Eleos, p.14
Eleos, page 14
“I wonder what he did in the war. He looked old enough,” I said.
“Probably had some safe diplomatic job that his daddy arranged for him.” Shimon shrugged. “You could smell an aristocrat even before we walked into his office.”
“What was that about Globke?” Yosef asked.
“Hans Globke, co-author of the Nuremberg Laws and chief legal advisor in the Office for Jewish Affairs in the Ministry of Interior, the section headed by Adolf Eichmann. Now the national security advisor to the esteemed Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.”
Yosef suddenly started laughing. We looked at him in puzzlement.
“It’s just … this von Eckner guy looked so perfectly Aryan.”
“So what?”
“When I think of the Nazi leadership”—he broke down laughing again—“they are like the least likely example of that Aryan stock they worshipped. Hitler with his bizarre gestures looked like a bad copy of Charlie Chaplin. Short and club-footed Goebbels. Fat Goering. Rodent-looking failed chicken farmer Himmler in charge of racial purity. You look back and think—how did this band of nobodies unleash so much evil?”
“He called you Dr. Bezor?” I emphasized Doctor.
Shimon waved me off. “Yeah, I have a degree in psychiatry from the Hebrew University. Not practicing much right now. A few years ago, I was asked to help with medical claims.”
“Is that what he referred to by a ‘profitable arrangement’?” I tried again.
Shimon replied non-committedly, “In 1953, West Germany passed indemnification laws permitting survivors of the Nazi persecution to claim compensation for medical damages. They established special offices to review claims. Entschädigungsämter. Breaks your tongue, doesn’t it? Anyway, some of my German colleagues don’t believe that the Nazi death camps left any psychiatric damage behind. David, can I ask you something?”
“Would it matter if I say no?”
Shimon laughed.
“You seem to be well-adjusted, but would you say that your time in Auschwitz had a long-term effect?”
I closed my eyes. I was there, stoking the ovens of hell.
“You’re the psychiatrist. What do you think?”
Shimon suddenly slammed the steering wheel, causing the car to swerve yet again.
“I think it’s bullshit! I was not there, but I’ve had enough survivors as clients to know about their nightmares and fears.”
I stared out the window, not answering. Heavy silence enveloped us. Lack of sleep caught up with me and I dozed off.
“David! Hey, David! Are you with us?”
I shook my head to return to the present.
“We are in Frankfurt,” Shimon announced.
We turned east off the autobahn, crossed the Main River, fought our way through the industrial artery of Mainzer Landstraße with its factories and office buildings, and drove into the maze of smaller streets of Gallus. I was here once with my father, in a different life millions of years ago.
4
Gerhardt Shrumpf’s office was on the second floor of a rare older building that survived the bombings. Most structures around it had a distinctly newer, modern architecture. Shimon knocked and walked in without waiting for an answer. Shrumpf was in his late forties or early fifties, slight and short, dark hair with strands of gray, protruding ears and hooded eyes. A dark blue tweed suit and a white shirt with a necktie completed the picture. He looked like a hobbit from Tolkien’s novel that I’d finished a few months earlier.
He awkwardly introduced himself as, “Gerhardt, Kripo on Alex.” Seeing confusion on Yosef’s face, he added, “Alex—that’s what we called the place where I worked. Criminal police headquarters on Alexanderplatz in Berlin. Kripo on Alex for short.”
Ever impatient, Shimon interrupted, “Let’s do it quickly, it’s almost five and the three of us have an early drive to Ludwigsburg.”
“What do you mean ‘three of us’?” Gerhardt protested. “You’re not leaving me behind. I’ve met people from ZS before. Besides, as I will explain, you will need me. What time do you have to be in Ludwigsburg?”
“Eleven.”
“We can leave at nine tomorrow morning. The three of you can stay in my apartment, it’s only ten minutes from here. I can sleep on the office couch.”
“Thank you, not necessary.” Shimon waved him off. “We have a place. Now, give us what you’ve got.”
