You know, Stephanie, because I made no secret of it, that at the war’s end I was in the Belsen concentration camp and would have died there if the British Army had not arrived and liberated the survivors. I have never tried to describe the experience because nobody could describe its reality. Everyone, of course, has seen pictures of the walking skeletons. But nobody who was not there has smelled them or has had to sleep beside the corpses.
You have seen the faded scars on my body and sometimes you have heard me scream in the night. You must often have wondered if you were married to two different men – the calm scholar and, perhaps, the hidden horror. I have loved you and I still do, but for years it has been impossible for me to love myself and now I feel compelled to tell you why.
Belsen? The thousands of corpses stacked there like cordwood? The guards, Germans like myself, and what they did and what they were? I never told you of one incident that has seared itself into my memory cells. A few weeks before the British came, a starved prisoner collapsed and fell on the ground a few meters away from me. I was weak and starving too, but when I bent down automatically to help him, a guard cuffed me aside, turned the man over on his back, and carefully smashed four gold teeth out of his mouth with a hammer. The man was still alive. He had enough strength left to moan and sob. The guard put the teeth into his pocket and I stood there watching him.
Nor did I tell you how it happened that I was sent to Belsen. After the war was over, anyone who had been in a concentration camp was regarded as a martyr or a hero. A sentence to a camp exonerated even a German from any kind of collective guilt. Naturally, some people believed I was in the German underground.
But there was no underground among the German people during that war. The police were everywhere and made any kind of popular revolt impossible. All the young men were mobilized into the armies, and the fighting was desperate. Night after night the allied planes bombarded the cities. The only resistance to Hitler came from a tiny group of high officers and it completely failed.
During the early days of the war I played an ignoble part; my sole purpose was to survive. But this changed when Hanna Erlich came home because her father had been arrested. I have confessed to you my impulsive, idiotic marriage to Eva Schmidt when I was blown up with delusions of intellectual grandeur and I have told you how deeply and happily I was in love with Hanna when we were both in England. But I never told you the whole truth about this. Hanna in England was one thing; Hanna in Hitler’s Germany was another, for in Germany her sole purpose was to protect her parents. I have also told you a little about Admiral Canaris, who was my protector in those days.
I was in Freiburg visiting my mother when a call came from Canaris ordering me to return to Berlin immediately. I arrived several hours behind time because the city had been struck by a ferocious air raid the night before and half a kilometer of railway track had to be cleared before trains could enter the city. I emerged from the ruins of the station into a wilderness of shattered buildings with fires burning everywhere and the smoke so thick that the central city was in twilight though the sun was shining brightly above it. People with smoke-blackened faces and desperate, enduring eyes were coming out of mass shelters and basements and plodding to work. Corpses were scattered here and there, fire engines were squirting water, fire hoses wriggled like pythons across bomb-holed streets. My lungs were dry and aching from the smoke, my nostrils were desiccated. There were blizzards of scorched paper, geysers of water spouted up from shattered mains. When finally I reached the Admiral his face was dusky and his eyes were red.
Canaris did not rise when I entered his room. He remained as he was, his small body hunched forward and his chin on the heels of his hands.
“How many more nights like this can our people stand?” he said as if to himself.
“Was it much worse than usual?”
“Yes, and less than what will come later.” He took a deep breath as though to clear the smoke from his lungs. “However, I didn’t summon you from Freiburg to tell you that. The time has come at last. At any moment Dr. Erlich may be picked up. As Hanna is with him now, she will be picked up, too.”
I said nothing and waited. His next question was not long in coming.
“Those trains – those freight trains with Jews packed into them like sardines – have you seen any of them?”
“So it’s true?”
“Most people know nothing of them.” The Admiral nodded toward the window through which we could see the drifting smoke. “With all they are suffering and will have to suffer, who should blame them if they don’t think about what he’s doing to the Jews? Yes, it’s true. It’s so unbelievably true that not even I believed it would come to this.”
The Admiral’s eyes closed, his head sank into his hands so that only the white cap of his hair was visible. It was the first time I had seen his mask crack open.
“Oh, Dehmel, so many of us have longed for this country to be honorable. Now on account of this man we are hated and despised as no people has ever been. There will be no mercy. The vengeance will be terrible. They have decided to destroy us.” He drew another ponderous breath and coughed. Then his voice firmed. “I will continue in the way I have chosen, but I can’t hope to last much longer.”
We sat there and coughed. I watched Canaris pick up a pen and doodle aimlessly on a scrap of paper.
“Can you do nothing for the Erlichs, sir?”
“My position is so slippery I may be arrested myself. My service is a travesty of what it once was. The party has virtually taken it over. I’ve had to be devious, Dehmel. Very devious and for such a long time that my brain feels like a weary muscle. So many balls in the air at once. Sooner or later one of them is bound to drop. They have always known that Dr. Erlich is my friend. For me to intervene on his behalf would not only be useless, it would be fatal to us both.” He paused and looked me in the eyes. “However, it is not known that you wish to marry his daughter.”
“Has Hanna blown her cover?”
“No, but she’s with her father. She feels he can’t be left alone. Three weeks ago her mother went to Switzerland to visit the doctor’s brother there. You can guess why she went. She was stopped at the border when she tried to return a few days later. She is still in Switzerland. Somehow Goebbels has found out where the doctor is. The change of name – somebody must have talked. Sooner or later they will come for him and if Hanna is there …” He lifted his hands and let them drop.
I waited for more. It soon came.
“If you still mean what you once said to me, you may be able to save them if you’re lucky. Don’t be shocked by what I’m going to propose to you. Your only chance is to join the Gestapo.”
I murmured, “Oh, my God!”
“In a Gestapo uniform you might pretend to arrest them and get them away from that village before the exterminators arrive. No local functionary will question a man in the black uniform.”
“And then?”
“You must hide them somewhere. In some place where they can stay until the war is over. That could be sooner than you think.”
“But would the Gestapo accept a man like me?”
The Admiral’s expression was resigned. “I’ve told you many times that these people are not normal.
Himmler hates all professional officers like your father. He knows what they say and think about him. He also knows he can’t do without them.”
“I don’t follow you, sir.”
“I’m still on terms with Himmler. I still have a certain power over him. What that power is I have mentioned to nobody but himself. Anyway, I took the liberty of telling him that you had asked me to recommend you to the ss. The idea of your father’s son wanting to join his gangsters is not unattractive to this chicken farmer.”
“Would he want me to spy on my father?”
“Probably.”
“My father never has spoken about him in my presence.”
“He’s an outspoken man. Never?”
“He was always careful until my brother was lost.”
“Your father and I have had several conversations these past few months. He’s a man I respect very much, but he’s not fitted for the situation we’re in now. However, say nothing to Himmler about him that you do not know to be true. He knows much about your father.”
I was silent.
Canaris said, “I may be wrong. I often am. But I believe Himmler will accept you.”
I rose and went to the window and looked out at the smoke drifting through the street. Even when Germany was everywhere triumphant, my intuition had told me it would finally come to this, but only in recent months had I truly believed it. Berlin was half destroyed already. Soon it would be totally destroyed. Many people had already dug caves out of the shattered masonry and were living in them with the corpses underneath. Soon all the German cities would be smashed. But the land would remain. The wonderful, varied land of forests and rivers and plains and mountains would still be there after the Devil had gone back to hell.
Bombs from an earlier raid had fallen near by and destroyed half a block. The ruins were outlined by the blackened stumps of torn linden trees. I turned away and sat down again.
“Is there any discharge from the ss?”
“Don’t waste your time thinking about that.”
“But doesn’t the training take months?”
“In your case I don’t think so. You would be employed as a functionary.”
