Chapter 2

Beneath the wings of the small spotter plane, the Polish landscape spread to the city of Lublin a few miles to the west. The pilot checked his map. There was the village of Dsiesiata, there the villages of Kalinowka and Abramowicz, all clearly identifiable. There was the Cholm Road, and alongside it, only a mile or so from Lublin, was an obvious suburb noted on his map as Maidanek, and—not noted on his map—a sprawling encampment of some sort. From the height of the droning plane the barracks-like buildings looked like a vast arrangement of children’s blocks. Black smoke billowed from a tall square stack rising at the extreme end of the encampment, dissipating itself over the tilled fields beyond.

There was a sudden chatter of machine-gun fire from one of the watchtowers set at regular intervals about the encampment; other guns joined in instantly. The small reconnaissance plane banked almost insolently and drifted off to the east. Inside the cockpit the observer made a note of the strange buildings and its armed watchtowers, and then shrugged as he slid his pencil back into his jacket-sleeve pocket. Whatever it was, they would find out fairly soon. Their troops were less than a hundred and fifty miles from Lublin.

In the area outside the command post barrack, Colonel von Schraeder, deputy commandant of the encampment, paused to study the disappearing plane with a frown. His eyes narrowed as he considered the ease with which the small reconnaissance plane had penetrated the area. He had been back from Strasbourg a day; when he had left for Berlin ten days before, such aerial intrusion would have been unthinkable. He watched the plane disappear in the growing evening dusk, shrugged, and pushed his way into the building.

In the conference room of the command post barrack, the fifteen principal officers responsible for the day-to-day operation of the camp either sat or stood, awaiting the start of the urgent meeting that had been called. Through the open windows the endless sound of the evening roll call from Field I could be heard faintly, now that the chatter of the machine guns had finally ceased. Some of the officers stared from the windows, watching the area of the sky where the plane had disappeared, each with his own disturbing thoughts.

There was a sudden movement at the door and the pudgy red face of the camp commandant, Klaus Mittendorf, was there. He jerked one ham-like hand abruptly; those standing hurried to find seats. A second downward movement of the hand and a young lieutenant walked quickly down one wall of the room, bending over fellow officers, closing windows. In the silence that followed the commandant’s voice was harsh.

“Gentlemen! The Russians are approaching the Polish border; Minsk has been recaptured. Reports are that the Army Group Mitte has been destroyed—”

A jeering voice broke out. “Propaganda, Commandant!”

“From Guderian?” The commandant was staring at the officer who had made the comment. His fat face was hard, his lips tight. He glared the man into defeat, then walked to his desk at the head of the conference room. He sat down abruptly and looked out over his subordinates. “All right, gentlemen. We have work to do.” He took a paper from an inner pocket and placed it on the desk. “Our orders, gentlemen. We are to exterminate as many of the present prison population as possible, then evacuate the camp and destroy any evidence it ever existed, or at least destroy any evidence as to the purpose of the camp.”

There was a general shifting of bodies; the officers stared at one another. Commandant Mittendorf properly interpreted the reaction to his statement.

“Destroy any evidence it ever existed,” he repeated firmly. “It is an order. We have not lost a camp to the enemy yet, but it is quite possible this one must be evacuated. There must be no evidence, is that clear? None whatsoever. That is an order! So let’s get on with it.” He reached across the desk for a list, ran his finger down it until he found the name he wanted; those lesser officers, or those in sections or duties unable to contribute to the purpose of the meeting, were not present. Mittendorf looked up. “Captain Müeller!”

“Sir!”

“How long do you estimate it would take you to dynamite the baths and the gas chamber, as well as the crematoria—both the old and the new—and then bulldoze them level, cover them with earth, and plant grass over them?”

Müeller stared. “Plant grass, sir? Grass takes—”

“Sod, then.” Mittendorf waved a thick hand. “You know what I mean. Take sod from the surrounding farms. Or even seed over the area. Who knows? The soil is rich here—” It was quite true; they all knew the soil was extremely rich. It was thoroughly mixed with human ashes and produced the finest cabbages in all Poland. Which was a fortunate circumstance, since cabbage had been the main staple of their diet for some weeks. The commandant’s face hardened. “Well? How long?”

Müeller considered the question carefully; he was a careful man and was not to be rushed into statements if he were to be held responsible for their fulfillment.

