Ostland, p.32
Ostland, page 32
Ivanova put on her underwear, her dress and her shoes and took a look in the mirror, almost as if she were saying farewell to the sight of her own face.
‘Will I need my coat?’ she asked, with an evident attempt to mask the desperation that lay behind that simple question.
‘Give it to me,’ I replied.
The coat was an ancient, mangy fur. I wondered whether she had inherited it from an aged relative. Or perhaps it was the property of a slaughtered Jew, given to her by Schranz. She handed it over and I felt the pockets and the linings, looking for anything that might be hidden there. The coat was clean. I handed it back.
‘You may put it on,’ I said. ‘Now it’s time to go.’
I walked the young woman downstairs and out through the front door. I held her arm in a way that a passer-by, unaware of the strength with which I was gripping her, might have interpreted as affectionate. A sergeant called Rumstein was working for me at the time. He was waiting by the car. ‘Get in the back and keep an eye on her,’ I told him. ‘I’ll drive.’
We all got in the car, me in the front seat, the other two in the back, and set off through the city in the late afternoon gloom. It wasn’t long before the young woman realized where we were going. ‘Why?’ she asked again. ‘Why?’
I ignored her and remained silent as we drove up to the entrance to the Jewish ghetto. Once overcrowded to the point of inhumanity, it was now all but empty. Virtually everyone who had ever lived there was dead. I drove to the old cemetery, where Jews had been buried in the days when they still died of natural causes, and stopped the car fifty metres or so inside the entrance. Then I looked over my shoulder, towards the back of the car and told Ivanova: ‘Get out.’
To Rumstein I said: ‘You stay here.’
‘No, no!’ she cried and clung to Rumstein. He tried to shove her away, but she would not be dislodged until I opened one of the rear passenger doors, leaned in, grabbed her roughly and yanked her out. She fell on to the tarmac beside the car. Taking the pistol from my holster and pointing it down at Ivanova, I gave her a sharp kick in the stomach, winding her slightly. She made a hoarse retching sound as she struggled for air. ‘Get up,’ I said without the slightest shred of kindness, paying no mind to her pain, feeling no qualms whatever about treating a woman this way.
I could have killed her there and then, but I wanted a little more privacy when I did it.
Ivanova got to her feet, looking at me with tears in her eyes. I think she found it hard to comprehend how a man who had always been so pleasant to her in the past could possibly behave like this now. As her breathing came back to her she spoke again, asking a question that was also a plea: ‘Doctor, what are you doing?’
Without a word, I stepped behind her, grabbing her wrist with one hand while the other pressed the pistol to the side of her head. Then I wrenched at her wrist, pulling her arm up behind her back to prevent her from getting away. She gave a gasp of pain and I pushed her forward so that she almost stumbled. As she regained her footing she found herself walking away from the car, into the shadowy gloom of the cemetery.
I pushed her again, steering her to the right as we stepped off the path and moved between the gravestones towards an old monument, almost the height of a man, erected in honour of a prosperous family: all gone now, of course. Once we were behind it we were out of sight of any prying eyes. Desperately, Ivanova made one last attempt to wriggle from my grasp, so I cracked the barrel of my pistol hard against her skull. The sudden nauseating shock of pain seemed to knock the last resistance out of her. She knew she was done for now. Her body slackened and the only sound she made was a soft, sad weeping.
I took one final look around to see that I was unobserved. Then I let go of Ivanova’s arm, grabbed the hair at the top of her head and aimed a single fierce stamp of my boots at her calves, just below the knee. Her legs gave way and she dropped to her knees. Retaining my grip on her hair so as to keep her head still, I placed my pistol against the back of her neck, at the point where it joined the skull, and fired a single shot.
She died at once. I let go of her hair and she flopped forward on to the cold, damp grass that surrounded the monument. I did not bother to give her lifeless body a second glance. I just replaced the pistol in my holster and walked briskly back to the car. When I reached it I told Rumstein: ‘You drive,’ and settled down in the passenger seat. ‘Take me back to the office,’ I said.
49
Do I shock you? Are you disgusted by my behaviour? I sincerely hope so, for what civilized person would not be? I certainly am. But I must confess that Ivanova wasn’t the only one of my victims in those dying months of 1943. Soon after her death I put a bullet through another female spy and left her body on a patch of wasteland for the Russians to find. Ehrlinger felt it was important to remind them that we were still in business.
A Catholic priest called Godlevsky was suspected of political subversion. I took him out to Maly Trostinets and shot him behind a barn, having first gone to his church and taken a substantial amount of cash from the safe there: far more money than any church collection could ever have raised. Since we had not given it to him, the Russians must have done: case closed.
Both of those executions, however, paled into insignificance beside the one that I am about to describe. For this marked the point at which my soul was irrevocably lost, when that imaginary, evil psychiatrist would have looked on in delight, knowing that he had proved beyond doubt that even the most law-abiding of men could be transformed into depraved, inhuman beasts, given the right environment and stimuli.