“All right. I always look for bad in people. For a change, I am looking for someone because he did something good. It’s a bit of a treat. Yosef—you are the one who was saved by the man we are looking for, right?”
Yosef nodded.
“And what is your role if I may ask?” Gerhardt turned to me.
“I am a researcher at Yad Vashem and a liaison to ZS. Yosef came to me with the story.”
Gerhardt’s face changed. “Shimon told me. You are the one from Auschwitz.”
He walked to the cabinet on the side wall and got out a bottle of schnapps and four small glasses. He limped rather badly.
After pouring schnapps, Gerhardt said, “I joined the police as Assistant Kriminal Kommissar in 1938. When they placed detectives under the control of the SS, every detective automatically became a member of the SS. I became a second lieutenant, SS-Untersturmführer. In 1942 I was promoted to Kriminal Kommissar, which made me SS-Obersturmführer.”
“Many detectives were sent to the occupied areas in the East,” I said.
“Not me. I had been blessed: shot in the leg in 1941 while pursuing a criminal. I stayed in Berlin and worked on criminal cases until April 20th of 1945, our beloved Führer’s birthday. The Red Army celebrated with massive shelling of the city. I am afraid I abandoned my post while there was still an escape route to the south, and made my way to Baden-Wurttemberg, where I’ve been properly de-nazified by the French. I wanted to tell you this.” Gerhardt emptied his glass.
“So we don’t think you killed Jews? You consider yourself innocent?”
“No.” Gerhardt shook his head slowly. “I don’t.”
I liked him. I don’t know why - I absolutely intended to hate his SS guts - but I liked him. There was something gentle and exposed about Gerhardt Shrumpf.
Shimon’s patience ran out. “Look, for the second time—let’s get to work!”
“OK, OK.” Gerhardt raised his hands palms up. He walked back to the same safe and got out a file. “Here’s how I understood the task. There was a German officer that saved Yosef from a mass shooting in Rostov-on-Don in August of 1942. He was named Arno. Also called Prinz, but that’s a nickname. In the process of saving Yosef, the officer killed a German soldier. He had a connection in Turkey and possibly a well-known uncle. Yosef made it to Palestine, but the officer disappeared before crossing the border. Is that a fair summary?”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“Very well.” Gerhardt opened the file. “Please understand that, despite our German talent for documentation, it’s not possible to assemble complete information. Many of the files were lost during the bombings. Many are in Allied or Russian hands and not available, at least not to me. Sixteen years after the war, we still have hundreds of thousands unaccounted for. And finding people in West Germany is not easy. We have no central population register. Each of our citizens must, by law, notify the local registry of his or her address. But if someone doesn’t want to be found, they just don’t do it. That’s why it’s important to have access to organizations that keep files on … how shall I put it? … the types of people that you are looking for.”
“OK, Gerhardt, stop covering your ass.”
“I like my ass. That’s why I cover it,” Gerhardt retorted. “This is the list of German military units that likely were in the area on those days. Just from the SS side: Einsatzgruppen D is the prime suspect in the Zmievskaya Balka shooting, but other SS and non-SS units could have taken part. Fifth SS Wiking Division, the one where Josef Mengele served before Auschwitz, was in the area. So were 1 SS Infantry Brigade and 2 SS Infantry Brigade. And non-SS was often drafted into Aktions.”
“Voluntarily, of course.”
“Sadly, there was no shortage of volunteers.” Gerhardt nodded. “Ideally, I would have found an SS officer that was declared missing around mid-August. But no such luck. Instead, I have a list of dozens of people that met some but not all of the criteria. In a few cases, I found pictures which I copied using my camera. Yosef, would you mind taking a look at them?”
Yosef studied a half-dozen pictures laid in front of him.
“No, none of these people.”
Gerhardt crossed out names from one of the lists.
“Too bad, the only Arnos I found were amongst those. That leaves … let’s see … fourteen possible candidates ….”
“Any of them had a powerful uncle?”
“Not as far as I can tell. None of the last names seem to be that of powerful Nazi families.”
