The Kindly Ones

ALLEMANDES I AND II

At the border they had set up a pontoon bridge. Just next to it, rising above the gray water of the Bug, the warped girders of the metal bridge the Soviets had dynamited lay in tangles. Our sappers had erected the new one in one night, we’d heard, and impassive Feldgendarmen, their crescent-shaped neck-plates reflecting the sun’s glare, controlled the traffic with self-assurance, as if they were still back home. The Wehrmacht had priority; we were told to wait. I contemplated the big lazy river, the quiet little woods on the other side, the throng on the bridge. Then it was our turn to cross and right on the other side there stretched out, like a boulevard, the wrecks of Russian equipment, trucks burned out and crumpled, tanks ripped open like tin cans, artillery carriages twisted like straw, overturned, swept aside, tangled up in an interminable burned strip made up of irregular heaps running alongside the road. Beyond, the woods gleamed in the splendid summer sun. The dirt road had been cleared but you could see traces of explosions along it, big oil slicks, scattered debris. Then came the first houses of Sokal. In the center of town, a few fires were still gently crackling; dust-covered corpses, most of them in civilian clothing, blocked part of the street, intermingled with ruins and rubble; and facing us, in the shade of a park, white crosses topped with curious little roofs formed a tidy line beneath the trees. Two German soldiers were painting names on them. We waited there while Blobel, accompanied by Strehlke, our supply officer, went to HQ. A sweetish smell, vaguely nauseating, intermingled with the acridity of the smoke. Soon Blobel returned: “It’s fine. Strehlke is taking care of the quarters. Follow me.”

The AOK* had set us up in a school. “I’m sorry,” a little quartermaster in creased field gray said. “We’re still getting organized. But they’ll send you some rations.” Our second in command, von Radetzky, an elegant Balt, waved a gloved hand and smiled: “That’s no problem. We’re not going to stay.” There weren’t any beds, but we had brought blankets; the men sat down on the little school chairs. There must have been about seventy of us. At night, we got soup with cabbage and potato, almost cold, some raw onions, and chunks of a black, gummy bread, which dried out as soon as it was sliced. I was hungry, I dipped it in the soup and ate it and bit into onions whole. Von Radetzky set the watch. The night passed peacefully.

The next morning, Standartenführer Blobel, our commander, gathered his Leiters together to go to HQ. The Leiter III, my immediate superior, wanted to type up a report, so he sent me in his place. The headquarters of the Sixth Army, the AOK 6, to which we were attached, had occupied a large Austro-Hungarian building, its façade gaily painted orange, enhanced with columns and stucco decorations, and riddled with shrapnel. An Oberst, who seemed to know Blobel well, received us: “The Generalfeldmarschall is working outdoors. Follow me.” He led us toward a vast park that stretched down from the building to a bend in the Bug, down below. Near a solitary tree, a man in swimming trunks was walking with long strides, surrounded by a buzzing cloud of officers, their uniforms drenched in sweat. He turned toward us: “Ah, Blobel! Hello, gentlemen.” We saluted him: he was Generalfeldmarschall von Reichenau, the commander in chief of the army. His hairy chest, thrust forward, radiated vigor; embedded in the fat that, despite his athletic build, drowned out the Prussian fineness of his traits, his famous monocle gleamed in the sun, incongruous, almost ridiculous. Without stopping his precise and meticulous instructions he continued his jerky movements to and fro; we had to follow him, which was a little disconcerting; I bumped into a Major and didn’t grasp much. Then he stood still to dismiss us. “Oh yes! One other thing. For the Jews, five guns are too much, you don’t have enough men. Two guns per condemned man will be enough. As for the Bolsheviks, we’ll see how many there are. If they’re women you can use a full squad.” Blobel saluted: “Zu Befehl, Herr Generalfeldmarschall.” Von Reichenau clicked his bare heels and raised his arm: “Heil Hitler!”—“Heil Hitler,” we all replied in chorus before beating a retreat.

Sturmbannführer Dr. Kehrig, my superior, greeted my report sullenly. “Is that all?”—“I didn’t hear everything, Sturmbannführer.” He made a face and fiddled distractedly with his papers. “I don’t understand. Who should we take our orders from, in the end? From Reichenau or Jeckeln? And where is Brigadeführer Rasch?”—“I don’t know, Sturmbannführer.”—“You don’t know much, Obersturmführer. Dismissed.”

Blobel called all the officers together the next day. Early in the morning, about twenty men had gone with Callsen. “I sent him to Lutsk with a Vorkommando. The whole Kommando will follow in a day or two. That’s where we’ll set up our headquarters, for now. The AOK will also be transferred to Lutsk. Our divisions are advancing quickly, we have to get to work. I’m waiting for Obergruppenführer Jeckeln, who will give us orders.” Jeckeln, an old Party hand, was the Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer for southern Russia; all SS formations in the zone, including our own, were subordinated to him in one way or another. But the question of the chain of command continued to worry Kehrig: “So, are we under the authority of the Obergruppenführer?”—“Administratively, we’re subordinated to the Sixth Army. But tactically we receive our orders from the RSHA, via the Gruppenstab, and from the HSSPF. Is that clear?” Kehrig nodded and sighed: “Not entirely, but I’m guessing the details will become clearer as we go along.” Blobel flushed crimson: “But they explained everything to you in Pretzsch, good God!” Kehrig kept his calm. “In Pretzsch, Standartenführer, they explained absolutely nothing to us. They fed us some speeches and made us exercise. That’s it. I would remind you that the representatives of the SD were not invited to the meeting with Gruppenführer Heydrich, last week. I’m sure there were good reasons for that, but the fact is that I have no idea what I should do, aside from write reports on the morale and behavior of the Wehrmacht.” He turned to Vogt, the Leiter IV: “You were there, at that meeting. Well, when they explain our tasks to us, we’ll carry them out.” Vogt tapped on the table with a pen, ill at ease. Blobel chewed the inside of his cheeks and stared furiously at a point on the wall. “All right,” he finally barked. “In any case, the Obergruppenführer is arriving tonight. We’ll see about that tomorrow.”

This inconclusive meeting probably took place on June 27, since the next day we were summoned to a speech by Obergruppenführer Jeckeln and my books affirm that this speech took place on the twenty-eighth. Jeckeln and Blobel had probably told themselves that the men of the Sonderkommando were in need of a little direction and motivation; late in the morning, the whole Kommando came to line up in the school courtyard to listen to the HSSPF. Jeckeln didn’t mince his words. Our job, he explained to us, was to identify and eliminate any element behind our lines that might threaten the security of our troops. Any Bolshevik, any People’s Commissar, any Jew and any Gypsy could at any instant dynamite our quarters, assassinate our men, derail our trains, or transmit vital information to the enemy. Our duty wasn’t to wait till he acted and then punish him, but to prevent him from acting. Nor was it a question, given the swiftness of our advance, of creating and filling camps: any suspect would be sent to the firing squad. For the lawyers among us, he reminded us that the USSR had refused to sign the Hague conventions, and that, therefore, the international law that regulated our actions in the West did not apply here. Certainly there would be mistakes; certainly there would be innocent victims; but that, alas, was war; when you bomb a city, civilians die too. At times it might be hard for us, our sensitivity and delicacy as men and Germans might sometimes suffer from it, he knew; we should triumph over ourselves; and he could only remind us of a phrase of the Führer’s, which he had heard from his own mouth: The leaders must themselves make the sacrifice of overcoming their doubts. Thank you and Heil Hitler. That at least had the merit of frankness. In Pretzsch, Müller’s and Streckenbach’s speeches abounded with fine phrases about the need to be pitiless and merciless, but aside from confirming that we were in fact going to Russia, they had confined themselves to generalities. Heydrich, in Düben, during the departure parade, might have been more explicit; but he had scarcely begun to speak when a violent rainstorm broke: he had canceled his speech and gone off to Berlin. So our confusion wasn’t surprising, all the more so since few of us had the slightest operational experience; I myself, ever since I had been recruited into the SD, did almost nothing but compile legal files, and I was far from being the exception. Kehrig took care of constitutional questions; even Vogt, the Leiter IV, came from the card files department. As for Standartenführer Blobel, they had taken him from the Düsseldorf Staatspolizei; he had probably never done anything but arrest asocials or homosexuals, along with maybe a Communist from time to time. In Pretzsch, they said he had been an architect: he had obviously not made a career of it. He was not what you would call a nice man; I found him aggressive, almost brutal with his colleagues. His round face, with his crushed chin and protuberant ears, seemed to be perched on the neck of his uniform like the naked head of a vulture, a resemblance even more accentuated by his beaklike nose. Every time I passed near him, he stank of alcohol; Häfner said that he was trying to get over a case of dysentery. I was happy I didn’t have to deal with him directly, and Dr. Kehrig, who was forced to, seemed to suffer from it. He himself seemed to feel out of place here. In Pretzsch, Thomas had explained to me that they had taken most of the officers from offices where they weren’t indispensable; they had been summarily attributed SS ranks (that’s how I found myself an SS-Obersturmführer, the equivalent of one of your lieutenants); Kehrig, an Oberregierungsrat, or government adviser, barely a month earlier, had benefited from his rank in the civil service to be promoted to Sturmbannführer; and he obviously had trouble getting used to his new epaulettes, as well as to his new functions. As for the noncoms and the troops, they came mostly from the lower middle class—shopkeepers, accountants, clerks, the kind of men who signed up in the SA during the Depression in the hope of finding work, and had never left it. Among them were a certain number of Volksdeutschen from the Baltic countries or from Ruthenia, gloomy, dull men, ill at ease in their uniforms, whose sole qualification was their knowledge of Russian; some could barely manage to make themselves understood in German. Von Radetzky, it’s true, stood out from the rest: he boasted of knowing the slang of the brothels of Moscow, where he was born, as well as that of Berlin, and always seemed to know what he was doing, even when he wasn’t doing anything. He also spoke some Ukrainian—he had apparently worked a little in import-export; like me, he came from the Sicherheitsdienst, the Security Service of the SS. His posting to the southern sector filled him with despair; he had dreamed of being in the center, of entering Moscow as a conqueror and of striding across the Kremlin carpets. Vogt consoled him by telling him we’d have fun enough in Kiev, but von Radetzky made a face: “It’s true that the lavra is magnificent. But aside from that, it’s a hole.” The night of Jeckeln’s speech, we received the order to pack our things and prepare to march the next day: Callsen was ready to receive us.

Lutsk was still burning when we arrived. A liaison officer from the Wehrmacht took charge of us to guide us to our quarters; we had to skirt the old city and the fort, the path was a complicated one. Kuno Callsen had requisitioned the Academy of Music, near the main square, at the foot of the castle: a fine, simple, seventeenth-century building—a former monastery that had also served as a prison, in the previous century. Callsen was waiting for us on the steps with some men. “It’s a practical place,” he explained to me as our equipment and our things were being unloaded. “There are still some cells in the basement, we just have to retool the locks, I’ve already started.” For my part I preferred libraries to jails, but all the books were in Russian or Ukrainian. Von Radetzky was also walking around with his bulbous nose and his vague eyes, examining the decorative moldings; when he passed near me, I remarked to him that there weren’t any Polish books. “It’s curious, Sturmbannführer. Not so long ago, this was Poland.” Von Radetzky shrugged: “The Stalinists got rid of everything, as you can well imagine.”—“In two years?”—“Two years is enough. Especially for an academy of music.”

The Vorkommando was already overworked. The Wehrmacht had arrested hundreds of Jews and looters and wanted us to take care of them. The fires were still burning and it seemed that saboteurs were keeping them up. And then there was the problem of the old fort. When he was putting his files in order, Dr. Kehrig had found his Baedeker and had held it out to me over the torn-open crates to show me the entry: “Castle Lubart. Look, a Lithuanian prince built it.” The central courtyard was overflowing with corpses, prisoners shot by the NKVD before their retreat, apparently. Kehrig asked me to go have a look. This castle had immense brick walls built on earthen ramparts, surmounted by three square towers; sentinels from the Wehrmacht guarded the gate, and an officer from the Abwehr had to intervene so I could enter. “Sorry. The Generalfeldmarschall ordered us to secure the place.”—“Of course, I understand.” An abominable stench assaulted my nose as soon as I went through the gate. I didn’t have a handkerchief and held one of my gloves over my nose to try to breathe. “Take this,” the Hauptmann from the Abwehr suggested, handing me a wet cloth, “it helps a little.” It did help a little, but not enough; even though I breathed through my mouth, the smell filled my nostrils, sweet, heavy, nauseating. I swallowed convulsively to keep from vomiting. “Your first time?” the Hauptman gently asked. I nodded. “You’ll get used to it,” he went on, “but maybe never completely.” He himself was livid, but didn’t cover his mouth. We had passed through a long vaulted corridor, then a little quadrangle. “It’s that way.”

The corpses were piled up in a big paved courtyard, in disordered mounds, scattered here and there. An immense, haunting buzzing filled the air: thousands of heavy blue flies were hovering over the bodies, the pools of blood, the fecal matter. My boots stuck to the pavement. The dead were already swelling up, I gazed at their green and yellowish skin, their faces gone shapeless, as if they’d been beaten to death. The smell was vile; and this smell, I knew, was the beginning and the end of everything, the very signification of our existence. This thought filled me with dismay. Little groups of soldiers from the Wehrmacht equipped with gas masks were trying to disentangle the piles and line up the bodies; one of them tugged on an arm, which came off and stayed in his hand; he tossed it with a weary gesture onto another pile. “There are more than a thousand of them,” the Abwehr officer said to me, almost whispering. “All the Ukrainians and Poles they’d been keeping in prison since their invasion. We found women, even children.” I wanted to close my eyes, or put my hand over my eyes, and at the same time I wanted to look, to look as much as I could, and by looking, try to understand, this incomprehensible thing, there, in front of me, this void for human thought. At a loss, I turned to the officer from the Abwehr: “Have you read Plato?” He looked at me, taken aback: “What?”—“No, it’s nothing.” I did an about-face and left the place. In the back of the first small courtyard, a door opened on the left; it led to some steps. In the upper floors, I wandered haphazardly through empty hallways, then noticed a spiral staircase, in one of the towers; at the top, one could access a wooden footbridge attached to the walls. From there, I could smell the odor from the fires in the city; it was far better, and I breathed deeply, then took a cigarette out of my case and lit it. I had the impression that the stench from the putrefied corpses was still stuck to the insides of my nose, I tried to chase it away by exhaling the smoke through my nostrils, but managed only to make myself cough convulsively. I looked at the view. Toward the back of the fort lay some gardens, little vegetable gardens with a few fruit trees; beyond the wall I saw the city and the loop of the Styr; on that side there wasn’t any smoke, and the sun shone on the countryside. I smoked quietly. Then I went down again and returned to the main courtyard. The officer from the Abwehr was still there. He stared at me inquisitively but without irony: “Feeling better?”—“Yes, thanks.” I tried to take an official tone: “You have an exact count? It’s for my report.”—“Not yet. Tomorrow, I think.”—“And the nationalities?”—“I told you, Ukrainians, Poles probably. It’s hard to say, most of them don’t have any papers. They were shot in groups, you can see they did it in a hurry.”—“Any Jews?” He looked at me with surprise: “Of course not. It’s the Jews who did this.” I grimaced: “Oh yes, of course.” He turned back to the corpses and didn’t say anything for a while. “What a mess,” he finally mumbled. I saluted him. Outside, some kids were gawking; one of them asked me a question, but I didn’t understand his language, I passed by without saying anything and returned to the Academy of Music to report to Kehrig.

The next day, the Sonderkommando set to work in earnest. One squad, under Callsen and Kurt Hans, shot three hundred Jews and twenty looters in the castle garden. In the company of Dr. Kehrig and Sturmbannführer Vogt, I spent my day in planning meetings with the military intelligence chief of the Sixth Army, the Ic/AO Niemeyer, along with several colleagues of his, including Hauptmann Luley, whom I had met the day before at the fort and who was in charge of counterespionage. Blobel thought that we were short on men and wanted the Wehrmacht to lend us some; but Niemeyer was categorical: it was up to the Generalfeldmarschall and his Chief of Staff, Oberst Heim, to decide that sort of question. During another meeting, in the afternoon, Luley announced to us in a strained voice that they had found ten German soldiers among the dead in the castle, horribly mutilated. “They were tied up and their noses, ears, tongues, and genitals were cut off.” Vogt went up to the castle with him and returned with a waxen face: “Yes, it’s true, it’s horrible, they’re monsters.” This news created a stir; Blobel ranted through the hallways and then went back to see Heim. That night he announced to us: “The Generalfeldmarschall wants to take punitive action. Strike a strong blow, discourage those bastards.” Callsen gave us a report on the day’s executions. They had gone off without any snags, but the method imposed by von Reichenau, with just two guns per condemned man, had its disadvantages: if you wanted to be sure of your shot, you had to aim at the head rather than the chest, which caused splattering, the men got blood and brains in their faces, they were complaining. That led to a heated argument. Häfner shouted, “You’ll see that it’ll end up with a bullet in the back of the neck, like the Bolsheviks.” Blobel reddened and pounded on the table: “Gentlemen! Such language is inadmissible! We are not Bolsheviks!…We are German soldiers. In the service of our Volk and our Führer!” He turned to Callsen: “If your men are too sensitive, we’ll have schnapps served to them.” Then to Häfner: “In any case there’s no question of bullets in the neck. I don’t want the men to have a feeling of personal responsibility. Executions will take place according to military method, and that’s final.”

I spent the next morning at the AOK: they had seized crates of documents when they captured the city, so I had to go with a translator and inspect these files, especially the ones from the NKVD, and decide which ones to deliver to the Sonderkommando for priority analysis. We were especially looking for lists of members of the Communist Party, of the NKVD, or other groups: many of those people must have stayed in town mixed in with the civilian population, to carry out acts of espionage or sabotage, so it was urgent to identify them. Around noon, I returned to the Academy to consult Dr. Kehrig. There was some agitation on the ground floor: groups of men were milling in the corners, whispering agitatedly. I caught a Scharführer by the sleeve: “What’s happening?”—“I don’t know, Obersturmführer. I think there’s a problem with the Standartenführer.”—“Where are the officers?” He pointed to a stairway that led to our quarters. On the way up, I met Kehrig, who was muttering as he came down, “This is insane, just insane.”—“What’s happening?” I asked him. He glanced at me gloomily and said, “How do you expect to work in such conditions?” He continued on his way. I climbed up a few more steps and heard a shot, the sound of broken glass, some shouts. On the landing in front of the open door of Blobel’s bedroom, two officers from the Wehrmacht were pacing furiously back and forth in front of Kurt Hans. “What’s happening?” I asked Hans. He gestured toward the room with his chin, his hands clenched behind his back. I went in. Blobel, sitting on his bed, wearing his boots but no jacket, was waving a pistol around; Callsen was standing next to him and trying without grasping his arm to direct the pistol toward the wall; a window pane had shattered; on the floor, I noticed a bottle of schnapps. Blobel was livid and spluttering incoherent words. Häfner came in behind me: “What’s happening?”—“I don’t know, it seems the Standartenführer is having a fit.”—“He’s gone nuts, you mean.” Callsen turned around: “Ah, Obersturmführer. Go ask the gentlemen from the Wehrmacht to excuse us and come back a little later, all right?” I stepped back and bumped into Hans, who had made up his mind to come in. “August, go find a doctor,” Callsen said to Häfner. Blobel was bawling: “It’s not possible, it’s not possible, they’re sick, I’m going to kill them.” The two officers from the Wehrmacht hovered in the hallway, rigid, pale. “Meine Herren…,” I began. Häfner pushed me aside and ran down the stairs. The Hauptmann squeaked: “Your Kommandant has gone mad! He wanted to shoot at us.” I didn’t know what to say. Hans went out behind me: “Meine Herren, I hope you’ll excuse us. The Standartenführer is suffering a breakdown and we have to call a doctor. We will have to resume this discussion later on.” In the bedroom, Blobel shouted piercingly: “I’m going to kill those shits, let me alone.” The Hauptmann shrugged: “If that’s what the senior officers of the SS are made of…. We’ll do without your cooperation.” He turned to his colleague, spreading his arms: “It’s not possible, they must have emptied the asylums.” Kurt Hans turned pale: “Meine Herren! The honor of the SS…” He too was bawling now. Finally I intervened and cut him off. “Listen, I don’t know what’s happening yet, but obviously we have a problem of a medical nature. Hans, it’s no use getting carried away. Meine Herren, as my colleague was saying, it might be better for you to excuse us for now.” The Hauptmann looked me up and down: “You are Dr. Aue, aren’t you? Fine, let’s go,” he said to his colleague. In the stairway they met Sperath, the doctor from the Sonderkommando, who was coming up with Häfner: “Are you the doctor?”—“Yes.”—“Be careful. He might shoot at you too.” I stood aside to let Sperath and Häfner pass, then followed them into the bedroom. Blobel had put his pistol on the night table and was speaking in a broken voice to Callsen: “But you can see that it’s not possible to shoot so many Jews. We need a plow, to plow them into the earth!” Callsen turned to us. “August, look after the Standartenführer for a minute, will you?” He took Sperath by the arm, drew him aside, and started whispering to him animatedly. “Shit!” Häfner cried. I turned and saw he was struggling with Blobel, who was trying to grab his pistol. “Standartenführer, Standartenführer, calm down, please,” I shouted. Callsen came back and began speaking to him calmly. Sperath also came over and took his pulse. Blobel made another move in the direction of his pistol but Callsen deflected him. Sperath spoke to him: “Listen, Paul, you’re overexerting yourself. I’m going to give you a shot.”—“No! No shots!” Blobel’s arm, flung up, hit Callsen in the face. Häfner had picked up the bottle and showed it to me, shrugging: it was almost empty. Kurt Hans remained by the door and watched without saying anything. Blobel let out almost incoherent exclamations: “It’s those shits from the Wehrmacht that should be shot! All of them!” then started muttering again. “August, Obersturmführer, come help me,” Callsen ordered. At the count of three, we took Blobel by the feet and under the arms and laid him down on the bed. He didn’t struggle. Callsen rolled his jacket into a ball and slid it under his head; Sperath rolled up his sleeve and gave him a shot. He was already starting to seem a little calmer. Sperath led Callsen and Häfner to the door to confer and I stayed next to Blobel. His bulging eyes were staring at the ceiling; a little saliva was wetting the corners of his mouth, and he was still mumbling: “Plow the Jews, plow the Jews.” Discreetly, I slipped the pistol into a drawer: no one had thought to do that. Blobel seemed already to have fallen asleep. Callsen returned to the bed: “We’re going to take him to Lublin.”—“Why Lublin?”—“There’s a hospital there, for this sort of case,” Sperath explained. “A madhouse, you mean,” Häfner blurted coarsely. “August, shut up,” barked Callsen. Von Radetzky appeared at the door: “What is this mess?” Kurt Hans spoke up: “The Generalfeldmarschall gave an order and the Standartenführer was ill, he wasn’t able to bear it. He wanted to shoot at the officers from the Wehrmacht.”—“He already had a fever this morning,” Callsen added. He briefly outlined the situation to von Radetzky, along with Sperath’s suggestion. “Fine,” von Radetzky decided, “we’ll do what the doctor says. I’ll take him myself.” He seemed a little pale. “As for the Generalfeldmarschall’s order, have you already started getting organized?”—“No, we haven’t done anything,” Kurt Hans said. “Fine. Callsen, you take care of the preparations. Häfner, you’ll come with me.”—“Why me?” Häfner retorted, his face darkening. “Because,” von Radetzky snapped with irritation. “Go get the Standartenführer’s Opel ready. Take some extra gas cans, just in case.” Häfner insisted: “Can’t Janssen go instead?”—“No, Janssen is going to help Callsen and Hans. Hauptsturmführer,” he said to Callsen, “do you agree?” Callsen shook his head pensively: “It might be better if you stayed and I went with him, Sturmbannführer. You’re in command, now.” Von Radetzky shook his head: “That’s why I think it would be better for me to go with him.” Callsen still seemed doubtful: “Are you sure you shouldn’t stay?”—“Yes, yes. In any case, don’t worry: Obergruppenführer Jeckeln is arriving soon, along with his staff. Most of them are already here; I’ve just had a meeting with them. He’ll take things in hand.”—“Good. Because, well, you understand, an Aktion of this magnitude, for me…” A thin smile played over von Radetzky’s lips: “Don’t worry. Go see the Obergruppenführer, and start your preparations: everything will go fine, I guarantee it.”

