The Kindly Ones

As soon as the Reichsführer had approved of my suggestion, I proceeded to reorganize my office. The entire unit in charge of research, with Asbach as chief, was transferred to Oranienburg. Asbach seemed relieved to be leaving Berlin. With Fräulein Praxa and two other assistants I set myself up again in my old premises at the SS-Haus. Walser had never come back: Piontek, whom I finally sent to find out about him, reported that the shelter in his building had been struck, on the Tuesday night. The number of dead was estimated at twenty-three, the entire population of the building; there were no survivors, but most of the corpses unearthed were unrecognizable. To set my mind at rest, I reported him missing: that way, the police would look for him in the hospitals; but I had little hope of finding him alive. Piontek seemed very upset about it. Thomas, already over his bout of spleen, was overflowing with energy; now that we were office neighbors again, I saw him more often. Instead of telling him about my promotion, I waited, to surprise him, until I had received my official notification and had had my new stripes and collar tabs sewn on. When I presented myself at his office, he burst out laughing, searched through his desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, waved it in the air, and cried out: “Ah! You scoundrel. You thought you could catch up with me!” He made the document into a paper plane and launched it at me; its nose hit my Iron Cross and I unfolded it to read that Müller was proposing Thomas as Standartenführer. “And you can be sure it won’t be refused. But,” he added with good grace, “until it’s official, dinners are on me.”

My promotion had just as little effect on the imperturbable Fräulein Praxa, but she couldn’t hide her surprise when she received a direct phone call from Speer: “The Reichsminister wants to speak to you,” she informed me in a breathless voice, handing me the receiver. After the last raid, I had sent him a message giving him my new coordinates. “Sturmbannführer?” his firm, pleasant voice said. “How are you? Not too much damage?”—“My archivist has probably been killed, Herr Reichsminister. Otherwise, everything’s fine. And you?”—“I moved into temporary offices and sent my family to the country. So?”—“Your visit to Mittelbau has just been approved, Herr Reichsminister. I’ve been appointed to organize it. As soon as possible, I’ll contact your secretary to set up a date.” For important questions, Speer had asked me to call his personal secretary, rather than an assistant. “Very good,” he said. “See you soon.” I had already written to Mittelbau to warn them to prepare for the visit. I called Obersturmbannführer Förschner, the Kommandant of Dora, to confirm the arrangements. “Listen,” his tired voice grumbled at the other end, “we’ll do our best.”—“I’m not asking you to do your best, Obersturmbannführer. I’m asking that the installations be presentable for the Reichsminister’s visit. The Reichsführer personally insisted on that. Do you understand?”—“Fine, fine. I’ll give some more orders.”

My apartment had been more or less fixed up. I had finally managed to find some glass for two windows; the others remained covered with a waxed canvas tarp. My neighbor had not only had my door repaired but had also unearthed some oil lamps to use until electricity was restored. I had some coal delivered, and once the big ceramic stove was started, it wasn’t cold at all. I told myself that taking an apartment on the top floor hadn’t been very smart: I had had incredible luck escaping the raids of that week, but if they returned, and they certainly would, it wouldn’t last. Yet, I refused to worry: the apartment didn’t belong to me, and I didn’t have many personal possessions; you had to keep Thomas’s serene attitude about these things. I simply bought myself a new gramophone, with records of Bach’s Partitas for piano, as well as some opera arias by Monteverdi. In the evening, in the soft, archaic light of an oil lamp, a glass of Cognac and some cigarettes within arm’s reach, I would lie back on my sofa to listen to them and forget everything else.