“Well, sir, we could probably dynamite the buildings to rough rubble in a matter of hours; that is no problem. If we have sufficient dynamite on hand, of course. But to crush this rubble to fine particles and bulldoze them level will take some time. Covering the resultant area with dirt will be a problem, too. I assume we don’t want them to look like burial mounds—”

Mittendorf glared. “I asked, how long? I didn’t ask for a speech!”

“If we can arrange the necessary equipment,” Müeller said carefully, aware he was treading on dangerous ground but determined to do his job properly, “and if we have sufficient dynamite, as I said, and if we can take the fine particles and spread them over the fields rather than trying to cover them—which may well kill the cabbage crop, of course—”

“The devil with the cabbages! If we leave here we won’t be coming back!” Mittendorf felt the eyes upon him. “At least not for a while,” he added gruffly.

“Then I should say probably three or four days, working nights as well, of course. If I can get an electrician or two to rig up lights—”

“Four days,” Mittendorf said, dismissing him. “No, make that three.” He made a note and passed on. Müeller fell silent, but it was evident he was unhappy at being pressured. It was also evident that Müeller’s unhappiness was the least of the commandant’s worries. His sausage-like finger moved down the list. “Lieutenant Burgsteller—”

“Sir?”

“Present prisoner population?”

“Let’s see, sir. We have roughly ten thousand women in Field V, mostly Poles. Very few Jews left, sir, and even less Russians. And no Gypsies at all. As far as the men are concerned, in Field I—”

“How many all together, Burgsteller! We don’t have all day!”

The lieutenant reddened. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t have the exact figures with me. I didn’t know you were going to want—” He saw the look on Mittendorf’s face and hastily added, “Forty thousand, sir, roughly, but it’s very close. It’s been approximately that figure for some months past, now, sir. They ship them in as fast as we—”

“Forty thousand.” The fingers wrote and moved on. “Colonel Schneller.”

“Sir.”

“Transportation possibilities. How many prisoners can be moved by rail back to camps further west? Or back to Germany, itself? In the next two weeks, say.”

Schneller had been anticipating the question. He had been going over the transportation possibilities in his mind ever since the commandant had made his first announcement, and the results as far as he could see were apt to bring out another burst of temper from Mittendorf. He frowned.

“The problem, you see, sir, is boxcars. They’re extremely tight. With the situation at the front—”

“The situation at the front is the problem of the army,” Mittendorf said, his voice rasping. “The evacuation of this camp is my responsibility. And according to my orders it takes top priority. How many prisoners do you estimate we can move if we have to?”

Schneller looked unhappy.

“I just can’t give you a definite answer without checking the rail yards at Lublin, sir, but I would be greatly surprised if I could manage to get more than thirty or forty cars, at the maximum. Even at a hundred people to a car, that would be—” He paused to calculate.

“Three thousand to four thousand. Not even ten per cent.” Mittendorf shook his head almost despondently. Rail shipments, obviously, did not seem to be the answer. His finger moved down the list, and then moved up again, near the top. “Colonel von Schraeder—”

“Yes.”

If Mittendorf noted the calmness of the response, he made no comment on it. Von Schraeder was looking at him with a sardonic look on his patrician face. The commandant bit back a retort; it would not be good for discipline to get into an argument with the bastard before the other men. Von Schraeder had been an insolent and independent shit ever since he had been assigned to Mittendorf as his deputy. A full colonel at twenty-nine years of age! If only the miserable son of a bitch could be left in charge of the camp to be picked up by the Russians! What a pleasure to picture the haughty, supercilious bastard, gloves and all, hanging from a rope in the center of one of the fields, that big mouth open to the flies, and that glib, sarcastic tongue black with congested blood and quiet for once! Unfortunately, the papers for von Schraeder’s transfer had already been signed by the brass in Berlin and were on the commandant’s desk at the moment. The shit certainly managed to push that Junker family name of his, although the arrogant bastard didn’t even have a family anymore! A father a suicide, a mother dead of something long since, probably syphilis if she was anything like that prick of a son of hers! And the family estates long gone to pay debts. So what had the high-nosed, patronizing shit to be so proud of? Mittendorf forced the bile from his throat, bringing his mind back to the matter at hand.

“Colonel—what is the maximum number we can handle in the gas chambers and the ovens? And don’t tell me what we’ve been doing. I want to know the maximum.”

“In what period of time?”

Now the commandant finally lost his temper. What difference did it really make what the men thought? Discipline would be gone in a few weeks in any event, so to hell with what the men thought! His tiny eyes, buried like little burned raisins in the doughy mass of his face, blazed briefly and then narrowed dangerously until they were almost completely out of sight.

