The Final Reckoning

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

El Correo August 12 1952

Tourist found dead in San Sebastián hotel; wife discovers body

Police in San Sebastián have launched an inquiry into the mysterious death of a holidaymaker, whose body was discovered by his wife in their room in the Hotel Londres. Mrs Schroeder said she and her German-born husband had been enjoying a week's vacation and that he had shown no signs of distress or depression. ‘I had only been out shopping for an hour or so, and when I came back he was, he was-’ a grief-stricken Mrs Schroeder told a reporter, before breaking down in tears.

I found the abundance of food the biggest shock. I had never seen such plenty, treats spilling out of every opening. Fresh fish laid on a bed of ice, their heads still intact; the counter brimming over with delights, from rolled peppers to the congealed potato omelette which somehow, even cold, managed to be delicious; the slices of salami and cheese, all ready to be munched down with a wipe of a paper napkin promptly dropped to the floor – and, of course, the rows of cured hams above the bar.

I confess, I had to stop myself staring at those suspended hams. I had never seen anything like it. Not in the ghetto of course, where there had been no meat, let alone a pig. And not in London where I had made my home, where food was still a precious rationed commodity. If this was what it was like to lose the war, why had we all fought so hard to win?

I sat on my own. I was used to that by now. I was barely twenty-two years old, but I had travelled all around Europe – France, West Germany, Austria – and beyond, to South America and Canada, always on my own. I had learned how to sit in a restaurant and read without drawing attention to myself. The trick was not to hide. No trilby hats or newspapers in front of the face, like in the movies. Show yourself, act confident, act like a local or else, unembarrassed, like a tourist. That way no one would notice you.

A shelf suspended above the bar was packed with every conceivable variety of liquor: five different types of whisky, more vodkas than I could count and a line of brandies. Had it been like this here during the war? Had the wine flowed and the tables groaned while Rosa and I had lived like wild animals, scratching for our very lives? An image of my sisters floated into my mind. That happened a lot when I was on a mission.

I needed to stay clear-headed, to keep my focus on the task in hand. I had been given that advice by one of the leaders, before he himself was killed on duty. ‘Don't hate them,’ he had said. ‘Hate them before and hate them afterwards. But don't hate them when you do a job. If you do, you will fail – and they will win.’

Usually, I managed to follow that advice. When I had crept into the hospital in Bochum in the far west of Germany, dressed in a doctor's white coat, and told my ‘patient’, a former Gestapo commander, now tucked up in bed with a thermometer under his tongue, that everything was on track for the minor operation in the morning, but that first he would need to do a brief test – one which entailed injecting kerosene into his bloodstream, as it happened – I had felt only a cool sense of purpose.

When I stamped on the accelerator in Paris, having pursued SS Captain Fritz Kramer down a side street, I did not feel hot anger course through my veins. Not even as I watched the mass murderer run for his life. No, I was calm as I caught up with the former officer of the Birkenau camp, the front of my car ramming him at speed, sending him flying fifteen feet until he landed spread-eagled, like a scarecrow, on the station railings.

I kept a memento of each operation, a report from the local newspaper recording the ‘death in mysterious circumstances’ or the ‘tragic accident’ which had deprived the community of one more Nazi war criminal posing as an upright citizen. It gives me no pleasure to record the fact that I had become one of the group's most accomplished executioners, able to slip in and out of most countries without impediment. Of course it helped, as it always had, that my hair was blond and my eyes blue. Occasionally my prey would look at me with warmth, imagining they were about to have a reunion with a young comrade. Sure, they couldn't quite place the face, but I looked the right sort. Where did we know each other from? Was it Sachsenhausen, or perhaps the Ukraine? Did we serve together, Mein Herr? Not quite, no.

So I was not usually fazed by my work. But this job was different. My target now was Joschka Dorfman, who had served the Reich with distinction as one of the senior men at the death camp of Treblinka, about a hundred kilometres northeast of Warsaw. For my comrades, that was the chief item on the indictment: some 840,000 people, almost all Jews, had perished at Treblinka, ‘processed’ through its gas chambers at a rate of ten thousand per day, an efficiency that was the envy of the other death camps. From the entire time in which Treblinka was in operation little more than a hundred people survived.