An hour later, the officers met in the main hall. Von Radetzky and Häfner had left with Blobel; he had started kicking when they put him into the Opel, Sperath had been forced to give him another shot while Häfner held him round the waist. Callsen began to speak: “Well, I think you’re all more or less up to date about the situation.” Vogt interrupted: “Could you perhaps go over it quickly?”—“If you like. This morning, the Generalfeldmarschall gave the order to undertake a retaliatory action for the ten German soldiers found mutilated in the fortress. He ordered us to execute one Jew for each person assassinated by the Bolsheviks; that is more than a thousand Jews. The Standartenführer received the order and that seems to have brought about a fit…”—“It’s also somewhat the army’s fault,” Kurt Hans said. “They should have sent someone with more tact than that Hauptmann. And transmitting an order of this importance through a Hauptmann is almost an insult.”—“We have to admit that this whole business reflects badly on the honor of the SS,” Vogt commented.—“Listen,” Sperath said acerbically, “that’s not the question. I can tell you that the Standartenführer was already ill, this morning, he had a strong fever. The beginning of typhoid, I think. It definitely precipitated his breakdown.”—“Yes, but he also drank a lot,” Kehrig remarked.—“That’s true,” I ventured, “there was an empty bottle in his room.”—“He had intestinal problems,” Sperath retorted. “He thought that might help.”—“In any case,” Vogt concluded, “we’re without a commander. And also without a deputy commander. That won’t do. I suggest that while we wait for the return of Sturmbannführer von Radetzky, Hauptsturmführer Callsen take command of the Sonderkommando.”—“But I’m not the highest-ranking officer,” Callsen objected. “You are, or Sturmbannführer Kehrig.”—“Yes, but we aren’t operations officers. Among the leaders of the Teilkommandos, you’re the most senior.”—“I agree,” Kehrig said. Callsen, his face tense, darted his eyes from one man to the other, then looked at Janssen, who turned aside before nodding his head. “Me too,” Kurt Hans added. “Hauptsturmführer, it’s your command.” Callsen remained silent and then shrugged: “Fine. As you like.”—“I have a question,” Strehlke, our Leiter II, said coolly. He turned to Sperath: “Doctor, according to you, what is the Standartenführer’s condition? Should we count on his returning soon or not?” Sperath made a face: “I don’t know. It’s hard to say. Part of his affliction is certainly of nervous origin, but there must also be organic causes. They’ll have to see how he is when the fever goes down.”—“If I understood you correctly,” Vogt spluttered, “he won’t be coming back right away.”—“That’s hardly likely. Not in the next few days, in any case.”—“Maybe he won’t come back at all,” Kehrig snapped. A silence spread through the room. Obviously the same thought united us, even if no one wanted to give voice to it: it might not be such a bad thing if Blobel did not come back. None of us had known him a month ago, and we had been under his orders for scarcely a week; nonetheless, we had learned that working with him could turn out to be difficult, disagreeable even. Callsen broke the silence: “Listen, that’s not all: we have to start planning our operation.”—“Yes, but really,” Kehrig went on vehemently, “it’s absolutely grotesque, this business, it doesn’t make any sense.”—“What is grotesque?” Vogt asked.—“These retaliations! You’d think it was the Thirty Years’ War! And also first of all, how are you going to go about identifying a thousand Jews? In one night?” He tapped his nose. “From sight? By examining their noses? By measuring them?”—“That’s true,” admitted Janssen, who hadn’t said anything till then. “It’s not going to be easy.”—“Häfner had an idea,” Kurt Hans laconically suggested. “We just have to ask them to drop their pants.” Kehrig exploded suddenly: “But that’s absolutely ridiculous! You’re all out of your minds!…Callsen, tell them.” Callsen remained somber but unmoved: “Listen, Sturmbannführer. Calm down. There must be a solution, I’ll discuss it later on with the Obergruppenführer. As to the principle of the thing, I don’t like it any more than you do. But those are the orders.” Kehrig stared at him, biting his tongue; he was obviously trying to contain himself. “And Brigadeführer Rasch,” he finally blurted, “what does he have to say about it? He is our direct superior, after all.”—“Exactly, that’s another problem. I’ve already tried contacting him, but it seems the Gruppenstab is still on the march. I’d like to send an officer to Lemberg to report to him and request his instructions.”—“Who were you thinking of sending?”—“I was thinking of Obersturmführer Aue. Can you do without him for a day or two?” Kehrig turned to me: “How far are you with those files, Obersturmführer?”—“I’ve already sorted through a large part. I need a few more hours, I think.” Callsen looked at his watch: “It’s already cutting it short if he’s going to arrive before nightfall.”—“All right,” Kehrig decided. “In that case, finish up tonight and leave at dawn.”—“Very well…Hauptsturmführer,” I asked Callsen, “what do you want me to do?”—“Report to the Brigadeführer on the situation and the problem with the Kommandant. Explain what our decisions were and tell him we’re awaiting his instructions.”—“While you’re at it,” Kehrig added, “get some information about the local situation. It seems things are pretty confused down there; I’d like to know what’s happening.”—“Zu Befehl.”

That evening, it took four men to carry the selected archives up to the offices of the SD. Kehrig was in a foul mood. “Come on, Obersturmführer,” he growled when he saw my boxes, “I thought I’d asked you to sort through all that!”—“You should see what I left behind, Sturmbannführer.”—“Maybe. We’re going to have to borrow some more translators. All right. Your car is ready, ask for Höfler. Leave early. Now go see Callsen.” In the hallway, I met Untersturmführer Zorn, another junior officer, who usually assisted Häfner. “Ah, Dr. Aue. You’re lucky.”—“Why do you say that?”—“Well, to be leaving. Filthy business, tomorrow.” I nodded: “No doubt. Is everything ready, then?”—“I don’t know. I just have to take care of the cordon.”—“Zorn does nothing but complain,” protested Janssen, who had joined us.—“Have you solved the problem?” I asked.—“Which one?”—“The problem of the Jews. How to find them.” He laughed dryly: “Oh, that! It’s very simple really. The AOK is going to print some posters: all Jews are requested to report tomorrow morning to the main square for forced labor. We’ll take the ones who come.”—“And you think there will be enough of them?”—“The Obergruppenführer says that yes, it never fails, it works every time. If not, we’ll arrest the Jewish leaders and threaten to shoot them if they’re not all there.”—“I see.”—“Ah, what a mess” Zorn sighed. “Fortunately I just have to look after the cordon.”—“At least you’re there,” Janssen grumbled. “Not like that pig Häfner.”—“It’s not his fault,” I objected. “He wanted to stay. It’s the Sturmbannführer who insisted he accompany them.”—“Right, exactly. And why isn’t he here, then?” He looked at me darkly. “I’d also like to take a trip to Lublin or Lemberg.” I shrugged and went to find Callsen. He was poring over a map of the city along with Vogt and Kurt Hans. “Yes, Obersturmführer?”—“You wanted to see me.” Callsen seemed much more in command of himself than in the afternoon, almost relaxed. “You will tell Brigadeführer Dr. Rasch that Obergruppenführer Jeckeln confirms the army’s orders and is personally taking control of the Aktion.” He stared at me with calm eyes; obviously, Jeckeln’s decision had taken a weight off his shoulders. “He also confirms my position as acting commander until Sturmbannführer von Radetzky returns,” he went on, “unless the Brigadeführer has another preference. Finally, for the Aktion, he is lending us Ukrainian auxiliaries and a company from the Ninth Police Reserve Battalion. That’s it.” I saluted and went out without saying a word. That night, I stayed awake for a long time: I was thinking of the Jews who would be coming the next day. I thought the method adopted very unfair; the Jews of goodwill would be punished, the ones who might have come to trust the word of the German Reich; as for the others, the cowards, the traitors, the Bolsheviks, they’d stay hidden and we wouldn’t find them. As Zorn said, it was a fine mess. I was happy to leave for Lemberg, it would be an interesting trip; but I wasn’t satisfied with avoiding the Aktion that way; I thought something like that was a serious problem, but that you should confront it and resolve it, for yourself at least, and not run away from it. The others—Callsen, Zorn—wanted to wash their hands of it, or at least not assume responsibility for it: that wasn’t right, to my thinking. If we were committing an injustice, we ought to think about it, and decide if it was necessary and inevitable, or if it was only the result of taking the easy way out, of laziness, of a lack of thought. It was a question of rigor. I knew that these decisions were made at a much higher level than our own; still, we weren’t automatons, it was important not just to obey orders, but to adhere to them; yet I was having doubts, and that troubled me. Finally I read a little and slept for a few hours.

At four o’clock I got dressed. Höfler, the driver, was already waiting for me in the mess with some bad coffee. “If you like I also have some bread and cheese, Obersturmführer.”—“No, that’s okay, I’m not hungry.” I drank my coffee in silence. Höfler dozed. Outside, there wasn’t a sound. Popp, the soldier who was to serve as my escort, joined us and started eating noisily. I got up and went out to smoke in the courtyard. The sky was clear, the stars were shining above the tall façades of the former monastery, closed and impassive in the gentle white light. I couldn’t see the moon. Höfler came out and saluted me: “Everything’s ready, Obersturmführer.”—“Did you take some cans of gas?”—“Yes. Three.” Popp was standing next to the front door of the Admiral, looking awkward and content with his rifle on his shoulder. I motioned to him to get in back. “Usually, Obersturmführer, the escort sits in front.”—“Yes, but I’d rather you got in back.”

After crossing the Styr, Höfler turned off onto the road leading south. Signs marked the way; judging from the map, we had a few hours ahead of us. It was a fine Monday morning, calm, peaceful. The sleeping villages seemed scarcely affected by the war; the checkpoints let us pass without difficulty. To our left, already, the sky was growing paler. A little later the sun, still reddish, appeared through the trees. Thin clumps of mist stuck to the ground; between the villages, large flat fields stretched out interminably, interspersed with copses and hills covered with dense, low foliage. The sky slowly turned blue. “The land must be good here,” Popp commented. I didn’t answer and he was silent. In Radziechow we stopped to eat. Once again, the roadsides and ditches were strewn with wrecked tanks, and burned isbas disfigured the villages. The traffic got thicker; we crossed long columns of trucks loaded with soldiers and supplies. A little before Lemberg, a roadblock forced us to pull aside to let some Panzers pass. The road trembled; whirlwinds of dust obscured our windows and slipped in through the cracks. Höfler offered Popp and me a cigarette. He made a face as he lit his own: “These Sportnixes really stink.”—“They’re all right,” I said, “don’t be so fussy.” After the tanks had passed, a Feldgendarm approached and motioned us not to start up: “There’s another column coming,” he shouted. I finished my cigarette and threw the butt out the door. “Popp is right,” Höfler suddenly said. “It’s a beautiful countryside. A man could settle down here, after the war.”—“You’d come settle here?” I asked him with a smile. He shrugged: “It depends.”—“On what?”—“On the bureaucrats. If they’re like the ones back home, it’s not worth it.”—“And what would you do?”—“If I could do anything, Obersturmführer? I’d open a business, like at home. A nice little cigarette shop, with a bar too, and maybe a fruit and vegetable stand, possibly.”—“And you’d rather do that here than at home?” He banged the steering wheel sharply: “Well, I had to close the store at home. In ’thirty-eight already.”—“Why?”—“Because of those bastards from the cartels, from Reemtsma. They decided we had to make at least five thousand a year, to carry their products. In my village, there are maybe sixty families, so, before you could sell five thousand reichsmarks’ worth of cigarettes…. There was nothing for it, they were the only suppliers. I had the only cigarette store in the village, so our Parteiführer supported me, he wrote letters to the Gauleiter for me, we tried everything, but there was nothing to be done. It ended up in the commercial court and I lost, so I had to close up shop. Vegetables weren’t enough. And then I got drafted.”—“So there’s no cigarette shop in your village now?” Popp said in his muffled voice.—“Well, no, that’s what I said.”—“In my town there never was one.” The second column of Panzers arrived and everything started trembling again. One of the Admiral’s windows had come loose and rattled wildly in its frame. I pointed it out to Höfler and he nodded. The column filed by, endless: the front must still be advancing at full speed. Finally the Feldgendarm signaled to us that the road was clear.

In Lemberg, chaos reigned. None of the soldiers questioned at the checkpoints could tell us where the HQ of the Sicherheitspolizei and the SD was; although the city had been captured two days before, no one seemed to have gone to the trouble of putting up tactical signs. We followed a large street almost at random; it ended up in a long boulevard divided in two by a mall and bordered with pastel-tinted façades prettily decorated with white moldings. The streets were swarming with people. Between the German military vehicles, cars and open trucks circulated, decorated with streamers and blue-and-yellow flags, teeming with men in civilian outfits or sometimes in scraps of uniforms, and armed with rifles and pistols; they shouted, sang, fired their guns in the air; on the sidewalks and in the park, other men, armed or not, cheered them, mixed in with impassive German soldiers. A Leutnant from the Luftwaffe was finally able to point me toward a divisional HQ; from there, we were sent to AOK 17. Officers ran up and down the stairways, came in, went out of offices, slamming doors; scattered, trampled Soviet files cluttered the hallways; in the lobby a group of men were standing with blue-and-yellow armbands on their civilian outfits, carrying rifles; they were talking animatedly in Ukrainian or Polish, I didn’t know which, with some German soldiers wearing badges embossed with a nightingale. I grabbed hold of a young Major from the Abwehr: “Einsatzgruppe B?”—“They got here yesterday. They moved into the NKVD offices.”—“And where are they?” He stared at me with an exhausted look: “I have no idea.” He finally found a subaltern who had been there and told him to help me.

On the boulevard, the traffic crawled along at a snail’s pace, then a crowd blocked everything. I got out of the Opel to see what was happening. The people were yelling at the top of their lungs and applauding; some had taken chairs from a café or some crates and were standing on top of them to get a better look; others were carrying their children on their shoulders. I made my way through the press with difficulty. In the center of the crowd, in a large cleared circle, a few men were strutting about in costumes stolen from a theater or a museum—extravagant outfits, a Regency wig with a hussar’s jacket from 1812, a magistrate’s gown bordered with ermine, Mongolian armor and Scottish tartans, a half-Roman, half-Renaissance operetta costume, with a ruff; one man was wearing Budyenny’s red cavalry uniform, but with a top hat and a fur collar, and was waving a long Mauser pistol; all of them were armed with clubs or rifles. At their feet several men on their knees were licking the pavement; from time to time, one of the men in costume kicked them or hit them with the butt of his rifle; most of them were bleeding profusely; the crowd was screaming louder than ever. Behind me, someone started up a lively tune on the accordion; immediately, dozens of voices struck up the words, while the man in a kilt whipped out a violin on which, since he had no bow, he scraped out chords as on a guitar. A spectator pulled me by the sleeve and shouted at me excitedly, “Yid, yid, kaputt!” But I had already understood. I pulled away and went back through the crowd; Höfler, in the meantime, had turned the car around. “I think we can go that way,” the man from the Abwehr said, pointing to a side street. We soon found ourselves lost. Finally, Höfler had the idea of asking a passerby: “NKVD? NKVD?”—“NKVD kaputt!” the man shouted joyously. With gestures, he showed us the way: it was in fact two hundred meters from the AOK; we had gone in the wrong direction. I dismissed our guide and went in to report. Rasch, they told me, was in a meeting with all his Leiters and some army officers; no one knew when he could receive me. Finally a Hauptsturmführer came to my rescue: “You came here from Lutsk? We’ve already been filled in, the Brigadeführer spoke on the phone with Obergruppenführer Jeckeln. But I’m sure your report will interest him.”—“Good. I’ll wait, then.”—“No need, he’ll be tied up for at least two hours. You should just go visit the city. The old city especially is worth seeing.”—“The people seem excited,” I remarked.—“That’s certainly true. The NKVD massacred three thousand people in the prisons, before they decamped. And also all the Ukrainian and Galician nationalists have come out of the woods, or from wherever they were hiding, and they’re a little worked up. The Jews are going to get it bad.”—“And the Wehrmacht isn’t doing anything?” He winked: “Orders from above, Obersturmführer. The population is clearing out the traitors and collaborators, it’s none of our business. It’s an internal conflict. See you later, then.” He disappeared into an office and I went out. The gunfire coming from the center of town sounded like sticks of firecrackers on a holiday. I left Höfler and Popp with the Opel and headed on foot toward the main boulevard. Under the colonnade a jubilant atmosphere reigned; the doors and windows of the cafés had been thrown wide open, and people were drinking and shouting; people shook my hand in passing; a jovial man offered me a glass of Champagne, which I emptied; before I could return it to him, he had disappeared. Mixed in with the crowd, like at a carnival, men dressed in theater costumes were still parading; some were even wearing masks, amusing, hideous, ridiculous. I crossed the park; on the other side began the old town, entirely different from the Austro-Hungarian boulevard: here, it was all tall narrow houses from the late Renaissance, crowned with pointed roofs, their façades painted in various colors and long past their prime, enhanced with baroque ornaments carved out of stone. There were far fewer people in the narrow streets. A macabre poster filled the window of a closed store: it showed an enlargement of a photo of corpses, with an inscription in Cyrillic; I could only make out the words Ukraine and Jidy, the Jews. I walked by a great fine church, obviously Catholic; it was closed and no one answered when I knocked. From an open door farther down the street came sounds of broken glass, blows, shouts; a little farther on lay the corpse of a Jew, his nose in the gutter. Little groups of armed men wearing blue-and-yellow armbands were conversing with civilians; from time to time they went into a house and there were more noises, sometimes gunshots. Right before me, on the second floor, a man suddenly flew through a closed window and came crashing down almost at my feet in the midst of a rain of glass shards; I had to jump backward to avoid the splinters; I distinctly heard the brittle snap of his neck when he hit the pavement. A man in shirtsleeves and an officer’s cap leaned out of the broken window; seeing me, he joyfully shouted in broken German: “Excuse me, Herr deutschen Offizier! I didn’t see you.” My anguish increased; I passed around the corpse and continued on in silence. A little farther, a bearded man in a priest’s robe appeared from a portal, at the foot of a tall ancient belfry; when he saw me, he veered toward me: “Herr Offizier! Herr Offizier! Come, please come.” His German was better than that of the man at the window, but he had a strange accent. He pulled me almost by force toward the gate. I heard cries, wild shouts; in the courtyard of the church, a group of men were cruelly beating some Jews lying on the ground, with clubs or iron rods. Some of the bodies had stopped moving beneath the blows; others were still twitching. “Herr Offizier!” the priest shouted, “do something, please! It is a church, here.” I remained by the gate, unsure; the priest tried to pull me by the arm. I don’t know what I was thinking. One of the Ukrainians saw me and said something to his comrades, shaking his head in my direction; they hesitated, stopped their blows; the priest shouted a torrent of words at them that I didn’t understand, then turned toward me: “I told them that you were ordering them to stop. I told them that churches are sacred and that they were pigs, and that churches were under the protection of the Wehrmacht and that if they didn’t leave they’d be arrested.”—“I’m all alone,” I said.—“That’s not important,” the priest retorted. He shouted some more sentences in Ukrainian. Slowly, the men lowered their clubs. One of them addressed a passionate tirade at me: I understood only the words Stalin, Galicia, and Jews. Another one spat on the bodies. There was a long moment of uncertain wavering; the priest shouted a few words more; at last the men abandoned the Jews and headed toward the gate, then disappeared into the street, without saying a word. “Thank you,” the priest said to me, “thank you.” He ran over to examine the Jews. The courtyard sloped slightly, ending with a fine shaded colonnade roofed in green copper, built against the church wall. “Help me,” the priest said. “This one is still alive.” He lifted him up by the armpits and I took his feet; I saw that he was a young man, with hardly any beard. His head fell back, a stream of blood ran down his side curls and left a line of big shiny drops on the flagstones. My heart was beating very hard: I had never carried a dying man like this. We had to go around the church; the priest shuffled backward, moaning in German: “First the Bolsheviks, now the crazy Ukrainians. Why doesn’t your army do anything?” In the back, a wide archway opened onto another courtyard and then the door to the church. I helped the priest carry the Jew into the vestibule and put him on a bench. The priest called out; two other men, dark and bearded like him, but in suits, emerged from the nave. He spoke to them in a strange language that sounded nothing like Ukrainian, Russian, or Polish. I followed the three men as they went out together, into the courtyard; one of them turned into a back alleyway as the other two walked back toward the Jews. “I sent him to look for a doctor,” the priest said.—“What is this, here?” I asked him. He paused and stared at me: “It’s the Armenian cathedral.”—“So there are Armenians in Lemberg?” I said with surprise. He shrugged: “A lot longer than the Germans or the Austrians.” He and his friend lifted up another Jew, who was quietly moaning. The blood from the Jews flowed slowly along the flagstones of the sloping courtyard and down toward the colonnade. Under the arches I could see tombstones sealed into the wall or set in the ground, covered with inscriptions in mysterious glyphs, Armenian no doubt. I went closer: blood filled the characters cut into the flat stones. I quickly turned away. I felt oppressed, at a loss; I lit a cigarette. It was cool under the colonnade. In the courtyard, the sun shone on the puddles of fresh blood and the limestone paving, on the heavy bodies of the Jews, on their suits of coarse cloth, black or brown, soaked with blood. Flies were buzzing around their heads and landing on the wounds. The priest returned near them. “What about the dead?” he asked me. “We can’t leave them there.” But I had no intention of helping him; the idea of touching one of those inert bodies filled me with revulsion. I headed for the gate, skirting round them, and went out into the street. It was empty; I turned left, more or less at random. A little farther on, the street came to a dead end; but to the right I ended up in a square overlooked by an imposing baroque church decorated with rococo ornaments and a tall columned gate, and crowned with a copper dome. I climbed the steps and went in. The vast vault above the nave rested lightly on thin cabled columns; daylight poured in through the stained-glass windows, shimmered on the wooden sculptures covered in gold leaf; the dark, polished pews stretched to the back, empty. In a little whitewashed side hall I noticed a low door of ancient wood set with brass fittings: I pushed it; a few stone steps led to a wide, low hallway lit by casement windows. Glassed-in shelves occupied the opposite wall, filled with religious objects; some of them looked ancient, wonderfully wrought. To my surprise one of the cases exhibited Jewish objects: scrolls in Hebrew, prayer shawls, old etchings showing Jews in synagogue. Books in Hebrew bore printers’ marks in German: LWOW, 1884; LUBLIN, 1853, BEI SCHMUEL BERENSTEIN. I heard footsteps and raised my head: a tonsured monk was walking toward me. He wore the white habit of the Dominicans. When he reached me, he stopped: “Hello,” he said in German. “Can I help you?”—“What is this, here?”—“You are in a monastery.” I pointed to the shelves: “No, I mean all this.”—“That? It’s our museum of religions. All the objects come from the region. Look, if you like. Normally, we ask for a little donation, but today it’s free.” He went on his way and disappeared silently through the brass-fitted door. Farther on, where he had appeared, the hallway turned at a right angle; I realized I was in fact inside a cloister, closed in by a low wall, with windows set between the columns. A long horizontal display case caught my attention. A little lamp attached to the wall lit up the interior of the case; I leaned over: two skeletons were lying there intertwined, half emerging from a layer of dirt. The larger one, the man probably, despite the large brass earrings resting against his skull, was lying on his back; the other, visibly a woman, was curled up on her side, nestled in his arms, her legs over one of his. It was magnificent, I had never seen anything like it. I tried in vain to make out the label. How many centuries had they been lying there, intertwined with each other? These bodies must have been very old, they must have gone back to the most remote eras; the woman had probably been sacrificed and laid out in the tomb with her dead chief; I knew such practices had existed in primitive times. But this knowledge didn’t change anything; despite everything, it was the position of rest after love, overcome, filled with tenderness. I thought of my sister and my throat tightened: she would have cried if she’d seen that. I left the monastery without meeting anyone; outside I headed straight, toward the other end of the square. Beyond that another vast square opened up, with a large building in the center, next to a tower, surrounded by trees. Narrow houses were squeezed around this square, fabulously decorated, each in a different style. Behind the main building an animated crowd was gathering. I avoided it and turned left, then went round a large cathedral, below a stone cross lovingly held in the arms of an angel, flanked by a languid Moses with his tablets and a pensive saint dressed in rags, raised over a skull and crossbones, almost the same emblem as the one sewn on my cap. Behind, in a little alleyway, stood a few tables and chairs. I was hot and tired, the café seemed empty, I sat down. A girl came out and spoke to me in Ukrainian. “Do you have beer? Beer?” I said in German. She shook her head: “Piva nyetou.” That I understood. “Some coffee? Kava?”—“Da.”—“Voda?”—“Da.” She went back into the room and returned with a glass of water that I drank in one gulp. Then she brought me a coffee. It was already sweetened and I didn’t drink it. I lit a cigarette. The girl reappeared and saw the coffee: “Coffee? Not good?” she asked in broken German. “Sugar. Niet.”—“Oh.” She smiled, took the coffee away, and brought me another. It was strong, without any sugar; I drank it while I smoked. To my right, at the foot of the cathedral, a chapel covered in bas-reliefs arranged in dark bands hid my view of the main square. A man in German uniform was walking round it, examining the intertwined sculptures. He noticed me and headed toward me; I saw his epaulettes, got up quickly, and saluted. He returned my salute: “Hello! So, you’re German?”—“Yes, Herr Hauptmann.” He got out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “Oh good. Do you mind if I sit down?”—“Of course not, Herr Hauptmann.” The girl reappeared. “Do you take your coffee with or without sugar? It’s all they have.”—“With, please.” I made the girl understand we wanted two more coffees, with sugar on the side. Then I sat down with the Hauptmann. He held out his hand: “Hans Koch. I’m with the Abwehr.” I introduced myself. “Oh, you’re from the SD? That’s right, I hadn’t noticed your badge. Very good, very good.” This Hauptmann seemed mild and friendly: he must have been just past fifty, wore round glasses and was a little paunchy. He spoke with a southern accent, not quite Viennese. “You are Austrian, Herr Hauptmann?”—“Yes, from Styria. And you?”—“My father is from Pomerania, originally. But I was born in Alsace. Then we lived here and there.”—“Of course, of course. Are you out for a walk?”—“Sort of, yes.” He nodded: “I’m here for a meeting. Over there, next door, in a little while.”—“A meeting, Herr Hauptmann?”—“See, when they invited us, they explained that it would be a cultural meeting, but I think it’s going to be a political meeting.” He leaned toward me as if to tell me a secret: “I was picked because I’m supposed to be an expert on Ukrainian national questions.”—“And are you?” He flung himself back: “Not at all! I’m a professor of theology. I know a thing or two about the Uniate question, but that’s it. They probably appointed me because I served in the Imperial army, I was a Leutnant during the Great War, so they must have thought that I knew something about the national question; but I was on the Italian front at the time, and in the Supply Corps too. It’s true that I had some Croatian colleagues…”—“You speak Ukrainian?”—“Not a single word. But I have a translator with me. He’s drinking now with the OUN guys, in the square.”—“The OUN?”—“Yes. You didn’t know they took over, this morning? At least, they took over the radio. And they’ve delivered a proclamation, on the revival of the Ukrainian state if I understood right. That’s why I have to go to this meeting now. The Metropolitan, I heard, has blessed the new State. It seems we’re the ones who asked him to do so, but I’m not sure.”—“What Metropolitan?”—“The Uniate, of course. The Orthodox hate us. They hate Stalin too, but they hate us even more.” I was about to ask another question but was suddenly interrupted: a rather plump woman, almost naked, her stockings torn, emerged suddenly with a cry from behind the cathedral; she plowed into the tables, stumbled, knocked one over, and fell at our feet squealing. Her white skin was marbled with contusions, but she wasn’t bleeding much. Two strapping youths with armbands were calmly following her. One of them spoke to us in bad German: “Excuse, Officers. Kein problem.” The other dragged the woman up by her hair and punched her in the stomach. She hiccupped and fell silent, saliva on her lips. The first one kicked her in the buttocks and she started running again. They trotted after her, laughing, and disappeared behind the chapel. Koch took off his cap and wiped his forehead again while I picked up the overturned table. “They’re real savages here,” I remarked.—“Oh yes, I agree with you on that one. But I thought you were encouraging them?”—“That would surprise me, Herr Hauptmann. But I’ve just arrived, I haven’t been filled in.” Koch went on: “At the AOK, I heard that the Sicherheitsdienst had posters printed and was encouraging these people. Aktion Petliura, they called it. You know, the Ukrainian leader? It was a Jew that assassinated him, I think. In ’twenty-six or ’twenty-seven.”—“You see, you are a specialist after all.”—“Oh, I’ve just read a few reports.” The girl had emerged from the café. She smiled and showed me that the coffee was free. In any case I didn’t have any local money. I looked at my watch: “Excuse me, Herr Hauptmann. I have to go.”—“Of course.” He shook my hand: “Good luck.”