“What’s next?”
“I have another list: people that might be able to help. Like Dr. Hans Vogel, SS Obersturmbannführer, officer of Einsatzkommando that operated in Rostov. And more veterans, relatives, and so on. Prinz is an unusual nickname. Someone might remember. Addresses are hard to get. People changed their names, they don’t want to be found. The ZS lawyers in Ludwigsburg should be able to help. They have files, access to Allied’s records.”
“Have you done a lot of work with the ZS?”
“Yes, but I don’t advertise it. It’d cost me my job like it did my friend Otto Busse.”
“Otto Busse?” It was my turn to be surprised. “I’ve met him in Israel. We helped him to re-unite with some of his friends.”
“Yes, during the war Otto saved a number of Jews. He lives not far from here, in Darmstadt. When his story was published earlier this year, he was denounced as a traitor and Jew-lover. Things got so bad, he had to quit his job. I heard he plans to leave the country.”
“Are you taking risks by working with us?”
“It’s not 1941, they won’t throw me into a camp. But this won’t make me popular.”
Shimon got up. “Put all the names you want in one list, so we don’t deal with multiple papers. Did you finish the other reports that I asked for?”
Gerhardt produced two thin files from the safe. Shimon looked through them without showing us, then nodded. “Good. We’ll pick you up tomorrow at nine.”
We went down a wooden staircase into a beer garden. The place was dark and smoky, smelling of sweat and beer. Laughter, drunken talk. I hadn’t been in Germany, surrounded by Germans, in many years. The ones I remembered carried guns and barked out curt commands. Here, they were waiters, construction workers, salesgirls, clerks, doctors. Dressed in civilian clothes, discussing soccer matches. I imagined them in black uniforms, with black German shepherds. Which one was going to call the police about me? I brushed the picture aside.
Shimon tried to explain to Yosef regional differences between a wiener schnitzel and a pork schnitzel, when a man at the next table asked, “Excuse me, where are you from?”
“Israel.”
“Oh.” The man raised his beer mug. “Prost! We have no grudge against you people.”
“Why would you have a grudge against us?” Shimon snarled.
“Well, it was a war. All the Jews were against us Germans. You won. We are paying reparations.”
The man looked very sincere and rather confused over our hostility. We won? One more such victory and there will be none of us left in the world.
“My family is gone. How are you going to make reparations for that?” Shimon replied.
The man shrugged and turned away. He was tipsy.
Shimon shook his head. “They claim collective innocence.”
After dinner, Shimon drove us to a place a few blocks away. It was another sparsely furnished two-bedroom apartment. Drapes were drawn, and we did not immediately notice that two Israelis were there, a man and a woman. Shimon was not happy to see them and barked in Hebrew, “I thought you were out doing interviews.” Then he introduced them: “Nahum and Esther. They help me with compensation claims.” The couple didn’t say much and quietly left.
Yosef whispered to me, “Shimon seems to be very well connected. All these places.”
“Feels too good to be true.” I agreed. Something was off: this place, these people, Gerhardt’s discomfort. I attributed the last to him being a Nazi amongst three Jews.
“Well, I am grateful for anything that makes this trip cheaper.”
Yosef and I each took a bedroom; Shimon insisted on staying on the couch in the living room.
During the night, Nahum and Esther returned. I overheard a discussion in Hebrew. They were whispering, so I only got a few words: “Syria, Egypt, rockets.”
Then I dreamt of Yael again.
In the morning, Gerhardt admired Shimon’s Mercedes.
“Is this new? Very nice. And the back seat looks comfortable, the car can easily accommodate five people.”
“Or a hundred and five Jews,” Shimon said with a straight face. “Two in the front, three in the back, a hundred in the ashtray.”
Gerhardt turned red. “Shimon, this is not necessary.”
“Overheard at a party.” Shimon shrugged. “I think it’s funny. Come, Gerhardt, sit in front with me.”