But that was not the cause of the small bubbling of sweat I could feel on my back, threatening to stain my shirt. The source of that could be found in another line on Joschka Dorfman's curriculum vitae. Because the lieutenant had won his promotion not in Poland but in next door Lithuania, in the city of Kaunas to be precise. At the Ninth Fort, where he had been one of those charged with filling the pits with the corpses of fifty thousand people, most of them Jews. I knew that, among those Dorfman would have seen shot in the back – if, that is, he had not fired the bullets himself – would have been my Hannah, my Rivvy and my Leah.

He would be here soon, I didn't doubt it. So far all the information we had received from our man in Spain had proved entirely reliable. Dorfman and his wife were indeed in town on vacation, as promised. Their home was in Alicante, in the Spanish south-east. Hundreds of them had gone there: it had become a haven for former servants of the Führer. Dorfman's movements were known; it would have been perfectly possible to hunt him down there. Possible, but risky. An operation in the heart of a retirement village of ex-Nazis would alert the others; they might flee or, worse, attempt to come after us. Better to take care of it here, at the opposite end of the country, where word would not spread.

Our source had discovered that the Dorfmans, husband and wife, liked to vacation here in the Basque country. They had developed a particular fondness for San Sebastián and I could see why. The whole town curved around the bay; its beaches were wide and fine. I had seen the couple swim in the morning, letting their skin dry in the sun. Then they would come here for a late lunch; she would drink wine, he preferred beer. Sated, he would return to the Hotel Londres for a siesta while she went strolling through the cobbled streets, idly window shopping. It looked like a pleasant routine and they had followed it on each one of the three days since they had got here.

I checked my watch the instant they arrived: ten to two. They looked tanned and handsome, the glow of a good holiday. She was smiling as she came in, removing a large, floppy sunhat and shaking the last grains of sand from her hair. He was wearing sunglasses, which gave me a surge of anxiety. What if he did not take them off? It would be impossible to make a one hundred per cent positive identification without seeing his eyes. But then they reached the counter and, keen to peruse the pintxos on offer, he removed his glasses and I was certain.

I ordered some mint tea and remained immersed in my newspaper: a man idling away the afternoon. When the Dorfmans eventually paid their bill and left, I quietly placed a wad of notes on the table, enough to cover my meal with plenty over, grabbed my bag and made my own exit.

I kept a fair distance behind them, much further than those who have never done such work would imagine. I let them disappear out of sight, turning left or right, knowing that I would catch up with them again. I had the great advantage of knowing where Dorfman, at least, was heading.

I watched the couple part, she giving him a light peck on his cheek, her right heel kicking up coquettishly, and I wondered what words she had used, whether she had said goodbye to her husband or merely au revoir. My heart was beginning to pound in a way I did not like.

I let her meander down one of the narrow, sloping passageways before picking up the pace. Dorfman was walking briskly now, the seafront to his right, the water a sparkling blue. Had the sun carried on shining in places like this when my sisters and I lived in the ghetto? I had always assumed that the skies had darkened across the whole world.

Dorfman crossed the promenade, waiting for a group of teenage boys to cycle past, before entering the hotel through one of the sliding doors facing the sea. I decided not to follow him but to go around to the street entrance.

With a purposeful walk I had perfected back on that train trip from Kovno to Warsaw, I strode past the reception desk, ignored the lift and climbed the stairs. Our informant had even supplied the room number. Before I touched the handrail, I pulled on a pair of tight leather gloves.

I paused halfway between the second and third floors. Looking upwards, I could see Dorfman emerge from the lift and watch his feet pad down the carpeted corridor. I held my breath, waiting for the sound of his key in the lock.

Outside Room 212, I did not give myself a moment to hesitate. I knocked twice and called out, in Spanish, ‘Servicio de habitaciones!’ Room Service!

I reached for the holster under my left shoulder and withdrew my Beretta 1951, so that its barrel became visible just as the door opened. It would be the first thing Dorfman would see.

I gave him no time to react. I used my left hand to shove him back into the room, just in case he had any ideas about trying to slam the door on me. With the gun held steady in my right hand, I closed the door with my foot.

‘Guten Tag, Herr Dorfman,’ I began, swiftly moving to the telephone at the side of the bed, yanking its cord out of the wall with a single tug. ‘Don't scream or I will kill you instantly.’ I was relieved my voice gave nothing away, no treacherous wobble. ‘You are SS Lieutenant Joshcka Dorfman of the Treblinka death camp and previously of the Ninth Fort at Kovno where you were personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews. I act in the name of the Jews and I have come to administer justice.’

