Holocaust (21 page)

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said we will all be killed anyway.”

“How do you know?”

“It has begun already. The Nazis are killing Jews in Russia. Not just ten or twenty or a hundred. But all of them. They are eliminating the ghettoes. There will be no more ghettoes like this or any other. Just mass graves.”

He spoke so quietly, but forcefully, that total silence descended on the meeting room.

“Just what are you saying, young man?” my father asked. “And how do you know this?”

“I am speaking of mass murder. Their policies have changed. Those ghettoes are merely gathering points.
In Russia, thousands and thousands of Jews are being systematically shot by the Germans. They mean to kill every Jew in Europe. We have reports from these communities.”

“Ridiculous. Rumors.” Dr. Kohn leaned back in his chair, but he said no more.

“What is your name, young man?” asked my father.

“Anelevitz. Mordechai Anelevitz. I am a Zionist. But it doesn’t matter who we are, or what we are, rich or poor, young or old, Communist, Socialist or bourgeoisie. They will kill us all.”

“Who let this man in?” was all Dr. Kohn could say in response to the challenge from the man in the cap.

“I tell this council, all of you, we should not be smuggling food alone, but also guns and grenades.”

This, from a plain workman in a dingy suit, enraged Dr. Kohn. “Silence!” he shouted. “I don’t know who you are, but you are a fool to speak that way. Such talk will guarantee our deaths.”

My Uncle Moses was at the meeting, along with my father. He appealed to Kohn to let Anelevitz have his say.

“Not another word!” Kohn cried. “I can see this city of half-starved, disease-ridden Jews, suddenly taking on the German army. Anelevitz, the Germans cleaned up all of Poland in twenty days. They are rolling through Russia right now, annihilating Stalin’s best divisions. And we are the people who are to resist such power?”

“We must.”

Kohn tried a different tack. “Young man, I know all about you Zionist militants and your secret meetings. You are dreamers. Fighting is not the Jewish way. We have survived over the millennia by accommodating. Give a little here, submit a little, strike a bargain. Find an ally, a friend, perhaps some prince, some cardinal, some politician—”

Anelevitz said, “You are not dealing with cardinals or politicians. The Nazis are mass murderers. Their primary aim in the conquest of Europe is the killing
of Jews. No matter what we do, how submissive we are, what bargains we offer them, how hard we work for them, they will kill us.”

Eva recalls that a terrible silence fell on the meeting. Few agreed with Anelevitz. He had seemingly come out of nowhere, off the street, a humble, plain-spoken man. But he had uttered thoughts that at least some of them had had themselves.

“That is quite enough,” Dr. Kohn said. “We will listen to no more. Leave.”

“If this council is too cowardly to give the order to arm and fight, then the Zionists will. We do not intend to die without a fight.”

“I said, get out,” Kohn shouted. “And watch your tongue. Don’t spread such ideas.”

“You will all die here, tipping your caps to the Germans, showing up for work details, assigning people to factories, attending classes, arguing over the Torah. You have no authority and you represent no one.”

“Throw him out!” Kohn shouted.

But no one moved. Anelevitz had cast some kind of spell over the room. He looked in appeal to the members of the council, found no visible supporters, and left—a disturbing presence.

My father and my Uncle Moses immediately got up and followed him into the dim corridor.

“I am Dr. Josef Weiss,” Papa said. “My brother Moses. We are at the hospital most of the time.”

“I know who you are,” said Anelevitz.

“I … don’t quite know what to say. We are not Zionists. We aren’t political. We’re professional people trying to make things a bit easier for the community.”

Anelevitz told them that their political beliefs, the beliefs of any Jews, were irrelevant to the Nazis. Calmly, sure of himself, he said that in the long run the Germans would kill all.

My father had never believed this. Nor had Moses. But they looked at each other with a new understanding. There was something so quietly persuasive, so
profoundly sincere in the young man’s manner, that they felt obliged to talk to him.

“May we … spend some time with you?” Papa asked.

“Of course. We need council members. We are mostly working people, students, the young.”

And so my father and my uncle were drawn into the resistance. They wondered at the time why so few had resisted. Why did most of the ghetto Jews act as if life could go on—schools, theaters, religion, jobs—when what faced them was eventual massacre? I am not sure that either he or Moses understood it then; nor am I certain I understand it now. In a strange way, with the psychological power of demons, the Germans had broken their will to live, by making them cling to life.

