The Kindly Ones

My legal case continued its course; Judge von Rabingen regularly summoned me to clear up one point or another. From time to time I saw Mihaï; as for Helene, she seemed to be growing increasingly transparent, not from fear, but from pent-up emotion. When, back from Hungary, I told her about the atrocities of Nyíregyháza (the Third Armored Corps had retaken the city from the Russians at the end of October, and had found women of all ages raped, parents nailed alive to doors in front of their mutilated children; and these had been Hungarians, not Germans), she looked at me for a long time, then said gently: “And in Russia, was it very different?” I didn’t say anything. I looked at the extraordinarily thin wrists her sleeves revealed; I could easily have looped my thumb and index finger around them. “I know their revenge will be terrible,” she said then. “But we’ll have deserved it.” In the beginning of November, my apartment, miraculously preserved till then, disappeared in a bombing: a bomb came through the roof and took the top two floors with it; poor Herr Zempke succumbed to a heart attack as he left the half-collapsed cellar. Fortunately, I had gotten into the habit of keeping some of my clothes and my underwear at the office. Mihaï suggested I move to his apartment; I preferred to go to Wannsee, to Thomas’s place, where he had moved after his Dahlem house burned down in May. He led a wild life there, there were always a few fire-brands from the Amt VI around, one or two of Thomas’s colleagues, Schellenberg, and of course girls. Schellenberg often talked in private with Thomas but obviously mistrusted me. One day I came home a little early and heard an animated discussion in the living room, loud voices, Schellenberg’s mocking, insistent intonation: “If that Bernadotte agrees…” He interrupted himself as soon as he saw me on the doorstep and greeted me in a pleasant tone: “Aue, nice to see you.” But he didn’t continue his conversation with Thomas. When I wearied of my friend’s parties, I sometimes let myself be taken around by Mihaï. He often attended the daily farewell parties of Dr. Kosak, the Croatian ambassador, which took place either at the legation or in his villa in Dahlem; the upper crust of the diplomatic corps and the Auswärtiges Amt

went there to stuff themselves, get drunk, and meet the prettiest UFA starlets, Maria Milde, Ilse Werner, Marikka Rökk. Around midnight, a choir sang traditional Dalmatian songs; after the usual Mosquito raid, the artillerymen from the Croatian flak battery stationed next door came to drink and play jazz till dawn; among them was an officer who had escaped from Stalingrad, but I took care not to tell him I had been there too, he would never have left me alone. These bacchanales sometimes degenerated into orgies, couples intertwined in the alcoves of the legation and frustrated idiots went out to empty their pistols in the garden: one night, drunk, I made love with Mihaï in the bedroom of the ambassador, who was snoring downstairs on a sofa; then, overexcited, Mihaï came back up with a little actress and took her in front of me as I finished a bottle of slivovitz and meditated on the servitudes of the flesh. This vain, frenetic gaiety couldn’t last. At the end of December, as the Russians were attacking Budapest and our last offensive was getting bogged down in the Ardennes, the Reichsführer sent me to inspect the evacuation of Auschwitz.

In the summer, the hurried, belated evacuation of KL Lublin had caused us a lot of concern: the Soviets had taken the installations intact, with the warehouses full, grist for the mill of their atrocity propaganda. Since the end of August, their forces had been camping on the Vistula, but it was obvious they wouldn’t linger there. Measures had to be taken. The evacuation of the camps and the subcamps of the Auschwitz complex, should the need arise, fell under the responsibility of Obergruppenführer Ernst Schmauser, the HSSPF for Military District VIII, which included Upper Silesia; the operations, Brandt explained to me, would be conducted by the camp personnel. My task would be to ensure that priority was given to the evacuation of the utilizable workforce, in good condition, to be put back to use within the Reich. After my Hungarian tribulations, I was on my guard: “What will my authority be?” I asked Brandt. “Can I give the necessary orders?” He eluded the question: “Obergruppenführer Schmauser has full authority. If you see that the camp personnel aren’t cooperating in the right spirit, refer to him and he’ll give the necessary orders.”—“What if I have problems with the Obergruppenführer?”—“You won’t have any problems with the Obergruppenführer. He’s an excellent National Socialist. Anyway, you’ll be in contact with the Reichsführer or me.” I knew from experience that this was a feeble guarantee. But I had no choice.