The Kindly Ones

The events of July 20 had another consequence—minor, but unfortunate for me: in mid-August, the Gestapo arrested Judge Baumann, of the Berlin SS court. I learned of it fairly rapidly from Thomas, but didn’t immediately realize all the consequences. At the beginning of September, I was summoned by Brandt, who was accompanying the Reichsführer on an inspection in Schleswig-Holstein. I joined the special train near Lübeck. Brandt began by announcing that the Reichsführer wanted to confer the first-class distinction on my War Service Cross: “Whatever you may have thought of it, your action in Hungary was very positive. The Reichsführer is pleased with it. He was also favorably impressed by your recent initiative.” Then he informed me that the Kripo had asked Baumann’s replacement to reopen the case against me; the latter had written to the Reichsführer: in his opinion, the accusations deserved an investigation. “The Reichsführer hasn’t changed his mind, and you have all his confidence. But he thinks it would be detrimental to you to prevent an investigation again. Rumors are beginning to circulate, you must know that. The best thing would be for you to defend yourself and prove your innocence: that way, we can close the case once and for all.” I didn’t like this idea at all, I was beginning to know the manic stubbornness of Clemens and Weser too well, but I didn’t have a choice. Back in Berlin, I went on my own initiative to introduce myself to Judge von Rabingen, a fanatical National Socialist, and explained my version of the facts to him. He retorted that the case put together by the Kripo contained disturbing elements, he kept going back to the bloodstained German clothes, made to my size, and he was also intrigued by the business with the twins, which he wanted to clear up at all costs. The Kripo had finally questioned my sister, who was back in Pomerania: she had placed the twins in a private institution, in Switzerland; she affirmed they were our orphaned second cousins, born in France, whose birth certificates had disappeared in the French rout in 1940. “That could be true,” von Rabingen superciliously declared. “But for now it’s unverifiable.”

This permanent suspicion haunted me. For many days running, I almost succumbed to a relapse of my illness; I remained locked up at home in a black prostration, even going so far as to refuse to answer the door to Helene, who came to visit me. At night, Clemens and Weser, animated marionettes, poorly made and badly painted, jumped on my sleep, creaked through my dreams, buzzed around me like dirty little mocking creatures. My mother herself sometimes joined this chorus, and in my anguish I came to believe these two clowns were right, that I had gone mad and had in fact killed her. But I wasn’t insane, I felt it, and the whole business came down to a monstrous misunderstanding. When I got hold of myself a little, I had the idea of contacting Morgen, the upright judge I had met in Lublin. He worked in Oranienburg: he immediately invited me to come see him, and received me affably. He talked to me first about his activities: after Lublin, he had set up a commission in Auschwitz, and charged Grabner, the head of the Politische Abteilung

, for two thousand illegal murders; Kaltenbrunner had had Grabner released; Morgen had re-arrested him and the investigation was following its course, along with that of numerous accomplices and other corrupt subalterns; but in January a fire of criminal origin had destroyed the barracks where the commission stored all the evidence and some of the files, which complicated things quite a bit. Now, he confessed to me in confidence, he was aiming for Höss himself: “I’m convinced he’s guilty of diversion of State property and of murder, but it will be hard for me to prove it; Höss has powerful protections. What about you? I heard you were having some problems.” I explained my case to him. “Accusing you isn’t enough,” he said thoughtfully, “they have to prove it. Personally, I trust your sincerity: I know the worst elements of the SS only too well, and I know you’re not like them. Whatever the case, to charge you, they have to prove concrete things, that you were there at the time of the murder, that those famous clothes were yours. Where are those clothes? If they stayed in France, it seems to me that the prosecution doesn’t have much to go on. And also, the French authorities who sent the request for legal assistance are now under the control of an enemy power: you should ask an expert in international law to study that aspect of things.” I left this interview a little reassured: the obsessive stubbornness of the two investigators was making me paranoid, I could no longer see what was true and what was false, but Morgen’s good legal sense was helping me find terra firma again.