“How the hell do I know? You tell me, von Schraeder, you’re so damned smart! How far away are the Russians at this moment? How fast will they move? How much resistance will our troops be able to put up? Will the Russians stop to destroy everything in Poland once they get here? Or to screw every girl? Or hang every man?” He brought himself forcibly under control, hating himself for his burst of temper, but hating von Schraeder even more for having provoked it. “That was a Russian reconnaissance plane over us a few minutes ago, Colonel. We don’t have a month to discuss the matter. So just tell me how many people our equipment can handle per day. Maximum!”

Von Schraeder’s only reaction to his superior’s outburst was to look faintly amused.

“The maximum we can handle is two thousand per day, exactly what we are doing at the present. No more, no less.” The colonel paused to take a cigarette from a gold case; he twisted it lightly into his holder, lit the cigarette, and set the holder in his mouth at a jaunty angle. He spoke around the smoke. “We can gas many more, of course; the gas pens have a capacity of almost two thousand by themselves. The gas is effective in five minutes.” He glanced at the ceiling, calculating. “If you figure an hour to get them all in, to gas them, to clear the air with the fans; then another hour, say, for the Sonderkommandos to get the bodies loaded into the carts for the ovens, we could probably clear out the entire prisoner population in two days.” He leaned over to negligently tip the ash from his cigarette onto the polished floor. “The problem is, of course, that the oven capacity is limited to two thousand bodies per day, taking an average body of men, women, and children. That’s the maximum. As I believe I’ve mentioned to you several times in the past.”

Mittendorf chose to disregard the final remark.

“What about the old ovens? The ones that were here before we built the new ones?”

“No burners,” von Schraeder said calmly. “We cannibalized the burners for the new ovens.”

“And no way to improvise?”

Von Schraeder merely shrugged. He seemed to be enjoying Mittendorf’s discomfiture.

“Two thousand per day …” Mittendorf picked up his pencil, made a rapid calculation, and then almost threw the pencil from him. “Gott in Himmel! It can’t be done!”

“Commandant—”

It was a Sergeant Schmidt. Schmidt had been in charge of the firing squads in Krepiecki Forest, six miles from the camp, and after that he had handled all deaths by gunfire at the Maidanek camp before even the old carbon-monoxide death trucks had been available. Now he was in charge of all hangings in the squares of the six fields. Sergeant Schmidt was a busy man.

Mittendorf looked at him sourly, sure that Schmidt was somehow going to compound the problem. He usually did. “Yes?”

“You said we were supposedly to destroy all the evidence—”

“That is correct.”

“What about the pits, sir?”

Mittendorf almost threw up his hands. He had been right about Schmidt; the pits were going to be an additional problem. The corpses from the firing squads had been buried in shallow pits, in layers, and then a small amount of lye and a thin layer of dirt thrown over them. The pits were easily identifiable; rats and moles had burrowed in them for food. It wouldn’t take any genius Russian investigator to uncover them; their damned soldiers would fall over them if they didn’t fall into them! Damn! It was easy enough for some big shot in Berlin to sit on his fat ass and issue orders, but carrying out those orders was something else. The pit in the Krepiecki Forest was almost three years old, the result of executions before the camp had been properly prepared for the job. Possibly by now the bodies would have disintegrated, rotted, disappeared somehow. Maybe animals had uncovered them and dragged them away. Well, it was something they would have to hope for, because he would have enough problems with the pits on the camp grounds proper, without sending men and equipment six miles to handle the trouble at Krepiecki.

“We’ll come to the matter of the pits,” he said unhappily, and ran his finger down the list again. He looked up. “Dr. Schlossberg—”

“Here, sir.”

The doctor was the only person in the room not in regulation uniform; instead he wore a long laboratory jacket. He was a man in his early forties, cavernous and prematurely bald, who always looked as if he expected to be blamed for something and was ill prepared to offer an excuse for whatever it was. Mittendorf studied him without expression. He had profound contempt for the doctor, not because of any lack of professional ability—although Mittendorf himself would not have let the man treat him for a hangnail—but because of the man’s apparent weakness.

“How is your assignment going at the hospital?”

“My assignment?” The doctor rubbed the bare top of his head as if, genie fashion, to raise an answer there. Before the war Schlossberg had a reputation as a brilliant surgeon, although Mittendorf found it hard to believe the doctor could have made the necessary difficult decisions.

“Your experiments, Doctor!”