I left the old town by the shortest route and with difficulty made my way through the jubilant crowd. At the Gruppenstab things were very animated. The same officer welcomed me: “Oh, it’s you again.” Finally, Brigadeführer Dr. Rasch received me. He shook my hand cordially, but his massive face remained severe. “Have a seat. What happened with Standartenführer Blobel?” He wasn’t wearing a cap and his broad domed forehead shone under the lightbulb. I briefly described Blobel’s collapse: “According to the doctor, it was due to fever and exhaustion.” His thick lips sketched a pout. He leafed through the papers on his desk and took out a sheet. “The Ic from AOK Six wrote to me to complain about his remarks. Apparently he threatened some officers from the Wehrmacht?”—“That’s an exaggeration, Brigadeführer. It is true that he was delirious, he was making incoherent remarks. But he wasn’t after anyone in particular, it was just an effect of the illness.”—“Good.” He questioned me on a few other points, then signaled that the discussion was over. “Sturmbannführer von Radetzky is already back from Lutsk, he’ll take the Standartenführer’s place until he recovers. I’ll have the orders drawn up, together with some other papers. For tonight, go find Hartl over in Personnel, he’ll see to it that you’re put up somewhere.” I left and went in search of the office of the Leiter I; one of his subordinates issued me some ration coupons. Then I went downstairs to find Höfler and Popp. In the lobby, I ran into Thomas. “Max!” He slapped me on the shoulder and I was filled with a sudden flush of joy. “I’m happy to see you here. What are you doing?” I explained to him. “And you’re staying till tomorrow? That’s wonderful. I’m going to have dinner with some people from the Abwehr, in a little restaurant, a good one, apparently. You’ll come with us. Did they find you a bunk? It’s not the Ritz, but at least you’ll have clean sheets. It’s good you didn’t arrive yesterday: it was a real mess. The Reds trashed everything before they left, and the Ukrainians came through before we arrived. We had some Jews clean up but it took hours, we didn’t get to bed till morning.” I arranged to meet him in the garden behind the building and left him. Popp was snoring in the Opel, but Höfler was playing cards with some policemen; I explained the arrangements to him and went to smoke in the garden as I waited for Thomas.

Thomas was a good friend, I was really glad to see him again. We had been friends for several years; in Berlin, we often had dinner together; sometimes he took me with him to nightclubs, or to famous concert halls. He was a bon vivant who knew his way around. And it was mostly thanks to him that I had found myself in Russia; at least the suggestion had come from him. But actually the story goes back a little further than that. In the spring of 1939, I had just received my doctorate in law and joined the SD, and there was a lot of talk of war. After Bohemia and Moravia, the Führer was turning his attention to Danzig; the whole problem was to anticipate the reaction of France and Great Britain. Most people thought that they wouldn’t risk war for Danzig any more than they would for Prague; but they had guaranteed the western border of Poland, and were rearming as quickly as possible. I had a long discussion about it with Dr. Best, my superior and also somewhat my mentor at the SD. In theory, he said, we shouldn’t be afraid of war; war was the logical outcome of our Weltanschauung. Quoting from Hegel and Jünger, he argued that the State could reach its ideal point of unity only in and through war: “If the individual is the negation of the State, then war is the negation of that negation. War is the moment of absolute socialization of the collective existence of the people, the Volk.” But in high places they had more prosaic concerns. Ribbentrop’s ministry, the Abwehr, our own foreign affairs department, each evaluated the situation in his own way. One day, I was called in to see the Chief, Reinhard Heydrich. This was my first time and I felt a mixture of excitement and anxiety as I entered his office. Rigidly concentrated, he was working on a pile of reports, and I stood at attention for several minutes before he made a sign for me to sit down. I had time to observe him up close. I had of course seen him many times, during staff conferences or in the hallways of the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais; but whereas at a distance he presented the very embodiment of the Nordic Übermensch, up close he gave a curious impression, somewhat blurred. I finally decided that it must be a question of proportion: beneath an abnormally high, domed forehead, his mouth was too wide, his lips too thick for his narrow face; his hands seemed too long, like nervous algae attached to his arms. When he raised his little eyes, set too close together, toward me, they didn’t stay in place; and when he finally spoke to me, his voice seemed much too high for a man with such a powerful body. He gave me a disturbing feeling of femininity, which only made him more sinister. His sentences fell rapidly, short, tense; he almost never finished them; but the meaning always remained crisp and clear. “I have a mission for you, Doktor Aue.” The Reichsführer was dissatisfied with the reports he was receiving about the intentions of the Western powers. He wanted another evaluation, independent from that of the foreign department. Everyone knew that in those countries there was a strong pacifist trend, especially within nationalist or pro-fascist circles; but what was still hard to judge was their influence on the governments. “You know Paris well, I think. According to your file you were connected to circles close to the Action Française. Those people have acquired a certain amount of importance since then.” I tried to get in a word but Heydrich interrupted me: “That doesn’t matter.” He wanted me to go to Paris and strike up again with my old acquaintances, to study the actual political weight of the pacifist circles. I was to use the end-of-term vacation as a pretext. Naturally, I was to repeat National Socialist Germany’s pacifist intentions toward France to anyone who cared to listen. “Dr. Hauser will go with you. But you’ll submit separate reports. Standartenführer Taubert will provide you with the necessary currency and documents. Is everything clear?” In fact, I felt completely lost, but he had caught me by surprise. “Zu Befehl, Gruppenführer,” was all I could say. “Fine. Be back by the end of July. Dismissed.”

I went to see Thomas. I was pleased he was leaving with me: as a student, he had spent several years in France, and his French was excellent. “What a face!” he said when he saw me. “You should be happy. A mission—they’ve given you a mission, that’s all.” I suddenly realized that in fact it was a godsend. “You’ll see. If we succeed, that’ll open quite a few doors to us. Things will start moving, soon, and there will be room for people who know how to seize the moment.” He had gone to see Schellenberg, who was acting as Heydrich’s main advisor for foreign affairs; Schellenberg had explained to him what they were expecting of us. “All you have to do is read the papers to know who wants war and who doesn’t. What’s more delicate is to gauge the actual influence of the various groups. And especially the actual influence of the Jews. The Führer, apparently, is convinced that they want to lead Germany into another war; but will the French stand for it? That’s the question.” He laughed openly: “And also in Paris you eat well! And the girls are beautiful.” The mission went off without any obstacles. I found my old friends—Robert Brasillach, who was getting ready to tour Spain in a mobile home with his sister Suzanne and Bardèche, his brother-in-law, Blond, Rebatet, some others I didn’t know as well, all my old comrades from my preparatory classes and my years at the ELSP. At night, Rebatet, half drunk, dragged me through the Latin Quarter to comment knowledgeably about the freshly painted graffiti, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN, on the walls of the Sorbonne; during the day, he sometimes took me to see Céline, who had become extraordinarily famous and who had just published a second vitriolic pamphlet; in the Metro, Poulain, a friend of Brasillach, declaimed whole passages of it to me: There is no fundamental, irremediable hatred between Frenchmen and Germans. What does exist is a permanent, implacable, Judeo-British machination to prevent at all costs Europe from reforming into a single unified Franco-German nation, as it was before 843. The whole Judeo-Britannic genius lies in leading us from one conflict to another, from one carnage to another, slaughters from which we regularly emerge, always, in an atrocious condition, Frenchmen and Germans, bled dry, completely at the mercy of the Jews of the City. As for Gaxotte and Robert himself, who L’Humanité claimed were in prison, they explained to anyone who would listen that all of French politics were guided by the astrology books of Trarieux d’Egmont, who had had the good fortune to predict with precision the date of Munich. The French government—a bad sign—had just expelled Abetz and the other German envoys. Everyone was interested in my opinion: “Ever since Versailles has gone to the scrap heap of history, there is no more French question, for us. No one in Germany has claims on Alsace or on Lorraine. But with Poland, things aren’t settled. We don’t understand what’s motivating France to get mixed up in it.” And it was a fact that the French government wanted to get mixed up in it. Those who didn’t credit the Jewish theory blamed England: “They want to protect their Empire. Ever since Napoleon, that’s been their policy: no single continental power.” Others thought that on the contrary England was still reluctant to intervene, that it was the French General Staff that, dreaming of a Russian alliance, wanted to attack Germany before it was too late. Despite their enthusiasm, my friends were pessimistic: “The French right is pissing in the wind,” Rebatet told me one night. “For honor’s sake.” Everyone seemed glumly to accept the fact that war would come, sooner or later. The right blamed the left and the Jews; the left and the Jews, of course, blamed Germany. I didn’t see Thomas much. Once, I took him to the bistro where I would meet up with the team from Je Suis Partout, introducing him as a university friend. “Is he your Pylades, then?” Brasillach acerbically snarled at me in Greek. “Exactly,” Thomas retorted in the same language, modulated by his soft Viennese accent. “And he is my Orestes. Beware the power of armed friendship.” He himself had developed contacts in the business world; while I was making do with wine and pasta in attic rooms crowded with excited young people, he was eating foie gras in the best brasseries in town. “Taubert will foot the bill,” he laughed. “Why should we stint?”

Back again in Berlin, I typed up my report. My conclusions were pessimistic, but lucid: the French right was fundamentally against the war, but had little weight politically. The government, influenced by the Jews and the British plutocrats, had decided that German expansion, even within the limits of its natural Grossraum, constituted a threat to the vital interests of France; it would go to war, in the name not of Poland itself, but of its guarantees to Poland. I conveyed the report to Heydrich; at his request, I also sent a copy to Werner Best. “You’re definitely right, I think,” Best said to me. “But that’s not what they want to hear.” I hadn’t discussed my report with Thomas; when I described its contents, he looked disgusted. “You really don’t understand anything. It’s as if you had just turned up from the backwaters of Franconia.” He had written exactly the opposite: that the French industrialists were opposed to the war because of their exports, and so the French army was too, and that once again the government would bow before the fait accompli. “But you know very well that that’s not how it’s going to happen,” I objected.—“Who gives a damn what will happen? How does that concern us, you and me? The Reichsführer wants just one thing: to be able to reassure the Führer that he can take care of Poland as he intends. What will happen afterward, we’ll deal with afterward.” He shook his head: “The Reichsführer won’t even see your report.”

Of course he was right. Heydrich never reacted to what I had sent him. When the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, a month later, and France and Great Britain declared war on us, Thomas was posted to one of Heydrich’s new elite Einsatzgruppen, and I was left to vegetate in Berlin. I soon understood that in the interminable National-Socialist circus games, I had gone seriously astray, I had poorly interpreted the ambiguous signs from above, I hadn’t correctly anticipated the Führer’s will. My analyses were correct, and Thomas’s were mistaken; he had been rewarded with an enviable post doubled with chances for promotion, and I had been shunted aside: that was worth reflecting on. During the following months, I detected from sure signs within the RSHA, newly formed from the unofficial fusion of the SP with the SD, that Best’s influence was waning, despite the fact that he had been appointed head of two departments; Schellenberg’s star, however, was rising day by day. Now, as if by chance, around the beginning of the year Thomas had begun spending more time with Schellenberg; my friend had a strange and infallible genius for finding himself in the right place not at the right time, but just before; so that it seemed every time as if he had always been there, and that the ups and downs of bureaucratic precedence did nothing but catch up with him. I could have understood this sooner if I had been paying attention. Now, I suspected that my name remained linked with Best’s, and thus equated with the labels bureaucrat, narrow-minded lawyer, not active enough, not tough enough. I could continue to write legal opinions, they did need people for that, but that would be all. And, in fact, in June the following year, Werner Best resigned from the RSHA, although he had contributed more than anyone else to its creation. At that time I volunteered for a position in France; I was told that my services would be more useful in the legal department. Best was clever, he had friends and protectors elsewhere; over the past few years, his publications had been evolving from the penal and constitutional fields to international law and the theory of the Grossraum, the “large spaces,” which he was developing against Carl Schmitt in the company of my old professor Reinhard Höhn and a few other intellectuals; cleverly playing these cards, he obtained a post high up within the military administration in France. As for me, I was even allowed to publish.

Thomas, on leave, confirmed this diagnosis: “I told you what you did was stupid. Anyone who is anybody is in Poland.” For now, he added, he couldn’t do much for me. Schellenberg was the star of the day, Heydrich’s protégé, and Schellenberg didn’t like me, he thought I was uptight. As for Ohlendorf, my other support, he was having enough difficulties with his own position to be able to think about me. Maybe I should go see my father’s former directors. But everyone was a little busy.

In the end, it was Thomas who started things going for me again. After Poland, he had gone to Yugoslavia and Greece, from which he returned a Hauptsturmführer, decorated many times over. He always wore a uniform now, as elegantly tailored as his suits had been before. In May 1941, he invited me to dine at Horcher’s, a famous restaurant on the Lutherstrasse. “It’s my treat,” he declared, laughing loudly. He ordered some Champagne and we drank to victory: “Sieg Heil!” Past victories and victories yet to come, he added; had I heard about Russia? “I’ve heard rumors,” I acknowledged, “but that’s all.” He smiled: “We’re attacking. Next month.” He paused to give the news all its weight. “Good God,” I finally let out. “There is no God. There’s just Adolf Hitler, our Führer, and the invincible power of the German Reich. We are in the process of amassing the largest army in the history of humanity. We will crush them in a few weeks.” We drank. “Listen,” he finally said. “The Chief is forming several Einsatzgruppen to accompany the assault troops from the Wehrmacht. Special units, as in Poland. I have reason to believe that he would positively welcome any talented young SS officer who would volunteer for this Einsatz.”—“I’ve already tried to volunteer. For France. They refused.”—“They won’t refuse this time.”—“What about you, are you going there?” He gently swirled the Champagne in his glass. “Of course. I’ve been posted to one of the Gruppenstäbe. Each Group will direct several Kommandos. I’m sure you could land a slot in one of the Kommandostäbe.”—“And what exactly is the purpose of these Groups?” He smiled: “I told you: special actions. SP and SD work, the security of the troops to the rear, intelligence, things like that. Keeping an eye on the military, too. They were a little difficult, in Poland, a little old-fashioned; we don’t want that to happen again. You want to think about it?” Does it surprise you that I didn’t even hesitate? What Thomas was suggesting seemed only reasonable to me, even exciting. Put yourself in my place. What man of sane mind could ever have imagined that they’d pick jurists to assassinate people without a trial? My ideas were clear and strong and I scarcely gave it a thought before replying: “No need. I’m bored to death here in Berlin. If you can get me in, I’ll go.” He smiled again: “I always said you were a good guy, that you could be counted on. You’ll see, we’re going to have fun.” I laughed with pleasure and we drank some more Champagne. Thus does the devil expand his kingdom.

