The Kindly Ones

In October, just after my birthday, I was sent back to Hungary. Horthy had been overthrown by a coup organized by von dem Bach-Zelewski and Skorzeny; now Szálasi’s Arrow Cross Party was in power. Kammler was clamoring for labor for his underground factories and his V-2s, the first models of which had just been launched in September. Soviet troops were already penetrating Hungary, from the south, as well as the Reich’s own territory, in eastern Prussia. In Budapest, the SEk had been dissolved in September, but Wisliceny was still there and Eichmann quickly made another appearance. Once more, it was a disaster. The Hungarians agreed to give us fifty thousand Jews from Budapest (in November, Szálasi was already insisting on the fact that they were only “on loan”), but they had to be conveyed to Vienna, for Kammler and for the construction of an Ostwall

, and there was no more transport available: Eichmann, probably with Veesenmayer’s agreement, decided to send them there on foot. The story is well known: many died on the road, and the officer in charge of reception, Obersturmbannführer Höse, refused most of the ones who arrived, for once again he could not employ women for excavation work. I could do absolutely nothing, no one listened to my suggestions, not Eichmann, not Winkelmann, not Veesenmayer, not the Hungarians. When Obergruppenführer Jüttner, the head of the SS-FHA, arrived in Budapest with Becher, I tried to intercede with him; Jüttner had passed the marchers, who were falling like flies in the mud, the rain, and the snow; this spectacle had scandalized him and he did in fact go and protest to Winkelmann; but Winkelmann sent him to Eichmann, over whom he had no control, and Eichmann bluntly refused to see Jüttner—he sent one of his subordinates, who haughtily brushed aside the complaints. Eichmann, obviously, was so full of himself that he no longer listened to anyone, except maybe Müller and Kaltenbrunner, and Kaltenbrunner no longer seemed to listen even to the Reichsführer anymore. I spoke about it with Becher, who was to see Himmler; I asked him to intervene, and he promised to do what he could. As for Szálasi, he soon took fright: the Russians were advancing; in mid-November he put an end to the marches, they hadn’t even sent thirty thousand, one more senseless waste, on top of the others. No one seemed to know what he was doing anymore, or rather everyone did just as he pleased, alone and separately; it was becoming impossible to work in such conditions. I made one final attempt to approach Speer, who had taken over complete control of the Arbeitseinsatz

in October, including the use of the WVHA inmates; he finally agreed to see me, but he rushed through the interview, in which he hadn’t the slightest interest. It’s true that I didn’t have anything concrete to offer him. As for the Reichsführer, I no longer understood his position at all. At the end of October, he gave Auschwitz the order to stop gassing the Jews, and at the end of November, declaring the Jewish question resolved, he ordered the destruction of the camp’s extermination installations; at the same time, at the RSHA and at the Persönlicher Stab

, they were actively discussing the creation of a new extermination camp in Alteist-Hartel, near Mauthausen. It was also said that the Reichsführer was conducting negotiations with the Jews, in Switzerland and Sweden; Becher seemed to know all about it, but eluded my questions when I asked him for clarification. I also learned that he finally got the Reichsführer to agree to summon Eichmann (that was later on, in December); but I didn’t find out what was said on that occasion until seventeen years later, during the good Obersturmbannführer’s trial in Jerusalem: Becher, having become a businessman and a millionaire in Bremen, stated in his deposition that the meeting had taken place in the Reichsführer’s special train, in the Black Forest, near Triberg, and that the Reichsführer had spoken to Eichmann with both kindness and anger

. One sentence in particular, that the Reichsführer, according to Becher, supposedly threw at his stubborn subordinate has often been quoted since in books: “Though you have been exterminating Jews up to now, from now on, if I give you the order, as I do now, you will be a nursemaid to the Jews. I should remind you that in 1933 it was I who set up the RSHA, and not Gruppenführer Müller or you. If you cannot obey me, tell me so!” This could be true. But Becher’s testimony should certainly be treated with caution; he takes credit himself, for example, thanks to his influence over Himmler, for the cessation of the forced marches from Budapest—whereas the order actually came from the panicking Hungarians—and also, an even more outrageous claim, the initiative for the order to interrupt the Endlösung: yet if anyone could have slipped that idea to the Reichsführer, it was certainly not that clever wheeler-dealer (Schellenberg, maybe).