“Would I be ordered to take part in this – this thing against the Jews?”
“That is precisely why I make this proposal to you.”
I began to tremble. “No, sir! Not even for Hanna. She’d kill herself if she knew this was the price of her life. She’d kill me, too.”
“I did not say you would have to do it. I said you’d be ordered to do it. I’m not pretending your position won’t be horrible to someone with your temperament. Even a few weeks of training with them will be a nasty experience. And if you help them escape and desert afterwards, as I propose that you do” – he shrugged – “you know what they will do to you if they catch you. But this is how I see it. If Himmler accepts you, they will give you a very short course of instruction. This operation against the Jews is now so enormous it has created a bureaucracy. They’re very short-handed and they don’t require the military types for much of this kind of work. They’re now in such a hurry I doubt if your training period will last more than three weeks at the most. At the end of that time – perhaps even during it – tell them your mother is in Freiburg and has taken seriously ill. Ask for a few days’ leave to visit her before they post you somewhere else. Whoever is your commander will probably grant this because you’ve been sent to him by Himmler. But don’t try to hide the Erlichs in Freiburg.”
I asked if it would be possible to get them into Switzerland. Perhaps the Gestapo officer he had squeezed a few years ago could be used again?
“Not unless he rises from the dead. He was killed by Russian partisans six months ago. No, I see no way of getting them into Switzerland now. The Swiss themselves are very nervous and with good reason. We’re pressing them one way, the Allies are pressing them another.”
“Why do you tell me not to hide them in Freiburg? Nobody knows them there.”
“Do you know anyone in the city apart from your mother who would take them in?”
“No.”
“There’s a Gestapo headquarters there and any newcomers would be investigated. There’s also another reason. At any moment the Allies will land in Europe. The invasion is sure to come through France, though the Leader thinks it may come in several other places. These past two years the English Intelligence has been uncannily clever. But they and the Americans will invade and they are sure to succeed. When they break through and close in on Germany, Freiburg will almost certainly be bombed to death.”
“But it has no military significance whatever.”
Canaris’s expression did not change. “The air power of the Allies is now overwhelming, as you can see for yourself. Their air marshals are also functionaries. Blowing up cities has become their business, and with each passing month there are fewer cities left intact. One has the power. One uses it.” He paused. “You are fond of walking. Do you know the Black Forest well?”
“Most of it.”
I sensed then what was in the Admiral’s mind and asked him to give me a few minutes to think.
In recent weeks I had often thought of the Black Forest as a refuge for Hanna and her father. I had even formed a tentative plan. The last time I visited Mother, I had gone for a walk to the place where I caught the hares during the hunger in the First War. The forester’s cottage was still there and an old widower was living in it alone. He was the same man who had been the forester many years ago when I was a boy. His cottage was empty at the time I caught the hares near it, because he had been drafted into the army at the end of the war. He had been gassed and wounded in Flanders, but after the war he had been given back his old job. When Hitler’s war began, a great deal of timber was cut in the forest, but for some reason very little was cut in this area. Though the man’s meager pay had come through regularly, he told me that it was more than a year since he had received any instructions. At first he was unwilling to talk, but when I told him about the hares in my boyhood the old man smiled.
“There are many hares now. I also have a small garden.” Then he said in a resigned voice, “They have forgotten all about me.”
The forester’s mind seemed vague, but when he and I sat in the sun and smoked our pipes – I had given him the first tobacco he had seen in more than a year – he began to talk. He spoke slowly, in fits and starts. He said his first wife had died so long ago he could hardly remember her. His second wife was also dead. By her he had had three sons and they had all been killed in Russia.
“One of them intended to take my place, but he can’t because he’s dead. They’ve forgotten all about me.”
Birds chirped in the forest, I saw a hare come out and squat in the sun, and we smoked in silence.
As though he were talking to himself, the forester said, “The Austrians got us into the first war and we lost it. Now another Austrian has got us into a worse one and we’ll soon lose it. That’s how it happens. Three sons. I’m all alone here. No work. They don’t tell me what to do.”
The old path I had followed as a child had been widened into a corduroy road which passed the cottage at a distance of about a hundred meters. The cottage was invisible from the road, which was overgrown with a short covering of grass. I asked him if it was still used and he shook his head.
“There’s another one about three kilometers away they use very much.”
On my way back to the city I had examined the surface of the road and calculated that if I could acquire some kind of vehicle I could convey Hanna and her father to this place along with rations and bedding. There was even a well behind the cottage near where the garden was. There were cooking utensils and an old stove inside. The forester might accept us and of course he could be paid, if only with tobacco. But I did not believe he would be influenced by a bribe. He was of the old stock of the old Breisgau; he was a tribesman.
I looked Canaris in the eyes and said, “All right, I’ll try.” And with those four syllables I committed myself.
A week later, wearing my naval uniform, I appeared before Himmler. I had seen many pictures of this man, but only when he was performing in some public affair in an imposing setting. The reality of Himmler alone in his office was very different. He was a dumpy, slope-shouldered little man almost chinless, hollow-chested and wide-hipped, pot-bellied and myopic behind rimless pince-nez that glittered in such a way that they seemed to mask the chilly eyes behind them. He made me think of a pettifogging clerk with nasty personal habits and a disagreeable body odor.
Himmler surveyed me as though I were a lifeless object, picked up a note from his desk, appeared to study it, then laid it down.
“I understand that you are the son of Rear-Admiral Dehmel?” he said.
“Yes, Herr Reichsführer.”
Himmler made some coldly poisonous remarks about the navy and its admirals and I was chilled and terrified. I had never met a man before who held such monstrous power and it was not reassuring to realize that in himself he was a total nothing. By his mere appearance this little creature seemed to define the preposterous character of the entire regime. Somehow I managed to articulate that the sailors had done their duty as they saw it.
“Then why have they done so badly?”
“Herr Reichsführer, do you believe my brother Siegfried did badly?”
“When I said the navy did badly, I was not referring to young submarine officers. Naturally, the Jugend are heroes. They grew up under the Führer. But their commanders?” He did not even shrug. He left it in the air.
“Herr Reichsführer,” I said, “if you are thinking about my father, he is a brave and loyal man. Unfortunately he is also an oldfashioned man who cannot understand the kind of world we’re living in now.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“The treachery, Herr Reichsführer. The last time I spoke with my father he was very worried. I told him that if our naval Intelligence had been half as good as England’s, my brother would still be alive and serving the Führer.”
With no expression, Himmler said, “You are a protege of Admiral Canaris. Are you criticizing your protector? If so, tell me why.”
“What can Admiral Canaris do when there are so many traitors?”
His chilly eyes became chillier. “That is very interesting, what you say. What do you know of these traitors you speak of?”
“Nothing of them, Herr Reichsführer. If I knew their names, I would have informed Admiral Canaris. I simply know they exist.”
“How do you know this?”
“What other explanation can there be except traitors in high places?”
“Explanation for what?”
“For the victories the British and Americans have been winning. Without treason they could never have done it. Africa – Sicily – Italy. Always they win by surprise. So there must be traitors, and in high places.”
A flicker of light appeared in Himmler’s little eyes and he said, “Yes, what other explanation is possible?”
Then the flat face turned cold again and he asked me what I thought of the Jews. Did I know that the service I wished to join was now committed to the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem? Did I know what the final solution was?
I had expected this question, had been told to expect it, and I had rehearsed my answer. I was trembling when I made it, for I had never had experience with these high fanatics and I still could not believe that anyone would take seriously what I had been told to say. I looked at him earnestly.
