The Vengeance of Rome (88 page)

‘Unfortunately, Dimka dear, I have no orders to shoot you.' Kolya came to put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Let us continue. There must be something we can think of between us.'

But there was nothing. My mind was numb. A little later Kolya had me escorted to a comfortable cell and gave orders to let me sleep as long as I needed. He said he would return the next day, and we would put our heads together.

The following afternoon he supplied me with sheets of paper and a pencil. He asked me to write down the names of the journalists I had known and what I thought of their political attitudes, their failings and weaknesses. Then he asked me a little about Mussolini and the work I had been doing with Il Duce. What surprised me was that he did not show a great deal of interest in my association with the Italian leader. Either Maddy had told them everything or Kolya did not wish to compromise me. Even when I mentioned some of my inventions, Kolya did not pursue this avenue. I suspected his masters knew nothing of my real strengths and weaknesses, and he was not going to compromise me any more than I had already compromised myself.

I filled the sheet as best I could.

By the following morning Kolya had finished his interrogation. He had been unable to find anything which would stop the inevitable. I asked
what was to become of me. He spread his elegant hands. I would soon be taken to Dachau under indefinite arrest. He would do what he could for me. I would be given a violet armband marking me as a privileged prisoner, an
Ehrenhäftling
, with an individual cell. If he saw any chance of obtaining my early release he would put matters in motion. Meanwhile, he suggested I reconcile myself to my fate. After all, there were worse ones, including that from which he had rescued me several years earlier.

I wept when he eventually left my cell. I feared in my heart that I was forsaken for ever, and I would never see him or any of my beloved friends again.

Surrounded by heretics, I did not become a Musselman. I know their object was to make me one: to reduce me from so much to so little would have been their ultimate triumph. In their hearts they understood they had sterilised themselves. To ensure a predictable present, they betrayed their future. Because they were incapable of creativity, they hated any true visionary. To order a world too complex for them, they imposed their simplified pattern and then demanded that the rest of us conform to it. We had to substantiate their infantile certainties. If we refused, we died. Died in the Soviet Union. Died in the Third German Reich. Died in Italy and Spain and Hungary. They died because they refused to deny their experience. They died for justice and the truth. The very men and women who elected to record the complex variety of the world, whose very subjectivity provided us with crucial information, were punished until they conformed or, if they refused, were silenced. I had thought the powers wanted information. I was misguided. They wanted only silence. That which refused to confirm and conform to their views was destroyed. But the evidence for the evidence they could not destroy.

I do not have my own cell, but I do have the violet armband. This means that I do not suffer what some suffer, but many of my fellow prisoners are suspicious of me. They think I might betray them, I know. The truly privileged live in the
Ehrenbunker
. They are German politicians, businessmen, aristocrats and high-ranking clergymen. You would not be happy in their part of the camp, my anti-Virgil explains to me.
Alles in Ordnung
, he reassures me. After a while I become a
Lagerschreiber
, because my German is not so bad. I report directly to the
Rapportführer
, who is distant but not especially cruel. What I see others suffering makes me thankful, even though I have no business being in this camp. When I came in the new
Zugang
I was taken to the Gestapo in the
Politische Abteilung
, the political department.
Their offices were near the main gate (
Arbeit macht Frei
in wrought iron). I was not tortured much, but the screams of the others encouraged me to good behaviour, as one of the Gestapo men, who appeared to be a friend of Kolya's, joked. I explained that I was a personal friend of Göring's and they remarked on how many friends he had in Dachau. You should form a club, they said. But, of course, there can only be two of you in the club at any one time. Three or more and you will be severely whipped. I became used to their mysterious laughter. Now I know to fear it.

1935. Halfway through my allotted span. I pray for ——. I search for ——. How can I communicate with ——? Is —— still with us? Or has —— become senile, still clinging to —— power, refusing —— son his true birthright. The Old Testament is a record of vengeance and cruelty, of unearned authority and unchecked ferocity. Here is the singular God, the only God, the reduced God of Zion. He is not the God I worship. I worship the Trinity. God the Father, Christ the Son and the Holy Ghost. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Michael, Gabriel and Lucifer. I worship the Trinity. Here, too, there is no complexity. There is only one truth, one answer.