But I couldn’t know that yet in Lemberg. Night was falling when Thomas came to pull me out of my daydreams. I could still hear some isolated gunshots, over toward the boulevard, but things seemed to have generally calmed down. “Are you coming? Or do you want to stay there gaping at the crows?”—“What’s Aktion Petliura?” I asked him.—“It’s what you saw in the street. Where did you hear about that?” I ignored his question: “Are you really the ones that started this pogrom?”—“Let’s just say we didn’t try to prevent it. We put up a few notices. But I don’t think the Ukrainians needed us to start. You haven’t seen the OUN posters? You welcomed Stalin with flowers, we will hand your heads to Hitler as a welcome. They came up with that one all by themselves.”—“I see. Are we going there on foot?”—“It’s right nearby.” The restaurant was in a narrow street behind the main boulevard. The door was locked; when Thomas knocked, it opened a little, then opened wide onto a dark, candlelit interior. “For Germans only,” Thomas smiled. “Ah, Professor, hello.” The officers from the Abwehr were already there; aside from them, there was no one else. I immediately recognized the taller of the two, the one Thomas had saluted, a distinguished man, still young, whose little brown eyes sparkled in the midst of a large oval face, relaxed, open. He wore his dark hair a little too long, curled up at the sides in a very un-military way. I shook his hand: “Professor Oberländer. It’s a pleasure to see you again.” He stared at me: “We know each other?”—“We were introduced a few years ago, after one of your lectures at the University of Berlin. By Dr. Reinhard Höhn, my professor.”—“Oh, you were a student of Höhn’s! Wonderful.”—“My friend Dr. Aue is one of the rising stars of the SD,” Thomas slipped in maliciously.—“If he’s a student of Höhn’s, that doesn’t surprise me. It sometimes seems as if the entire SD has passed through his hands.” He turned to his colleague: “But I haven’t introduced you yet to Hauptmann Weber, my adjunct.” Both of them, I noticed, wore the badge embossed with a nightingale that I had seen that afternoon on the arms of certain soldiers. “Excuse my ignorance,” I asked while we sat down, “but what is that insignia?”—“It’s the symbol of the Nachtigall,” Weber replied, “a special battalion of the Abwehr, recruited from the Ukrainian nationalists of western Galicia.”—“Professor Oberländer commands the Nachtigall. So we’re rivals,” Thomas interrupted.—“You exaggerate, Hauptsturmführer.”—“Not really. You came with Bandera in tow, we brought Melnyk and the Berlin committee.” The discussion suddenly became lively. We were served some wine. “Bandera might be useful to us,” Oberländer affirmed.—“In what way?” Thomas retorted. “His men are uncontrollable, they make proclamations all over the place, without consulting anyone.” He raised his arms: “Independence! That’s a nice one.”—“You think Melnyk would do better?”—“Melnyk is a reasonable man. He wants the support of Europe, not terror. He’s a politician, he’s ready to work with us on the long term, and that leaves us more options.”—“Maybe, but the street doesn’t listen to him.”—“Rabid idiots! If they don’t calm down, we’ll bring them to heel.” We drank. The wine was good, a little rough but rich. “Where does it come from?” Weber asked, tapping his glass.—“That? The Carpathians, I think,” Thomas replied.—“You know,” Oberländer went on blithely, “the OUN successfully resisted the Soviets for two full years. It wouldn’t be so easy to eliminate them. It’s better to try to co-opt them and channel their energy. Bandera, at least, they’ll listen to. He saw Stetsko today and it went very well.”—“Who is Stetsko?” I asked. Thomas answered ironically: “Jaroslav Stetsko is the new prime minister of a so-called independent Ukraine that we haven’t authorized.”—“If we play our cards right,” Oberländer went on, “they’ll quickly back down.” Thomas reacted sharply: “Who? Bandera? He’s a terrorist, and he’ll always be a terrorist. He has the soul of a terrorist. That’s why all those maniacs adore him, too.” He turned to me: “You know where the Abwehr found this Bandera? In prison!”—“In Warsaw,” Oberländer added, smiling. “He was actually serving a sentence for assassinating a Polish government minister, in 1934. But I don’t see any harm in that.” Thomas turned back to him: “I’m simply saying he’s uncontrollable. You’ll see. He’s a fanatic, he dreams of a Great Ukraine from the Carpathians to the Don River. He takes himself for the reincarnation of Dmitri Donskoy. At least Melnyk is a realist. And he also has a lot of support. All the old-time militants look up to him.”—“Yes, but that’s just the trouble: not the young. And you’ll have to admit that on the Jewish question he isn’t very motivated.” Thomas shrugged: “We can take care of that without him. In any case, historically, the OUN has never been anti-Semitic. It’s only thanks to Stalin that they’ve moved somewhat in that direction.”—“That may be true,” Weber quietly acknowledged. “But still there is a basis, in the historical link between the Jews and the Polish landowners.” The dishes arrived: roast duck stuffed with apples, with mashed potatoes and braised beets. Thomas served us. “Capital,” Weber said.—“Yes, excellent,” Oberländer approved. “Is this a specialty of the region?”—“Yes,” Thomas explained between mouthfuls. “The duck is prepared with marjoram and garlic. Usually it’s served with a soup made with duck blood as an appetizer, but today they couldn’t.”—“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “Your Nachtigall men, where do they fit in all this?” Oberländer finished chewing and wiped his lips before responding: “With them it’s another thing entirely. It’s the Ruthenian spirit, if you like. Ideologically—and even personally for the oldest of them—they come from a national unit of the old Imperial army that was called the Ukrainski Sichovi Striltsi, the Ukrainian Sich Rifles, you could say, a Cossack reference. After the war, they stayed here and a lot of them fought under Petliura against the Reds, and a little against us, too, in 1918. The OUN don’t like them much. In a way they’re more autonomists than separatists.”—“Like the Bulbovitsi, too,” Weber added. He looked at me: “They haven’t shown their faces yet, in Lutsk?”—“Not to my knowledge. More Ukrainians?”—“Volhynians,” Oberländer corrected. “A self-defense group that started up against the Poles. Since ’thirty-nine they’ve been fighting against the Soviets, and it could be interesting if we came to an agreement with them. But I think they keep more toward Rovno, and farther up, in the Pripet marshes.” Everyone had started eating again. “What I don’t understand,” Oberländer at last went on, pointing his fork at us, “is why the Bolsheviks repressed the Poles but not the Jews. As Weber said, they’ve always been closely associated.”—“I think the answer is obvious,” Thomas said. “Stalinist power is dominated by the Jews in any case. When the Bolsheviks occupied the region, they took the place of the Polish gentry, but maintained the same configuration—that is, they continued to depend on the Jews to exploit the Ukrainian peasantry. Hence the legitimate anger of the people, as you could witness today.” Weber hiccupped into his glass; Oberländer chuckled dryly. “The legitimate anger of the people. That’s going a bit far, Hauptsturmführer.” He had settled back in his chair and was tapping the table edge with his knife. “That’s good for the onlookers. For our allies, for the Americans maybe. But you know as well as I do how that justified anger is organized.” Thomas smiled amiably: “At least, Professor, it has the merit of involving the population psychologically. Afterward, they can only applaud the introduction of our measures.”—“That’s true, I have to admit.” The waitress cleared the table. “Coffee?” Thomas asked.—“With pleasure. But quickly, we still have work to do tonight.” Thomas offered cigarettes around while the coffee was served. “Whatever the case,” Oberländer commented, leaning toward the lighter Thomas held out, “I’ll be very curious about what we find when we cross the Sbruch.”—“And why is that?” asked Thomas, lighting Weber’s cigarette.—“You’ve read my book? On rural overpopulation in Poland.”—“Unfortunately not, sorry.” Oberländer turned to me: “But I imagine you have, with Höhn.”—“Of course.”—“Good. Well, if my theories are correct, I think that once we arrive in Ukraine proper we’ll find a rich peasantry there.”—“How’s that?” Thomas asked.—“Thanks precisely to Stalin’s policies. In a dozen years, twenty-five million smallholdings have become two hundred fifty thousand large-scale farms. The de-kulakization, I believe, especially the planned famine of 1932, was an attempt to find the point of equilibrium between the space available for the extraction of edible resources and the consumer population. I have reason to believe that they succeeded.”—“And what if they failed?”—“Then it would be up to us to succeed.” Weber made a sign to him and he finished his coffee. “Gentlemen,” he said, getting up and clicking his heels, “thank you for the pleasant evening. What do we owe?”—“Don’t bother,” Thomas said as he too got up, “it’s a pleasure.”—“It’s our treat next time, then.”—“Fine. In Kiev or Moscow?” Everyone laughed and shook hands. “My greetings to Dr. Rasch,” Oberländer said. “We used to see a lot of each other, in Königsberg. I hope he’ll have time to join us, one of these evenings.” The two men went out and Thomas sat back down: “You’ll have a Cognac? It’s on the Group.”—“With pleasure.” Thomas ordered. “Say, you speak good Ukrainian,” I said to him.—“Oh. In Poland, I learned some Polish; it’s almost the same thing.” The Cognacs came and we clinked glasses. “Tell me—what was he insinuating, about the pogrom?” Thomas took a while to answer. Finally he made up his mind: “But,” he said carefully, “you keep this to yourself. You know that in Poland we had quite a few problems with the military. Especially about our special methods. Those gentlemen had objections of a moral kind. They thought you can make omelettes without breaking eggs. This time around, we took measures to avoid misunderstandings: the Chief and Schellenberg negotiated precise agreements with the Wehrmacht; they explained that to you, in Pretzsch.” I nodded and he continued: “But still, we want to keep them from changing their minds. And for that, the pogroms have a huge advantage: they show the Wehrmacht that if the SS and the Sicherheitspolizei have their hands tied, there’ll be chaos in their rear zone. And if there is one thing a soldier fears more than ‘dishonor,’ as they say, it’s disorder. Three more days like this and they’ll come begging us to do our work: clean, discreet, efficient, no fuss.”—“And Oberländer suspects as much.”—“Oh, that doesn’t disturb him at all. He simply wants to be sure that we’ll let him continue his little political intrigues. But,” he added smiling, “we will control him too when the time comes.”

A strange guy, I thought as I was going to bed. His cynicism sometimes shocked me, even though I often found it refreshing; at the same time, I knew that I couldn’t judge his behavior by his words. I trusted him completely: at the SD, he had always loyally helped me, without my ever asking him, and even when I couldn’t be of any perceptible use to him in return. I had asked him the question openly once and he had burst out laughing: “What do you want me to tell you? That I’m keeping you in reserve for a long-term plan? I like you, that’s all.” Those words had touched me deeply, and he had hurried to add: “In any case, smart as you are, at least I’m sure that you can never threaten me. That’s already a lot.” He had played a role in my entering the SD—that’s also how I had met him; it’s true that it had happened in somewhat peculiar circumstances, but one doesn’t always have a choice. For a few years already I had been part of the SD’s network of Vertrauensmänner, informants employed in all spheres of German life: industry, agriculture, bureaucracy, university. When I arrived at Kiel, in 1934, I had limited resources, and on the advice of one of my father’s former directors, Dr. Mandelbrod, I had applied to the SS, which allowed me to avoid matriculation fees at the university; with his support, I had been quickly accepted. Two years later, I had gone to an extraordinary lecture given by Otto Ohlendorf on the deviations of National Socialism; afterward, I had been introduced to him by Dr. Jessen, my economics professor, who had also been his a few years earlier. Ohlendorf, it turned out, had already heard about me from Dr. Mandelbrod, with whom he was in contact; he rather openly extolled the Sicherheitsdienst, and recruited me on the spot as a V-Mann. The work was simple: I was to send reports, on what was being said, on rumors, jokes, the reactions of people to the advances of National Socialism. In Berlin, Ohlendorf had explained to me, the reports of the thousands of V-Männer were compiled, then the SD distributed a summary to the different branches of the Party, in order to allow them to gauge the feelings of the Volk and to formulate their policies accordingly. This replaced elections, in a way; and Ohlendorf was one of the creators of this system, of which he showed himself visibly proud. In the beginning, I found it exciting, Ohlendorf’s speech had impressed me strongly, and I was glad to be able to participate in a concrete way in building National Socialism. But in Berlin, Höhn, my professor, subtly discouraged me. In the SD, he had been a mentor for Ohlendorf and for many others; but since then he had fallen out with the Reichsführer and left the service. He quickly succeeded in convincing me that working for an intelligence or espionage service stemmed from pure romanticism, and that I had much more useful ways to serve the Volk. I stayed in contact with Ohlendorf, but he no longer talked to me much about the SD; he too, I learned later, had his difficulties with the Reichsführer. I continued paying my dues to the SS and showing up for the parades, but I no longer sent in reports, and soon I ceased to think of the matter. I was concentrating on my thesis, which was somewhat daunting; what’s more, I had developed a passion for Kant and was conscientiously boning up on Hegel and idealist philosophy; with Höhn’s encouragement, I planned on requesting a position in a government ministry. But I must say that something else too was holding me back, private motives. In my Plutarch, I had underlined these sentences on Alcibiades one night: …a man, judging by the outward appearance, would have said, “’Tis not Achilles’s son, but he himself; the very man” that Lycurgus designed to form; while his real feeling and acts would have rather provoked the exclamation, “’Tis the same woman still.” That might make you smile, or grimace in disgust; now, it’s all the same to me. In Berlin, despite the Gestapo, you could still in those days find whatever you wanted of that kind. Famous bars such as the Kleist-Kasino or the Silhouette were still open, and they weren’t often raided, they must have been paying someone. Otherwise, there were also certain places in the Tiergarten, near the Neuer See in front of the zoo, where the Schupos rarely ventured at night; behind the trees waited the Strichjungen, or young muscular workers from “Red” Wedding. At university, I had had one or two relationships, necessarily discreet ones and in any case brief; but I preferred proletarian lovers, I didn’t like to talk.

In spite of my discretion, I ended up running into trouble. I should have been more careful; after all, the warning signs were there to see. Höhn had asked me—quite innocently—to review a book by the lawyer Rudolf Klare, Homosexuality and Criminal Law. This remarkably well-informed man had established a surprisingly precise typology of practices, then, on their basis, a classification of offenses, beginning with abstract coitus or contemplation (Level 1), moving past pressure of the naked penis on a part of the partner’s body (Level 5) and rhythmic friction between the knees or legs or in the armpit (Level 6), and ending with touching of the penis by the tongue, penis in the mouth, and penis in the anus (Levels 7, 8, and 9, respectively). To each level of offense corresponded a punishment of increasing severity. This Klare, it was obvious, must have attended a boarding school; but Höhn affirmed that the Minister of the Interior and the Sicherheitspolizei took his ideas seriously. I found it all rather comical. One spring night—it was in 1937—I went for a stroll behind the Neuer See. I watched the shadows of the trees until my gaze met a young man’s. I took out a cigarette, asked him for a light, and when he raised his lighter, instead of leaning toward his hand, I pushed it aside and threw away the cigarette, took him by the back of the neck, and kissed him on the lips, gently tasting his breath. I followed him under the trees, walking away from the paths, my heart, as it does each time, beating crazily in my throat and temples; a sudden veil had fallen over my breathing; I unfastened his pants, buried my face in the sharp smell of his sweat, male skin, urine, and eau de cologne; I rubbed my face against his skin, his sex, and where the hairs thickened, I licked him and took him in my mouth, then, when I couldn’t hold back any longer, I pushed him against a tree, turned myself around without letting him go, and buried him in me, until all time and grief disappeared. When it was over he quickly moved away, without a word. Exalted, I leaned on the tree, readjusted myself, lit a cigarette, and tried to master the trembling in my legs. When I was able to walk, I headed toward the Landwehrkanal, to cross it and continue toward the S-Bahn at the zoo. A limitless lightness carried each of my steps. On the Lichtenstein Bridge, a man was standing, leaning on the guardrail: I knew him, we had friends in common, his name was Hans P. He seemed very pale, distraught, and wasn’t wearing a tie; a fine sweat made his face gleam almost green under the glum light of the streetlamps. My feeling of euphoria suddenly fell away. “What are you doing here?” I asked him in a peremptory, unfriendly tone. “Ah, Aue, it’s you.” His giggle bore a touch of hysteria. “You really want to know?” This encounter was growing odder and odder; I stayed as if transfixed. I nodded. “I wanted to jump,” he explained, chewing his upper lip. “But I don’t dare. I even,” he went on, opening his jacket to reveal the butt of a pistol, “I even brought this.”—“Where the hell did you find it?” I asked him in a muffled voice.—“My father is an officer. I nicked it from him. It’s loaded.” He stared at me anxiously. “You wouldn’t like to help me, would you?” I looked around: along the canal, no one, as far as I could see. Slowly I stretched out my arm and took the pistol out of his belt. He was staring at me with a fascinated, petrified look. I examined the cartridge clip: it seemed full, and I shoved it back in with a sharp click. With my left hand I brutally seized his neck, pushed him up against the guardrail, and forced the barrel of the gun between his lips. “Open!” I barked. “Open your mouth!” My heart was pounding wildly, I felt as if I were shouting, though I was making an effort to keep my voice low. “Open!” I buried the barrel between his teeth. “Is that what you want? Suck it!” Hans P. was melting with terror, I suddenly smelt a bitter stench of urine, I looked down: he had wet his pants. My rage vanished immediately, as mysteriously as it had welled up. I replaced the pistol in his belt and patted him on the cheek. “It’ll be okay. Go home.” I left him there, crossed the bridge, and headed right, along the canal. A few meters farther on three Schupos appeared out of nowhere. “Hey, you there! What are you doing here? Papers.”—“I’m a student. I’m taking a walk.”—“Yeah, we know that kind of walk. What about him over there, on the bridge? Is he your girlfriend?” I shrugged: “I don’t know him. He looked strange, he tried to threaten me.” They exchanged a look and two of them headed at a trot for the bridge; I tried to walk away, but the third man took me by the arm. On the bridge, there was a commotion, some shouts, then gunshots. The two Schupos returned; one of them, livid, was holding his shoulder; blood flowed between his fingers. “That bastard. He shot at me. But we got him.” His comrade gave me an angry look: “You’re coming with us.”

They took me to the Polizeirevier on Derfflingerstrasse, at the corner of the Kurfürstenstrasse; there, a half-asleep policeman took my ID papers, asked me some questions, and wrote the answers down on a form; then they told me to go sit on a bench. Two hours later they took me across the way, to the Abschnittkommando of the Tiergarten, the neighborhood’s main police station. They led me into a room where a man who was badly shaved but dressed in a meticulously ironed suit sat hunched behind a table. He was from the Kripo. “You’re in for it, young man. A man fired on a police officer and was killed. Who was he? Did you know him? They saw you on the bridge with him. What were you doing there?” Sitting on the bench, I had had time to reflect, and I stuck to a simple story: A doctoral student, I liked taking walks, at night, to meditate on my thesis; I had left home, in Prenzlauer Berg, to stroll along Unter den Linden then through the Tiergarten, I wanted to reach the S-Bahn to return home; I was crossing the bridge and this man had accosted me, he said something I couldn’t catch, his strange behavior had frightened me, I thought he was threatening me and had continued on my way, then I had met the Schupos, and that was all. He asked the same question as the policemen: “That area is a well-known meeting place. Are you sure he wasn’t your boyfriend? A lovers’ quarrel? The Schupos confirmed you spoke with him.” I denied this and repeated my story: doctoral student, etc. That lasted for a while: he asked his questions in a brutal, hard tone; several times he tried to provoke me, but I didn’t let myself be intimidated, I knew that the best thing was to stay calm. I began to be bothered by a strong need and finally asked to go to the bathroom. He sniggered: “No. Afterward,” and continued. Finally he waved the air with his hand. “Okay, Mr. Lawyer. Go sit in the hallway. We’ll continue later on.” I left the office and sat down in the entryway. Aside from the two Schupos and a drunkard asleep on a bench, I was alone. A bulb flickered now and then. Everything was clean, neat, quiet. I waited.