“I don’t deny, Herr Reichsführer, that when I was young there were some individual Jews I thought I liked. It took me far too long to realize that the supreme proof of the Führer’s genius lies in this – that he understood the Jews as nobody has ever understood them. The Romans loathed them. ‘This disgusting people’ – that is how their historian Tacitus described them. But he did not understand them. Neither did the Christians. We had to wait until the Führer made us realize that though they are human in the anatomical sense, they have always been a disease within every civilization they have infected, and that no civilization can hope to survive unless they are exterminated.”
I had been told that Himmler’s little eyes could smile at his wife and child with adolescent sentimentality but for me they remained cold as a snake’s.
“Am I supposed to be impressed by that statement? You repeat only what the Führer was saying when you were still in school. Just when did you come to share his opinion, Professor?”
This question I had also expected and was ready with an answer.
“I remember the day precisely, Herr Reichsführer. It was the day after the Führer became Chancellor and I knew that at last Germany had found her savior.”
His eyes remained a snake’s. “In that case – quite a long time after the date you mentioned – why did you return from England to work under the Jew Rosenthal?”
“I returned to serve Germany, Herr Reichsführer. I knew that Rosenthal was sure to be dismissed.”
The snake’s coil tightened. “I am very well informed, Dehmel.”
“One knows that, Herr Reichsführer. One is thankful for that.”
“I have filing cabinets containing many more than a million names and incidents. I review them constantly.”
I bowed and said nothing.
“Answer me this – why, the day you arrived from England at the Grosser Kurfürst Institut – why did you defend this Jew against a loyal German you later dismissed?”
This question I had been sure would be asked and as I still remembered with bitterness my first day at the Institut, I was able to answer with real indignation.
“I did not defend Rosenthal, Herr Reichsführer, though that stupid oaf of a Blockwart probably thought I did. I am not accustomed to insolence from a Kerl like him. The man was a fool. Loyal, certainly, but a hopeless fool. I wished to talk privately with Rosenthal before he left the country. I wished to learn some of his connections abroad. All I learned was that he knew Einstein – or pretended that he did. He was very clever and very slippery. I still wonder why he was allowed to leave with his life.”
Himmler nodded. “He did know Einstein. They’re both in the same place in America.”
For nearly a minute Himmler was silent and expressionless. Then he murmured as though he were talking to himself.
“These Jews are so difficult. I have never been hostile to them. I even tried to like them. But they remain Jews and they can never be anything else. They have given me a terrible problem. They have made me do things that may injure my reputation.”
Again he fell silent and for the next few minutes he seemed unaware that I was in the room. There were many papers on his desk. He picked up one after the other, glanced at them, and initialled them. A filing clerk of death and murder, I thought, and stood before him wondering whether another paper would be initialled that would send me to my end.
Suddenly he looked up. “You will report to Gruppenführer Krafft in Munich. One of the secretaries will give you the address and the date.”
“Thank you, Herr Reichsführer.”
Himmler extended across the desk a limp, clammy hand. “Hals und Beinbruch,” he said.
I left him, spoke with the secretary, and was given a date and an address in Munich. I saluted, pocketed the information, and asked where the men’s room was. I locked myself into a toilet cabinet and vomited with such violence I felt as though I were vomiting up some of the tissues of my stomach. Weak, wet, sweating, and pale I got to my feet, wiped my face clean with a handkerchief, and opened the door of the cabinet to confront a Gestapo sergeant.
“I had too much to drink last night,” I said to him.
The sergeant’s face was a block of expressionless bone and muscle.
“But it wasn’t really that,” I said. “To meet the Reichsführer – to be accepted by him when I hardly dared hope I’d be accepted – it was too much for me.”
“What can I do for you, Herr Leutnant?”
“A car to my lodgings, if that’s possible.”
“Bestimmt, Herr Leutnant.”
The man crashed into a salute. I replied with a casual naval one.
The next day in Munich I was inducted into the Gestapo. My fingerprints were taken and checked against those on the dossier which Krafft had ready on his desk. He asked me a series of routine questions about my past career and turned me over to a doctor for a medical examination. The doctor stabbed a thick finger up my rectum with such violence I nearly screamed from pain and shock. He grinned at me.
“So you’re not a homosexual. What a pity! However” – he was still grinning – “it was a necessary medical examination.”
Later that day I was fitted for the black uniform and the next morning my training began. It occupied me entirely and I discovered it would take a good deal longer than Canaris had expected. For more than six weeks I studied manuals, listened to lectures, spent four hours a day in rugged and exhausting physical exercises, underwent weapons training, and was instructed in various methods of making arrests. I had been in the Gestapo for more than two weeks before the western Allies landed in France. The first communiqués were vague and made light of the situation and I was afraid it was another failure like Dieppe.
The pace of the training became faster and harsher. One morning a senior officer barked at me to stand at attention. I did so, and without warning he slapped me hard across the face with the back of his hand. It was a test, of course, and as I had heard about it I did not flinch. Later I was put into a section of twenty young men with blank faces and powerful bodies and taught some routine methods of quick killing. Finally I received a summons to appear before Krafft once more.
“You have done quite well,” he said. “At least adequately well. I will now tell you what lies ahead.”
Here Canaris had been accurate. My work with the Gestapo would be purely bureaucratic. I would be assigned to a small district in Hungary where I was to order a compilation of the names and addresses of all the Jews living there. Those still at liberty I was to have arrested and finally I was to make arrangements with the railway officials for the trains that would take them to the gas chambers and the ovens in Poland. When I asked when I was to leave for Hungary, Krafft became irritable.
“The damned bombing is causing delays everywhere. In France alone we’ve lost thousands of freight cars and hundreds of locomotives. Anyway, your training is not complete. You must still pass your final stage.”
He did not tell me what the final stage was and for another week I was put through even more exhausting physical drills and weapons training. It was now midsummer and the weather was hot and humid. I worried constantly about Hanna and her father because time was passing and I was afraid they had already been arrested. If there was any reliable news about the battle in France we were not told of it. The first real information came to me by chance at the mess table when a senior officer joined Krafft and I overheard the conversation. This officer looked tired, strained, and very worried. He had just returned from Normandy.
“It’s not good,” I heard him say. “We knew the English and the Canadians would be tough but we thought the Americans would be soft. We were wrong about that. Of course, none of them are in our class, but that fool Goering has left us without an air force. Their planes are over us like an umbrella from dawn till dark. The bombing is unbelievable. The fighting is worse than anything I ever saw in Russia.”
I kept my eyes fixed on my plate. So the invasion was successful. So Hanna and her father might have a chance if they were still free. I myself might have a chance. And surely the British and the Americans would know there were men like Canaris in Germany who could do away with Hitler and make peace with the West before the Russians came in and tore what was left of the country to pieces.
When the visiting officer departed I finally made my gamble. I told Krafft that I had just learned that my mother, who was in Freiburg, had been diagnosed for cancer. I wanted to speak with her physician to learn the exact nature of her case. As she might have little time left, I begged for a few days’ leave to visit her before going to Hungary. Krafft looked at me with suspicion.
“Your final sessions begin tomorrow. You will have three of them on successive days.”
I asked him what they would consist of and he said casually, “Interrogations.”
Stephanie, those next three days were the second most horrible I ever spent in my life. The sessions I attended lasted from four to six hours and I had to watch what they did to the victims strapped to a bloodstained table and I had to hear their screams. I had to look on with a frozen face, for Krafft kept watching me. If I had protested, fainted, or vomited I would have been disgraced in Krafft’s eyes, and any chance of rescuing Hanna would have vanished.
After the final session Krafft became very friendly. He clapped me on the back and called me ein ganzer Kerl (a fine boy) and told me he now trusted me completely. He also said I might have four days’ leave to visit my mother in Freiburg.
“Give your respected mother my greetings,” he said. Then he added reflectively, “Those interrogations weren’t much. Those men broke very quickly.”
