsbank, with its swastika banners and its five rows of rectangular window-pits which resembled the slits from which the defenders of medieval castles used to discharge their arrows. Herr Lang was expecting him. Together they weighed the gold: twenty-two kilos. To Gerstein there was something terribly unclean about that brownish-yellow mass: was it the fact that it came from dead peoples’ mouths, or did its Jewishness defile it? This is one of the most secret matters. He closed his eyes, turned out the gas chamber’s light.