“Oh, the experiments. Why, they’re going along all right, sir.” The doctor suddenly realized the question had been asked in conjunction with the questions others in the meeting had been called upon to answer. “Oh, you mean about evacuating the camp, sir. They can be stopped without—none of them are long-term experiments …” The doctor suddenly further understood the question. “Oh, the patients will be no problem, Commandant. We have various means—”

“And more corpses for the verdamnt ovens!” Mittendorf’s thick fingers drummed restlessly on his desk while he considered all phases of the enormous problem. “All right,” he said at last, making up his mind. “Sergeant Schmidt, I want you to take charge of the pits—” For raising the question, he told himself. “Forget those in Krepiecki; concentrate on those inside the camp area itself. You will have to dig them up and rebury the bodies deeper, much deeper. Put enough lye on them this time. If you have time, try to start some sort of construction over them to hide them—”

“Commandant?” It was Schmidt again. Mittendorf’s face darkened. What now? Hadn’t the idiot caused enough problems already?

“Yes? What is it?”

“Why not make a latrine over the old pit? The one back of the baths? The new pit is probably too far away to convince anyone it was used as a latrine, but the old pit is close enough. The Russians will never dig up a pit that is full of shit.”

The officers grinned; even Mittendorf permitted himself a brief smile. For once Sergeant Schmidt had made a constructive suggestion, although it had obviously been triggered by his own idea of constructing something over the pits.

“Good enough. Have plans prepared for building it. Inmates of Fields II and III can use it. Maybe you can make the old pit also look as if it was once used as a latrine. If you have time have some prisoners haul some shit down there and spread it around; we have plenty of it. In any event, it’s your assignment, Sergeant. Do what you have to do.”

He swung about.

“Colonel Schneller, get into Lublin and see what you can do about arranging boxcars. As soon as you get any, load them up and ship them west. Contact Auschwitz and have them check their companion camps, and they can check Birkenau next door. See how many people they can take. Possibly we can get a turnaround on the cars going to camps that aren’t too far away. See what you can do. And we’ll push the ovens to capacity. In a week or so, when we see where we are, we’ll start making arrangements to destroy the ovens and the gas pens and move the rest of the prisoners out on foot with the balance of the guards. All right. Any questions? Any comments?”

“Sir?” It was a Lieutenant Frisch. As Mittendorf recalled, another idiot who probably shouldn’t even have been at the meeting. “We tried pyres once—”

“Which weren’t worth the petrol they burned. Any other comments? Captain Müeller?”

“Sir, if we could start clearing the fields one by one, rather than sending men to the gas chamber a few from each field, I could get a head start by burning those barracks once they’re cleared—”

“Not a bad idea.” Mittendorf made a note and then scratched through it. It was a terrible idea. “We do not have to burn the barracks. What do barracks signify? There was an army camp here. Don’t waste your time; concentrate on the ovens and the gas pens.”

“Yes, sir.” Müeller sounded doubtful. “I’ll still need the time and the men and the dynamite to get the job done, and that’s four days at the very least—”

“You’ll have it! If we have it, that is. Good God! All right—anything else? All right, gentlemen, let’s get to work. Heil Hitler!” There was a murmur of response as the men came to their feet. The commandant cleared his throat. “Colonel von Schraeder, if you please. And Dr. Schlossberg. If you two might remain a moment after the others.”

The two men settled back into their chairs while the others filed out. The tall thin doctor looked guilty at being selected, as though—while he had no idea of the details of his crime—he was sure he must have committed it. Von Schraeder merely looked bored. He ejected his cigarette from his holder and ground it out beneath his boot heel on the conference-room floor, well aware that Mittendorf was watching and equally aware of the commandant’s pride in the neat appearance of the command post. When the door had closed after the final man, the commandant turned first to the doctor.

“Doctor, your work is in order?”

“Why—yes, sir.”

“Good. I want you to turn everything you have in progress over to your chief assistant. You are being transferred, together with Colonel von Schraeder.”

The doctor looked alarmed. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said you are being transferred to a different camp.” Good God! Couldn’t the idiot understand simple German? “You will leave for Buchenwald camp tomorrow morning. I have your orders here. Colonel von Schraeder’s car will pick you up tomorrow morning at your quarters at five o’clock sharp. Be ready to leave.”

“Yes, sir.” The doctor stroked his bald spot almost frantically. “But, sir—I didn’t ask for a transfer …”

“I know,” Mittendorf said dryly. “And I didn’t request one for you, either. But it’s evident someone did. In any event, it’s really of no great importance. You’ll just be leaving a bit earlier than the rest of us, the way the situation appears.” He turned to the colonel, trying his best to sound normal, a commandant speaking with a subordinate, fighting to hide the bitterness, the hatred that twisted his stomach each time he had to deal with the colonel. “I’m sure you’re not surprised to be transferred, are you, Colonel?”