There had been much discussion in the group about this stage in the process. Some believed it entailed an unnecessary risk, that any delay was foolish. I did not argue with that: in some cases, it was indeed impossible. I had had no chance, for example, to address Fritz Kramer when I smashed him off the road, nor to speak to the others who had wound up in road-side ditches or in flaming cars on the autobahn. But where it was possible, as it was now, then it was worthwhile. The leader of our group – Aron, the same grave, intense man who had sent me on my first mission as a messenger, from that candlelit cellar in Kovno – had argued it with great passion. ‘Those who are guilty of the greatest crime in human history should know, even as they draw their last breath, that their victims did not let this crime go unavenged. That Jews cannot be murdered with impunity. That the Jews will fight back.’

Dorfman's tan vanished, the sight of the gun draining the blood from his face. There was also, I noticed, a glint of confusion in his eye, a perplexed expression which I had seen more than once. Why are you, a young, strong Aryan man, saying these things?

‘No. You have made a mistake, I am-’ ‘I am a Jew and I am here to avenge my people.’ ‘But I have done nothing wrong. You have the wrong-’

‘Don't worry. I'm not going to shoot you.’ At that, Dorfman slumped in relief. He tottered backwards and sank onto the edge of the bed. ‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘Thank God.’

I kept the gun trained on him and said nothing.

‘You want money, yes? That's what it is. Of course. You want money. How much money do you want, to keep this information, er, confidential? Name your price. There are plenty of people who could arrange a wire transfer, you need only-’

‘I am not going to shoot you because that would be too quick. I have in my bag two syringes and a small tank of gasoline. I am going to inject the gasoline into your heart. Death takes at least – but you know how long it takes. From the experiments of Aribert Heim at Mauthausen. He ran this particular experiment many times. Surely he shared the results with you?’

‘Please, don't do this to me. Please. Whatever you want, you can have it. Names. I can give you names.’

This, too, was part of our procedure. The plea for mercy, in return for information on other war criminals in hiding – their whereabouts, their new identities – we always listened to that patiently.

I opened my bag and pulled out a notebook and pen. I wrote down what Dorfman told me. Occasionally I told him to slow down. The stream of words, powered by his fear, was flowing too fast for me to keep up, a pen in my right hand, the revolver in my left.

But I was also aware of the time. I knew that Frau Dorfman would soon tire of her shopping. I closed my notebook and returned it to the bag. The Nazi exhaled deeply, believing his ordeal was coming to an end.

‘Now, where were we?’ I said. ‘Oh yes. I was explaining how I am going to kill you.’

‘You dirty Jew! We made a bargain!’

‘You'd better call your lawyer.’

At that, Dorfman lunged for the gun. But he miscalculated. I was still holding the weapon in my left hand, freeing my right hand to deliver a swift, but meaty right hook to his jaw.

For a moment, I was worried that I had knocked him out. That would be no good. Dorfman was flat out on the bed, his hands clasped to his face – but he was conscious.

‘As I was saying, the gasoline will go straight to your heart. Fortunately, I have two syringes. One for each of you.’

There was a stirring from the bed and a low grunt.

‘Sorry, I can't hear you.’

His voice slurred, the blood bubbling in his mouth, Dorfman tried again. ‘What do you mean, each of you?’

‘For you and your wife, of course. We will wait for her to come back and you can die together. Though, as you know thanks to Dr Heim, it may take some time.’

With mammoth effort, Dorfman pulled himself upright. His eyes were fierce with fear. I noticed a patch of damp spreading across the Nazi's trousers; he had soiled himself.

He began to beg. At first he pleaded for both their lives, his wife's and his, repeating his offer of money until he could see it was futile. He promised he could give more names, if only he had more time. Eventually, I heard what I was waiting to hear. ‘Take me, but not her. And allow me to die like a man.’

He wanted the revolver, but I refused: too noisy. Instead, I opened my bag and pulled out a long rope. Our source had told me there were ceiling beams in this hotel and that the height was good enough.

I, a Jew, handed him, a Nazi, the rope. I positioned a chair. I watched as Dorfman made the noose around his neck then tied it, and I kept watching as he tightened it. My gaze did not waver when he kicked away the chair: I watched his weight fall. I showed no expression as SS Lieutenant Joschka Dorfman of the Ninth Fort gasped, his body convulsing in the last spasms of life, until his legs were swinging, as dumb and fleshy as the hams on Puerto Street.

Quietly, I holstered my gun, gathered up my things, including a bag which now contained a range of unused weapons, including a spare revolver – but certainly no syringes or petrol – and closed the door of room 212 softly behind me.