And in fairness, Tamar says, the record of resistance among Europeans of far greater strength and numbers was a spotty one. The absolute totality of Nazi terror, the refinements of the police state, the unhesitant use of murder, torture, deceit, deprivation, humiliation, left people without defenses. If one is to be critical of the Jews for failing to fight back as much as they should have, what about entire nations, like France, where resistance was marginal? Not an easy question to resolve.

But in any case, Papa and Uncle Moses were now committed.

Ukraine
September 1941

I am shaking. Still, I must write dispassionately, now. Try to forget; no, to understand. I too, at last, have killed.

As Heydrich’s “eyes and ears” I am now on the
outskirts of Kiev, overseeing the operation of Einsatzgruppe C, under the command of Colonel Paul Blobel.

I detest Blobel. He drinks too much and runs a slovenly operation. I wonder why Heydrich has let him advance this far. But he apparently enters his assignment with readiness to do the job, and do it quickly. It takes a special breed of German to carry out our mandate; and I imagine that Blobel, for all his failings, is of that breed.

We stopped first at an enlisted men’s barracks where some new men were being inducted. There are roughly a thousand men in each of the four “Action Commando” teams, these men recruited from the SS, the SD, the Criminal Police, and so on. We also will be using a great many Ukrainians and Lithuanians and Balts, who have no compunction about special handling of Jews.

“We also drew a lot of fuck-ups and goldbricks,” Blobel said, as we approached the barracks. Men lounged about in their undershirts—the Ukraine can be beastly hot in September—reading, writing letters, cleaning firearms. No one came to attention as Blobel and I and our party approached.

“They’re tired,” Blobel said. “And they don’t give a shit after a while. Got to keep them going with schnapps.”

A sergeant got to his feet and saluted lazily.

“It’s all right, Foltz, rest,” Blobel said.

“New men today, sir.”

“Fine, fine, give them the drill.”

I could hear Foltz welcoming one of the new men—his name was Hans Helms, and he had been in an infantry division—to Einsatzgruppe C.

“You’ll like it here,” Sergeant Foltz mocked. “No one shoots at you. Regular hours. And we divide up the loot. After the officers get theirs. Don’t look so dumb, Helms.”

“I’m a combat soldier,” Helms said. “I didn’t ask to join this shitty outfit.”

“You’ll learn to love it,” Foltz said.

The new arrival walked off to the barracks. I did not like the tone of Sergeant Foltz’s lecture and I told Blobel so. The man was mocking our mission.

“Bullshit, Dorf,” Blobel said. “What’s the difference what their attitude is, so long as they do the killing?”

“Language, Blobel. We do not refer to killings. You know the approved words.”

His fat, ruddy face stared at me. “Yeah. Your goddam special vocabulary. Special handling. Special action. Resettlement. Executive action. Autonomous Jewish communities. Transport. Removal.”

I ignored Blobel. I shouldn’t have to explain to this unsubtle and thick-headed man that the code words serve many purposes. First of all, they hide from the Jews the realities facing them. They are quite willing to tell themselves they are being “resettled,” almost more eager to believe than we are to dissemble. Moreover, it makes matters easier within our own ranks and within the ranks of our allies.

After all, we remain a Christian nation, and there is always a chance that well-meaning but misguided churchmen (like Lichtenberg) will raise a hue and cry. The Vatican is sympathetic to our crusade against Bolshevism in Russia. Why muddy this relationship by shouting that we intend to shoot several million Jews? Then, there is the matter of final judgments, once we rule Europe. We can always say that some Jews perished while being resettled, died of their own filthy habits, their tendency to spread contagion, or were executed for sabotage and spying.

Blobel led me across a meadow to a wooded area. In front of a grove of tall birches and elms, a wide ditch had been recently dug. The piled earth behind it still looked damp. I estimated this ditch to be about ten feet wide and four feet deep. It was quite long, fifty or sixty feet.

“We make them dig it themselves,” Blobel said. “Right to the end they think it’s a work detail.”