A few hours went by, I must have dozed, the dawn light was beginning to turn the windows in the entryway pale, a man came in. He was tastefully dressed, in an elegantly cut pinstripe suit with a starched collar and a pearl-gray knitted tie; on the lapel he wore a Party insignia, and under his arm he was holding a black leather briefcase; his jet black hair, thick, shining with brilliantine, was combed straight back, and although his face remained closed, his eyes seemed to be laughing as they looked me over. He murmured a few words to the Schupos on guard; one of them led him down the corridor and they disappeared. A few minutes later the Schupo returned and waved his stubby finger at me: “You there. This way.” I rose, stretched, and followed him, struggling to hold back my urge. The Schupo brought me back to the room where I had been interrogated. The Kripo inspector had vanished; sitting in his place was the well-dressed young man, one arm with its starched sleeve resting on the table, the other casually hooked over the back of his chair. The black briefcase lay on the table near his elbow. “Come in,” he said politely but firmly. He pointed toward an empty chair: “Please, sit down.” The Schupo closed the door and I came and sat. I could hear the man’s hobnailed boots clicking in the hallway as he left. The elegant, polished young man had a voice that was soft but barely hid its sharpness. “My colleague from the criminal police, Halbey, takes you for a Paragraph One-seventy-five. Are you a Paragraph One-seventy-five?” That seemed a genuine question to me and I answered frankly: “No.”—“That’s what I think too,” he said. He looked at me and held out his hand over the desk: “My name is Thomas Hauser. A pleasure.” I leaned over to shake it. His grip was firm, his skin dry and smooth, he had perfectly cut fingernails. “Aue. Maximilien Aue.”—“Yes, I know. You’re lucky, Herr Aue. Kriminalkommissar Halbey has already sent a preliminary report on this unfortunate incident to the Staatspolizei, mentioning your presumed involvement. It was addressed in duplicate to Kriminalrat Meisinger. Do you know who Kriminalrat Meisinger is?”—“No, I don’t.”—“Kriminalrat Meisinger directs the Reich’s Main Office for the Struggle Against Homosexuality and Abortion. So he’s in charge of the One-seventy-fives. He is not a nice man. A Bavarian.” He paused. “Fortunately for you, Kriminalkommissar Halbey’s report came across my desk first. I was on duty tonight. I was able for now to block the copy addressed to Kriminalrat Meisinger.”—“That’s very kind of you.”—“Yes, it is. See, our friend Kriminalkommissar Halbey has formed suspicions about you. But Kriminalrat Meisinger doesn’t care about suspicions, he cares about facts. And he has methods to obtain those facts that do not meet with complete approval at the Staatspolizei, but that generally turn out to be effective.” I shook my head: “Listen…I don’t really understand what you’re talking about. There must be a misunderstanding.” Thomas clicked his tongue: “For now, you’re right. There seems to be a misunderstanding. Or perhaps rather an unfortunate coincidence, if you like, hastily interpreted by the zealous Kriminalkommissar Halbey.” I bent forward, spreading my hands: “Look, this is all idiotic. I am a student, a member of the Party, of the SS…” He cut me off: “I know you are a member of the Party and the SS. I know Professor Höhn very well. I know perfectly who you are.” Then I understood: “Oh. You’re from the SD.” Thomas smiled amiably: “That’s more or less it, yes. Normally I work with Dr. Six, the replacement for your professor, Dr. Höhn. But for the time being I have been seconded to the Staatspolizei as assistant to Dr. Best, who is helping the Chief to draw up the legal framework for the SP.” Even then I noted the marked emphasis with which he uttered the words the Chief. “So you’re all doctors, at the Sicherheitsdienst?” I blurted out. He smiled again, a wide, frank smile: “Almost.”—“And you’re a doctor too?” He inclined his head: “In law.”—“I see.”—“The Chief, on the other hand, is not a doctor. But he is much more intelligent than we are. He uses our talents to reach his ends.”—“And what are these ends?” Thomas knitted his eyebrows: “What are you studying, with Höhn? The protection of the State, of course.” He stopped. I kept silent; we looked at each other. He seemed to be waiting for something. He bent forward and leaned his chin on one hand, tapping the manicured nails of the other on the table. Finally he asked in an annoyed tone: “The protection of the State doesn’t interest you, Herr Aue?” I hesitated: “Well, I am not a doctor…”—“But you will be soon.” A few more seconds of silence passed. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at,” I finally said.—“I’m not getting at anything at all, I’m trying to help you avoid useless difficulties. You know, the reports you wrote for the SD, at one time, were quickly noticed. Very well written, to the point, nourished by a Weltanschauung whose rigor was unquestionable. It’s too bad you didn’t continue, but that’s your business. Still, when I saw Kriminalkommissar Halbey’s report, I said to myself that this would be a loss for National Socialism. I phoned Dr. Best—I woke him up, too—he agreed with me and authorized me to come here, to suggest to Kriminalkommissar Halbey that he curb his annoying initiatives. You understand, they’re going to open a criminal investigation, as is necessary when a man dies. What’s more, a policeman was wounded. At the very least you should in principle be called to appear as a witness. Given the location of the crime, a notorious homosexual meeting place, the case, even if I can convince Kriminalkommissar Halbey to moderate his zeal, will automatically be forwarded, sooner or later, to the services of Kriminalrat Meisinger. Then Kriminalrat Meisinger will take an interest in you. He’ll start digging, like the coarse animal he is. Whatever the results are, it will leave indelible traces in your personal file. Now it just so happens that the Reichsführer-SS has a particular obsession about homosexuality. Homosexuals frighten him, he hates them. He thinks a hereditary homosexual can contaminate dozens of young men with his disease, and that all those young men will then be lost to the race. He also believes that inverts are congenital liars, who believe in their own lies—hence a mental irresponsibility that renders them incapable of loyalty, causes them to blab, and can lead to treason. Thus, this potential threat that the homosexual represents signifies that the question, for the Reichsführer, is not a medical question that can be remedied by therapy, but a political question, to be treated by the methods of the SP. He even recently expressed enthusiasm for the suggestion of one of our best legal historians, Professor and SS-Untersturmführer Eckhardt, whom you must know, to return to the old Germanic custom of drowning effeminate men in peat bogs. This, I would be the first to acknowledge, is a somewhat extreme point of view, and although its logic is undeniable, not everyone sees the matter in such an unequivocal way. The Führer himself, it seems, remains somewhat indifferent to this question. But his lack of interest on this subject leaves the field free for the Reichsführer, with his excessive ideas, to define the current policies. So if Kriminalrat Meisinger came to form an unfavorable opinion of you, even if he didn’t manage to obtain a condemnation under Paragraphs One-seventy-five or One-seventy-five-A of the Penal Code, you could have all sorts of problems. It’s even possible, if Kriminalrat Meisinger insisted, that an order for preventive custody be issued against you. I would be sorry about that, and Dr. Best too.” I was only half listening because my need was overtaking me again, more violently than ever, but finally I reacted: “I don’t understand where you’re heading. Are you making me an offer?”—“An offer?” Thomas raised his eyebrows. “But who do you take us for? Do you really think that the SD needs to resort to blackmail for its recruitment? Come on. No,” he continued with a broad, friendly smile, “I simply came to help you in a spirit of camaraderie, as one National Socialist toward another. Of course,” he added with an ironic look, “we suspect that Professor Höhn is warning his students against the SD, that he must have discouraged you a little, and that’s too bad. Did you know he’s the one who recruited me? He has become ungrateful. If you ever changed your mind about us, all the better. I think if our work began to appear to you in a more favorable light, Dr. Best would be happy to discuss it with you. I invite you to think about it. But that has nothing to do with my actions tonight.” I must say that this frank, direct attitude pleased me. I was very impressed by the uprightness, the energy, the calm conviction radiating from Thomas. It didn’t at all correspond to the idea I had formed of the SD. But he was already getting up. “You’ll go out with me. There won’t be any objections. I’ll inform Kriminalkommissar Halbey that you were in that area in the line of duty, and the matter will rest there. When the time comes you’ll testify to that effect. That way, everything will be perfectly civilized.” I couldn’t stop thinking about the toilets; when the conversation ended, Thomas waited in the hallway while I finally relieved myself. I had time then to reflect a little: when I came out, I must already have made my decision. Outside it was day. Thomas left me on the Kurfürstenstrasse, shaking my hand vigorously. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon. Tchüss!” And that is how, my ass still full of sperm, I resolved to enter the Sicherheitsdienst.

The day after the dinner with Oberländer, as soon as I woke up, I went to see Hennicke, the Group’s Chief of Staff. “Ah, Obersturmführer Aue. The dispatches for Lutsk are almost ready. Go see the Brigadeführer. He’s at the Brygidki Prison. Untersturmführer Beck will take you there.” This Beck was still very young; he was handsome, but seemed to be brooding about something, harboring a secret anger. After saluting me he hardly said a word. In the streets, the people seemed even more agitated than the day before; armed groups of nationalists were patrolling, and traffic was difficult. There were also many more German soldiers evident. “I have to stop by the train station to pick up a package,” Beck said. “Is that all right with you?” His driver already knew the way well; to avoid the crowd, he cut off onto a side street, which, farther on, wound along the side of a little hill lined with middle-class houses, quiet and comfortable. “It’s a beautiful city,” I remarked.—“That’s normal. It is a German city, basically,” Beck responded. I was silent. At the station, he left me in the car and disappeared into the crowd. Streetcars were discharging their passengers, taking on others, setting off again. In a little park over to the left, indifferent to the commotion, several families of Gypsies were lounging about under the trees, dirty, weather-beaten, dressed in colorful rags. Others were standing near the train station, but they weren’t begging; the children weren’t even playing. Beck returned with a little package. He followed my gaze and noticed the Gypsies. “Instead of wasting our time with the Jews, we’d do better taking care of those people,” he spat out viciously. “They’re much more dangerous. They work for the Reds, did you know that? But we’ll deal with them.” In the long street that led up from the station, he spoke again: “The synagogue is here, right next door. I’d like to see it. After that we’ll go to the prison.” The synagogue was set back in a little side street, on the left side of the avenue leading to the center of town. Two German soldiers were standing guard in front of the gate. The dilapidated façade wasn’t much to look at; only a Star of David on the pediment revealed the nature of the place; there wasn’t a Jew in sight. I followed Beck through the little door. The main room rose up two floors, surrounded by an elevated gallery, for the women no doubt; vivid paintings in bright colors decorated the walls, in a naïve but vigorous style, representing a great Lion of Judah surrounded by Jewish stars, parrots, and swallows, and riddled in places with bullet holes. In place of benches there were little chairs with school desks attached. Beck contemplated the paintings for a long while, then went out. The street in front of the prison was swarming with people, a monstrous, cacophonic crush. The people were shouting themselves hoarse; women, hysterical, were tearing their clothes and rolling on the ground; Jews, on their knees, guarded by Feldgendarmen, were scrubbing the sidewalk; now and then a passerby kicked one, a rubicund Feldwebel barked, “Juden, kaputt!” Ukrainians frantically applauded. At the gate to the prison, I had to make way for a column of Jews, in shirtsleeves or stripped to the waist, most of them bleeding, who, flanked by German soldiers, were carrying putrified corpses and loading them onto wagons. Old women in black threw themselves on the bodies, ululating, then rushed at the Jews, scratching at them until a soldier tried to push them away. I had lost sight of Beck; I went into the prison courtyard, and there it was the same spectacle again, terrified Jews sorting through corpses, others scrubbing the pavement while soldiers hooted; from time to time one of them lunged forward, striking at the Jews with his bare hands or his rifle butt, the Jews screamed, collapsed, struggled to rise up and get back to work, other soldiers were photographing the scene, still others, laughing, shouted insults or encouragements, sometimes too a Jew didn’t get up, and then several men would go at him with their boots, until one or two Jews would come to drag the body by the feet over to the side, while others had to scrub the pavement again. Finally I found an SS man: “Do you know where Brigadeführer Rasch is?”—“I think he’s in the prison offices, over there, I just saw him go up.” In the long hallway, soldiers were coming and going, it was calmer, but the green walls, shiny and filthy, were splattered with bloodstains, more or less fresh, and speckled with scraps of brain mixed with hair and bone fragments; there were also long trails where they had dragged the corpses, my boots stuck to the floor at each step. At the other end, Rasch was coming down the stairs in the company of a tall Oberführer with a chubby face and several other officers from the Group. I saluted them. “Oh, it’s you. Good. I received a report from Radetzky; ask him to come here as soon as he can. And you’ll report in person to Obergruppenführer Jeckeln about the Aktion here. Insist on the fact that it’s the nationalists and the people who took the initiative. In Lemberg the NKVD and the Jews assassinated three thousand people. So the people are taking their revenge, that’s normal. We asked the AOK to leave them a few days.”—“Zu Befehl, Brigadeführer.” I followed them out. Rasch and the Oberführer were having an animated discussion. In the courtyard, distinct from the stink of the corpses, rose the heavy, nauseating smell of fresh blood. Going out, I passed two Jews who were coming back in from the street under escort; one of them, a very young man, was sobbing violently, but in silence. I found Beck again next to the car and we returned to the Gruppenstab. I ordered Höfler to get the Opel ready and find Popp, then went to get the dispatches and the mail from the Leiter III. I also asked where Thomas was, since I wanted to say goodbye to him before leaving: “You’ll find him down by the boulevard,” I was told. “Go look in the Metropole Café, on Sykstuska.” In the courtyard, Popp and Höfler were ready. “Shall we go, Herr Obersturmführer?”—“Yes, but we’ll make a stop on the way. Go by the boulevard.” I found the Metropole easily. Inside, clusters of men were noisily talking; some, already drunk, were bellowing; near the bar, officers from the Rollbahn were drinking beer and commenting on the situation. I found Thomas in the back next to a blond young man in civilian clothes with a bloated, sullen face. They were drinking coffee. “Hi, Max! This is Oleg. A very well informed, intelligent man.” Oleg got up and shook my hand eagerly; he actually looked like a complete idiot. “Listen, I’m leaving now.” Thomas replied in French: “That’s very good. In any case we’ll see each other soon: according to the plan, your Kommandostab will be stationed in Zhitomir, with us.”—“Excellent.” He continued in German: “Good luck! Keep up your spirits.” I nodded to Oleg and went out. Our troops were still a long way away from Zhitomir, but Thomas seemed confident, he must have had good information. On the road, I lost myself with pleasure in the softness of the Galician countryside; we advanced slowly, in the dust of columns of trucks and equipment heading toward the front; from time to time the sun pierced through the long rows of white clouds that scrolled across the sky, a vast roof of shadows, cheerful and calm.

I arrived in Lutsk in the afternoon. Blobel, according to von Radetzky, wouldn’t be returning right away; Häfner told us confidentially that in the end they had left him in an insane asylum run by the Wehrmacht. The reprisal Aktion had been carried out successfully, but no one seemed too eager to talk about it: “You can count yourself lucky not to have been there,” Zorn whispered to me. On July 6, the Sonderkommando, still sticking to the advance of the Sixth Army, moved to Rovno, then quickly on to Tsviahel or Swjagel, which the Soviets call Novograd-Volynskiy. At each stage, Teilkommandos were detached to identify, arrest, and execute potential opponents. Most of them, it should be said, were Jews. But we also shot Commissars or cadres of the Bolshevik Party, when we found them, thieves, looters, farmers who were hiding their grain, Gypsies too, Beck would have been happy. Von Radetzky had explained to us that we had to reason in terms of objective threat: since unmasking each and every guilty individual was impossible, we had to identify the sociopolitical categories most liable to cause us harm, and act accordingly. In Lemberg, the new Ortskommandant, General Rentz, had little by little succeeded in reestablishing order and quieting things down; nonetheless, Einsatzkommando 6, and then Einsatzkommando 5, which had come to replace it, had continued executing hundreds of people outside the city. We were also beginning to have problems with the Ukrainians. On July 9, the brief independence experiment came to an abrupt end: the SP arrested Bandera and Stetsko and sent them under escort to Cracow, and their men were disarmed. But elsewhere, the OUN-B started a revolt; in Drohobycz, they opened fire on our troops, and several Germans were killed. From that time on we began to treat Bandera’s supporters too as an objective threat; the Melnykists, delighted, helped us identify them, and took control of the local administrations. On July 11, the Gruppenstab to which we were subordinated traded designations with the one attached to Army Group Center: from then on, our Einsatzgruppe was called “C”; the same day, our three Opel Admirals entered Zhitomir behind the tanks of the Sixth Army. A few days later, I was sent to reinforce this Vorkommando, while we waited for the rest of headquarters to catch up with us.

After Tsviahel the landscape changed completely. Now it was the Ukrainian steppe, an immense undulating prairie, intensively cultivated. In the fields of grain the poppies had just died, but the rye and barley were ripening, and for kilometers on end, the sunflowers, raised toward the sky, tracked the wave of the sun. Here and there, as if thrown haphazardly, a line of isbas in the shade of acacia trees or little groves of oak, maple, and ash broke the dazzling perspectives. The country paths were bordered with lindens, the rivers with aspen and willow; in the towns they had planted chestnut trees along the boulevards. Our maps turned out to be completely inadequate: roads marked did not exist or had disappeared; yet sometimes where an empty steppe was indicated, our patrols discovered kolkhozes and vast fields of cotton, melons, beets; and tiny municipalities had become developed industrial centers. On the other hand, whereas Galicia had fallen almost intact into our hands, here, the Red Army had applied on its retreat a policy of systematic destruction. Villages, fields were burning; we found the wells dynamited or filled in, the roads mined, the buildings booby-trapped; in the kolkhozes there were still livestock, poultry, and women, but the men and the horses had left; in Zhitomir, they had burned everything they could: fortunately, a number of houses remained standing among the smoking ruins. The city was still under Hungarian control, and Callsen was furious: “Their officers treat the Jews like friends, they have dinner with the Jews!” Bohr, another officer, went on: “Apparently some of the officers are Jewish themselves. Can you imagine? Allies of Germany! I don’t even dare shake their hands anymore.” The inhabitants had received us well, but complained about the Honvéd advance into Ukrainian territory: “The Germans are our historic friends,” they said. “The Magyars just want to annex us.” These tensions broke out daily in countless incidents. A company of sappers had killed two Hungarians; one of our generals had to go apologize. For their part, the Honvéd were blocking the work of our local policemen, and the Vorkommando was forced to lodge a complaint, via the Gruppenstab, with the HQ of the Army Group, the OKHG South. Finally, on July 15, the Hungarians were relieved and AOK 6 took over Zhitomir, followed soon after by our Kommando as well as Gruppenstab C. In the meantime, I had been sent back to Tsviahel as a liaison officer. The Teilkommandos under Callsen, Hans and Janssen, had each been assigned a sector, radiating out almost up to the front, blocked in front of Kiev; to the south, our zone reached that of Ek 5, so operations had to be coordinated, since each Teilkommando functioned autonomously. This is how I found myself with Janssen in the region between Tsviahel and Rovno, on the border with Galicia. The brief summer storms were turning more and more often into showers, transforming the loess dust, fine as flour, into a sticky mud, thick and black, that the soldiers called buna. Endless stretches of swamp formed then, where the corpses and carcasses of horses scattered by the fighting slowly decomposed. Men were succumbing to endless diarrhea, and lice were making their appearance; even the trucks were getting stuck, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to move around. To help the Kommandos, we were recruiting many Ukrainian auxiliaries, nicknamed “Askaris” by the old Africa hands; they were financed by the local municipalities using confiscated Jewish funds. Many of them were Bulbovitsi, those Volhynian extremists Oberländer talked about (they took their name from Taras Bulba): after the liquidation of the OUN-B, they had been given the choice between a German uniform or the camps; most had melted back into the population, but some had come to sign up. Farther up north, on the other hand, between Pinsk, Mozyr, and Olevsk, the Wehrmacht had allowed a “Ukrainian Republic of Polesia” to be established, headed by a certain Taras Borovets, erstwhile proprietor of a quarry in Kostopol nationalized by the Bolsheviks; he hunted down isolated units of the Red Army and Polish partisans, and that freed more troops for us, so in exchange we tolerated him; but the Einsatzgruppe worried that he was protecting hostile elements of the OUN-B, the ones whom people jokingly called “OUN (Bolshevik)” in contrast to the “Mensheviks” of Melnyk. We also recruited the Volksdeutschen we found in the communities, to serve as mayors or policemen. The Jews, almost everywhere, had been conscripted into forced labor; and we were beginning systematically to shoot the ones who didn’t work. But on the Ukrainian side of the Sbrutch, our actions were often frustrated by the apathy of the local population, which did not inform on the movements of the Jews: the Jews took advantage of this to move around illegally, hiding in the forests to the North. Our Brigadeführer, Rasch, gave the order then to have the Jews parade in public before executions, in order to destroy in the eyes of the Ukrainian peasants the myth of Jewish political power. But such measures didn’t seem to have much effect.

One morning, Janssen suggested I come witness an action. That had to happen sooner or later, I knew it and had thought about it. I can in all honesty say that I had doubts about our methods: I had trouble grasping their logic. I had talked with Jewish prisoners; they told me that for them, bad things had always come from the East, and good ones, from the West; in 1918 they had welcomed our troops as liberators, saviors; those troops had behaved very humanely; after their departure, Petliura’s Ukrainians had returned to massacre them. As for Bolshevik power, it starved the people. Now, we were killing them. And undeniably, we were killing a lot of people. That seemed atrocious to me, even if it was inevitable and necessary. But one has to confront atrocity; one must always be ready to look inevitability and necessity in the face, and accept the consequences that result from them; closing your eyes is never an answer. I accepted Janssen’s offer. The action was commanded by Untersturmführer Nagel, his adjunct; I left Tsviahel with him. It had rained the night before but the road was still good; we traveled slowly between two high walls of green streaming with light, which hid the fields from us. The village, I’ve forgotten its name, was on the edge of a wide river, a few miles beyond the old Soviet border; it was a mixed hamlet, the Galician peasants lived to one side, the Jews to the other. At our arrival I found the cordons already deployed. Nagel had pointed to a wood behind the hamlet: “That’s where it happens.” He seemed nervous, hesitant; he too had probably never killed anyone yet. On the main square, our Askaris were gathering the Jews, men of advanced age, adolescents; they took them in little groups from the Jewish alleyways, sometimes striking them, then they forced them to crouch down, guarded by a few Orpos. Some Germans were accompanying them too; one of them, Gnauk, was lashing the Jews with a horsewhip to push them on. But apart from the shouting everything seemed relatively calm, well ordered. There weren’t any spectators; from time to time, a child appeared in the corner of the square, looked at the squatting Jews, then went away. “We need another half hour, I think,” Nagel said.—“Can I look round?” I asked him.—“Yes, of course. But take your orderly with you.” That’s what he called Popp, who ever since Lemberg was always with me and prepared my quarters and my coffee, polished my boots, and washed my uniforms; not that I had asked him for anything. I headed toward the little Galician farms, in the direction of the river, with Popp following a few steps behind, rifle on his shoulder. The houses were long and low; the doors remained obstinately closed; I didn’t see anyone at the windows. In front of a wooden gate coarsely painted pale blue, about thirty geese were noisily cackling, waiting to go back in. I went past the last houses and down to the river, but the bank grew swampy, I climbed back up a little; farther on, I caught sight of the woods. The air resounded with the throbbing, obsessive croaking of frogs mating. Farther up, threading their way between soaked fields where pools of water reflected the sun, a dozen white geese were walking in a line, fat and proud, followed by a frightened calf. I had already had a chance to visit some villages in the Ukraine: they seemed much poorer and more miserable than this one; Oberländer would be disappointed to see his theories demolished. I turned back. In front of the blue gate, the geese were still waiting, watching a weeping cow, its eyes swarming with clusters of flies. In the square, the Askaris were making the Jews get into trucks, shouting and whipping them, though the Jews were not resisting. Two Ukrainians, in front of me, were dragging an old man with a wooden leg; his prosthesis came off and they threw him unceremoniously into the truck. Nagel had walked away; I caught hold of one of the Askaris and pointed to the wooden leg: “Put that with him in the truck.” The Ukrainian shrugged, picked up the leg, and tossed it in after the old man. About thirty Jews could be crammed into each truck; there must have been 150 in all, but we only had three trucks, so it would take two trips. When the trucks were full, Nagel motioned me to get into the Opel and headed toward the wood, followed by the trucks. At the edge, the cordon was already in place. The trucks were unloaded, then Nagel gave the order to pick the Jews who would go and dig; the others would wait there. A Hauptscharführer made the selection, and shovels were handed out; Nagel formed an escort and the group disappeared into the wood. The trucks had already left. I looked at the Jews: the ones closest to me looked pale, but calm. Nagel approached and bawled at me sharply, pointing to the Jews: “It’s necessary, you understand? Human suffering mustn’t count for anything in all this.”—“Yes, but still it does count for something.” This was what I couldn’t manage to grasp: the yawning gap, the absolute contradiction between the ease with which one can kill and the huge difficulty there must be in dying. For us, it was another dirty day’s work; for them, the end of everything.

Shouts were coming from the wood. “What is it?” Nagel asked.—“I don’t know, Untersturmführer,” a noncom said, “I’ll go see.” He went into the wood. Some Jews were shuffling back and forth, dragging their feet, their eyes fixed on the ground, in the sullen silence of dull men waiting for death. A teenager, crouching on his heels, was humming a nursery rhyme and looking at me with curiosity; he put two fingers to his lips; I gave him a cigarette and some matches: he thanked me with a smile. The noncom reappeared at the entrance to the woods and called out: “They found a mass grave, Untersturmführer.”—“What? A mass grave?” Nagel headed toward the wood and I followed him. Under the trees, the Hauptscharführer was slapping one of the Jews, shouting: “You knew, you bastard! Why didn’t you tell us?”—“What’s going on?” Nagel asked. The Hauptscharführer stopped slapping the Jew and answered: “Look, Untersturmführer. We’ve discovered a Bolshevik grave.” I approached the trench dug by the Jews; at the bottom, you could make out moldy, shriveled, almost mummified bodies. “They must have been shot in the winter,” I observed. “That’s why they haven’t decomposed.” A soldier in the bottom of the trench stood up. “It looks like they were killed with a bullet in the neck, Untersturmführer. NKVD work for sure.” Nagel summoned the Dolmetscher: “Ask him what happened.” The interpreter translated as the Jew spoke. “He says the Bolsheviks arrested a lot of men in the village. But he says they didn’t know that they were buried here.”—“These scum didn’t know!” the Hauptscharführer exploded. “They killed them themselves, you mean!”—“Hauptscharführer, calm down. Have this grave filled in again and go dig somewhere else. But mark the place, in case we have to come back for an investigation.” We returned to the cordon; the trucks were arriving with the remaining Jews. Twenty minutes later the Hauptscharführer, beet red, joined us. “We’ve come across more bodies, Untersturmführer. It’s not possible, they’ve filled the forest.” Nagel called a little meeting. “There aren’t many clearings in this wood,” a noncom suggested, “that’s why we’re digging in the same places as they did.” While they talked, I gradually noticed long splinters of very fine wood stuck in my fingers, right under the nails; feeling around, I discovered that they went down to the knuckle, just beneath the skin. This was strange. How had they gotten there? I hadn’t felt anything. I began to pull them out delicately, one by one, trying to avoid drawing blood. Fortunately they slipped out easily enough. Nagel seemed to have reached a decision: “There’s another part of the wood, over there, it’s lower down. We’ll go try on that side.”—“I’ll wait for you here,” I said. “Fine, Obersturmführer. I’ll send someone to get you.” Absorbed, I flexed my fingers several times: everything seemed in order. I walked away from the cordon along a gentle incline, through tall weeds and flowers, already almost dry. Farther down began a wheat field, guarded by a crow crucified by its feet, its wings spread out. I lay down in the grass and looked at the sky; my soul spread calm and flat over the field, gently lazing out to the rim of the woods. I closed my eyes.

