Fatherland (39 page)

Weidemann: four such gas chamber/crematorium installations in camp. Total capacity of each: 2,000 bodies per day = 8,000 overall. Operated by Jewish labor, changed every 2-3 months. The operation thus self-supporting; the secret self-sealing. Biggest security headache—stink from chimneys and flames at night, visible over many kilometers, especially to troop trains heading east on main line.

March checked the dates. Luther had visited Auschwitz on July 15. On July 17 Buhler had forwarded the map locations of the six camps to Kritzinger of the Reich Chancellery. On August 9 the last deposit had been made in Switzerland. That same year, according to his wife, Luther had suffered a breakdown.

He made a note. Kritzinger was the fourth man. His name was everywhere. He checked Buhler's pocket diary. Those dates tallied also. Another mystery solved.

His pen moved across the paper. He was almost finished.

A small thing, it had passed unnoticed during the afternoon; one of a dozen or so scraps of paper stuffed at random into a torn folder. It was a circular from SS- Gruppenführer Richard Glücks, Chief of Amtsgruppe D in the SS Economic Administration Main Office. It was dated August 6, 1942.

Re: the utilization of cut hair.

In response to a report, the Chief of the SS Economic Administration Main Office, SS-Obergruppenführer Pohl, has ordered that all human hair cut off in concentration camps should be utilized. Human hair will be processed for industrial felt and spun into thread. Female hair that has been cut and combed out will be used as thread to make socks for U-boat crews and felt stockings for the railways.

You are instructed, therefore, to store the hair of female prisoners after it has been disinfected. Cut hair from male prisoners can be utilized only if it is at least 20 mm. in length. . . .

The amounts of hair collected each month, separated into female and male hair, must be reported on the 5th of each month to this office, beginning with September 5, 1942.

He read it again:
". . . for U-boat crews. . ."

One. Two. Three. Four. Five
. March was underwater, holding his breath, counting. He listened to the muffled noises, saw patterns like strings of algae float past him in the dark.
Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.
With a roar he rose above the surface, sucking in air, streaming water. He filled his lungs a few more times, took an immense gulp of oxygen, then went down again. This time he made it to twenty-five before his breath exploded and he burst upward, slopping water onto the bathroom floor.

Would he ever be clean again?

Afterward, he lay with his arms dangling over the sides of the tub, his head tilted back, staring at the ceiling like a drowned man.

However this war may end, we have won the war against you; none of you will be left to bear witness, but even if someone were to survive, the world would not believe him. There will perhaps be suspicions, discussions, research by historians, but there will be no certainties, because we will destroy the evidence together with you. And even if some proof should remain and some of you survive, people will say that the events you describe are too monstrous to be believed: they will say that they are the exaggerations of Allied propaganda and will believe us, who will deny everything, and not you. We will be the ones to dictate the history of the Lagers.

SS OFFICER, quoted in
The Drowned and the Saved
by Primo Levi

In July 1953, not long after Xavier March had turned thirty and his work as yet consisted of little more than the arresting of whores and pimps around the docks of Hamburg, he and Klara had taken a holiday. They had started in Freiburg, in the foothills of the Black Forest, had driven south to the Rhine, then eastward in his battered KdF-wagen toward the Bodensee, and in one of the little riverside hotels, during a showery afternoon with a rainbow cast across the sky, they had planted the seed that had grown into Pili.

He could see the place still: the wrought-iron balcony, the Rhine valley beyond, the barges moving lazily in the wide water, the stone walls of the old town, the cool church; Klara's skirt, waist to ankle, sunflower yellow.

And there was something else he could still see: a kilometer downriver, spanning the gulf between Germany and Switzerland—the glint of a steel bridge.

Forget about trying to escape by way of the main air or sea ports: they were watched and guarded as tightly as the Reich Chancellery. Forget about crossing the border to France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Croatia, Yugoslavia,

Italy—that was to scale the wall of one prison merely to drop into the exercise yard of another. Forget about mailing the documents out of the Reich: too many packages were routinely opened by the postal service for that to be safe. Forget about giving the material to any of the other correspondents in Berlin: they would only face the same obstacles and were, in any case, according to Charlie, as trustworthy as rattlesnakes.

The Swiss border offered the best hope; the bridge beckoned.

Now hide it. Hide it all.

He knelt on the threadbare carpet and spread out a single sheet of brown paper. He made a neat stack of the documents, squaring off the edges. From his wallet he took the photograph of the Weiss family. He stared at it for a moment, then added it to the pile. He wrapped the entire collection tightly in the paper, binding cellophane tape around and around it until the package felt as solid as a block of wood.

He was left with an oblong parcel, ten centimeters thick, unyielding to the touch, anonymous to the eye.

He let out a breath. That was better.

He added another layer, this time of gift paper. Golden letters spelled GOOD LUCK! and HAPPINESS! , the words curling like streamers amid balloons and champagne corks behind a smiling bride and groom.

By autobahn from Berlin to Nuremberg: 500 kilometers. By autobahn from Nuremberg to Stuttgart: 150 kilometers. From Stuttgart the road then wound through the valleys and forests of Württemberg to Waldshut on the Rhine: 150 kilometers again. Eight hundred kilometers in all.

"What's that in miles?"

"Five hundred. Do you think you can manage it?"

"Of course. Twelve hours, maybe less." She was perched on the edge of the bed, leaning forward attentively. She wore two towels—one wrapped around her body, the other in a turban around her head.

