Eleos, p.36
Eleos, page 36
“It’s hard to imagine a greater wrong. There was no law in Belzec.”
“Precisely. That’s why it happened.”
“There are other laws, Fritz.”
“What are you saying?”
“Forty-three years ago, a man named Soghomon Tehlirian executed Talat Pasha, the former Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, one of the architects of the Armenian genocide. And the German jury acquitted him. These German jurors had no legal training, but they knew a hell of a lot more about justice than the judges in the Belzec trials. Or the Chelmno or Ulm trials.”
“I won’t hear of that, David. Extra-judicial vengeance is not the way. These prosecutors, they are good people. They risked their careers for these trials. Most of the German population opposes any further Nazi trials. They believe it damages our reputation abroad, wastes money, it’s time to finally be done with all this.”
“Do you understand how sad this is? Prosecutors must risk their careers to try murderers, and nobody wants them to succeed.”
“People are uncertain about how they might have behaved in Belzec and Auschwitz. David, it’s not only about the punishment. Two years ago, nobody knew about Auschwitz. Now, everyone does. They may not like it, but at least they know. We may yet succeed with the Auschwitz trial.”
“Why would I believe that? Your justice system already failed with Belzec and Chelmno. It’s almost amusing how you pray on the altar of the law. Must be a German thing. In 1933, you passed the Enabling Law, which permitted Hitler to ignore the law. The law as a shield for amorality. There were hundreds of thousands in the SS alone. Over nine million in the Nazi party. How many can you possibly try?”
“Don’t you understand that I want to put them all away for life?” the usually calm Fritz shouted. “I want to strangle Laternser with my own hands, but we must let him do his job. The truth is coming out.”
“You want truth, but no justice?”
“We put some of the defendants away. Even if it’s only for seven or ten years.”
“And they’ll be out for good behavior in three or four. Oh, Fritz, there is justice and then there is Justice with a capital ‘J’. Fritz, Fritz … besides a few dozen defendants that will likely get away with a slap on the wrist, there are much bigger criminals that not only eluded justice but now enjoy high positions in the country. I’ve met with a few of them recently and found no remorse.”
Erika started to cry.
“What’s the matter?” I put my arm around her.
“We came here to remember Kurt Gerstein. A man with a conscience. Instead, we argue about murderers.”
I felt bad afterwards. Fritz was one of the good guys. There were just too few of them here.
I didn’t tell Fritz the real reason for my outburst. Earlier that week, in the Frankfurt courtroom, I was studying a photo from the Auschwitz album that was submitted as a part of the evidence. A picture of a young girl in a beret, waiting in the woods near the gas chambers. She was looking at the photographer with a questioning innocence: “Why are you taking my picture?” I may have seen her. The summer of ‘44. I couldn’t be sure because we were “processing” thousands daily. But it kept coming back to me: a little girl under a pile of bodies, the ones that rushed to the door in their mortal terror. Her small naked body twisted, with feet pointing down but wide-open brown eyes staring at the ceiling. I froze for a moment and received a blow from our foreman. “Hurry up!” Perhaps it was her. Logically, I knew it was unlikely: thousands of girls her age had been gassed or shot or worse in Auschwitz that summer. And yet, I kept thinking it was her in the picture.
Who was that girl? Nobody at the trial spoke for her. The defendants were only being tried for exceeding their orders. Her murder was not really a crime in this courtroom. What would they have said if she was a German girl? What kind of justice would they have demanded? Would defense attorneys argue that no one was responsible for her death? Would church fathers tell them to love and forgive the perpetrators? No, I imagine there would be torches and pitchforks. If I were the accused, would I even make it to a trial? Or would I be lynched like dozens of others during the Kristallnaght? That was still well before Auschwitz, before the war, when the vaunted German law that was being upheld here was still very much in force.
I thought of the girl as Leah. My sister’s name. Someone—perhaps Hans Stark sitting but a fifty-feet from me—poured in Zyklon-B crystals that killed her. Forget the past? Why was I being asked to put it all behind, while that man was walking amongst us? Or Ezra’s daughter Lia. Was it Wilhelm Boger who put a bullet into her brain? He was laughing now, amused by the latest testimony.
I did something unthinkable: I secretly took documents from the museum and gave them to the East Germans. Documents that implicated some of the senior government and industry officials. I wanted show trials, like the one that they put Hans Globke on. I wanted to embarrass the government into at least firing these people. But I found out that the information I gave would be used for blackmail, not justice.
The people that killed that girl must be held fully accountable. This court wouldn’t do that. As Fritz Jager explained to me, it’s so vitally important for the German people to “get back” to the rule of the law. But nobody speaks for the little girl. I know that my friend Fritz is right about the limits of the law. But I know I’m right too. The law failed her. She’s a non-person in this courtroom. She’s being murdered again, written out of humanity. How do you burn hearts with words, when words can be twisted into anything? There is a lawyer in this courtroom that says that the act of “selection” was an act of mercy. What good are words?