Popp came to find me. “They’re almost ready, Obersturmführer.” The cordon with the Jews had moved to the lower part of the wood. The condemned men were waiting under the trees, in little groups; some were leaning on the tree trunks. Farther on, in the woods, Nagel was waiting with the Ukrainians. Some Jews at the bottom of a trench several yards long were still throwing shovelfuls of mud over the embankment. I leaned over: water filled the ditch; the Jews were digging with muddy water up to their knees. “That’s not a trench, that’s a swimming pool,” I remarked rather dryly to Nagel. He didn’t take the remark too kindly: “What do you want me to do, Obersturmführer? We’ve hit an aquifer, and it’s rising as they dig. We’re too close to the river. But I’m not going to spend all day having holes dug in this forest.” He turned to the Hauptscharführer. “Fine, that’s enough. Tell them to get out.” He was livid. “Your shooters are ready?” he asked. I understood that they were going to have the Ukrainians shoot. “Yes, Untersturmführer,” the Hauptscharführer replied. He turned to the Dolmetscher and explained the procedure. The Dolmetscher translated for the Ukrainians. Twenty of them came to stand in a line in front of the trench; five others took the Jews who had dug, and who were covered in mud, and made them kneel along the edge, their backs to the shooters. On an order from the Hauptscharführer, the Askaris shouldered their rifles and aimed at the Jews’ necks. But the count wasn’t right; there were supposed to be two shooters per Jew, but they had taken fifteen Jews to dig. The Hauptscharführer recounted, then ordered the Ukrainians to lower their rifles and had five of the Jews rise again and go wait on the side. Several of them were reciting something in a low voice, prayers no doubt, but aside from that they weren’t saying anything. “We should add some more Askaris,” suggested another noncom. “It would go faster.” A little discussion followed; there were only twenty-five Ukrainians in all; the noncom suggested adding five Orpos; the Hauptscharführer argued that they couldn’t deplete the cordon. Nagel, exasperated, made a decision: “Continue as is.” The Hauptscharführer barked an order and the Askaris raised their rifles. Nagel advanced a step. “At my command…” His voice quivered; he was making an effort to master it. “Fire!” The burst of shots crackled and I saw what looked like a red splatter, masked by the smoke of the rifles. Most of the men killed flew forward, face down in the water; two of them still lay there, huddled at the edge of the ditch. “Clean that up and bring the next ones,” Nagel ordered. Some Ukrainians took the two dead Jews by the arms and feet and threw them into the ditch; they landed with a loud splash of water, the blood streamed from their smashed heads and spurted onto the Ukrainians’ boots and green uniforms. Two men came forward with shovels and started cleaning the edge of the ditch, throwing clumps of bloody earth and whitish fragments of brain in to join the dead men. I went to look: the corpses were floating in the muddy water, some on their stomach, others on their backs with noses and beards sticking out of the water; blood was spreading out from their heads on the surface, like a fine layer of oil, but bright red; their white shirts were red too and little red trickles were flowing on their skin and in the hairs of their beards. They brought the second group, the five who had dug and five others from the edge of the wood, and set them on their knees facing the ditch, the floating bodies of their neighbors; one of them turned around to face the shooters, his head raised, and watched them in silence. I thought about these Ukrainians: How had they gotten to this point? Most of them had fought against the Poles, and then against the Soviets, they must have dreamed of a better future, for themselves and for their children, and now they found themselves in a forest, wearing a strange uniform and killing people who had done nothing to them, without any reason they could understand. What could they be thinking about all this? Still, when they were given the order, they shot, they pushed the bodies into the ditch and brought other ones, they didn’t protest. What would they think of all this later on? Once again, they had fired. Now we could hear moans coming from the ditch. “Oh hell, they’re not all dead,” the Hauptscharführer muttered.—“Well, finish them off,” Nagel shouted. On an order from the Hauptscharführer, two Askaris came forward and fired again into the ditch. The groans continued. They fired a third time. Next to them others were cleaning up the edge. Once again, a bit farther, ten more Jews were being brought up. I noticed Popp: he had taken a fistful of earth from the large pile next to the ditch and was contemplating it, kneading it between his fingers, smelling it, even taking a little in his mouth. “What is it, Popp?” He approached me: “Look at this earth, Obersturmführer. It’s good earth. A man could do worse than live here.” The Jews were kneeling down. “Throw that away, Popp,” I said to him.—“They told us that afterward we could come settle here, build farms. It’s a good region, that’s all I’m saying.”—“Be quiet, Popp.” The Askaris had fired another salvo. Once again, piercing shouts rose up from the ditch, moans. “Please, dear Germans! Please!” The Hauptscharführer ordered them finished off, but the shouts didn’t stop, we could hear men struggling in the water, Nagel was yelling too: “They shoot like lame idiots, your men! Make them go down in the hole.”—“But, Untersturmführer…”—“Make them go down!” The Hauptscharführer had the order translated. The Ukrainians started talking agitatedly. “What are they saying?” Nagel asked. “They don’t want to go in, Untersturmführer,” the Dolmetscher explained. “They say there’s no point, they can shoot from the edge.” Nagel was red. “Make them go down!” The Hauptscharführer seized one by the arm and pulled him over to the ditch; the Ukrainian resisted. Everyone was shouting now, in Ukrainian and German. A little farther on, the next group of Jews was waiting. Enraged, the chosen Askari threw his rifle on the ground and jumped into the ditch, slipped, floundered among the corpses and the dying. His comrade went down after him, holding on to the edge, and helped him get up. The Ukrainian swore and spat, covered in mud and blood. The Hauptscharführer held out his rifle. On the left we heard several gunshots, shouts; the men from the cordon were shooting into the woods: one of the Jews had taken advantage of the commotion to cut and run. “Did you get him?” Nagel called.—“I don’t know, Untersturmführer,” one of the policemen replied from a distance.—“Well then go look!” Two other Jews suddenly dashed to the other side and the Orpos started shooting: one of them fell immediately, the other vanished into the woods. Nagel had taken out his pistol and was waving it around, shouting contradictory orders. In the ditch, the Askari was trying to press his rifle against the forehead of a wounded Jew, but he was rolling in the water, his head kept disappearing beneath the surface. The Ukrainian finally fired blind, the shot took the Jew’s jaw away but still didn’t kill him, he was struggling, catching on to the Ukrainian’s legs. “Nagel,” I said.—“What?” His face was haggard, the pistol hung from his arm.—“I’m going to go wait in the car.” In the wood, we could hear gunshots, the Orpos were shooting at the fugitives; I glanced fleetingly at my fingers, to make sure I had taken out all the splinters. Near the ditch, one of the Jews started weeping.

Such amateurishness soon became the exception. As the weeks went by, the officers acquired experience, and the soldiers got used to the procedures; at the same time, one could see that everyone was searching for his place in all this, thinking about what was happening, each in his own way. At table, at night, the men discussed the actions, told anecdotes, and compared their experiences, some sadly, others cheerfully. Still others were silent; they were the ones who had to be watched. We had already had two suicides; and one night, a man woke up emptying his rifle into the ceiling, he had to be held down by force, and a noncom had almost been killed. Some reacted with brutality, sometimes sadism: they struck at the condemned, tormented them before making them die; the officers tried to control these outbursts, but it was difficult, there were excesses. Very often our men photographed the executions; in their quarters, they exchanged their photos for tobacco, or stuck them to the wall—anyone could order prints of them. We knew, through the military censors, that many of them sent these photos to their families in Germany; some even made little albums of them, with captions; this phenomenon worried the hierarchy but seemed impossible to control. Even the officers were losing their grip. Once, while the Jews were digging, I surprised Bohr singing: “The earth is cold, the earth is sweet, dig, little Jew, dig deep.” The Dolmetscher was translating; it shocked me deeply. I had known Bohr for some time now, he was a normal man, he had no particular animosity against the Jews, he did his duty as he was told; but obviously, it was eating at him, he wasn’t reacting well. Of course there were some genuine anti-Semites in the Kommando: Lübbe, for example, another Untersturmführer, seized the slightest occasion to rant against the Hebrews with extreme virulence, as if the whole of world Judaism were nothing but a vast conspiracy aimed at him, Lübbe. He tired everyone out with this. But his attitude toward the actions was strange: sometimes he behaved brutally, but sometimes in the morning he was overcome with violent diarrhea; he would report sick and had to be replaced. “God, how I hate those vermin,” he said as he watched them die, “but what a filthy job.” And when I asked him if his convictions didn’t help him bear it, he retorted: “Listen, just because I eat meat doesn’t mean I want to work in a slaughterhouse.” He was transferred anyhow, a few months later, when Dr. Thomas, the replacement for Brigadeführer Rasch, purged the Kommandos. But increasingly the officers as well as the men were becoming hard to control; they thought they were allowed to do all sorts of things, unimaginable things—and this is probably normal, with this sort of work the boundaries get confused, grow vague. And then there were some who stole from the Jews, kept gold watches, rings, money, even though everything was supposed to be turned in to the Kommandostab to be sent to Germany. During the actions, the officers were obliged to watch the Orpos, the Waffen-SS, the Askaris, to make sure they didn’t make off with anything. But officers too kept things. And also they drank, the sense of discipline started to unravel. One evening, we were billeted in a village, Bohr brought back two girls, Ukrainian peasants, and some vodka. He and Zorn and Müller started drinking with the girls and feeling them up, putting their hands under their skirts. I was sitting on my bed and trying to read. Bohr called to me: “Come take your fill too.”—“No, thanks.” One of the girls was unbuttoned, half naked, her flabby breasts drooped a little. This sour lust, this sagging flesh, disgusted me, but I had nowhere to go. “You’re not much fun, Doktor,” Bohr snapped at me. I looked at them as if I had X-ray vision: beneath the flesh I could clearly make out the skeletons; when Zorn embraced one of the girls it was as if their bones, separated by a thin gauze, knocked together; when they laughed, the grating sound burst forth from the jaws in the skulls; tomorrow, they would already be old, the girls would grow obese or, on the contrary, their exhausted skin would hang on their bones, their dry, empty teats would fall like a drained wine skin, and then Bohr and Zorn and these girls too would die and be buried under the cold earth, the soft earth, just like all those Jews mowed down in the prime of life, their mouths full of earth would laugh no more, so what was the use of this sad debauchery? If I asked Zorn that question, I knew what he’d say: “Just that: to have a little fun before I croak, nothing more, just a little pleasure,” but I had nothing against pleasure, I too could take my pleasure when I wanted it, no, it was probably their terrifying lack of self-awareness, that surprising way of never thinking about things, good or bad, of letting themselves be carried along with the current, killing without understanding why and without caring either, groping women because they were willing, drinking without even seeking to be absolved of their bodies. That is what I didn’t understand, but no one was asking me to understand anything.

In the beginning of August, the Sonderkommando conducted a preliminary cleansing of Zhitomir. According to our statistics, thirty thousand Jews lived there before the war; but most of them had fled with the Red Army, so no more than five thousand remained, 9 percent of the present population. Rasch had decided that was still too many. General Reinhardt, who commanded the Ninety-ninth Division, lent us some soldiers for the Durchkämmung, a fine but untranslatable German word that suggests a sifting-through. Everyone was a little tense: on August 1, Galicia had been reunited to the Generalgouvernement and the Nachtigall regiments had rebelled as far as Vinnitsa and Tiraspol. All the OUN-B officers and noncoms among our auxiliaries had to be identified, arrested, and sent along with the officers of the Nachtigall to join Bandera in Sachsenhausen. Since then, we had to keep an eye on the remaining ones, not all of them could be trusted. In Zhitomir itself, some Bandera supporters had assassinated two pro-Melnyk officials that we had put in place; at first, suspicion had fallen on the Communists; then we had shot all the OUN-B supporters we could find. Fortunately, our relations with the Wehrmacht were turning out to be excellent. The veterans of Poland were surprised at this; they had expected at best a grudging consent, but now our relations with the various headquarters were growing positively cordial. Often it was the army that took the initiative for actions; they asked us to liquidate the Jews in villages where acts of sabotage had taken place, as retaliation or because the Jews were regarded as partisans, and they turned over Jews and Gypsies to us to execute. Von Roques, the commander of the Rear Army Group Area South, had given the order that if the authors of some act of sabotage couldn’t be identified with certainty, we should conduct reprisals against Jews or Russians, since we shouldn’t arbitrarily blame the Ukrainians: We must convey the impression that we are just. Of course, not all the officers of the Wehrmacht approved of these measures; the older officers especially, according to Rasch, still lacked understanding. The Group was also having some problems with certain Dulag commanders, who were reluctant to hand over Commissars and Jewish prisoners of war to us. But von Reichenau, it was known, defended the SP vigorously. And sometimes, on the contrary, the Wehrmacht outdid us. The HQ of one division wanted to set up in a village, but there wasn’t enough room: “We still have the Jews,” their Chief of Staff suggested to us; and the AOK supported his request, so we had to shoot all the male Jews in the village, then regroup the women and children into a few houses so as to free up some quarters for the officers. In the report this was listed as a retaliation. Another division went so far as to ask us to liquidate the patients of an insane asylum they wanted to occupy; the Gruppenstab replied indignantly that the Staatspolizei are not hangmen for the Wehrmacht: “No interest of the SP makes this action necessary. Do it yourselves.” (Yet, another time, Rasch had had some lunatics shot because all the hospital guards and nurses had left, and he thought that if the patients took advantage of this to escape, they would constitute a security risk.) What’s more it looked like things were soon going to get worse. Rumors reached us from Galicia about new methods: Jeckeln, apparently, had received considerable reinforcements and was conducting much more extensive cleansings than anything that had been undertaken till then. Callsen, back from a mission in Tarnopol, had vaguely mentioned a new Ölsardinenmanier to us, but he refused to elaborate, and no one really knew what he was talking about. And then Blobel had returned. He was cured, and in fact seemed to drink less, but he was just as quarrelsome as ever. I now spent most of my time in Zhitomir. Thomas was there too and I saw him almost every day. It was very hot. In the orchards, the trees bowed under the weight of the purple plums and the apricots; in the individual plots, on the outskirts of the city, you could see the heavy masses of pumpkins, a few ears of corn already dried out, some isolated rows of sunflowers, their heads bent to the ground. When we had some free time Thomas and I left the city to take a boat out on the Teterev and swim; then, lying under the apple trees, we drank bad white wine from Bessarabia and bit into ripe fruit, always within arm’s reach in the grass. At that time there weren’t yet any partisans in the region, so it was calm. Sometimes we read curious or amusing passages out loud to each other, like students. Thomas had unearthed a French pamphlet from the Institut d’Études des Questions Juives, the Institute for the Study of Jewish Questions. “Listen to this amazing prose. Article on ‘Biology and Collaboration,’ by a certain Charles Laville. Here it is. A policy must be biological or not exist. Listen, listen: Do we want to remain a common polypary? Or do we on the contrary want to move toward a superior stage of organization?” He read in French with an almost singsong accent. “Answer: The cellular associations of elements with complementary tendencies are what have permitted the formation of superior animals, up to man. To refuse that which is now offered to us would be, in a way, a crime against humanity, as well as against biology.” For my part, I was reading Stendhal’s correspondence. One day, some sappers invited us onto their motorboat; Thomas, already a little drunk, had wedged a crate of grenades between his thighs and, comfortably stretched out in the bow, he fished them up one by one, took the pin out, and tossed them lazily over his head; the gushes of water thrown up by the underwater detonations splashed over us, while the sappers, armed with nets, tried to catch the dozens of dead fish that bobbed up in the wake of the boat; they laughed, and I admired their tanned skin and careless youth. At night, Thomas sometimes came to our quarters to listen to music. Bohr had found a young Jewish orphan and had adopted him as a mascot: the boy washed the cars, polished the officers’ boots, and cleaned their pistols, but above all he played the piano like a young god, light, nimble, cheerful. “Fingers like that excuse everything, even being Jewish,” Bohr said. He had him play Beethoven or Haydn, but the boy, Yakov, preferred Bach. He seemed to know all the suites by heart, it was wonderful. Even Blobel tolerated him. When Yakov wasn’t playing, I sometimes entertained myself by jokingly taunting my colleagues, I read them passages from Stendhal about the retreat from Russia. Some of them took offense: “Yes, the French, maybe, they’re good for nothing. But we are Germans.”—“Certainly. But the Russians, however, are still Russians.”—“Not at all!” Blobel blurted out. “Seventy or eighty per cent of the population of the USSR are of Mongol stock. It’s proven. And the Bolsheviks had a policy of deliberate racial mixing. During the Great War, yes, we fought against authentic Russian muzhiks, and it’s true they were tough bastards, real bruisers, but the Bolsheviks exterminated them! There are almost no real Russians, real Slavs left. In any case,” he went on without any logic, “the Slavs are by definition a mixed race, a race of slaves. Of bastards. Not a single one of their princes was really Russian, it was always Norman, Mongol, then German blood. Even their national poet was a negro Mischling, and they tolerate it, that’s proof…”—“In any case,” Vogt added sententiously, “God is with the German nation and the Volk. We cannot lose this war.”—“God?” Blobel spat out. “God is a Communist. And if I ever meet him, he’ll end up like his Commissars.”

He knew what he was talking about. In Cherniakov, the SP had arrested the president of the regional Troïka of the NKVD, along with one of his colleagues, and had sent them to Zhitomir. Interrogated by Vogt and his colleagues, this judge, Wolf Kieper, admitted he had had more than 1,350 people executed. He was a Jew in his early sixties, a Communist since 1905 and a People’s Judge since 1918; the other one, Moishe Kogan, was younger, but he was also a member of the Cheka and a Jew. Blobel had discussed the case with Rasch and Oberst Heim and they had agreed on a public execution. Kieper and Kogan were tried before a military court and condemned to death. On August 7, early in the morning, officers from the Sonderkommando, supported by Orpos and our Askaris, conducted arrests of Jews and gathered them together in the market square. The Sixth Army had made available a propaganda company car with a loudspeaker that wound through the streets of the city and announced the execution in German and Ukrainian. I arrived at the square toward late morning, accompanied by Thomas. More than four hundred Jews had been assembled and forced to sit down, their hands clasped at the back of their necks, next to the tall gallows put up the day before by the Sonderkommando drivers. Beyond the Waffen-SS cordon, hundreds of onlookers were flooding in, soldiers especially but also men from the Organisation Todt and from the NSKK, as well as many Ukrainian civilians. These spectators filled the square on all sides; it was difficult to clear a path through them; about thirty soldiers were even perched on the metal roof of a neighboring building. The men were laughing and joking; a lot of them were photographing the scene. Blobel was standing at the foot of the gallows along with Häfner, who had just returned from Belaya Tserkov. In front of the rows of Jews, von Radetzky was haranguing the crowd in Ukrainian: “Does someone have an account to settle with one of these Jews?” he asked. A man emerged from the crowd and kicked one of the seated men, then returned; others threw fruit and rotten tomatoes at them. I watched the Jews: their faces were gray, they looked anguished, wondering what was going to happen next. There were a lot of old men among them, but some quite young ones too. I noticed that in the cordon of guards were several Landsers from the Wehrmacht. “What are they doing here?” I asked Häfner.—“They’re volunteers. They asked to help.” I made a face. A number of officers could be seen, but I didn’t recognize anyone from the AOK. I headed toward the cordon and questioned one of the soldiers: “What are you doing here? Who asked you to stand guard?” He looked embarrassed. “Where is your superior?”—“I don’t know, Herr Offizier,” he finally replied, scratching his forehead under his cap.—“What are you doing here?” I repeated.—“I went to the ghetto this morning, with my comrades, Herr Offizier. And then we offered to help out, your colleagues said yes. I had ordered a pair of leather boots from a Jew and I wanted to try to find him before…before…” He didn’t even dare say the word.—“Before they shoot him, is that it?” I said sharply.—“Yes, Herr Offizier.”—“And did you find him?”—“He’s over there. But I haven’t been able to speak to him.” I returned to where Blobel was. “Standartenführer, the men from the Wehrmacht should be dismissed. It’s not normal for them to participate in the Aktion without orders.”—“Leave it, leave it alone, Obersturmführer. It’s wonderful they’re showing enthusiasm. They’re good National Socialists, they want to do their part too.” I shrugged and rejoined Thomas. He gestured to the crowd with his chin: “We should have sold tickets, we’d be rich.” He snickered. “At the AOK, they call this Executionstourismus.” The truck had arrived and was maneuvering under the gallows. Two Waffen-SS had Kieper and Kogan come out. They were in peasant shirts and had their hands tied behind their backs. Kieper’s beard had turned white since his arrest. Our drivers placed a plank atop the truck’s side, climbed up on it, and started attaching the ropes. I noticed Höfler standing apart, smoking glumly; Bauer, Blobel’s personal driver, was testing the knots. Then Zorn also climbed up and the Waffen-SS hoisted up the two condemned men. They were placed standing below the gallows, and Zorn made a speech; he spoke in Ukrainian, he must have been explaining the sentence. The spectators were yelling and hissing, and he had difficulty making himself heard; several times he made gestures to silence them, but no one was paying any attention. Soldiers were taking pictures, pointing at the condemned men, and laughing. Then Zorn and one of the Waffen-SS placed the nooses around their necks. The two condemned men remained silent, withdrawn into themselves. Zorn and the others came down from the board and Bauer started up the truck. “Slower, slower,” shouted the Landsers, who were taking photographs. The truck moved forward, the two men tried to keep their balance, then they fell over, one after the other, and swung back and forth several times. Kieper’s pants had fallen around his ankles; below his shirt, he was naked; horrified, I saw his engorged penis, still ejaculating. “Nix Kultura!” a Landser bellowed, and others took up the cry. On the posts of the gallows, Zorn was nailing signs explaining the condemnation; they stated that Kieper’s 1,350 victims were all Volksdeutschen and Ukrainians.

