The Kindly Ones

The following week, I put together a small team for the Einsatz in Hungary. I appointed a specialist, Obersturmführer Elias; a few clerks, orderlies, and administrative assistants; and of course Piontek. I left my office under Asbach’s responsibility, with precise instructions. On Brandt’s orders, on March 17, I set out for the KL Mauthausen, where a Sondereinsatzgruppe of the SP and the SD was assembling, under the command of Oberführer Dr. Achamer-Pifrader, the former BdS of the Ostland. Eichmann was already there, at the head of his own Sondereinsatzkommando. I presented myself to Oberführer Dr. Geschke, the officer in charge, who set me up with my team in a barracks. I already knew when I left Berlin that the Hungarian leader, Horthy, was meeting the Führer at Klessheim Palace, near Salzburg. Since the war, the events at Klessheim are well known: confronted with Hitler and von Ribbentrop, who bluntly gave him the choice between the formation of a new pro-German government or the invasion of his country, Horthy—admiral in a country without a navy, regent of a kingdom without a king

—decided, after a brief heart attack, to avoid the worst. At the time, though, we knew nothing of that: Geschke and Achamer-Pifrader contented themselves with summoning the superior officers on the night of the eighteenth, to inform us that we were leaving the next day for Budapest. Rumors, of course, were flying; many people expected Hungarian resistance at the border, they had us put on our field uniforms and they handed out submachine guns. The camp was simmering with excitement: for many of these functionaries of the Staatspolizei or the SD, it was their first experience of the field; and even I, after almost a year in Berlin, and the dullness of bureaucratic routine, the permanent tension of underhand intrigues, the fatigue of bombings you had to undergo without reacting, I let myself be caught up in the general exhilaration. That evening, I went to have a few drinks with Eichmann, whom I found surrounded by his officers, beaming and strutting about in a new field gray uniform, tailored as elegantly as a parade uniform. I knew only a few of his colleagues; he explained to me that for this operation he had sent for his best specialists from all over Europe, from Italy, Croatia, Litzmannstadt, Theresienstadt. He introduced me to his friend Hauptsturmführer Wisliceny (the godfather of his son Dieter), a frightfully fat, placid, serene man, who had come from Slovakia. The mood was cheerful, there wasn’t much drinking; everyone was champing at the bit. I went back to my barracks to sleep a little, since we were leaving around midnight, but I had trouble getting to sleep. I thought about Helene: I had left her two days earlier, telling her I didn’t know when I’d return to Berlin; I had been somewhat abrupt, giving few explanations and not making any promises; she had accepted it gently, gravely, without any obvious anxiety, and yet, it was clear I think to both of us, a connection had been formed, tenuous perhaps, but solid, which wouldn’t dissolve by itself; it was already a relation, in some way.