10
I had to make sure it was him. One does not want to make a mistake in such matters. It was my eighth trip to the town that Anton pointed me to. I was doing my Jaffa oranges pitch in a local supermarket, when I heard people speaking German. I turned around just in time to get a good look at three men in their fifties, laughing at some joke. The one nearest to me had a slightly hooked, bird-of-prey nose, similar to what Rolff’s was in the photo. The men disappeared down one of the aisles.
I turned back to the manager and interrupted him with, “Estoy de acuerdo. I agree.”
The manager looked at me in surprise and slight disappointment. I robbed him of the excitement of haggling. But he couldn’t pass up the deal. “Muy bien!”
I told him I’d be back with the contract and left abruptly. For a moment I was terrified that I lost them, but then I heard German speech again. They were in the wine section, trying to choose between Garnacha and Rioja. I hung around within a listening distance, then shadowed them into the parking where they got into a late-model Mercedes and drove off. My rented Barreiros Dart took its time to start, but I managed to catch up with them, through a roundabout and down to the beach. The Mercedes stopped by a seafood restaurant, where they got out. I looked at Rolff’s pictures one more time and went into the restaurant. The men were at one of the beach-fronting tables, the bottle already uncorked. I could not get close enough to hear what they were saying, so I sat in the back where I could see them. The more I looked, the more I was convinced that one of them was indeed Erich Rolff. After lunch, I discreetly followed them about ten kilometers north, to a residential area. They all lived on the same small, palm tree-lined street, a few short steps from the beach.
I extended my stay in the area by three days. The next morning, I had returned to the supermarket with a contract and invited the manager to have a dinner that night to celebrate. Then I found a real estate agency and pretended to be a well-to-do West German salesman looking for a vacation place near the beach, preferably where I would have some German compatriots. Between the manager, whose tongue was loosened by strong Spanish wine, and the enthusiastic real estate agent, I found out that a little German colony there began in the late 1940s and grew in the 1950s. Amongst others, a man called Ernst Wolen came in 1952. His wife, Sylvia, joined him two years later. I knew that Rolff’s wife, Gretel, left Germany in 1954. I had her photo as well. The agent told me about wonderful parties that took place in the tightly knit community. “What a great place it is to be a German!” he said.
I purchased swimming trunks and each day I went to the beach. On the third day, they showed up, with beach chairs and towels. A tall, lanky man who looked to be in his late fifties and his short, plump wife, early fifties. Ernst and Sylvia Wolen. Also, Erich and Gretel Rolff. There was no doubt at that point.
11
It’s been four months since I touched this notebook. A friend died in April, and there was no point in writing. But it was a part of my nature to strive for a proper logical conclusion, and for that sake I had to make one last entry. I waited for the verdict in the trial, and the verdict was in. I don’t know why I hoped for anything different than in the Belzec trial, or the Chelmno trial, or so many of those judicial farces they’d been staging. But my verdict was in too. I’d been thinking of them all: the righteous, the collaborators, the murderers.
In the Bible, God was willing to spare Sodom if ten righteous people could be found there. How low are our expectations for righteousness! When Grüber testified in Jerusalem, there was a headline about one righteous man redeeming a nation. It’s not possible. Like guilt, the righteousness is individual, not collective. The righteous are not there to redeem or assuage our sins. Many of them perished in anonymity, and the ones that survived are, more often than not, still ostracized by their countrymen. We don’t like those that made us look bad by their courage, or by even a simple refusal to conform. They are to be celebrated for what they are, for knowing in their hearts that a murder is a murder, even if sanctioned by the authority. For them, we must be eternally grateful. They deserve to be honored, but let’s not think of them as our redeemers. The only redemption there is, must be our own.
The collaborators, and those that stood by, are a painful topic for me. When Aram asked me to write, I was tempted to begin with the 1954 trial of Rudolf Kasztner for collaborating with the Nazis in Hungary. Did he “sell his soul to the devil” as Judge Halevi found? What to do about those that saved a few and betrayed others? To some, Kasztner is a hero for saving sixteen hundred people. To others, he is a villain for not warning thousands of others. I think he was neither, for he was in an impossible situation. He probably thought that he could outsmart Eichmann and find a “lesser evil” alternative.
But the “lesser evil” road is often a very slippery one. Much more important personas than Kasztner failed at playing diplomacy with the devil. Such as Pope Pius XII, who knew and yet spoke nothing but generalities. Do I point an accusatory finger at the US War Department for refusing to bomb Auschwitz? Had they done so in July of 1944, perhaps one or two hundred thousand living beings could have been saved. Or do I point it at Lord Moyne, the British High Commissioner in Egypt: after receiving a message that the Nazis might be willing to spare the Hungarian Jews in return for supplies, he replied: "What shall I do with those million Jews? Where shall I put them?" Perhaps he was not too adverse to the 'final solution' as long as the Germans did the work.
We can’t equate them with deliberate malevolence, but we can pass a judgment on indifference, selfishness, even heartlessness—what happened would not have been possible if not for them. There are shades of darkness here. And that’s the twilight that I dwell in: for the people I escorted to Auschwitz’s gas chambers there was no escape, their fates had been sealed the moment that the doors of cattle cars closed behind them. But I know it’s a self-serving argument.