Then the soldiers in the cordon ordered the Jews to stand up and march. Blobel got into his car with Häfner and Zorn; von Radetzky invited me to come with him and also took Thomas. The crowd followed the Jews, there was an immense commotion. Everyone headed outside the city toward what people called the Pferdefriedhof, the horse cemetery: a trench had been dug there, with thick beams stacked up behind, to stop stray bullets. Obersturmführer Grafhorst, who commanded our company of Waffen-SS, was waiting with about twenty of his men. Blobel and Häfner inspected the trench, then we waited. I was thinking. I thought about my life, about what relationship there could be between this life that I had lived—an entirely ordinary life, the life of anyone, but also in some respects an extraordinary, an unusual life, although the unusual is also very ordinary—and what was happening here. There must have been a relationship, and it was a fact, there was one. True, I wasn’t taking part in the executions, I wasn’t commanding the firing squads; but that didn’t change much, since I often attended them, I helped prepare them and then I wrote the reports; what’s more, it was just by chance that I had been posted to the Stab rather than to the Teilkommandos. And if they had given me a Teilkommando, would I too have been able, like Nagel or Häfner, to organize the roundups, have the ditches dug, line up the condemned men, and shout “Fire!”? Yes, certainly. Ever since I was a child, I had been haunted by a passion for the absolute, for the overcoming of all limits; and now this passion had led me to the edge of the mass graves of the Ukraine. I had always wanted my thinking to be radical; and now the State, the nation had also chosen the radical and the absolute; how, then, just at that moment, could I turn my back, say no, and at the end of the day prefer the comfort of bourgeois laws, the mediocre assurance of the social contract? That was obviously impossible. And if this radicalism was the radicalism of the abyss, and if the absolute turned out to be absolute evil, one still had to follow them to the end, with eyes wide open—of that at least I was utterly convinced. The crowd was arriving and filling the cemetery; I noticed some soldiers in bathing suits; there were also women, children. People were drinking beer and passing cigarettes around. I looked at a group of officers from headquarters: Oberst von Schuler was there, the IIa, along with several other officers. Grafhorst, our Kompanieführer, was positioning his men. Now we were using one rifle per Jew, a bullet in the chest at the level of the heart. Often that wasn’t enough to kill, and a man had to go down into the trench to finish them off; the screams resounded among the chatter and clamor of the crowd. Häfner, who was more or less officially commanding the action, was shouting himself hoarse. Between the salvos, men emerged from the crowd and asked the Waffen-SS to trade places with them; Grafhorst didn’t object to this, and his men handed their rifles over to the Landsers, who tried one or two shots before returning to join their comrades. Grafhorst’s Waffen-SS were quite young and, since the beginning of the execution, seemed disturbed. Häfner began bawling one of them out, who at each salvo handed his rifle over to a volunteer soldier and stood off to the side, white as a sheet. And then there were too many shots that missed and that was a problem. Häfner had the executions stopped and started to confer with Blobel and two officers from the Wehrmacht. I didn’t know them, but could see from the colors of their collar patches that one was a military judge and the other a doctor. Then Häfner went to talk things over with Grafhorst. I saw that Grafhorst was objecting to what Häfner was saying, but I couldn’t hear their words. Finally Grafhorst had a new batch of Jews brought over. They were positioned facing the trench, but the shooters from the Waffen-SS aimed at the head rather than the chest; the result was horrifying: the tops of their skulls flew into the air, the shooters got pieces of brain splashed in their faces. One of the volunteer shooters from the Wehrmacht was vomiting and his comrades were making fun of him. Grafhorst had flushed completely red and was cursing Häfner; then he turned toward Blobel and the debate started up again. Once again they changed methods: Blobel added some shooters and they shot two at a time into the neck, as in July; Häfner himself administered the deathblow when it was necessary.

The evening of that execution I accompanied Thomas to the Kasino. The officers from the AOK were discussing the day animatedly; they saluted us courteously, but seemed embarrassed, ill at ease. Thomas started up a conversation; I withdrew into an alcove to smoke alone. After the meal, the discussions resumed again. I noticed the military judge whom I had seen speaking with Blobel; he seemed particularly upset. I approached and joined the group. The officers, I understood, had no objection to the action itself, but to the presence of many soldiers from the Wehrmacht and their participation in the executions. “If we give them the order, that’s one thing,” the judge argued, “but as it is, it’s inadmissible. It’s a shame for the Wehrmacht.”—“So,” Thomas cut in, “the SS can shoot, but the Wehrmacht can’t even look?”—“It’s not that, it’s not that at all. It’s a question of order. Tasks like this are disagreeable for everyone. But only those who have received the order should participate in them. Otherwise, all military discipline will collapse.”—“I agree with Dr. Neumann,” Niemeyer, the Abwehroffizier, said. “It’s not a sporting event. The men were acting as if they were at the races.”—“Still, Herr Oberstleutnant,” I reminded him, “the AOK had agreed that this be publicly announced. You even lent us your PK.”—“I’m not criticizing the SS at all, which is carrying out some very difficult work,” Niemeyer replied, a bit on the defensive. “We did discuss it beforehand and we came to an agreement that this would be a good example for the civilian population, that it was useful for them to see with their own eyes how we are smashing the power of the Jews and the Bolsheviks. But things went a little too far here. Your men shouldn’t have been handing their weapons over to ours.”—“Your men,” Thomas dryly retorted, “shouldn’t have been asking for them.”—“At the very least,” barked Neumann, the judge, “we should raise the question with the Generalfeldmarschall.”

The result of all this was a typical order from Reichenau: referring to our necessary executions of criminals, Bolsheviks, and essentially Jewish elements, he forbade soldiers in the Sixth Army, without orders from a superior officer, from attending, photographing, or participating in the actions. In itself that would probably not have changed much, but Rasch ordered us to conduct the actions outside the towns, and to set a cordon on the perimeter to prevent the presence of spectators. Discretion, it seemed, would henceforth be the rule of the day. But the desire to see these things was also human. Leafing through my Plato, I had found the passage of The Republic that my reaction in front of the corpses in the Lutsk fortress had brought to mind: Leontius, the son of Aglaion, coming up one day from the Piraeus, under the north wall on the outside, observed, near the executioner, some dead bodies lying on the ground; and he felt a desire to look at them, and at the same time loathing the thought he tried to turn away. For a time he struggled with himself, and covered his eyes, till at length, overcome by the desire, he forced his eyes wide open with his fingers, and running up to the bodies, exclaimed, “There! you devils! gaze your fill at the beautiful spectacle!” To tell the truth, the soldiers rarely seemed to feel Leontius’s anguish, only his desire, and it must have been this that was disturbing the hierarchy, the idea that the men could take pleasure in these actions. Still, everyone who participated in them took some form of pleasure in them—that seemed obvious to me. Some, visibly, enjoyed the act itself, but these could be regarded as sick men, and it was right to ferret them out and give them other tasks, even punish them if they overstepped the bounds. As for the others, whether the actions repelled them or left them indifferent, they carried them out from a sense of duty and obligation, and thus drew pleasure from their devotion, from their ability to carry out such a difficult task despite their disgust and apprehension: “But I take no pleasure in killing,” they often said, finding their pleasure, then, in their rigor and their righteousness. The hierarchy, obviously, had to consider these problems as a whole; the solutions could necessarily only be approximate or rough. Einzelaktionen, of course, individual actions, were rightly regarded as murders and were condemned. Berück von Roques had promulgated an interpretation of the OKW order on discipline, imposing a sixty-day confinement, for insubordination, on soldiers who shot Jews on their own initiative; in Lemberg, I had heard, a noncom had received six months in prison for the murder of an old Jewish woman. But as the actions became more widespread, it became increasingly difficult to control all their repercussions. On August 11 and 12, Brigadeführer Rasch gathered all his Sonderkommando and Einsatzkommando leaders together: besides Blobel, there were Hermann from 4b, Schulz from 5 and Kroeger from 6. Jeckeln came too. Blobel’s birthday was on the thirteenth, and the officers had decided to throw him a party. During the day, he seemed in an even more execrable mood than usual, and spent long hours alone, locked up in his office. I myself was rather busy: we had just received an order from Gruppenführer Müller, the head of the Gestapo, to collect visual materials on our activities—photographs, films, posters, notices—to send to the Führer. I had gone to negotiate a small budget with Hartl, the administrator of the Gruppenstab, so as to buy copies of their photos from the men; he had started out by refusing, alleging an order from the Reichsführer forbidding members of the Einsatzgruppen to profit from executions in any way whatsoever; and for him, the sale of photographs constituted a profit. I finally managed to convince him that we couldn’t ask the men to finance the Group’s work out of their own pockets, and that we had to defray the expenses of printing the images we wanted to archive. He accepted, but on condition that we pay only for the photos of noncommissioned officers and soldiers; officers should reprint their photos at their own expense, if they took any. Armed with this agreement, I spent the rest of the day in the barracks, examining the men’s collections and ordering prints. Some of them were remarkably accomplished photographers; but their work left me with an unpleasant aftertaste, and at the same time I couldn’t take my eyes away from it, I was stunned. At night, the officers gathered in the mess, decorated for the occasion by Strehlke and his adjuncts. When Blobel joined us, he had already been drinking; his eyes were bloodshot, but he controlled himself and didn’t speak much. Vogt, who was the oldest officer, presented him our best wishes and led the toast for his health; then he was asked to speak. He hesitated, then put down his glass and addressed us, his hands clasped behind his back. “Meine Herren! Thank you for your good wishes. Know that your confidence means a lot to me. I have to share some bad news with you. Yesterday, the HSSPF Russland-Süd, Obergruppenführer Jeckeln, delivered us a new order. This order came directly from the Reichsführer-SS and emanates, I want to emphasize this for you as he emphasized it for us, from the Führer himself.” As he spoke, he winced; between phrases, he chewed the inside of his cheeks. “Our actions against the Jews will henceforth have to include the entire population. There will be no exceptions.” The officers present reacted with consternation; several started talking at the same time. Callsen’s voice rose, incredulous: “All of them?”—“All of them,” Blobel confirmed.—“But look, that’s impossible,” Callsen said. He seemed to be begging. I remained silent; I felt a great coldness come over me; Oh Lord, I was saying to myself, now that too must be done, it has been spoken, and we’ll have to go through that too. I felt invaded by a boundless horror, but I remained calm, nothing showed through, my breathing remained even. Callsen continued his objections: “But, Standartenführer, most of us are married, we have children. They can’t ask us to do that.”—“Meine Herren,” Blobel snapped in a brutal but toneless voice, “this is a direct order from our Führer, Adolf Hitler. We are National Socialists and SS men, and we will obey. Understand this: in Germany, the Jewish question was able to be resolved, fully resolved, without excesses and in a manner in keeping with the requirements of humanity. But when we conquered Poland we inherited three million additional Jews. No one knows what to do with them or where to put them. Here, in this immense country, where we are waging a pitiless war of destruction against the Stalinist hordes, from the beginning we have had to take radical measures to ensure the security of our rear. I think you have all understood their necessity and efficacy. Our forces are not sufficient to patrol each village and at the same time wage battle; and we cannot allow ourselves to leave such treacherous, such sly potential enemies behind us. At the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the possibility is being discussed, once the war is won, of gathering all Jews into a large reservation in Siberia or in the North. There, they’ll be peaceful, and we will be too. But first we have to win the war. We have already executed thousands of Jews and there are still tens of thousands left; the more our forces advance, the more there will be. Now, if we execute only the men, there will be no one left to feed the women and their children. The Wehrmacht doesn’t have the resources to feed tens of thousands of useless Jew females along with their brats. Nor can we leave them to die of hunger: those are Bolshevik methods. To include them in our actions, along with their husbands and their sons, is in fact the most humane solution given the circumstances. What’s more, experience has taught us that the more procreative Eastern Jews are the original breeding ground from which the forces of Judeo-Bolshevism as well as of the capitalist plutocracy are constantly renewed. If we let some of them survive, those products of natural selection will be the source of a renewal even more dangerous for us than the present peril. The Jewish children of today are the saboteurs, the partisans, the terrorists of tomorrow.” The officers were silent, glum; Kehrig, I noticed, was downing glass after glass. Blobel’s bloodshot eyes glistened through the veil of alcohol. “We are all National Socialists,” he continued, “SS men in the service of our Volk and our Führer. I remind you that Führerworte haben Gesetzeskraft, the Führer’s word has the force of law. You must resist the temptation to be human.” Blobel was not a very intelligent man; these striking sentences had certainly not originated from him. But he believed in them; even more important, he wanted to believe in them, and he was offering them in turn to those who needed them, those to whom they could be of use. For me, they weren’t much use; I would have to work out my reasoning on my own. But it was hard for me to think about it; my head was buzzing with an intolerable pressure, I wanted to go to sleep. Callsen was fiddling with his wedding ring, I was sure he didn’t realize it; he wanted to say something, but changed his mind. “A Schweinerei, this is a grosse Schweinerei,” Häfner muttered, and no one contradicted him. Blobel seemed drained, out of ideas, but everyone could feel that his will was holding us and wouldn’t let us go, just as other wills held him. In a State like ours, everyone had his assigned role: You, the victim, and You, the executioner, and no one had a choice, no one asked anyone’s consent, since everyone was interchangeable, victims as well as executioners. Yesterday we had killed Jewish men, tomorrow it would be women and children, the day after tomorrow yet others; and after we had fulfilled our role, we would be replaced. Germany, at least, did not liquidate its executioners; on the contrary, it took care of them, unlike Stalin with his mania for purges; but that too was part of the logic of things. For the Russians, as for us, man counted for nothing; the nation, the State were everything; and in this sense we saw our reflection in each other. The Jews too had this strong feeling of community, of Volk: they mourned their dead, buried them if they could and said Kaddish; but as long as one single Jew remained alive, Israel lived. That, no doubt, was the reason they were our privileged enemies, they resembled us too much.

It wasn’t a problem of humanity. Some people, of course, could criticize our actions in the name of religious values, but I wasn’t one of them, and in the SS there must not have been many; or in the name of democratic values, but we had moved beyond what is called democracy in Germany sometime ago. Blobel’s arguments, in fact, were not entirely idiotic: if the supreme value is the Volk, the people to which one belongs, and if the will of this Volk is embodied in a leader, then in fact, Führerworte haben Gesetzeskraft. But still it was vital to comprehend within oneself the necessity of the Führer’s orders: if one accepted them out of a simple Prussian spirit of obedience, out of a Knecht’s spirit, without understanding them and without accepting them, that is without submitting to them, then one was nothing but a sheep, a slave and not a man. When the Jew submitted to the Law, he felt that this Law lived in him, and the more terrible, hard, demanding it was, the more he loved it. National Socialism had to be that too: a living Law. Killing was a terrible thing; the reaction of the officers was a good proof of that, even if they didn’t all draw the consequences of their own reactions; and the man for whom killing was not a terrible thing, killing an armed man as well as an unarmed man, and an unarmed man as well as a woman and her child, was nothing but an animal, unworthy of belonging to a community of men. But it was possible that this terrible thing was also a necessary thing; and in that case we had to submit to this necessity. Our propaganda repeated over and over again that the Russians were Untermenschen, sub-humans; but I refused to believe that. I had interrogated captured officers, Commissars, and I saw that they too were men like us, men who wished only good, who loved their families and their country. But these Commissars and these officers had caused millions of their own fellow citizens to die, they had deported the Kulaks, starved the Ukrainian peasantry, repressed and shot the bourgeois and deviationists of all stripes. Among them were sadists and psychopaths, of course, but also kind men, honest and upright, who sincerely wanted the good of their people and of the working class; and though they had gone astray, they were still men of good faith. They too were for the most part convinced of the necessity of what they were doing, they weren’t all madmen, opportunists, and criminals like that Kieper; among our enemies too, a good and honest man could convince himself to do terrible things. What they were asking us to do now posed the same problem for us.

The next day I awoke distraught, with a sad rage stuck in my head. I went to see Kehrig and closed the office door: “I’d like to talk with you, Sturmbannführer.”—“What about, Obersturmführer?”—“About the extermination order.” He raised his bird’s head and stared at me through his fine-rimmed glasses: “There is nothing to discuss, Obersturmführer. Anyhow I’m leaving.” He gestured to me to sit down. “You’re leaving? How’s that?”—“I settled it with Brigadeführer Streckenbach, with the help of a friend. I’m going back to Berlin.”—“When?”—“Soon, in a few days.”—“And your replacement?” He shrugged: “He’ll come when he comes. In the meantime, you’ll run the shop.” He stared at me again: “If you want to leave too, you know, that can be arranged. I can go see Streckenbach for you in Berlin, if you like.”—“Thank you, Sturmbannführer. But I’ll stay.”—“Why?” he asked sharply. “To end up like Häfner or Hans? To wallow in this mud?”—“You’ve stayed till now,” I said gently. He laughed dryly: “I requested my transfer at the beginning of July. In Lutsk. But you know how it is, it takes time.”—“I’ll be sorry to see you leave, Sturmbannführer.”—“Not me. What they want to do is insane. I’m not the only one who thinks so. Schulz, from Kommando Five, broke down when he learned about the Vernichtungsbefehl. He asked to leave right away, and the Obergruppenführer gave his consent.”—“You might be right. But if you leave, if Oberführer Schulz leaves, if all the honorable men leave, only the butchers will be left here, the dregs. We can’t accept that.” He made a grimace of disgust: “Because you think you can change something if you stay? You?” He shook his head. “No, Doktor, follow my advice, leave. Let the butchers take care of the butchering.” “Thank you, Sturmbannführer.” I shook his hand and left. I headed for the Gruppenstab and went to find Thomas. “Kehrig is a sissy,” he said curtly when I had reported the conversation to him. “Schulz too. We’ve had our eye on Schulz for a while now. In Lemberg, he let some condemned men go, without permission. All the better if he leaves, we don’t need men like that.” He looked at me pensively. “Of course, it’s atrocious, what they’re asking us to do. But you’ll see, we’ll get through it.” He suddenly grew even more serious. “I don’t believe it’s the right solution. It’s an emergency response, improvised because of the war. We must win this war soon; afterward, we can discuss things more calmly, and carefully think them through. More subtle opinions can be taken into account. With the war, that’s impossible.”—“Do you think it will last much longer? We were supposed to reach Moscow in five weeks. It’s been two months now and we haven’t even taken Kiev or Leningrad.”—“It’s hard to say. It’s obvious that we underestimated their industrial potential. Every time we think their reserves are exhausted, they throw fresh divisions at us. But they must be reaching the end now. And also, the Führer’s decision to send us Guderian will soon open up the front, here. As for Army Group Center, since the beginning of the month, they’ve taken four hundred thousand prisoners. And in Uman we’re also surrounding two entire armies.”

I returned to the Kommando. In the mess, alone, Yakov, Bohr’s little Jew, was playing the piano. I sat down on a bench to listen to him. He was playing Mozart, the andante of one of the sonatas, and it brought a lump to my throat, deepening my sadness even more. When he had finished I asked him: “Yakov, do you know Rameau? Couperin?”—“No, Herr Offizier. What is it?”—“It’s French music. You should learn it. I’ll try to find some scores.”—“Is it beautiful?”—“It might be the most beautiful thing there is.” “More beautiful than Bach?” I considered the question: “Almost as beautiful as Bach,” I acknowledged. This Yakov must have been about twelve years old, and could have played in any concert hall in Europe. He came from the region of Czernowitz and had grown up in a German-speaking family; with the occupation of the Bukovina, in 1940, he’d found himself in the USSR; his father had been deported by the Soviets and his mother had died in one of our air raids. He was truly a handsome boy: a long narrow face, full lips, black hair in untamed tufts, long blue-veined fingers. Everyone here liked him; even Lübbe left him alone. “Herr Offizier?” Yakov asked. He kept his eyes on the piano. “Can I ask you a question?”—“Of course.”—“Is it true that you’re going to kill all the Jews?” I straightened up: “Who told you that?”—“Last night, I heard Herr Bohr talking with the other officers. They were shouting very loudly.”—“They were drinking. You shouldn’t have been listening.” He insisted, his eyes still lowered: “So you’ll kill me, too?”—“Of course not.” My hands were tingling, I forced myself to keep a normal, almost cheerful tone of voice: “Why would we want to kill you?”—“I’m Jewish too.”—“That’s all right, you work for us. You’re a Hiwi now.” He began hitting a key gently, a high note: “The Russians always told us that the Germans were mean. But I don’t think so. I like you.” I didn’t say anything. “Would you like me to play?”—“Play.”—“What would you like me to play?”—“Play whatever you like.”

The mood within the Kommando was becoming execrable; the officers were nervous, they shouted at the slightest provocation. Callsen and the others went back to their Teilkommandos; everyone kept his opinions to himself, but you could see that the new tasks weighed on them. Kehrig left quickly, almost without saying goodbye. Lübbe was often sick. From the field, the Teilkommandoführers sent very negative reports on the morale of their troops: there were nervous depressions, the men often cried; according to Sperath, many were suffering from sexual impotence. There was a series of incidents with the Wehrmacht: Near Korosten, a Hauptscharführer forced some Jewish women to undress and made them run naked in front of a machine gun; he took photos, and these photos were intercepted by the AOK. In Belaya Tserkov, Häfner had a confrontation with an officer from division headquarters, who had intervened to block the execution of some Jewish orphans; Blobel had to go down there himself and the affair went all the way up to von Reichenau, who confirmed the execution and reprimanded the officer; but it created quite a few ripples, and furthermore Häfner refused to inflict that on his men, and left the dirty work to his Askaris. Other officers did the same; but as the difficulties with the OUN-B persisted, this practice in turn engendered new problems: the Ukrainians, disgusted, were deserting or even committing treason. Others, however, carried out the executions without grumbling, but they shamelessly stole from the Jews and raped the women before killing them; sometimes we had to shoot our own soldiers. Kehrig’s replacement hadn’t arrived, and I was overwhelmed with work. At the end of the month, Blobel sent me to Korosten. The “Republic of Polesia,” northeast of the city, was off-limits to us per order of the Wehrmacht, but there was still a lot of work in the region. The officer in charge was Kurt Hans. I didn’t like Hans much—he was a foul man, moody; and he didn’t like me, either. Still, we had to work together. The methods had changed, they had been rationalized, systematized according to the new demands. But these changes still didn’t make the soldiers’ work any easier. Now the condemned had to undress before execution, since their clothing was collected for the Winter Aid and the repatriates. In Zhitomir, Blobel had explained to us the new practice of Sardinenpackung developed by Jeckeln, the “sardine-packing” method that Callsen already knew. With the considerable increase in volume, in Galicia, as early as July, Jeckeln had decided that the graves were filling up too quickly; the bodies were falling any which way and got all tangled up, a lot of space was wasted, and so we were wasting too much time digging; so now the condemned, undressed, had to lie on their stomachs in the bottom of the trench, and a few shooters administered a shot in the neck at point-blank range. “I have always been against the Genickschuss,” Blobel reminded us, “but now we no longer have a choice.” After each row, an officer had to perform an inspection and make sure all the condemned were indeed dead; then they were covered with a thin layer of dirt and the next group came to lie down on top of them, head to foot; when five or six layers had accumulated this way, the trench was filled in. The Teilkommandoführer thought the men would find this too difficult, but Blobel didn’t want to hear any objections: “In my Kommando, we will do what the Obergruppenführer says.” Kurt Hans, in any case, wasn’t too bothered; he seemed indifferent to everything. I attended several executions with him. I could now distinguish three different temperaments among my colleagues. First, there were those who, even if they tried to hide it, killed with sensual pleasure; I have already talked about them, they were criminals who revealed their true nature thanks to the war. Then there were those who were disgusted by it and who killed out of duty, overcoming their repugnance, out of a love of order. Finally, there were those who regarded the Jews as animals and killed them the way a butcher slaughters a cow—a joyful or a difficult task, according to their humor or disposition. Kurt Hans clearly belonged to this last category: for him, the only thing that counted was the precision of the gesture, the efficiency, the output. Every night, he meticulously went over his totals. And what about me? I couldn’t identify with any of these three types, but that was of little help, and if I had been pushed a little, I would have had trouble articulating an honest answer. I was still looking for one. Passion for the absolute was a part of it, as was, I realized one day with terror, curiosity: here, as in so many other things in my life, I was curious, I was trying to see what effect all this would have on me. I was always observing myself: it was as if a film camera were fixed just above me, and I was at once this camera, the man it was filming, and the man who was then studying the film. Sometimes that astonished me, and often, at night, I couldn’t sleep; I stared at the ceiling; the lens didn’t leave me in peace. But the answer to my question kept slipping through my fingers.

