The Kindly Ones

Outside, it was snowing again, harder than ever. I returned to the station. A mass of inmates was waiting in an empty lot, sitting in the snow and the mud under the gusts of wind. I tried to have them come into the station, but the waiting rooms were occupied by soldiers from the Wehrmacht. I slept with Piontek in the car, overcome with fatigue. The next morning, the lot was deserted, aside from a few dozen snow-covered corpses. I tried to find the Obersturmführer from the day before, to see if he was following my instructions, but the immense futility of it all oppressed me and paralyzed my movements. At noon, I had made my decision. I ordered Piontek to find some gas, then, through the SP, I contacted Elias and Darius. By early afternoon I was on my way to Berlin.

The fighting forced us to make a considerable detour, via Ostrau and then through Prague and Dresden. Piontek and I took turns driving; it took us two days. Dozens of kilometers before Berlin, we had to clear a way for ourselves through floods of refugees from the East, whom Goebbels was forcing to skirt round the city. In the center, all that was left of the annex of the Ministry of the Interior where my office had been was a gutted shell. It was raining, a cold, evil rain that soaked into the patches of snow still clinging to the rubble. The streets were dirty and muddy. I finally found Grothmann, who told me that Brandt was at Deutsch Krone, in Pomerania, with the Reichsführer. I then went to Oranienburg, where my office was still functioning, as if detached from the rest of the world. Asbach explained to me that Fräulein Praxa had been wounded during a bombing, with burns to her arm and breast, and that he had had her evacuated to a hospital in Franconia. Elias and Darius had retreated to Breslau during the fall of Kattowitz and were awaiting instructions: I ordered them to return. I started going through my mail, which no one had touched since Fräulein Praxa’s accident. Among the official letters was a private letter: I recognized Helene’s writing. Dear Max

, she wrote, my house was bombed and I have to leave Berlin. I am in despair, I don’t know where you are, your colleagues won’t tell me anything. I’m leaving to join my parents in Baden. Write to me. If you want, I’ll come back to Berlin. All is not lost. Yours, Helene.

It was almost a declaration, but I didn’t understand what she meant by All is not lost. I quickly wrote to her at the address indicated to tell her I’d returned, but that it was better for now that she stay in Baden.

I devoted two days to writing a very critical report on the evacuation. I also spoke about it in person to Pohl, who swept aside my arguments: “Anyway,” he declared, “we have no more room to put them, all the camps are full.” In Berlin, I had run into Thomas; Schellenberg had left, he had stopped throwing parties and seemed in a glum mood. According to him, the Reichsführer’s performance as commander of an Army Group was turning out rather pathetic; he wasn’t far from thinking that Himmler’s appointment was a maneuver of Bormann’s to discredit him. But these imbecilic games of the thirteenth hour no longer interested me. I was feeling sick again, my vomiting had resumed, I got nauseated as I sat at my typewriter. When I found out that Morgen was also in Oranienburg, I went to see him and told him about the incomprehensible stubbornness of the two Kripo agents. “It’s true,” he said thoughtfully, “it’s odd. They seem to have something against you personally. But I saw the file, there’s nothing substantial in it. If it had been one of those shiftless types, a man without any education, you could imagine anything, but I know you, it seems ridiculous to me.”—“Maybe it’s some form of class resentment,” I suggested. “They want to bring me down at any cost, it seems.”—“Yes, that’s possible. You’re a cultivated man, there are a lot of prejudices against intellectuals among the dregs of the Party. Listen, I’ll mention it to von Rabingen. I’ll ask him to send them an official reprimand. They shouldn’t be pursuing an investigation against a judge’s decision.”