My sinister anti-Virgil instructs me in this singularity, guides me from a dark forest through an inferno into purgatory. Abandoned in my exile, like Dante, punished though I commit no crime, I am alone, longing for my sweet little Beatrice who has been taken from me not once but three times.

For some reason I am put into the émigré hut. There are five huts for ‘politicals', two for ‘anti-socials' and one, isolated by barbed wire, which is for a
Strafkompanie
, those enduring punishment, usually permanent. Invalids, such as there are, are in the
Revier
, the hospital hut. There are five guard towers, each with a machine gun. The cookhouse is outside our compound, together with the
Revier
and, of course, the SS quarters. Our food is brought in every day in large containers, handled by privileged prisoners like myself. We assemble regularly in the
Appellplatz
, for roll-calls and punishment parades. Fifty thousand of us can be in the
Appellplatz
at one time. From this leads the
Lagerstrasse
, about three hundred metres long, which is lined by poplars planted by the prisoners. On either side of this wide road are the blocks, the huts, and between these runs a
Blockstrasse,
about ten metres wide. There are thirty-four blocks, either lettered B to C and D to E or given odd numbers from 1 to 29, if on the right, 2 to 30, if on the left. All are of wood, originally painted white, standing on cement slabs about ninety metres long and ten metres wide. Then there are the quarantine blocks to which all new arrivals are brought, to be assigned a hut or a work party, or possibly sent on to a subsidiary camp, perhaps to
be transported elsewhere. Special treatment is reserved for men in these separate blocks. Every ordinary
Wohnblock
has two sections, of more or less equal size, each with its own entrance. Each part consists of two dormitories, which we call
Schlafräume
, and two day rooms, which we call
Tagesräume
. There is also a latrine and a washroom. We call each dormitory and day room a
Stube
. Each
Stube
contains room for fifty-two prisoners but this will change as more and more are brought in. When I arrived we each had a little cupboard for our personal effects, and even had a stool each in the
Tagesraum
, where we could sit at the table and read or write, if we wished. We had a big stove in the centre of this room and even racks for our shoes. We look back on those days with a kind of nostalgia. Now even some day rooms have bunks in them and new inmates are not given cupboards or stools. These inmates are taken to the north end of the camp to the disinfection buildings, near the angora-rabbit farm which is one of the SS businesses, intended to make us self-funding. Mostly red triangles, the politicals, work there.

Sometimes visitors are brought to the camp. Himmler himself often attends. The huts, both residential and service, have pictures on their walls. They remind us of what we are missing. They are predominantly landscapes and scenes of Bavarian life or framed homilies such as ‘Self-conquest is the finest victory'. Some prisoners are cynical about such slogans, but I take them seriously, as I must do if I am ever to be freed. I will not become a Musselman. I have seen the camp museum. Here, too, visitors are brought. It is an elaborate affair. There are plaster models supposed to represent all types of prisoners. There are also photos. The models and photos show typical communists, Social Democrats, various German statesmen, now in disgrace. They are ‘before' and ‘after' photographs, especially of former dignitaries who are shown first in their public uniforms, when they were in authority, and then in their striped convict clothes. In the criminal section you see all types, many with hideous tattoos or scars. But of course the largest space is given over to the Jews. Photographs and dioramas show them stealing from their own kind, as well as their German neighbours, bargaining with decent Bavarian housewives, giving false measure and so on. Often visitors are shown live prisoners, especially those of a grotesque physical disposition. Himmler is anxious to convince foreigners or churchmen that the camp isolates only the worst elements of society. The atmosphere of the camp, they are told, is firm but fair. Many of the prisoners are grateful for the improved food and shelter they receive as inmates of Dachau. If a prisoner dies, he is decently cremated and his ashes returned in an urn to
his family. This privilege, of course, is reserved for German nationals, even though many are blackmarketeers or communists.