“Two of them screamed in French and one of them screamed in Czech.”
“Did they? The difficult ones were the Germans in the early days. Communists. Swine of course, but they were at least Germans. Most of them died before they talked. What a waste!” He smiled at me. “You’ll enjoy your work in Hungary. I think you’ll enjoy it very much.”
I hoped to get some more information about the battle in France but he was indifferent.
“The Führer will soon take personal charge of the situation and settle it. So now, on your way to Freiburg! Report to our barracks when you arrive and if you need anything, they’ll provide it.” He then gave me requisitions for a Volkswagen and gasoline and shook my hand. “Heil Hitler,” he said. “Heil Hitler,” I said.
I told you, Stephanie, that I have found it impossible to love myself. It was this experience that started it. The next day, driving in the Volkswagen to the mountain village where I hoped to find Hanna and her father, I was no longer the same kind of man I had been before. Even now as I write this I can hear the screams of those tortured men, but that morning they deafened me. I felt worse than a murderer. I wondered if the shame and horror had passed into my face and I soon discovered that it had.
Hanna and I had not seen each other for more than five months and when I appeared at the door in my ss uniform her face went pale and she flinched away with loathing in her eyes. Let nobody blame her for that. This was a time so unnatural that almost anything could happen and I realized that her first thought was that I had joined the Gestapo in order to save my own life and that part of the deal was to arrest her father and possibly herself. I was in partial shock anyway and her attitude paralyzed me. But her father understood instantly and closed the door behind me.
“So you are Conrad!” he said and smiled and shook my hand.
Hanna was still staring at me. “How long have you been wearing that?” she said and pointed at my uniform.
Then something like fury exploded inside me and my voice shook. “I’ve planned everything. You must leave here at once.”
“For where? Dachau?”
Dr. Erlich intervened. “Hanna – please! You’re not yourself. Listen to what Conrad is trying to tell us.”
“I’ve found a place where I can hide you both,” I said. “It’s in the Black Forest near Freiburg. I have a car to take you there. Believe me, it’s your only chance.”
“I asked you how long you’ve been wearing that uniform,” she said.
“Longer than the Admiral told me would be necessary. It was his plan. He told me this was the only way to save you.”
“Hanna hadn’t heard from you for months,” the doctor said gently. “She was very worried about you and this – well, it’s a surprise.”
Hanna’s disgust was leaving her, but I was still hurt and angry.
“You mean Admiral Canaris did –” and she pointed at my uniform.
“He told me my only chance of saving you and your father was to join the Gestapo. He arranged it with Himmler. Do you think I enjoyed it?”
“It’s done something to your face.”
“I’m afraid it has, Hanna.”
“We won’t go with you. No matter what you have in mind, we won’t go with you.”
My temper broke and I shouted at her. “Has the hell I’ve been through these past two months been useless? Do you think I intend to go back to Gestapo headquarters? I have two civilian suits in the car and when the time comes I’m going to burn or bury this horrible uniform.”
At last she believed me. Her pallor turned into a flush, but she remained stubborn.
“The day I first saw you – when I came back to Germany – I told you I’d never endanger you, Conrad.” Quietly she added, “I still mean it. No, Conrad, we won’t go with you.”
My nerves were screaming at me and I think I screamed at her, “For God’s sake why do you have to be so stubborn? Endanger me? I’ve endangered myself and there’s no turning back. There’s no possible alternative for any of us. More than two months have passed since Admiral Canaris warned me that you and your father could be picked up at any moment. Do what I say, for God’s sake, and stop arguing.”
Dr. Erlich put his hand on his daughter’s arm. “Hanna dear, we both understand how you feel, but please be reasonable.” He turned to me and said, “I learn nothing here and Hanna can only guess what’s been happening. She’s thought and worried about you every day, Conrad.”
The doctor had a way with him and my voice became normal again. “What’s happening is what both you and the Admiral predicted. The liquidation of the Jews has become almost as important to Hitler as the war. He knows he’s lost the war, but he thinks he still has time to destroy the Jews. We have no time to waste, Doctor. We can talk all we like on the way to Freiburg.”
I looked out the window and saw some villagers standing outside watching. Dr. Erlich also looked out the window.
“These village people rather like us,” he said. “They think you’ve come to arrest us.”
“That’s just what I want them to think.” I gave the doctor an appraising glance. He seemed frail, but probably in adequate health for the journey. To Hanna I said, “How soon will you be ready to leave?”
She was herself again, her very efficient self. She was already packing a carton with all the food they had. While doing so she told me they had two suitcases already packed and ready.
I threw open the door with a theatrical crash and stalked out, not a man but a uniform, and barked at the villagers to clear out and ask no questions. They knew what my uniform meant and they vanished. I drove the Volkswagen to the back of the house where we could pack it without being seen. I asked if any arrests had been made in the village and Dr. Erlich said there had been none.
“That’s good,” I said, “because this isn’t the normal way we arrest Jews in the Gestapo.”
It was a cruel thing to say and Hanna winced.
“So you were taught to do that, too?” she said.
This day was the only one on which I felt totally bitter against her. “I was taught, but I haven’t done it. Will that satisfy you, or do you wish to continue humiliating me?”
Dr. Erlich, of course, understood us better than we understood ourselves. “How long will it take us to reach Freiburg?” he asked gently.
Looking at my watch I saw it was now eleven o’clock. “It’s about two hundred kilometers to Freiburg. If the roads are clear, we should be there by early evening.”
“There have been many planes overhead recently,” he said.
“German or allied?”
“Both, but mostly allied.”
“Are the Allies shooting up traffic on the roads?”
“Possibly, but here there’s nothing to shoot at.”
We drove off, and as we passed through the village main street I noticed a few movements of curtains and knew we were being watched. I took the road for Munich and I’m not proud of what I said then, but Hanna had wounded me and I said it.
“If this was a real arrest, we’re going in the right direction. Just beyond Munich is Dachau.”
Dr. Erlich said quietly, “Of course, Conrad. But Hanna has also been under great tension.”
After Munich I turned west and there was little traffic on the road. We rolled on. It was quite incredible, but gradually I relaxed. The doctor was in the front seat of the little car, Hanna in the rear with the carton of food, the suitcases in the trunk ahead. I was thinking, “If it hadn’t been for Hanna I would not have horrified myself and now she despises me for what I did for her sake.” I was thinking, “But those men would have been tortured anyway, so why should I feel degraded?” I thought again, “But I was degraded. Hanna knows it and she’s biting me for it.” And again, “But how can she possibly know it?” And still again, I recalled that in her work with the Red Cross she must have discovered pretty accurately the training methods of the Gestapo, and it was with bitterness that I thought that I had never loved anyone as I had loved her and now she seemed to have contempt for me.
After a time I felt her fingers touch the back of my neck and gently stroke it and at last I began to feel better. Some day I would tell her about witnessing the tortures, but I could not tell her now. Perhaps I never would tell her. Perhaps I would never tell anyone.
Until now, all these years later, I never have.
A half-hour after leaving Munich we overtook a column of tanks moving slowly ahead of us. I guessed they had come from Russia and were going west to reinforce the new front in France. I exchanged salutes with an officer standing in the turret of the leading tank and we passed on ahead of the column. When we reached Augsburg the center of the city was in ruins from a recent raid and it took some time to get through. Beyond Augsburg we saw a formation of heavy American planes flying west, which meant that they had discharged their bombs. Where, I could not even guess. I muttered to the doctor what madmen the Nazis were to continue this war when the skies over Germany were in the complete command of their enemies. Then, remembering the ss men I had been living with, I said, “Are they really insane, Doctor? Are they really insane or am I just using words that mean nothing?”