As we pulled onto a giant eight-lane Bundesautobahn 5 in the morning, Gerhard announced,
“Welcome to the Führer's Autobahn!"
“What do you mean?”
“Construction for this section was started in 1933 by our then-beloved leader. Nazis called it ‘Germany's first Autobahn’. Inconveniently, there was already a public autobahn between Cologne and Bonn. So, the Nazis downgraded it to a state highway. Anything for good propaganda.”
“Politicians all over the world are like that,” Shimon said. “Gerhard, can I ask you a theoretical question?”
“Of course.”
“What if you were not shot in the leg in 1941? What if they sent you to Russia to run Gestapo services in Kiev or Minsk, like some of your police colleagues? Ordered you to round up and shoot Jews? What would you have done?”
It was a warm day, but it felt like the temperature inside the car instantly dropped by ten degrees. Gerhardt was in front with Shimon; I couldn’t see his face. But he slumped, like a heavy weight had been lowered onto his shoulders.
After a long pause, Gerhardt replied haltingly, “I would like to believe that I would have refused. Back in Berlin, I avoided any work that involved looking for Jews, I avoided roundups in 1941 and 1942. But then … you’re right, I worked with some of the people that became mass murderers during the war. I would have never suspected that they had this capacity within them. Perhaps it’s in all of us. Before 1941 was over, we’d heard about mass executions. Anybody who was not blind and deaf knew. Every day since I thanked the man who shot me.”
“Did you thank him in person?”
“No, he was killed in the same shootout.”
I tried to ask a question, but my throat constricted. We rode in silence for a few minutes until I finally squeezed it out, “Gerhardt, what if they threatened to shoot you if you didn’t comply with the order?”
Gerhardt turned around to look at me, hesitated.
“I don’t know how to answer. I don’t think any of us knows ourselves that well. But it was established in Nuremberg and afterwards that no SS member had been prosecuted or seriously punished for refusing take part in the slaughter. Not a single case was ever found.”
5
The Central Office of the Land Judicial Authorities for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes (ZS) was established in December of 1958. It was housed in a typical modern building, just like a regular example of a bureaucratic German institution. Except that people inside dealt exclusively with industrial scale mass murders. After our long drive, I had to go to the toilet. Down the stairs, into the basement. Windowless, clean, meticulously plastered walls, low white ceiling, a dead light bulb was the only sign that not everything was in perfect order. The smell of disinfectant overpowered that of urine and excrement. I knew it was only my sick imagination, but I thought I heard the gas starting to hiss from under one of the stalls. I hurried out.
Four people joined us in a small conference room. Fritz Jager, a lawyer I’d met at the Eichmann trial, was one of them. Another older lawyer introduced himself as Phil Baier. I knew about him, he was the driving force behind the ZS. The other two were women, an older stenographer that curtly stated “Greta,” and a woman in her late twenties that introduced herself as “Erika Jager, journalist with Frankfurter Post.”
“Are you?” Shimon looked from Erika to Fritz.
“Yes.” Fritz nodded. “Hope you don’t mind that my sister is here. Sometimes publicity helps us.”
Shimon tried to flirt. “You live in Frankfurt? You could have come with us.”
She nipped it in the bud. “Thank you. I took a train yesterday. I like trains.”
“And Mr. Zeug?” I was surprised he was not there.
“Unfortunately, he couldn’t join us today,” Baier said apologetically. “I’m here in his place. To be honest, we didn’t expect a whole delegation. Mr. Schrumpf, I know we involved you in some of our investigations, but it’s not appropriate to have you in this meeting. I apologize. There is a bar around the corner, if you like.”
Gerhardt and Shimon exchanged glances. Shimon shrugged and Gerhardt left.
“Here’s our report on Chelmno.” I passed a thick file to Baier.
He grabbed it eagerly, began flipping through pages, caught himself.
“Thank you, I know this will be of great benefit. And we appreciate your help with the upcoming Auschwitz trial.”
“What?” I was taken aback. “I thought this was only about Chelmno. I haven’t been briefed about the other one.”