"No need to rush it—you've got twenty-four. When you calculate you've put a safe distance between yourself and Berlin, telephone the Hotel Bellevue in Waldshut and reserve a room—it's out of season, there should be no difficulty."

"Hotel Bellevue. Waldshut." She nodded slowly as she memorized it. "And you?"

"I'll be following a couple of hours behind. I'll aim to join you at the hotel around midnight."

He could see she did not believe him. He hurried on, "If you're willing to take the risk, I think you should carry the papers, and also this..." From his pocket he drew out the other stolen passport. Paul Hahn, SS-Sturmbannführer, born Cologne, August 16, 1925. Three years younger than March, and looked it.

She said, "Why don't you keep it?"

"If I'm arrested and searched, they'll find it. Then they'll know whose identity you're using."

"You have no intention of coming."

"I have every intention of coming."

"You think you're finished."

"Not true. But my chances of traveling eight hundred kilometers without being stopped are less than yours. You must see that. That's why we go separately."

She was shaking her head. He came and sat beside her, stroked her cheek, turned her face to his, her eyes to his. "Listen. You're to wait for me—listen!—wait for me at the hotel until eight-thirty tomorrow morning. If I haven't arrived, you drive across without me. Don't wait any longer, because it won't be safe."

"Why eight-thirty?"

"You should aim to cross the border as close to nine as you can." Her cheeks were wet. He kissed them. He kept on talking. She had to understand. "Nine is the hour when the beloved Father of the German People leaves the Reich Chancellery to travel to the Great Hall. It's months since he's been seen—their way of building excitement. You may be sure the guards will have a radio in the customs post, and be listening to it. If ever there's a time when they're more likely just to wave you through, that's it."

She stood and unwrapped the turban. In the weak light of the attic room, her hair gleamed white.

She let the second towel drop.

Pale skin, white hair, dark eyes. A ghost. He needed to know that she was real, that they were both alive. He stretched out a hand and touched her.

They lay entwined on the little wooden cot and she whispered their future to him. Their flight would land at New York's Idlewild Airport early tomorrow evening. They would go straight to the
New York Times
building. There was an editor there she knew. The first thing was to make a copy—a dozen copies—and then to get as much printed as possible, as soon as possible. The
Times
was ideal for that.

"What if they won't print it?" This idea of people printing whatever they wanted was hard for him to grasp.

"They'll print it, all right. God, if they won't, I'll stand on Fifth Avenue like one of those mad people who can't get their novels published and hand out copies to passersby. But don't worry—they'll print it, and we'll change history."

"But will anyone believe it?" That doubt had grown within him ever since the suitcase had been opened. "Isn't it unbelievable?"

No, she said with great certainty, because now we have facts, and facts change everything. Without them, you have nothing, a void. But produce facts—provide names, dates, orders, numbers, times, locations, map references,

schedules, photographs, diagrams, descriptions—and suddenly that void has geometry, is susceptible to measurement, becomes a solid thing. Of course, this solid thing can be denied or challenged or simply ignored. But each of these reactions is, by definition, a
reaction
, a response to something that exists.

"Some people won't believe it—they wouldn't believe it no matter how much evidence we had. But there's enough here, I think, to stop Kennedy in his tracks. No summit. No reelection. No detente. And five years from now, or fifty years, this society will fall apart. You can't build on a mass grave. Human beings are better than that—they have to be better than that—I do believe it— don't you?"

He did not reply.

He was awake to see another dawn in the Berlin sky. A familiar gray face at the attic window, an old opponent.

"Your name?"

"Magda Voss."

"Born?"

"October 25, 1939."

"Where?"

"Berlin."

"Your occupation?"

"I live at home with my parents, in Berlin."

"Where are you going?"

"To Waldshut, on the Rhine. To meet my fiancé."

"Name?"

"Paul Hahn."

"What is the purpose of your visit to Switzerland?"

"A friend's wedding."

"Where?"

"In Zürich."

"What is this?"

"A wedding present. A photograph album. A Bible? A book? A chopping board?" She was testing the answers on him.

"Chopping board—very good. Exactly the sort of gift a girl like Magda
would
drive eight hundred kilometers to give." March had been pacing the room. Now he stopped and pointed at the package in Charlie's lap. "Open it, please, Fräulein."

She thought for a moment. "What do I say to that?"

"There's nothing you can say."

"Terrific." She took out a cigarette and lit it. "Well, would you look at that? My hands are trembling."

It was almost seven. "Time to go."

The hotel was beginning to wake. As they passed the lines of flimsy doors they heard water splashing, a radio, children laughing. Somewhere on the second floor, a man snored on regardless.

They had handled the package with care, at arm's length, as if it were plutonium. She had hidden it in the center of her suitcase, buried in her clothes. March carried it down the stairs, across the empty lobby and out the narrow fire exit at the rear of the hotel. She was wearing a dark blue suit, her hair hidden by a scarf. The hired Opel stood next to his Volkswagen. From the kitchen came shouts, the smell of fresh coffee, the hiss of frying food.

"When you leave the Bellevue, turn right. The road follows the line of the valley. You can't miss the bridge."

"You've told me this already."

"Try to see what level of security they're operating before you commit yourself. If it looks as if they're searching everything, turn around and try to hide it somewhere. Woods, a ditch, a barn—somewhere you can remember, a place where someone can go back and retrieve it. Then get out. Promise me."

"I promise you."

"There's a daily Swissair flight from Zürich to New York. It leaves at two."

"At two. I know. You've told me twice."