In the wake of the September attack on the Lenin House we had captured a number of suspected partisans. Of these some died under interrogation, or were shot once their guilt had been established. But three of them, two men and a woman, were found to have had a particularly significant role to play in the planning and execution of the attacks. It was therefore felt that they should be killed in a special way, and it so happened that just such a way had recently presented itself, for while the number of Jews remaining to be processed was declining, and new, more efficient methods of execution and disposal were now in operation, yet the question of what to do with the bodies of those killed by more traditional means still remained.
For some months an operation known as Action 1005 had therefore been tasked with finding the most effective method of disposing of bodies and then putting that method into practice, right across the Reich and its occupied territories. In the autumn of 1943 an Action 1005 team had arrived in Minsk to deal with the graves in the woods at Blagovshchina.
Its commander was Arthur Harder, an SS Captain who had spent the previous few months going around Russia, opening up mass graves, removing the half-rotten corpses within and then burning them. The dirty work at any given site was done by Russian POWs, who laboured under heavy guard and were all shot when that particular operation was complete. They exhumed all the bodies and placed them on pyres comprising alternate layers of corpses and wooden logs. When the pyre was about five metres high it was doused in heating oil and set alight. It could take as long as two days for the bodies to burn through completely, but once the fire had finally died down all that remained was ash.
Blagovshchina had been transformed from a delightful stretch of woodland into a foul, repugnant kingdom of the dead. Even before the exhumations, there were places where the ground itself used to shift, contort and belch noxious fumes and vile liquids into the air as the gas from the decomposing bodies forced its way to the surface. Now the corpses were rising out of the ground as though the Day of Judgement had come. Yet Harder seemed relatively immune to the horror of it all. He told me that after a while it just became a job like any other.
We did not, of course, discuss the inescapable logic that underpinned Action 1005. A criminal suspect disposes of evidence that would prove his guilt because he fears that it may be found. In seeking to obliterate any trace of their Jewish victims our leaders were effectively admitting two things. First, that the racial extermination policies of which they were so proud were terrible crimes, and second, that these crimes would otherwise be uncovered when the lands we had once conquered were recaptured by our enemies. Thus they had accepted their defeat and were merely trying to lessen their disgrace.
As long as the war was still going on, however, Action 1005 provided a perfect opportunity to give the captured partisans the send-off they deserved.
On the day of their execution, Harder was ordered to cease work early and to ensure that all the Russian POWs were returned to the bunker at Maly Trostinets where they were being housed until the time came to dispose of them. Meanwhile, I put together a squad of Latvians and got Merbach to bring a couple of his trucks to transport us all to Maly Trostinets. Together we escorted the three partisans from the Minsk prison down to the site of Harder’s most recent cleanup operation.
It took several pyres to deal with the contents of a single pit, and when we arrived a couple were fully ablaze, while two more were dying down. The atmosphere was cold and damp when we first got out of the car, but it became hotter with every step closer to the flames. This was the time of year, of course, when it was quite normal to see fires, burning up the fallen leaves of autumn. Yet in Blagovshchina the smoke that drifted over the air and disappeared between the trees was sweet with the pork-like smell of burning human flesh.
Looking around, I realized that this was the place where we’d processed the Vienna transport containing Hannah Lang’s parents. Their bodies must have been somewhere close by: reduced to ashes, fuelling the flames of the blazing pyres, or lying as death-cold skeletons, half draped in rotting flesh, waiting for the touch of a match.
A year earlier, such an idea would have been almost insupportable to me: my feelings for Hannah were still too raw. Two years earlier, it would have been inconceivable: I had no idea of the reality of our extermination campaign. Now, I just registered the thought and moved on.
We took the partisans from the sealed van in which they’d been brought down from Minsk, lined them up with guns trained upon them and told them to strip. As they took off their clothes, one of the men started talking. I couldn’t understand him, but one of the Latvians told me that he’d said: ‘Be brave, comrades, it will soon be over. We will not even feel the bullets that kill us. But when the Red Army catches these animals, then they will discover what it means to suffer.’
My God, he had no idea of the irony of his words.
We all stopped for a moment to look at the naked woman. She was very thin after two months in prison and still bore the scars and bruises of her interrogation. Just then I heard a familiar voice: ‘Can we all just fuck her first, Doctor?’
It was Sergeant Rübe. He’d been at a loose end since the ghetto was liquidated and had consequently been reassigned to help Harder get rid of all the dead Jews. It was the sort of work that suited him.
‘No time for fooling around,’ I replied. ‘It’ll be dark if we don’t get on with this.’
Someone had placed a ladder by the side of the pyre. Harder sent two of his men up it and then three large stakes were passed up to them. They drove these down into the pyre until they were firmly in position: I dread to think what was holding them upright. Then ropes were passed up to the men.
It was now that the partisans realized that the stakes and ropes were intended for them. We were going to burn them to death. The woman started screaming hysterically and had to be physically restrained from trying to escape. The two men were given a few sound blows with rifle butts, hard enough to crack a rib or two, and all three of them were herded towards the pyre.