“Are they insane?”
The doctor said this and was silent for nearly a minute. Then he said, “That’s a question I’ve asked myself thousands of times. Insanity is not a word to be used carelessly. The human mind is infinitely suggestible.”
Driving the car, irritable and feeling put upon by Hanna, I said, “Doctor, I have asked you a direct question.”
“Yes, Conrad, you have, and it’s a legitimate question. You may not like my answer. In my opinion very few of Hitler’s henchmen are true psychotics. But even before he came to power I realized that he was creating what we call in my profession a folie à deux. Are you familiar with the term?”
“No.”
“Among individuals this happens frequently. A man – or a woman – gets another person under control and makes his partner believe that he is not only right but a benefactor. Quite often this person is sincere, though in such a case sincerity is another meaningless word. I’m not talking about confidence men. They know what they’re doing. You asked me a question, Conrad, and I’ll try to answer it.
“Hitler in my belief has created a folie à deux – a duet of folly – with a nation of ninety million people. Others have done it in the past and the great men of your profession have called them men of destiny. The great men of the earth! This is understandable, that they call them great, considering what they have accomplished. Napoleon psychotic? He was a gambler, but he was seldom out of touch with reality. But Hitler is an out-and-out psychotic and the generals and politicians are helpless before him because they can’t understand what a psychotic can do. Your colleagues, your historians, they used to talk of ‘the dignity of history.’ To me the evolution of mankind is utterly marvellous. But there is no dignity in the history Hitler has made, just as there is none to be found in the psyche of a sadistic maniac. Unfortunately, there is some of that in us all and Hitler has found his path to it.”
“Professor Rosenthal used almost the same words to me.”
I was frightened again. Why was I here? Why was I driving along this road with a woman I loved who distrusted me and shut me out? Why, for God’s sake? Had Hanna created a folie à deux with me because of her family? Was her father indirectly trying to tell me that? But of course she hadn’t and he wasn’t.
We passed another column of troops, this time infantry huddled close together in army trucks with motorcycle men on their flanks. Another transfer from Russia? If the British and the Americans killed them their troubles would be over. But when I took a quick glance at their faces I knew they would fight in anguish to the last word of command from above.
Soon afterwards we reached the Danube at Ulm, that beautiful city where Einstein was born. Its ancient heart had been blasted to rubble but the famous spire of the cathedral was still a finger pointing to eternity. It was uncanny how the bombers, even the British who bombed by night, were able to blast the hearts out of city after city and yet leave their cathedrals standing. Did they spare the cathedrals because they needed their spires as markers?
Uncanny also was the peacefulness of the German countryside where farmers were working as usual in their fields, though night after night they had heard the thunder of the bomber streams and seen the flames of burning cities flaring around their horizons. We passed still another troop column moving very slowly because of the ersatz fuel it was using. Some thirty kilometers later I saw the burntout wreckage of a large bombing plane in a field near the road. On an impulse I stopped the car, got out, and walked over to it and there was a single corpse inside the wreckage. It was the pilot, who must have stayed at his controls while his crew parachuted. There was little left of him but on his only remaining shoulder I made out the scorched word “Canada” and it gave me a feeling of awe. What was the mystical power of England that had enabled her to draw these distant people across the ocean to fight for her? Now, of course, I have become one of them.
As we neared Freiburg an American long-distance fighter plane dipped its nose and made for us. I stopped the car, Hanna and I leaped out and helped Dr. Erlich, and we hurried him across a ditch into a clump of trees and lay down with our faces pressed against the grass. It smelled sweetly of clover and I heard a thrush singing in the branches. We waited and nothing happened. The noise of the plane’s engine diminished and I got up and saw it climbing into the sky in the west. Was it on reconnaissance, and if so, for what? Anyway, the pilot had not wasted his ammunition on a Volkswagen.
We reached Freiburg in the evening and the Minster spire was outlined by a sinking sun.
The house where mother lived had once belonged to a wealthy Jewish manufacturer who had left Germany shortly after Hitler had taken charge of the country. Afterwards it had been broken up into five separate apartments. There was no Blockwart and Mother lived on the ground floor. When she saw me standing in the doorway in my Gestapo uniform she blanched. When I entered and told her why I was wearing it, she trembled so much I thought she might faint. There was no need for me to tell her what danger I was in because of this uniform. But she had always had the strength of the gentle ones who seem able to accept anything. When I beckoned to Hanna and her father to come in, her eyes met Hanna’s and she smiled.
“So you are Hanna at last!”
Hanna looked at her and also smiled, “And you are Maman!”
They embraced each other. I introduced Dr. Erlich and when he kissed her on both cheeks I had to turn away because tears of thankfulness were in my eyes. It might still be worth while. Hanna had not turned on me after all.
With Hanna helping, I unpacked the car, and after the suitcases were inside the apartment I left to make my report to the local Gestapo headquarters. It was a small establishment compared to the one in Munich and the commanding officer had once served under Krafft. I presented the paper signed by Krafft and explained why I was in Freiburg and how long I expected to stay. The officer offered me any assistance I might require but I told him I needed none. It was simply a family matter, I said. He nodded and did not even ask Mother’s address.
When I returned to the apartment Mother was cooking supper with Hanna helping her. I was too restless to sit down and stood by the window looking out at the Minster and remembering my grandfather when I was a child.
Behind me I heard the doctor say, “This is truly a lovely city.”
“I have never felt at home anywhere else,” I said and sat down. I had not realized how tired I was. My eyelids felt as though they had weights on them like a doll’s.
There was a calmness in the doctor’s prematurely aged face. I was aware of him observing me, probably wondering what kind of man I really was or would become; wondering also how well or how little I understood what manner of woman his daughter was. I felt a sudden happiness and realized that ever since leaving England I had almost forgotten what happiness feels like.
While we were eating supper I asked Mother if the city had been attacked.
“There have been a few warnings. Single planes have flown over us, but they dropped no bombs.”
But they certainly took photographs, I thought. There was no need to mention this to Mother. She knew why the planes had come.
“We still hope to escape the bombing,” she said. “There are now almost thirty hospitals in the city, each of them with a Red Cross painted on the roof.”
“They must be military hospitals. Are many wounded in them now?”
“So far very few.”
“More may arrive unless the war ends soon.”
I asked her if there was any news from the front in Normandy.
“The radio tells us the British and Americans are being held there.”
For how much longer, I thought, and at what cost? The Red Crosses on the hospitals? I did not have to tell Mother they would be more of an invitation than a protection. Hitler had taught his enemies to be as merciless as himself, and some of them must certainly be relishing it. They were human, after all, and Hitler had given them a perfect excuse to do what they could do.
I asked Mother about her health and she admitted to the occasional heart palpitation, but said that the arthritis was the only thing that troubled her. We were sipping coffee (I had brought a small tin I had taken from the kitchen of the barracks) when I asked her if she had news from my father. She told me it was more than a month since she had heard from him.
“Are you worried on account of the bombing in Berlin?”
“The Admiralty has deep shelters.”
“I suppose you know what it’s been like in Berlin?”
“Naturally.”
Neither of us said anything more about my father for several minutes. Hanna and her father ate quietly and both understood what we were talking about.
Finally I said, “Admiral Canaris told me he has had several conversations with Father. He likes and respects him, but my impression is that he considers Father too rash. I don’t think they will permit him to be one of them.”
She nodded imperceptibly and changed the subject.
We spent the night in Mother’s little apartment with Dr. Erlich sleeping in the spare bed, Hanna on a couch in the living room, and me in an armchair. I heard Hanna’s voice coming out of the darkness.
“I’m sorry about this morning. Some time perhaps you will tell me what it was like for you in the Gestapo barracks.”