Von Schraeder shrugged, looking faintly amused at the commandant’s attempt to be subtle.

“I try not to be surprised at anything, Commandant.”

“Yes …” Mittendorf looked into the colonel’s cold slate-blue eyes but could read nothing there. “Well, your orders are to be transferred to Buchenwald, as well. After you’ve gone”—he could not help but add—“we’ll see if we can’t improve on your vaunted efficiency. Get a bit more out of the ovens than you were able to do.”

“I’m sure you’ll do your best,” von Schraeder said. His tone indicated that Mittendorf’s best would break no records. He came to his feet and raised his hand in a half salute that was customary with him. “Possibly we’ll meet again, sometime.” He reached over casually, removing the papers from Mittendorf’s hand, checking them as if the commandant might not be trusted to give him the right ones. He handed the proper set to the doctor. Schlossberg paused long enough to first salute, then shake hands, and finally say “Heil Hitler” before following the colonel from the room. He closed the door quietly behind him.

In the now deserted conference room, Klaus Mittendorf stared at the closed door, his loathing for von Schraeder almost making him physically ill. He had been, first, with the Brown Shirts, then with the SS since the bully-boy days of the early twenties, and had never gotten beyond the rank of sergeant major, and although rank had nothing to do with position in concentration-camp leadership—the commandant was commandant regardless of military rank, and received the respect due him—it still rankled. Mittendorf sat and gritted his teeth; he would have given a month’s pay to know how von Schraeder had managed to pull strings and get both himself and Dr. Schlossberg transferred without his approval. It was done on the Berlin trip, of course; if he thought for a moment messages had gone back and forth from the camp communications center without his knowledge, someone would pay for it dearly. But he was sure it had been handled on von Schraeder’s last leave of absence. Personal business! What a story! And why the transfer at this particular time? Did von Schraeder think the Maidanek camp was going to be surrendered to the Russians with all personnel attached? Although if Mittendorf could have done it, he would have loved to leave his deputy in charge when the evacuation was complete. But it would have been impossible, and von Schraeder should have known it. He was merely anticipating a transfer that would have taken place in any event in another week or two. Why? Why?

And why the transfer of the doctor at the same time to the same camp? It was all part of whatever von Schraeder had in mind, because no one on earth was ever going to make him believe that it was mere coincidence. Was it possible there might be something between the two men? Something sexual? Although that seemed ridiculous, considering Colonel von Schraeder’s reputation as a womanizer; the endless parade of women prisoners through the deputy commandant’s house, on their way either to the soldatenheim, the brothel, or—if they got pregnant—to the ovens, was no great secret at Maidanek.

Ah, the fucking bastard! And that story of his for never saluting properly, that he had broken his arm as a child and it had never healed properly! Gruss Gott, what an alibi! Well, so the colonel said that possibly they might meet again sometime, eh? It was possible; everything was possible. And at that future meeting, whenever and wherever it took place, it was also possible that army rank might mean nothing, and it was also possible that von Schraeder might not have so many fine friends in high places. Then on that lovely day we shall see, my fine-feathered young colonel. We shall see.…

With a curse for von Schraeder and a sigh for the work that had to be done, Mittendorf bent back to his lists, trying to correlate the impossible numbers. People, including superiors who should have known better considering their own experience, seemed to have no idea of the difficulty of killing huge numbers of prisoners and getting rid of the bodies. On paper it looked simple; a bullet in the nape of the neck or the spray of a machine gun or a whiff of gas; but that was just the beginning. You couldn’t leave the dead bodies lying around like cordwood, spreading disease and stinking up the place; you had to get rid of them. Once he had been permitted to bury them, but now his orders were to destroy them completely, although nobody bothered to tell him exactly how this was to be accomplished.

It was true, he had grudgingly to admit, that when that Junker prick von Schraeder had originally been assigned to Maidanek, the intention had been to make the camp a labor source for the industrial complex that was to be built there; it was also true that when, in May of 1942, the decision had been made not to build the industrial portion but to turn the camp into a vernichtungslager—an extermination camp—von Schraeder had not hesitated a moment. The colonel seemed to enjoy mass killing, the cold-blooded bastard! At any rate, he certainly enjoyed resolving the technical problems involved in mass killing. It was von Schraeder who had dismantled the original crematory and built the new one at the extreme rear of the camp so that those newcomers entering were not immediately aware of the end purpose of the place. It had been von Schraeder who had insisted upon the victims entering the shower area actually getting a shower before being herded into the concrete pens in the next room to be gassed. At other camps the shower heads were false; not at Maidanek. It meant far less trouble, more docility on the part of the prisoners on their way to death.