At last, I get to the murderers. In the final analysis, I must admit that these people are beyond my comprehension. There was no giant impersonal machine. There were individuals that chose—not on the pain of death—to murder. They can’t be judged by a court based on morality, because they are beyond it. The only way to judge these people is to invoke an absolute and universal moral standard: that rights to life and liberty are not negotiable, and the consequences of our actions can’t be left to God or a supreme leader but belong to us personally. We must insist on individual responsibility, that’s why we’ve been given free will. I owed it to my brothers and sisters, whose ashes remained in Poland, to tell the truth, to bear witness. But with all the witnesses, the little girl’s murder was not a crime in the Frankfurt’s courtroom. Like millions of others, she’s been forgotten, erased, blotted out of memory – but not by me. Justice for her requires another judgment—which I’m now willing to pass. Sometimes retribution is the only way to serve justice, in hope that it will deter others.
For years, I wondered whether my survival on that October day was an accident. And it was, but not in the way I imagined. Ezra’s life was about protecting Lia. Unable to save her, he saved me. And so my body—tissue and bones and blood—is here. But I, David Levy, I’m not here. Too many voices inside of me, too many memories. I didn’t really go to see Schawik that morning of October 7, 1944. I went to work in the crematorium as usual, and someone grabbed a Nazi guard and threw him into the burning furnace, and Ezra and I hammered another furnace until the bricks came loose inside, and then we ran out into the hail of machine gun fire. That’s how it was supposed to end. But I was allowed to—forced to—go on a bit longer. There is nothing like the despair of the Lager, of the inability to change anything. And ultimately dying for naught.
But I’ve been given the privilege of fighting back. Even if it’s a small measure compared to what’s been lost, it’s not nothing.
My family returned. I saw them: my mother cooking dinner; my father looking through his papers, books-books-books all over the place; Leah practicing her violin, swaying with the music. Mendelsohn’s violin concerto was her favorite. When the haunting melody of the first movement would begin to flow from under her bow, we would all stop whatever we were doing and let the music take us. Afterwards, she would let me touch the violin and I gently traced my index finger along the exquisite curves. Ever since, I thought the violin’s shape to be the most graceful, the most beautiful. I had no gift to extract the music from its slender body; to me it was magic. Leah had to stop playing Mendelssohn after the Reichsmusikkammer declared it to be a degenerate Jewish music. My poor sister couldn’t understand why cultured German people would do something like that. She didn’t know how much higher the wall of hatred and cruelty would rise. She didn’t know what a powerful, evil, metaphysical force our little family represented to them.
Once they came back—my family—they did so with disturbing frequency. My mother patiently conjugating English verbs, she was the one with the true genius for languages. My father discussing Socrates with me. “Always ask questions; the really important thing is not to live, but to live honorably.” There was always a touch of sadness within him, like a premonition that he carried inside. Perhaps that’s why he was one of the few to not despair when the cattle car’s door closed. Instead, throughout the whole miserable journey he told us stories.
What did they think about in their last moments? After being forced to undress and go in naked —did they know that it was the end, or did they believe the deception about a warm shower and a hot coffee waiting? Were they together? I’m sure they were. Holding on to each other as the poison gas rose up and there were no more lies or hopes.
I made it out, Ezra. You pushed me out of there. Right now, I’m drinking slivovka in your memory. You gave me this gift for a reason. Your daughter Lia and my sister Leah, their names were the same. In another universe, they might have been giving a concert together: Lia’s voice, Leah’s violin. What was it like for you, knowing that your daughter had to daily endure German soldiers and criminal kapos that got passes to the bordello for being sufficiently vicious? You just wanted to keep her alive, to protect your precious baby whatever it took. Kindness is compassion. Justice is also compassion. I could not save my Leah or your Lia. I can’t bring them back, just like I can’t bring back the little unnamed girl in the Auschwitz Album. But there might be another girl that I can still save. She might have been born already, a happy girl playing violin or singing or dancing or writing. Justice is compassion for future generations.
Yael, my love, you were right too—you couldn’t be my salvation. I had another purpose.
I wonder where Itzhak is now. My enemy, my brother. No, Itzhak, my life is mine, my own. And so is my revenge and freedom to choose how to leave.
My brave, strong, generous, beautiful Erika—you deserved so much better. In another life, you would have been my soulmate.
Benny—finally, I’m ready to accept that needle that I refused in Grottaferrata.
Part 9: Avi
1
The exchange took place near Sidon. As arranged, Aron Milman drove me to a checkpoint controlled by the South Lebanese Army. I walked about a hundred yards and was ushered into a large black Mercedes with tinted windows and a small red, blue and orange Armenian flag. Just a month ago I was playing volleyball in Hermosa Beach and the difference in the surroundings, with burned out cars and military vehicles on the roadside, was jarring. I kept thinking of my brother Tigran, who lived and died here. How much anger must have burned inside of him to trade peaceful and free-wheeling California for this.
The man that held the door open for me got in, and I found myself in the middle of the back seat, next to a smallish man around sixty. Whatever hair he lacked on the crown of his head, he had in abundance elsewhere. His fingers gently stroked his grey and bushy beard. He did this pretty much throughout the time I’d had with him.