There are about ninety guards. I must never be
frech
. However disciplined I am some of them will still spit at me and refer to me as a
Drecksjude
, even though I wear my violet armband. They are mistaken. No Jew is given such an armband.
Brillenschlange
, they say, in reference to my mutilated manhood, I suppose, or sometimes
Brillenträger
. I am no snake. My eyesight is as good as anyone's. Yet I must not contradict anyone.
Ja, ja, Herr Lagerälteste Kapp
, I say.
Ja, ja, Herr Rottenführer Rogler
. I must know every rank, as many names as possible. I must take off my cap and stand at respectful attention when addressed. Any lapse can be punished. Most of the prisoners never see our Oberführer Deubel, the camp Commandant, except from a distance. Occasionally, during a special visit from outside, I stand at attention, watching him smiling and joking with his guests. We know which SS men are fair, which are crooks, which are sadists. Oberscharführer Franz Hoffmann, for instance, is a crook. He makes private profits from his job. He is by no means the only one.

(Someone told me that the camp became even more overcrowded. They said that by the end the whole of Dachau was being run at a profit for the SS men, but in my day this was not, I think, the general rule. Perhaps I was naive, but I still believed I would eventually be freed, that there had been a mistake. I soon learned, however, not to voice these expectations to anyone.)

There is also a chapel in the camp, but prisoners are usually too tired or too cynical to attend services, given by a well-meaning Lutheran who comes in from the town. There are already some churchmen in Dachau when I arrive, but even these do not visit the chapel and eventually services are cancelled ‘for lack of demand'. Some of the priests are treated almost as badly as the Jews. Most of them are Baptists or worse.
Himmelhund
is a favourite insult.

As a violet armband I am allowed to go to the West Row and visit the library, next to the canteen. The books are all in German. Kolya has arranged for credit, from my own bank account, so I can also go to the food shop and buy extras, at horribly inflated prices, some of which I distribute among my comrades. This means I am not as unpopular as I might be.

The food shop is housed in the
Wirtschaftsgebäude
, the largest single building in the camp, which contains all our main service departments including the cookhouse and the showers. It is about two hundred metres long. At each end are two wings, each of about sixty metres long. Here, too,
is the
Effektenkammer
, the depository for the prisoners' personal effects, also a clothing shop, stores for linen and shoes and the cobbler's and tailor's workshops, which not all prisoners are allowed to use. In fact, most of the customers are the SS and Gestapo. The administrative building is called the
Jourhaus
and there live the
Rapportführer
and the
Blockführer
. On its first floor are the offices of the
Schutzhaftlagerführer
, where I am usually questioned by Sturmführer Schnauben, and the
Vernehmungsführer
. Usually in the morning, I am sometimes pulled from my bunk and brought to the SS offices. Sturmführer Schnauben asks me such stupid questions. At first I wonder where Kolya is. I ask after him. Schnauben seems to have been up all night. His spectacles are a poor fit. As usual, he pinches his nose.

‘Captain Petroff is about his business. He has done his job. He is not SS. Why should he be interested in you now? Would you rather be with the Gestapo? It will be nothing for me to contact their office.' He reaches for the telephone. He thinks I fear the police more than I do him.

‘I don't understand why the SS is interested in me.'

‘You should be flattered.'

Schnauben is younger than me. His grey eyes are grubby stones. His mouth is a thin line. His cheeks are bright, hard spots of red. He is convinced of his own intelligence. He is a philosopher. He is obsessed with me. I am not sure of his instructions. Is his mission to make me into one of the
unhumanische
? Is that why he chooses never to leave me alone?

Perhaps he simply prefers my company to that of the others he interrogates. Countless times he asks the same questions. He sits me on the chair in his little office. The atmosphere is informal. He lets me cross my legs if I want to. He does not demand I stand to attention or respond in a military manner. ‘I am not of the old school,' he says. I am suspicious of this. Outside I can hear the camp stirring.