And it was von Schraeder, to give the devil his due, who had stopped the use of carbon monoxide copied from Treblinka and substituted it with the far quicker Zyclon B, working with the chemists and technicians of Tesch & Stabinow of Hamburg, and the engineers of Degesch of Dessau, the two German firms that had acquired the patent for the crystals from I. G. Farben, in order to determine the optimum quantity needed to get the job done without undue waste. And von Schraeder had brought in the engineers of C. H. Kori and worked with them on the design of the new ovens to determine the proper temperature and best fuel to cremate the bodies more rapidly. Before that innovation they had been lucky to handle a thousand through the ovens in a day.

Still, what Berlin seemed to forget was that Colonel von Schraeder, Junker prick, had done all of his engineering marvels under the direction of his commandant, although one would never have suspected it from the praise the colonel got from Berlin, while the brass there acted as if Klaus Mittendorf didn’t even exist! God! If he could only expose von Schraeder for the thousand upon thousands of Deutschemarks he had sent to his secret account in Switzerland, money taken in bribes from prisoners to keep them or someone in their family alive, only to send them to the gas chamber once the last pfennig had been extracted. Or the money from the gold in the prisoners’ teeth, often taken before they were killed; or the clothing on their back—all moneys that by law should have gone to the Reich. It was a charge of that nature that had finished Koch at Buchenwald. But, unfortunately, that was one closet door better left unopened; many had gotten rich at Maidanek, von Schraeder and Mittendorf included. If he could only demonstrate the colonel’s complicity without having his own divulged—no, damn it! it would be too dangerous. But someday …

Ah, well, dwelling on the shit von Schraeder would do nothing to resolve the problem of forty thousand men, women, and children who would have to be removed one way or another before the Russians got within striking distance of the camp, not to mention doing something about the hundreds of thousands of bodies, either shot or hung, poorly buried in the various pits. What was it Eichmann had said? Ten dead are a catastrophe; ten million are a statistic. It was easy enough for Eichmann to say; he didn’t have to resolve the problem of that statistic. It wasn’t numbers Mittendorf had to get rid of; it was bodies, bodies, bodies!

Back to work.

In the area outside the command post barrack, young Colonel von Schraeder carefully tucked his travel orders into an inner pocket, tugged his uniform jacket straight, and smiled at the doctor in a fashion unusually friendly for him.

“An oaf,” he said, obviously referring to the commandant, “as well as being a fool. But then,” he added, quite as if he were voicing a common opinion, “they are all acting like fools.”

“I beg your pardon?” The doctor’s mind was on something else.

“Don’t you agree, my friend, that it’s rather stupid to use boxcars to haul Jews and Poles and Gypsies and Russians back and forth all over Asia and Europe, when our troops need the cars for transporting ammunition and food and clothing and the million and other things an army needs to fight?” He shook his head half humorously. “I swear that future military historians simply will not believe it!”

“Yes,” said Schlossberg, who hadn’t heard a word. “Colonel—”

“You know,” the colonel said reminiscently as if Schlossberg had not spoken, “when I joined the SS it was an elite organization. It had high standards—” He started to stroll in the direction of his villa; the doctor, not wishing to be impolite, was forced to walk with him. “It was limited to men from fine families, and there were many qualifications, physical qualifications, educational qualifications. Nowadays—well, look at Mittendorf as an example! We’ve let the bars down completely. A Brown Shirt bully-boy! He’s short, fat, he looks like a pig and he has that animal’s mentality, not to mention its manners. If he managed to get through the first form in school I should by very surprised, and God knows where he comes from. A navvy’s son, by the looks of him.”

“Yes, sir,” said Schlossberg, who had been waiting impatiently to get a word in. “Colonel—”

“Ah, Franz! That is your name, is it not? You must call me Helmut. We are friends, nicht wahr? And destined to become much closer friends, I’m sure.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel. I mean, Helmut.” The doctor hesitated, his hand automatically coming up to pat and then rub his bald head. “Could I ask you a question, sir? Helmut?”

“Of course.”