“It was Gestapo routine.”
“Try to forgive me.”
“For what?”
“For what you had to do there.”
I felt a wave of peace come over me because she had understood, but I was still bruised and my pride would not let me thank her.
I was almost asleep when I heard her once more: “When all this is over, perhaps I can be good for you again.”
At dawn the next morning I put on a sweater and an old pair of pants and drove into the Black Forest. I found the old forester sitting in the sun sucking an empty pipe. At first he did not seem to recognize me, but when I gave him a tin of tobacco and spoke to him in the Schwarzwald dialect he suddenly smiled.
“You’re the young naval officer. And you thought I’d forgotten you! I have a very good memory. I have not forgotten you.”
We smoked our pipes for five minutes in silence and he told me it was good tobacco, the best he had ever had. It was; I had made sure that it would be the best. Finally I asked him if he would accept three people in his cottage until the war ended. Myself, a young lady, and an elderly man who was her father. For what may have been three minutes he did not speak and I wondered if he was deaf or had not understood.
“I will pay you, of course,” I said. “I will pay you very well. And I will bring rations.”
He smiled with a sublime insouciance. “But I also have rations. Hares and pheasants. Eggs from a few chickens. Soon I will have potatoes and turnips. My beans are ripe already.” He looked at me with an ancient smile. “The last time you were here you wore a naval uniform.”
“I’m on leave now.”
He smiled again. “Why do you and these people want to come to my house?”
“Air attacks,” I said. “My fiancée and her father. He is old and he has not been well.”
“You don’t have to tell me a story.”
“Will you accept us?”
“I have nobody to talk to here.”
I opened my wallet and began counting out paper marks. Seeing them, the old man laughed like an amused child, but what he said was not childish.
“What’s the use of that money?”
“Money is always useful.”
“Soon all that money of yours won’t buy a box of matches. We’ve lost the war.”
“How do you know that?”
The old man’s face deployed in a crafty smile. “I have a little radio. I have two batteries for it. At night I put up my antennae. I hear our radio.” He smiled again. “But also I hear the English radio.”
I asked the forester if I could bring my people up that evening.
“I told you that,” he said.
I left him and went back to the city. When I reached Mother’s apartment only Dr. Erlich was there. He told me that Hanna and Mother had gone out to buy some necessities. Owing to my father’s naval rank, Mother had a telephone, so I called the office of her doctor. I introduced myself to his secretary, who told me the doctor was too busy to see another patient for at least three weeks. I explained that I was an officer on leave, that my mother was already his patient, and asked if the doctor could speak to me for a few moments on the phone. When he came onto the line his voice was brusque and he seemed annoyed, but when I asked him if cancer had been found in Mother, his tone altered.
“Is she in hearing now?” he said.
“No, Herr Doktor.”
“Why did you ask such a question?”
I tightened, for I had asked the question only as a cover-up in case the police should check with the doctor to make sure I had told them the truth.
“My mother is no longer young,” I said. “Naturally one thinks of these possibilities.”
He hesitated. “Are you returning to the front?”
“To my duties, certainly.”
He hesitated, then said, “Well, yes, there is cancer. I refrained from telling your respected mother. She should be able to live with it for a few more years. Cancer with older people is slower than with the young. And in the meantime, Herr Leutnant” – I could almost see his shoulders shrug – “who knows what may happen?”
“Who knows,” I said, and it was a statement, not a question. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”
I hung up and sat silently looking out the window. Dr. Erlich had left the room when I went to the telephone to make the call. Probably he had lain down for a rest. I changed into my uniform and went out to buy some supplies. Bedrolls we all needed and I had told Hanna to leave that to me. I went to four different stores before I found one that had them. Then I went to a grocery and bought a quantity of powdered milk, a few kilograms of rice, and a sack of flour. There was no serious lack of food in Germany because the Nazis had looted the continent of most of the food they needed.
When I returned to the apartment Mother and Hanna were there and it was evening. I packed the car and was giving my instructions when Hanna interrupted me.
“You should have been an actor instead of a scholar. Two months in the Gestapo and you’re to the manner born.”
I was angry until I saw she was smiling.
“It’s good, Conrad. I never thought you had it in you.”
“God damn you!” I said, but I also smiled and for an instant I was proud.
“All right,” I said, still smiling, “these are the orders and they’re necessary. Dr. Erlich, will you and Hanna leave here and walk slowly to the corner of the Kaiserstrasse and the Salzstrasse. I’ll pick you up there in the car. Meanwhile, I want to be seen leaving here.”
They left and I had a few more words with Mother. Then we both went outside and talked a little longer. We kissed one another and I got into the car. My last words were spoken loudly through the open window of the car. “I wish I didn’t have to go to Munich but I must.”
My departure had been witnessed. Mother went back to her home and I drove off.
It was twilight when we entered the forest. On the verge of it we passed a few pedestrians and one of them looked at us curiously until he recognized my uniform and turned his eyes away. The Volkswagen bumped over the corduroy and reached the forester’s cottage just before dark. We settled in by the light of two lanterns, spread our bedrolls on the floor, and one after the other we fell asleep.
Early the next morning I removed the licence plates from the car and buried them. Then I tried to conceal the car in thick underbrush near the cottage. It was a very small car but its top was just high enough to be visible above the bushes. I took off the wheels and the car jerked down out of sight. It wasn’t much of a precaution but it was better than nothing.
Several days passed with nothing happening and no news. Dr. Erlich and Hanna had brought along a few books in their suitcases and were reading in the sun with their backs propped against a log. The forester smoked and seemed happy to have us with him. Once he pointed the stem of his pipe towards Hanna and Dr. Erlich and remarked, “Vornehme Leute. Es freut mich sehr solche Leute zu beschützen.”
Yes, I thought, he was just the kind of man who would be happy to protect them, but if the police came it would be the end of him. I told him I hoped we would not cause him trouble and he spat carefully.
“My wife is dead. My sons were put into the army and killed. What is trouble? Don’t worry, Herr Leutnant. I know what I know and I do what I do.”
But I could not stop worrying about nearly everything and particularly about my mother. I had toyed with the idea of asking her to join us in the forest but I knew she would never have done so. She had to be home in her apartment if my father called her. Also, if Krafft had his men question her, she would be able to say that I had left for Munich on schedule and the neighbors would corroborate her. When I failed to turn up in Munich, they might believe I had been shot up on the roads or killed in the bombing of a city, but if Mother disappeared they would be sure I had deserted and the hunt would be up. As for Hanna and her father, I still relied on Canaris’s assurance that the police knew nothing of my connection with them.
Two nights later the forester’s radio was tuned in to London and the BBC informed Europe that American planes had delivered a mass raid on Munich. It was a daylight raid and it struck the city at just about the time I would have been due to arrive in it. God knows how many innocent Bavarians had been slaughtered, but all I could think about was ourselves. This might be my alibi.
“I think we’re going to make it,” I said.
Hanna and I walked out into the forest. It was a warm night with a gibbous moon in a clear sky and no aircraft within hearing. The moonlight filtered down through the branches and the earth was fragrant. We lay on a patch of soft, dry moss and looked up at the Gothic intricacy of the branches with the moonlight shimmering through them. She was wearing a blouse and a dirndl skirt and with swift movements she opened her blouse, took off her skirt, and embraced me.
“Come into me, darling. Come into me!”
If tenderness can unite with ferocity it did so then for both of us. I had never known anything like it before and neither had she. After it was over she rolled on her side still holding me and in the silence of the forest we heard the stealthy movements of small animals. An owl hooted and we lay together until I became potent again and time vanished. The moon was behind a cloud and it was so dark I could not see her but I saw all of her in my mind. We said nothing because no words were necessary. But these words I have written are necessary because this was the last time Hanna and I made love.