One by one the three partisans were forced up the ladder. The woman had to be carried up. Rübe happily volunteered for that task and then stayed up at the top of the pyre to help tie her and her comrades to the stakes. Then a large can of fuel oil was passed up the ladder and its contents were poured over the partisans. More cans were emptied over the lower levels of the pyre. Our men came down from the top and the ladder was removed. All was ready.
Up above us the woman was still crying. One of the men was shouting defiantly at us, while the other remained quite silent, looking around with fierce concentration. ‘You’re trying to work out how to escape, aren’t you?’ I thought to myself, and made a mental note to keep an eye on him.
Another of Harder’s team appeared with a long stick, at the end of which was a rag dripping in oil. A match was applied to the rag. Harder looked at me and asked: ‘Would you like the honour of lighting our fire?’
How could I refuse? I thanked him with a grim smile and took the flaming torch. I touched it to the pyre and the oil caught fire like the brandy around a crepe suzette. Within seconds the whole pyre was ablaze and the writhing figures of the partisans were illuminated in a lurid orange glow that became ever brighter until they were engulfed in dazzling, white-hot flame.
All that could be heard over the roaring blaze were the high-pitched death-cries of the woman. It was as if we were witnessing the burning of witches or heretics, centuries ago. I saw Rübe looking up at this scene of agony and suffering with a rapt expression on his face, as though he were yet another who found nothing so arousing as someone else’s violent death.
Merbach crossed himself and turned away, unable to witness this terrible scene any longer. I watched him leave the immediate surroundings of the pyre.
It was then that Rübe shouted out: ‘Watch out! One of ’em’s making a run for it!’
I looked back at the pyre. The fire was so dazzling that it was almost blinding, but in the darkness beyond it I could just see something moving. I raced around the pyre, pulling out my gun as I went. As my eyes gradually acclimatized themselves to the dim, grey light of the dusk I saw the outline of a naked man, one arm wrapped around his broken ribs, heading towards the trees. He could manage little more than a frantic, hobbling movement, so I had a second or two in which to raise my pistol, line it up and fire three quick shots. He fell to the ground and I ordered two of my men to check whether he was dead. Guns at the ready, they raced up to where the partisan was lying. I thought I saw one of his legs give a feeble twitch. Then two more shots rang out and he lay still.
‘Throw him on the flames!’ I shouted and then returned to where Rübe was standing. ‘How are the other two doing?’ I asked.
‘Dead,’ he said, with something close to disappointment in his voice. ‘To be honest, I was hoping they’d survive a little longer.’
Just then Merbach arrived in a state of great agitation. ‘Damn you, Heuser, you nearly killed me!’ he shouted.
‘What do you mean?’
‘One of the bullets you fired just now missed the Russian and almost hit me. I swear I heard it go right past my face.’
‘Well that serves you right for running away,’ I replied. ‘If you’d been man enough to watch this little show, you’d have been quite safe.’
*
Driving back to the city I wondered what my old boss Lüdtke would have made of a killer with my modus operandi. I imagined him in the squad room, with a map pinned up on the wall, surrounded by pictures of the deceased and the crime scenes. I could hear him telling his men: ‘The killer appears to be indiscriminate in his choice of targets. The fact that he has killed women and a priest would suggest that he has no moral or religious scruples. That he can watch fellow humans burn to death is a mark of exceptional callousness. He is arrogant and supremely self-confident in his ability to avoid capture: why else does he leave the bodies where he killed them, without any attempt to disguise his activities? He is, in short, a cold-blooded, ruthless murderer.’
And what if some eager young graduate of the Leaders’ School should ask his boss: ‘Would you class him as a serial killer?’ What would Lüdtke have said then?
50
I could no longer even claim that my apparently immoral acts had actually served a greater good. Any hope of that had long since disappeared. Whole areas of both Reich Commissariats, Ostland and Ukraine, were now under partisan control with their own farms, defence forces and communist administrations. So far as most Russians were concerned it was not an act of courage to rebel against us, so much as a prudent investment for the future.
We Germans, meanwhile, lived in a strange state that I can only call fatalistic defiance. We knew that our armies were now engaged in a retreat that would surely take us all the way back to Berlin. But what could we do but fight on? Hitler would never surrender, and even if he did, we would then be left to the mercy of the Red Army, and better a swift bullet to the skull than a lingering death at their hands. So there was nothing for it but to prepare for a long, bloody, but ultimately futile struggle. In the meantime, our moral and spiritual collapse as individuals mirrored that of the Reich as a whole, as any principles we might once have held gave way to bitter cynicism, hope was replaced by fatalism and moral standards collapsed into utter decadence. Our leaders continued to strut about and speechify as if we were still in the glory days of ’41, but any admiration or even respect that we might once have had for them had given way to scorn.
In November we received a transcript of a speech given by Reichsführer Himmler to a gathering of SS top brass in Posen. He told his audience: ‘Most of you must know what it means when one hundred corpses are lying side by side, or five hundred or one thousand. To have stuck it out and at the same time – apart from some exceptions caused by human weakness – to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard.’