“Did you—I mean, were you responsible for my transfer? The way Commandant Mittendorf spoke—”

They were passing the barracks of the women guards at the northeast corner of Field I; there was the sound of giggling from the second floor of the building. As they walked the colonel screwed a cigarette into his holder, held his lighter to it, and inhaled deeply. In the growing dusk the cigarette end glowed and ebbed.

“Colonel—”

“Helmut,” said the colonel, and smiled. “Look, Doctor. Franz. We have a very long and very tiresome drive ahead of us tomorrow if we are to make Weimar and the Buchenwald camp in one day. We’ll have more than ample time to speak of anything you wish in the car. It will be diverting.”

“But—” Schlossberg floundered. “I was simply wondering why—”

Von Schraeder raised an eyebrow as he looked at the thin medical officer. For the first time he seemed slightly disappointed with his new-found friend.

“Why? Why what? Have you any objections to being transferred?”

“Oh, no! No, no! I was simply wondering—”

“We’ll talk of it tomorrow,” von Schraeder said firmly. “It’s too nice an evening to discuss Mittendorf or other unpleasant subjects. Come over to the house and have a drink.”

“I really can’t, Colonel.”

“Helmut,” von Schraeder said patiently. “Why not?”

“I really don’t have the time. I’ve got to pack, and I have to turn all my work and notes over to Zellerbach, my assistant, and—oh, there are a hundred things to do.”

Von Schraeder looked at the doctor this time in genuine surprise.

“Do you mean it? Do you honestly and truly mean it? Franz, Franz! The Russians are within days of this place, a few weeks at the most. Do you really think it makes the slightest difference if you turn your work over to whoever-he-is, or if you don’t?”

“But Zellerbach will have to handle the problem of the prisoners we’ve been experimenting with,” Schlossberg said sincerely, truly wishing the colonel—Helmut, his new-found friend—to understand. “You heard the orders; they came from Berlin, not from the commandant. Zellerbach wasn’t at the meeting. He’ll have to be told they want all evidence of what we’ve been doing here destroyed.”

Von Schraeder snorted.

“So you can tell what’s-his-name that in two minutes. Come along and have that drink. There is no chance that Mittendorf, our brilliant commandant, will have the time—or the ability to use it—to dynamite the gas chambers and the ovens, let alone spread them over his cabbage fields and hide them. Grass, for heaven’s sake! The man’s a maniac. It’s a dream at best, don’t you see?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“And I wish you would get over that habit of saying ‘I beg your pardon’ all the time,” von Schraeder said testily. Despite his best intention of being charming, the doctor was beginning to grate. “It’s most annoying. We’ll have to talk about that in the car tomorrow, as well.”

“But I mean—a dream …?”

“A fantasy,” von Schraeder said firmly. His tone was that of a teacher trying his best to drive a lesson through the head of an exceptionally obtuse student. He took Schlossberg by the arm, as if taking him into his confidence. “For one reason, how can we possibly hide what we have been doing here? Everyone in Lublin knows what we have been doing here; anyone with a nose has been able to smell it for years. People from the town write in to the camp asking for clothes from the victims; they want the best pick of everything before we ship it to the central warehouse in town. One woman, bless her, even wrote in asking for a baby carriage; she said she preferred a new one if we could let her have it. At least she was considerate enough not to specify color.” He looked at the doctor. “It’s true, you know.”

“I believe you, but—”

“But what?” Von Schraeder did not wait for an answer. “Is our genius of a commandant going to cap the total destruction of the Maidanek camp by dynamiting the entire city of Lublin as well? Assuming Müeller can find the dynamite? Is he going to order the bulldozing over of a whole city? Does he intend to plant his precious grass on what is left of Lublin Castle afterward, and plant sod on the rubble of Radziwell Palace? And what about the million pairs of shoes in the central warehouse? Is he going to cover them with his grass seed and hope the Russians will think the shoelaces are plant shoots? It’s ridiculous!”

“Still—” Having said that, the doctor had nothing more to say. He marched along, studying the ground beneath his feet.

“Besides,” von Shraeder added, not particularly touched by the look of woe on the doctor’s face, but feeling the man needed a little encouragement none the less, “when and if an exact description of what we have been doing here is given to the world, very few will believe it. Very few. Atrocity stories are old. They wouldn’t believe it coming from Catholic nuns, let alone from the mouths of Russians.”