The next night the news on the forester’s radio was different.
Marvellous, we thought, when we heard the first two sentences; terrible we knew, when we heard the rest:
“An unthinkable thing has happened. An attempt has been made on the life of the Führer. The criminals failed, as they were sure to fail. The police already have some of them. The identities of the others are known and they will be hunted down relentlessly.”
We were then informed that the hand of God had been over Hitler and that Hitler had taken command of all Germany including the armies. This meant that victory was now certain. “Deutschland über Alles” crashed out and when it ended the radio was silent.
The forester said cheerfully, “Now let’s hear what the English say.”
The radio crackled with static while he turned the key and soon we heard a voice speaking such meticulous German it could only have come from a foreigner. The English broadcaster made no mention of the plot to kill Hitler. Instead, he told us that the German armies in France were being annihilated in a climactic battle and that the end of Hitler was in sight.
Time, I thought, time! From now on time is going to be the only thing that matters to us. I looked at Dr. Erlich enquiringly and his face in the lamplight was somber.
“This is terrible,” he said. “It will make him totally ferocious. He will drive the people to the bitter end.”
“He would have done that anyway. I’m wondering about Admiral Canaris.”
“So am I.”
“Do you think he was involved in it?”
“You would know that better than I.”
I shook my head, for I knew nothing. “I’m also thinking about my father.”
That night I may have dozed for half an hour, but no real sleep came. I heard Hanna breathing peacefully, but when I got dressed two hours before dawn she came awake.
“I have to go into town to speak with Mother,” I whispered. “I’m not wearing my uniform.”
“I understand.”
I kissed her, she clung to me and guided my hand to her breast. “It’s still dark,” I whispered. “It will probably be safe enough. But I have to find out what she knows.”
Following the path in the darkness I came out of the forest and arrived at Mother’s apartment just as the Minster spire was emerging into the first light. The streets were void and I did not see a living thing, not even an alley cat. It was two minutes after my ring before Mother opened the door. She had been asleep and was in her dressing gown. I went in and closed the door silently.
“Have you heard the news?” I asked her.
“You heard it on the radio up there, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“Your father telephoned me last night from Berlin.”
“Was he involved?”
“No.”
“Did he dare tell you that over the phone?”
“Not in actual words, but he was able to let me know it.”
“So he’d discussed something like this with you before?”
“All he told me was that there were officers who were planning something. He never told me what it was. I don’t think he knew.”
“Is he absolutely safe? Were any of his friends involved?”
“All I know is that he made it clear that he had nothing to do with it.”
“What of Canaris?”
“He did not mention Canaris.”
I sat down and breathed deeply. “Thank God! Even if those officers did fail, the war can’t go on much longer. The British and Americans will break through at any time now. We heard the radio from London.”
“You must leave now, Conrad.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“And don’t you worry about me.”
I left unnoticed and met nobody on my way into the forest. When I reached the forest I smelled coffee brewing.
“It’s all right,” I said. “Now there’s nothing for us to do but wait.”
But it was not all right. They came for Mother about a week after I left, though I did not know it until much later. Had she told me the truth about my father? I still don’t know whether she had or not. Had Father told the truth to her? I don’t know that, either. Long after the war was over, when I was safe in America, I read that seven thousand people were executed after the plot against Hitler, and that the families of all the suspects disappeared into what Hitler called Nacht und Nebel – night and fog. Every trace of them was obliterated.
A few nights after I saw Mother, we heard from the London radio that the front had broken in France and that British, American, and Canadian tanks were streaming eastward toward Germany with their infantry following in thousands of army trucks. All the German troops that had not been killed or captured in France fell back to defend the frontiers. I thought the war was sure to end within a few weeks at the most, but it dragged on for eight more months during which several million more people died. Once again Dr. Erlich had been right. Hitler drove his people to the bitter end, and Europe with them.
The planes finally came to Freiburg. In the forest we heard them approaching from the west like the noise of a vast orchestra tuning up before a concert. Then we heard the reverberation of bombs, we felt tremors in the earth, and from the verge of the forest we saw the smoke and flames with the Minster now hidden, now emerging. This was one of the most merciless raids of the entire war. Apart from a few retreating soldiers and the wounded in the hospitals, the total population of Freiburg was less than a hundred thousand souls. After the war I was told that more than twenty-five thousand died in this single attack. Whether it was actually this bad I still don’t know, for there was always a tendency to exaggerate the number of casualties in these extermination attacks.
Wave after wave of planes came in over the city, dropped their bombs, and wheeled away. There was no defence at all. Not a fighter plane, not an anti-aircraft gun.
I looked at Hanna and realized I was sobbing.
“I must go down there. I must go down.”
Whatever the others may have thought of the possibilities of my finding my mother in all that carnage, they realized that I had to go. On the edge of the city I moved through clusters of men, women, and children who had escaped. Some of them were in tears, all of them seemed in shock. For most, this was the first experience of a mass air attack.
The smoke became so dense that I did not know where I was. The heat seared my skin. Firemen were working but seemed unable to do anything. The city’s heart looked impassable. Suddenly I realized that I was in the Schillerstrasse beside the little Dreisam stream only fifty meters from our old home. Its windows were shattered, and when I touched the wall of the house it was hot. I crossed the bridge to the Schwabentor and stumbled through rubble toward the Minster and Mother’s house. A hand came down on my shoulder and it was a policeman.
“My mother,” I shouted. “I’m trying to find my mother!”
“If she lived where you’re going, you’ll never find her until the fires are out. I can’t let you enter. Orders.”
He turned away but I stepped after him and caught his arm.
“I’m a naval officer on leave. My father is Admiral Dehmel.”
He turned around abruptly. “Did you say Admiral Dehmel? Is Frau Dehmel your mother?”
“Yes, now will you let me go.”
He looked at me strangely. “Frau Dehmel isn’t here. She left the city a short time ago.”
“Are you sure? Did you know her?”
“Yes,” he said, “I’m sure.” And he added, “I’m very sorry about it.”
I was in too much of a daze to ask him why he was sorry. I felt only relief because my mother had not been there when the planes struck. But I also felt a terrible grief because this was my city, this was my home, and it had been destroyed. As usual, the bombers had spared the cathedral.
I struggled back through the wreckage, passed through the Schwabentor, and crossed the bridge away from the fires. The clusters of refugees had now become a swarm, and police and troops were trying to make some order out of them. I worked my way through intending to return to the forest and suddenly I found myself a few meters away from a face I had almost forgotten. She was in some kind of uniform and was standing beside a big Gestapo officer of a much higher rank than Krafft’s. With him was a small clutch of NCOS.
She saw me at the same instant that I saw her. She pointed at me and screamed, “That’s him! Grab him!”
It was Eva Schmidt after all these years. A pair of sergeants closed in and I was arrested. I saw Eva speaking to the officer with hatred in her face and saw his eyebrows rise. He came close and looked me over appraisingly.
“So you are Herr Doktor Dehmel! This is very interesting.”
He lifted the riding whip he was carrying and slashed me twice across each side of my face.
“Take him away,” he said to the sergeants. And to me he added, “I’m occupied at present but we shall soon meet again.”
I don’t know where they took me, but it was certainly a long distance from Freiburg. I was lying with my hands and ankles manacled in a closed truck and could see nothing. It was dark when they dragged me out and kicked me forward into a prison. I was locked up in a cell and lay there with my back in a partial spasm for many days. I was given enough soup and bread to keep me alive and I lay there and thought about my parents and about Hanna and her father, and about that terrible expression of Hitler’s, “Nacht und Nebel.” Was that where Mother was? Had my father been arrested? The Gestapo chief had told me we would meet again. Torture followed by death? I assumed it was certain and tried to prepare myself for it.