In front of the trench were two wooden tables. On each was a light machine gun and ammunition belts. There were also bottles of cheap Russian cognac,
glasses, boxes of cigarettes. Behind each weapon was a three-man team, members of Blobel’s SS Einsatzgruppe.

They appeared to me rather slovenly—collars open, boots unpolished. Two men were smoking, and one was sipping cognac. Hardly a military-looking unit. I complained to Colonel Blobel about their appearance, and made an invidious comparison to the army, where soldiers were expected to be trim and neat, even when going into battle.

In typical crude fashion, Blobel made an insulting remark about the army, and reminded me I was an SS officer, and we made our own rules. He referred to a “chickenshit” army major who had complained about “un-German” activities by the SS; Blobel had put him off with a few choice curses.

In the distance I saw the Jews. A group had been halted at the edge of the ditch. Under the prodding of SS guards, they were being made to undress. Clothing was being neatly stacked. People were being searched for valuables—watches and the like.

The fascination some of the guards showed for the nude and semi-nude women was totally uncalled-for. Women stood about in undergarments—slips, bloomers, garters—and were stared at. I could hear lewd comments. When they were at last naked, the women tried vainly to cover their breasts and pudenda. Some of the women held children in their arms. There were ancient crones barely able to stand, and one old woman who had to be carried by two men.

These were Jews from a village near Kiev, I had been informed. Many were Orthodox, with long beards, curling earlocks, and a lost, soulful look on their fleshy faces. No wonder Himmler and my other superiors have concluded that these are a subhuman species. One has only to see them naked, exposed, their white soft flesh tormented by the hot Ukrainian sun, to know they are unlike other people.

It is odd. I feel no hatred for them, but my awareness that they are indeed alien from us, and that they are plotters and connivers who, from the time of Christ
to the present, have been history’s great betrayers, makes it easier for me to accept what I witnessed for the first time.

“Go on, Foltz,” Blobel said and grinned at me. “March ‘em in. Don’t overload the trench.”

Orders were shouted below. About fifty of the naked Jews were prodded and clubbed, made to walk into the trench and face the two tables on which stood the machine guns. To my amazement, there was no resistance, just some slowness on the part of the older people. The Orthodox among them seemed to be praying. A woman crooned to the child in her arms. A child kept asking when he could go home. I could swear a girl of about twelve was asking if she would be able to do her homework from school that night.

It was over in seconds.

At a signal from Sergeant Foltz the guns chattered, short bursts of orange flame. The acrid stench of powder clogged my nose.

Through the haze I saw the Jews fall in shapeless heaps. Their bodies were stitched with small red holes.

The little girl who had just asked if she could do her schoolwork was lying across her mother’s body. In death, they were embracing.

I half-heard Blobel saying, “Two bullets per Jew, my ass. Let that bastard Von Reichenau come out here and count the holes in them if he wants.”

Quickly I put a clear plastic shield over my eyes. I was crying. Not, I realized, out of sympathy for the Jews. They died so easily, so quickly, so uncomplainingly, that it is difficult to accept that it was death at all. But out of some vague, imperfectly understood perception of the awful dimensions of our job. Heydrich has convinced me, beyond any doubt, that we are forging a new civilization. Hard and cruel deeds are necessary. I have now seen one.

Sergeant Foltz was walking along the edge of the ditch, his Luger drawn. Three times he kneeled and fired shots at short range.

“Why is he doing that?” I asked Blobel.

“Sometimes they aren’t dead,” he answered. “Act of
mercy. Better than burying them alive. But that happens also on a busy day.” He squinted at me, as if suspecting that I had been crying. But he said nothing.

His bluff obscene manner serves him well in his work. And I will have to cultivate a similar defense. I can be frank about it in these pages. Ohlendorf, I have been told, another Einsatzgruppe chief, is capable of
intellectualizing
his work. A professor, expert on trade, doctor of jurisprudence, he sees the elimination of Jews as a social and economic necessity. I am surely as bright and as brave as Ohlendorf; I will take a page from his book.

A thought occurred to me right after the shootings: there is no future for the Jews in Europe. They are universally despised, for whatever reasons. We are solving a problem of almost worldwide dimensions. Our means and our ends are identical. In denying them the earth, we do mankind a great service. “Armed Bohemians” a critic of our movement once called us. I am glad to be one.