Of course the very few would probably include the justices at any war-crimes trials, but von Schraeder saw no need to mention this to the doctor, at least not at this time. This was one further point for discussion in the car the next day, and had been planned, almost orchestrated, for that period. He paused to eject his cigarette stub from the holder, blew through the holder to clear it of remaining smoke, and tucked it into his pocket. Above them the floodlights suddenly blazed into light from the trapezoidal watchtowers set about the six fields, bathing the area in cold unnatural light, wiping the sight of Lublin’s silhouetted skyline from the night. Von Schraeder sighed.

“But enough of these topics. Let’s get that drink. Besides, you’ve had your eye on that girl Sarah ever since I picked her out of the last shipment and brought her home. I have a feeling you’d be willing to postpone your packing for an hour or so if you could take her to bed.”

“I? My eye on her? Never!” The doctor did his best to sound shocked at the suggestion. “I don’t even know her—”

“The girl you examined for venereal disease,” von Schraeder said gently. “The last one, less than ten days ago. I was there when you examined her, remember? I saw the look on your face. And the bulge in your pants.”

“Oh, her,” Schlossberg said, his face reddening. “She’s Jewish—”

“True,” von Schraeder said dryly, “and the vodka we’ll be drinking is Russian, and the slivovitz will be Polish, and that never stopped us from enjoying them, did it?” He smiled at the doctor. “If it eases your conscience, she isn’t circumcised. I’ve looked.”

They were almost by Field I by this time, approaching the baths and the gas pens. The flower beds surrounding the baths and the gas chambers gave a heady perfume to the night; water splashed from the fountain in front of the death house the prisoners had built under orders. Within the angled barbed wire of Field I prisoners stood or wandered about aimlessly. Those at the wire, staring hopelessly out, turned quickly at sight of the trim colonel and his awkward-looking companion; Colonel von Schraeder had been known to select men for the gas chamber merely because he had not cared for the way they looked at him. But tonight they were safe; the colonel’s thoughts were on the girl in his villa, and particularly on the doctor’s reaction to her.

Schlossberg wet his thin lips and tried to sound noncommittal, as if he were merely making male conversation.

“What’s she like?”

“You obviously mean in bed.” Von Schraeder gave him a lewd wink. “She’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced! She comes to bed like a statue, resolved each time to lie there like a broomstick and not give me the slightest satisfaction. Everything about her is limp. I take her hand and put it between my legs and she makes no attempt to either resist or comply; she just lets her hand rest where I put it, neither holding me nor squeezing me, and for some reason this excites me more than if she were all over me with her hands or her mouth. She simply lies there, those marvelous breasts of hers as soft as pillows, and when I touch them and rub the nipples gently, and then run my tongue around them and find the nipples with my lips, they get hard as rocks, swelled out like grapes. I know she hates herself for not being able to control them. And when I slide my hand gently over her belly and run it down her legs, I do it very gently—not like that bull Mittendorf coupling with one of his cows down at the brothel.”

He glanced across at the doctor. Schlossberg was breathing more rapidly, his eyes slightly glazed, his mouth a bit open. Von Schraeder bit back a smile and went on.

“She’s quite hairy between her legs, you know, and I like that. It’s not the wire you find on some women; it’s soft, like thick moss. When I part the lips and start to stroke her there, I barely touch her. I just barely run the tip of my finger over her little button and she shivers and starts to breathe faster, and then she begins to cry, as silently as she can, and I know she hates herself more and more—more, I think, than she hates me. And she hates me, believe it! But she can’t help herself; she gets wetter and wetter and she twitches every time my fingertip slides up and down her slit. It’s like rubbing your finger in jelly. And when at last I finally get on top of her and go into her, it’s like being dipped into a pot of hot honey. She does her best to lie still but she can’t help responding, and before we’re done she’s panting like a mare in heat, using every muscle she has to suck me deeper and deeper inside of her. And when we finally explode together—because she can’t help exploding any more than I can—she lies there, still pulsing inside, and bites her lips until they bleed.” He looked over at the doctor. “You’ll find her everything you’ve dreamed about, Franz, I’m sure.”

Schlossberg wet his lips and tried to act as if the picture of the girl writhing sensuously beneath him in bed was not all that was on his mind at the moment.

“And what will happen to her after tomorrow, when you leave?”

Von Schraeder shrugged.

“What difference does it make? As you said, she’s a Jew. Maybe Mittendorf will take her, just because he thinks it will get back at me somehow—although I have a feeling he’ll be a little busy these next few days to spend much time worrying about women. Or he may send her to the ovens, just because I enjoyed her. Or, if she’s lucky, she still may be alive when the Russians get here.”