The day came when the door of my cell was opened with a crash and two Gestapo goons came in. They kicked me down a corridor into a room with the table and the whips and the instruments. Eva’s man was standing there in his uniform and high polished boots. He looked at me without speaking and ordered the goons out of the room and closed the door. Then he sat down on the only chair and looked me over again.
“Your training with us seems to have improved you a little,” he said. “You’re not as soft as you used to be.”
I stood in front of him and said nothing.
“I have decided to introduce myself. I am Obersturmbannführer Heinrich. You have possibly heard of my reputation?”
“Naturally, sir.”
He lit a cigarette, drew on it, held it away, and looked studiously at the burning tip of it.
“There is said to be a common bond between two men who have had the same woman,” he said coolly. “Would you agree?”
I said nothing and he smiled slightly.
“If you had been a man like myself, you would have found her remarkably responsive. But you were not a man like myself.”
I said nothing.
“When I first saw you,” he said, “I realized something that does not seem to have occurred to you, Herr Doktor. Our features are quite similar. Our expressions, of course, are not. And fortunately that is the great difference.”
I looked at him and realized that he was right. The bone structure of our faces was remarkably alike, but his mouth was wider and in repose it was a hard, straight line. His eyes were a hard, cold gray.
“You know, Professor, I’m beginning to have a slight respect for you. You almost got away with it. You can thank your father for your failure. If he hadn’t joined those imbecile generals who tried to kill the Führer, we’d never have caught you. Did you know what he was up to?”
“I knew nothing of it.”
“If I’d believed you had, I wouldn’t have asked you the question. Well, they bungled it. Fools and snobs.” He stared at me calmly. “Your father was hanged two days ago. Slowly. Do you know what happens to the sphincter muscle when a man is hanged?”
“I received instruction in the ss.”
“Their braces and belts were removed from their pants and their pants fell down to their ankles. Their pants caught it. Do you wish to know about your mother?”
I kept my mouth shut and he smiled slightly once more.
“She has been put away,” he said quietly, his eyes steady on mine.
“Not yet.”
“I’m sure Mother knew nothing.”
“As you’ve already told me that you knew nothing about it yourself, how dare you tell me your mother knew nothing?”
“If my father was involved – and I can’t believe he was, though some of his friends may have been – he would never have told my mother.”
“A matter of no importance. The Führer has ordered the disappearance of every man, woman, and child connected with those fools!”
I made my last play for Mother. “Herr Obersturmbannführer, there is – or was – my brother Siegfried. You must know of his service to the nation and the Führer. Can’t that be considered in my mother’s case?”
“You underwent training with us and you ask such a stupid question?” He suddenly barked, “Strip!”
I stood there stupidly.
“Take off your clothes!” he shouted. “All of them!”
I stumbled when I took off my first shoe, but finally I stood naked before him. He rose from his chair, looked over my body, felt the muscles of my shoulders and arms, and flicked my penis lightly with his whip.
“In that, at least, there is no resemblance between us. You didn’t even know Eva well enough to know she only responds when she is being hurt.” He sat down again and crossed his legs, the overhead light shining on his polished jackboots. “Now you will tell me where is the Jew Erlich and his daughter.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t insult your own intelligence, to say nothing of mine.”
His body seemed to spring from the chair in a single piece and he slashed my face with his whip. My nakedness shuddered.
“Do you deny that you knew this Jewess, Hanna Erlich?”
“I knew her in London before the war, but I left London after the Führer took power.”
“We know that, of course. When did you next meet her?”
He sat down again and once more crossed his legs, though his whip kept flicking nervously against his boots.
“This becomes tiresome. Permit me to move the enquiry more quickly. An ss lieutenant was seen driving Erlich and his daughter from that village where they were living. They went in the direction of Munich. The local people thought he was arresting them. A few days later two genuine officers came for them and were told about what you did there. Sturmbannführer Krafft told me the rest. He also told me the story you trumped up about your mother’s illness.”
“She did have cancer,” I said. “You can prove it by speaking with the doctor who treated her. I can give you his name. I can –” I stopped, because I knew it was hopeless to continue.
“I’ve no more time to waste,” Heinrich said. “Where are Erlich and his daughter?”
“In Switzerland.”
“Can’t you think of a better lie than that? We know about that banker-brother of this Dr. Erlich. They’re not in Switzerland. They’re some place near Freiburg. Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You fool. Now we must waste more of our time with you.”
The torture sessions went on for the rest of the day. During them I fainted several times. The tortures were resumed after I came to. I still marvel that I lasted as long as I did. I didn’t know day from night so I can’t tell at what time I finally broke. But I did break in the end and told them where Hanna and her father were and told them also that if they found an old man with them he was innocent and knew nothing. Then I became unconscious again. I came to in my cell and the only realities were the pain and the horror and the shame. I expected to be taken out and shot and remembered that during the tortures I had begged them to kill me, just as had hundreds of thousands of others in those years.
How much time passed while I was in the cell I don’t know, but a day came when I was dragged out once more and found myself in a room with Heinrich and two of his assistants. My brain was functioning badly. Hanna and her father were also in the room but at first I was not sure whether they were real or images in my mind.
They were real. Heinrich smiled in their direction and pointed to me with his whip.
“He’s the one who told us where you were hiding. What do you think of him now?”
Hanna saw the condition I was in and suddenly she screamed, “It doesn’t matter, Conrad, it doesn’t matter! They arrested us two days after the attack on the city. They killed the forester. So it doesn’t matter what you said.”
The whip slashed across her face. They were both taken away and I never saw them again. Heinrich looked at me and said in an indifferent voice, “It won’t be necessary to torture you again. However, you will not die quickly.”
I was shipped to the Belsen camp, where I was to be starved and worked to death along with the other inmates. If the British had been a week later I don’t believe I would have survived, for in the end we had nothing to eat at all.
I never told you any of these details, Stephanie. I just couldn’t do it. Now that I have written all this down, I don’t think I should ever show it to you. what happened to me happened to hundreds of thousands of others and many of them were much braver than I was.
The whole world knows in a general way what happened in those years, but even now, who can really understand why it happened? Modern medicine has easily explained the Black Death and Dr. Erlich explained why Hitler became a psychotic. But as time passes I’m not sure that even he explained how it was possible for a man like Hitler to become our master.
So why have I written this? To sound a warning? To suggest that if such things happened in one civilized country, they may happen in others? But thousands have sounded the same warning before me.
Those years seem an eternity ago except when I have nightmares. The Hanna I loved so greatly has become unreal, though the Hanna I saw for a few minutes in the presence of Heinrich will never leave me. Since then I have studied and worked and have known what contentment and happiness are, and nearly all of it I owe to you, dear Stephanie. But what should have been the prime of my life was blighted by the place and the time where I spent it. It was the same for nearly all Germans of my age, and for hundreds of millions of others. We were robbed of our youth, of the best years of our lives, and this may explain why so many of us have failed the youth of today.
Now the storm signals are flying again and the world may easily go out of control once more. Some psychopaths are sure to come to power because no age has ever been immune to them. But if a breakup comes, and quite possibly it won’t, the cause of it will at least be more impressive than a miserable little creature like Adolf Hitler. It will come out of the vastest explosion of human energy this little planet has ever known. It will come because our political habits and institutions will prove incapable of controlling this energy. The entire world is screaming for freedom and is sincere about it, but they don’t understand what freedom is. The most violent screamers are really screaming for release from freedom’s discipline, which means they are screaming for somebody to return them to slavery.
Is even this correct? Will men ever understand the meaning of the things they do, or why they do them?