With the women, the children especially, our work sometimes became very difficult, heart-wrenching. The men complained nonstop, especially the older ones, the ones who had a family. Faced with these defenseless people, these mothers who had to watch their children being killed without being able to protect them, who could only die with them, our men suffered from an extreme feeling of powerlessness; they too felt defenseless. “I just want to stay whole,” a young Sturmmann from the Waffen-SS said to me one day, and I understood this desire, but I couldn’t help him. The attitude of the Jews didn’t make things any easier. Blobel had to send back to Germany a thirty-year-old Rottenführer who had spoken with a condemned man; the Jew, who was the same age as the Rottenführer, was holding in his arms a child about two and half years old; his wife, next to him, was carrying a newborn with blue eyes; and the man had looked the Rottenführer straight in the eyes and had said to him calmly, in flawless German: “Please, mein Herr, shoot the children cleanly.”—“He came from Hamburg,” the Rottenführer explained later on to Sperath, who had then told us the story; “he was almost my neighbor, his children were the same age as mine.” Even I was losing my grip. During an execution, I watched a young boy dying in the trench: the shooter must have hesitated, the shot had hit too low, in the back. The boy was twitching, his eyes were open and glassy, and this terrifying scene blended into a scene from my childhood: with a friend, I was playing cowboys and Indians with some cap pistols. It was not long after the Great War, my father had returned, I must have been about five or six, like the boy in the trench. I had hidden behind a tree; when my friend approached, I leaped out and emptied my pistol into his stomach, shouting, “Bang! Bang!” He dropped his weapon, clutched his stomach with both hands, and fell down twisting. I picked up his pistol and handed it to him: “Come on, take it. Let’s go on playing.”—“I can’t. I’m a corpse.” I closed my eyes; in front of me, the boy was still panting. After the action, I visited the shtetl, empty now, deserted; I went into the isbas, dark, miserable dwellings, with Soviet calendars and pictures cut out of magazines on the walls, a few religious objects, coarse furniture. Certainly none of this had much to do with the internationales Finanzjudentum. In one house, I found a big bucket of water on the stove, still boiling; on the ground were pots of cold water and a washbasin. I closed the door, stripped and washed myself with this water and a piece of hard soap. I scarcely diluted the hot water: it burned, my skin turned scarlet. Then I got dressed again and went out; at the entrance to the village, the houses were already in flames. But my question wouldn’t let go of me, I returned again and again, and that’s how another time, at the edge of a grave, a little girl about four years old came up and quietly took my hand. I tried to free myself, but she kept gripping it. In front of us, they were shooting the Jews. “Gdye mama?” I asked the girl in Ukrainian. She pointed toward the trench. I caressed her hair. We stayed that way for several minutes. I was dizzy, I wanted to cry. “Come with me,” I said to her in German, “don’t be afraid, come.” I headed for the entrance of the pit; she stayed in place, holding me by the hand, then followed me. I picked her up and held her out to a Waffen-SS: “Be gentle with her,” I said to him stupidly. I felt an insane rage, but didn’t want to take it out on the girl, or on the soldier. He went down into the trench with the child in his arms and I quickly turned away and entered the forest. It was a large, sparsely wooded pine forest, well cleared and full of soft light. Behind me the salvos crackled. When I was little, I often played in forests like this, around Kiel, where I lived after the war: strange games, actually. For my birthday, my father had given me a three-volume set of Tarzan, by the American writer E. R. Burroughs, which I read and reread with passion, at the table, in the bathroom, at night with a flashlight. In the forest, like my hero, I stripped naked and slipped among the trees, between the tall ferns, I lay down on beds of pine needles, enjoying the little pricks on my skin, I squatted behind a bush or a fallen tree, above a path, to spy on the people who came walking there, the others, the humans. They weren’t explicitly erotic games; I was too young for that; I probably didn’t even get erect then; but for me, the entire forest had become an erogenous zone, a vast skin as sensitive as my naked child’s skin, bristling in the cold. Later on, I should add, these games took an even stranger turn; this was still in Kiel, but probably after my father had left; I must have been nine, ten at most: naked, I would hang myself with my belt from a tree branch, and let myself go with all my weight; my blood, thrown into a panic, made my face swell, my temples beat to the point of bursting; my breath came in wheezes; finally I would stand back up, regain my breath, and begin again. That’s what forests used to mean to me, games like that, full of keen pleasure and boundless freedom; now, the woods filled me with fear.

I returned to Zhitomir. An intense agitation reigned at the Kommandostab: Bohr was under arrest and Lübbe in hospital. Bohr had attacked him in the middle of the mess, in front of the other officers, with a chair first and then with a knife. It had taken at least six people to control him; Strehlke, the Verwaltungsführer, had had his hand slashed, not very deeply but painfully. “He went mad,” he said to me, showing me the stitches.—“But what happened?”—“It’s because of his little Jew. The one who played the piano.” Yakov had had an accident while repairing a car with Bauer: the jack, badly set, had let go, and his hand had been crushed. Sperath had examined it and declared it had to be amputated. “Then he’s no good for anything,” Blobel decided, and he had given the order to liquidate him. “Vogt took care of it,” said Strehlke, who was telling me the story. “Bohr didn’t say anything. But at dinner, Lübbe began taunting him. You know how he is. ‘No more piano,’ he said out loud. That’s when Bohr attacked him. If you want my opinion,” he added, “Lübbe got what he deserved. But it’s too bad for Bohr: a good officer, and he’s ruined his career for a little Jew. It’s not as if there were a lack of Jews, over here.”—“What’s going to happen to Bohr?”—“That’ll depend on the Standartenführer’s report. At worst, he could go to prison. Otherwise, he’ll be stripped of his rank and sent to the Waffen-SS to redeem himself.” I left him and went up to my room to lock myself in, exhausted with disgust. I understood Bohr completely; he had been wrong, of course, but I understood him. Lübbe had no right to make fun of him, that was shameful. I too had grown attached to little Yakov; I had discreetly written to a friend in Berlin, for him to send me some Rameau and Couperin scores; I wanted Yakov to study them to discover Le Rappel des Oiseaux, Les Trois Mains, Les Barricades Mystérieuses, and all those other wonders. Now these scores were of no use to anyone: I don’t play the piano. That night I had a strange dream. I was getting up and heading toward the door, but a woman was barring the way. She had white hair and wore glasses: “No,” she said to me. “You can’t go out. Sit down and write.” I turned to my desk: a man was sitting in my chair, hammering away at my typewriter. “Excuse me,” I ventured. The noise of the keys clacking was deafening, he didn’t hear me. Timidly, I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and shook his head: “No,” he said, waving toward the door. I went into my library, but someone was there too, calmly tearing the pages out of my books and tossing the gutted bindings into a corner. Well then, I said to myself, in that case I’ll go to sleep. But a young woman was lying in my bed, naked beneath the sheet. When she saw me, she dragged me down to her, covering my face with kisses, wrapping her legs around mine, trying to unfasten my belt. It was only with the greatest difficulty that I managed to fight her off; the effort left me panting. I thought of throwing myself out the window; it was jammed, painted shut. The toilet, fortunately, was empty, and I hastily locked myself in.

The Wehrmacht had finally resumed its advance, and this was creating new tasks for us. Guderian was completing his breakthrough, attacking the Soviet armies in Kiev from the rear; his prey, as if paralyzed, wasn’t reacting. The Sixth Army started moving again, and crossed the Dnieper; farther south, the Seventeenth Army was also passing the Dnieper. It was hot and dry, and the troops on the move raised columns of dust as high as buildings; when the rains came, the soldiers rejoiced, then cursed the mud. No one had time to bathe and the men were gray with dust and mire. The regiments advanced like little isolated ships on the ocean of corn and ripe wheat; they saw no one for days, and the only news that reached them came from Rollbahn drivers coming back up the line; all around them, flat and wide, stretched the vast earth: Is there anyone living on this plain? sings the knight in the old Russian tale. Sometimes, when we went out on a mission, we met one of these units; the officers would invite us to eat, happy to see us. On September 16, Guderian joined forces with von Kleist’s Panzers in Lokhvitsa, 150 kilometers beyond Kiev, surrounding four Soviet armies according to the Abwehr; to the north and south, the air force and infantry began to crush them. Kiev lay wide open. In Zhitomir, since the end of August, we had stopped killing Jews, and the survivors had been regrouped in a ghetto; on September 17, Blobel left the city with his officers, two units from the Police Regiment South, and our Askaris, leaving behind only the orderlies, the cooks, and the repair gear for the vehicles. The Kommandostab was to establish itself as soon as possible in Kiev. But the next day, Blobel changed his mind, or received a counterorder: he returned to Zhitomir to liquidate the ghetto. “Their insolent attitude hasn’t changed, despite all our warnings and our special measures. We can’t leave them behind us.” He formed a Vorkommando under the leadership of Häfner and Janssen to enter Kiev with the Sixth Army. I volunteered and Blobel accepted.

That night the Vorkommando camped in a little deserted village near the city. Outside, the obsessive cawing of the crows sounded like babies crying. While I was lying on a straw-filled mattress in an isba that I was sharing with the other officers, a little bird, a sparrow perhaps, flew into the room and started careening into the walls and the closed windows; half stunned, it would lie on the floor for a few seconds, out of breath, its wings askew, before exploding again in another brief and futile frenzy. I thought it might be dying. The others were already asleep or else didn’t react. Finally I managed to trap it under a helmet and release it outside: it fled into the night as if it were awakening from a nightmare. At dawn we were already on the move. The war now was just in front of us, we were advancing very slowly. By the roadsides the insomniac dead lay scattered, their eyes open, empty. The wedding ring of a German soldier gleamed in the early morning sun; his face was red, swollen, his mouth and eyes full of flies. The dead horses lay intermingled with the men, some, wounded by bullets or shrapnel, were still dying, they neighed, struggled, rolled furiously over the other carcasses or the bodies of their riders. Near a makeshift bridge right in front of us, the current carried off three soldiers, and from the bank for a long while we could make out the sodden uniforms, the pale faces of the drowned men, slowly drifting away. In the empty villages, abandoned by their inhabitants, cows with swollen udders were lowing in pain; the geese, horrified, were cackling in the little gardens of the isbas in the midst of rabbits and chickens and chained dogs doomed to die of hunger; the houses lay wide open, the people, overwhelmed with panic, had left behind their books, their framed prints, their radios, their quilts. Then came the outer suburbs of Kiev, ravaged by destruction, and then just after, the center, almost intact. Along Shevchenko Boulevard, under the fine autumn sun, the lush lindens and chestnut trees were glowing yellow; on Kreshchatik, the main street, we had to navigate between antitank barricades that exhausted German soldiers were clearing away with difficulty. Häfner liaised with the HQ of the Twenty-ninth Army Corps, and they directed us to the premises of the NKVD, on a hill above Kreshchatik, overlooking the center. It had once been a beautiful palace from the early nineteenth century, with a long yellow façade decorated with moldings and tall columns painted white flanking the main door, under a triangular pediment; but it had been bombed and then, for good measure, burned by the NKVD. According to our informants it used to be a pension for poor young virgins; in 1918, the Soviet institutions had taken over the building; since then, it had a sinister reputation, people were shot in the garden, behind the second korpus. Häfner dispatched a platoon to round up some Jews to clean and repair whatever could still be fixed; we set up our desks and equipment wherever we could, and some officers were already getting to work. I went down to army headquarters to ask for some sappers: the building had to be inspected, to make sure it wasn’t mined; they promised me some for the next day. In the palace of young virgins, the first Jews were arriving under escort and beginning to clear away the rubble; Häfner had also confiscated some mattresses and quilts, so we wouldn’t have to sleep on the bare ground. The next morning, a Saturday, I hadn’t even had time to go inquire after my sappers when a formidable explosion echoed through the center of town, knocking out the few windowpanes we had left. Quickly the news spread that the citadel of Novo-Pecherskaya had blown up, killing, among others, the commander of the artillery division and his Chief of Staff. Everyone was talking of sabotage, delayed-action detonators; the Wehrmacht remained cautious, and didn’t rule out the possibility of an accident caused by some badly stored ammunition. Häfner and Janssen started to arrest Jews, while I tried to recruit Ukrainian informants. It was difficult, we knew nothing about them: the men who presented themselves could just as easily be Russian agents. The arrested Jews were locked up in a movie theater on Kreshchatik; I was frantically cross-checking the information coming in from all over: everything seemed to indicate that the Soviets had carefully mined the city; and our sappers still hadn’t arrived. Finally, after a vigorous protest, we were sent three engineers; they left after two hours without finding anything. At night, my anxiety bled into my sleep and infected my dreams: seized with an intense need to defecate, I ran to the bathroom, the shit pouring out liquid and thick, a continuous flow that quickly filled the toilet bowl and kept rising, I kept shitting, the shit reached up to below my thighs, covered my buttocks and scrotum, my anus kept disgorging. I frantically wondered how to clean up all this shit, but I couldn’t stop it, its acrid, vile, nauseating taste filled my mouth, sickening me. I woke up suffocating, my mouth dry, doughy and bitter. Dawn was rising, and I climbed up onto the cliffs to watch the sun rise over the river, the dismembered bridges, the city, and the plain beyond. The Dnieper sprawled out at my feet, wide, sluggish, its surface covered with swirling green scum; in the middle, beneath the dynamited railroad bridge, stretched a few little islets surrounded by reeds and water lilies, with some abandoned fishing boats; a barge belonging to the Wehrmacht was crossing; farther up, to the other side, a boat was gathering rust on the beach, half aground, lying on its side. The trees hid the lavra and I could see only the golden dome of its bell tower, which dully reflected the coppery light of the rising sun. I returned to the palace: Sunday or not, we were overwhelmed with work; what’s more, the Gruppenstab Vorkommando was arriving. They presented themselves in midmorning, headed by Obersturmführer Dr. Krieger, the Leiter V; with him were Obersturmführer Breun, someone named Braun, and Krumme, a Hauptmann of the Schutzpolizei, who commanded our Orpos; Thomas had stayed behind in Zhitomir, and would arrive a few days later with Dr. Rasch. Krieger and his colleagues occupied another wing of the palace, where we had already set things somewhat in order; our Jews were working nonstop; at night, we kept them in a basement, near the former cells of the NKVD. Blobel visited us after lunch and congratulated us on our progress, then left, back to Zhitomir. He wasn’t planning to stay there since the city was already judenrein; the Kommando had emptied the ghetto the day of our arrival in Kiev and liquidated the 3,145 remaining Jews. One more number for our reports; there would soon be others. Who, I wondered, will mourn all these killed Jews, all these Jewish children buried with open eyes under the rich black earth of the Ukraine, if their sisters and mothers are killed too? If they were all killed, no one would be left to mourn them, and maybe that also was the idea. My work progressed: I had been sent some trustworthy Melnykists, they vetted my informants and even identified three Bolsheviks, including one woman, who were shot on the spot; thanks to them, I recruited some dvorniki, Soviet janitors who habitually informed for the NKVD but had no problem doing the same for us, in exchange for small privileges or for money. They soon identified officers of the Red Army disguised as civilians, as well as Commissars, Banderists, and Jewish intellectuals, whom I transferred to Häfner or Janssen after a quick interrogation. Häfner and Janssen for their part continued to fill the Goskino 5 with arrested Jews. Since the explosion of the citadel, the city was calm, the Wehrmacht was getting organized, and the food supply was improving. But the searches had been overly hasty. Wednesday morning, the twenty-fourth, another explosion ripped apart the Feldkommandantur set up in the Hotel Continental, on the corner of Kreshchatik and Proreznaya Streets. I went down to look. The street was swarming with onlookers and idle soldiers watching the building burn. Some Feldgendarmen were beginning to collar civilians to help clear the rubble; officers were evacuating the intact wing of the hotel, carrying suitcases, blankets, phonographs. Glass crunched underfoot: for several streets around, the windows had been shattered by the force of the explosion. A number of officers must have been killed, but no one knew exactly how many. Suddenly another detonation sounded, farther down, near Tolstoy Square; then another huge bomb burst in a building opposite the hotel, projecting rubble and a cloud of dust onto us. The people, panicking, ran in all directions, mothers shouted after their children; German motorcyclists swarmed up Kreshchatik between the antitank obstacles, firing submachine-gun bursts at random. Black smoke quickly enveloped the street; fires had broken out everywhere; I was suffocating. Officers from the Wehrmacht shouted contradictory orders; no one seemed to know who was in charge. Kreshchatik was now blocked with rubble and overturned vehicles; the electric lines of the trolley buses, cut, dangled in the streets; a few meters away from me, the gas tank of an Opel blew up and the car caught fire. I went back to the palace; from above, the entire street seemed to be burning, and we could hear more explosions. Blobel had just arrived, and I reported the situation to him. Then Häfner arrived and explained that the Jews detained in the movie theater near the Hotel Continental had for the most part escaped in the confusion. Blobel ordered them found; I suggested it might be more urgent to have our quarters thoroughly searched again. Janssen then divided our Orpos and Waffen-SS into little groups of three and sent them into all the entrances of our palace, with the order to knock down any locked door, and especially to search the basements and attics. Less than an hour later, one of the men discovered explosives in the cellar. A Scharführer from the Waffen-SS who had served in the engineers corps went to look: there were about sixty bottlesful of gasoline, what the Finns called “Molotov cocktails” since their Winter War, apparently just stored there, but one couldn’t be sure, we had to send for an expert. The news set off a panic. Janssen shouted and started whipping our Arbeitsjuden; Häfner, with his air of efficiency, barked out useless orders just to keep face. Blobel quickly conferred with Dr. Krieger and ordered the building evacuated. No fallback position had been planned, so no one knew where to go; while our vehicles were hastily being loaded, I hurriedly liaised with the HQ of the Army Corps; but their officers were overwhelmed, they told me to manage on my own. I returned to the palace through the fires and confusion. Wehrmacht sappers were trying to set up fire hoses, but the flames were gaining ground. Then I thought about the big Dynamo stadium; it was far away from the fires, near the lavra on the Pechersk Hills, and it wasn’t very likely that the Red Army had gone to the trouble of mining it. Blobel approved my idea and directed the loaded cars and trucks; the officers set up in the abandoned offices and in locker rooms that still stank of sweat and disinfectant, while the men occupied the bleachers, and the Jews, brought under careful guard, were made to sit down on the grass. While our files, cases, and typewriters were unloaded and arranged, and specialists were unpacking the communication equipment, Blobel went to the Army Corps; when he returned, he ordered us to pack everything again: the Wehrmacht was assigning us some quarters in a former czar’s residence, a little farther down. Everything had to be loaded up again; the whole day was wasted in moving. Only von Radetzky seemed happy at the commotion: “Krieg ist Krieg und Schnaps ist Schnaps,” he threw haughtily at whoever complained. By evening, I was finally able to begin collecting information with my Melnykist collaborators: we had to learn as much as possible about the Reds’ plan; obviously the explosions were coordinated; the saboteurs had to be arrested and their Rostopchin identified. The Abwehr had some information about a certain Friedmann, an agent of the NKVD reportedly heading a spy and sabotage network set up before the Red Army’s retreat; the sappers argued that it was just a matter of mines set in advance, with time fuses. The center of the city had become a hell. There had been more explosions, and now fires were raging all along Kreshchatik, from Duma Square to Tolstoy Square; Molotov cocktails, stored in the attics, were breaking in the heat, gelled gasoline ran down the stairways of buildings and fed the flames, which little by little were extending to the parallel streets, Pushkin Street on one side, then Mering, Karl Marx, Engels streets, all the way to the October Revolution Street, at the foot of our palace. The two TsUMs, department stores, had been stormed by the terrified population; the Feldgendarmerie was arresting many looters and wanted to hand them over to us; others had died in the flames. The entire population of the city center was fleeing, bent under bundles and pushing carts loaded with radios, rugs, and household appliances, while the babies squealed themselves hoarse in their mothers’ arms. A number of German soldiers had mixed in with them and were also fleeing in complete disorder. From time to time a roof collapsed into a building in a huge clatter of rafters. In some places I was able to breathe only with a moistened handkerchief over my mouth; I coughed convulsively, spitting out thick globs of phlegm.

The next morning the Gruppenstab arrived, together with the bulk of our Kommando, headed by Kuno Callsen. Sappers had finally inspected our palace and taken away the crates of explosive bottles, and we had been able to go back to our premises in time to welcome them. A Vorkommando from the HSSPF arrived too and occupied the czar’s residence that we had just left; they brought with them two Orpo battalions, which gave us considerable reinforcements. The Wehrmacht began to dynamite the buildings in the center of town to control the fires. Four tons of explosives had been found in the Lenin Museum, ready to detonate, but the sappers had managed to defuse them and buried them in front of the entrance. The new City Kommandant, Generalmajor Kurt Eberhard, was holding almost constant meetings, which representatives of the Group and the Kommando had to attend. Since Kehrig still hadn’t been replaced, I found myself the acting Leiter III of the Kommando, and Blobel often asked me to accompany him or delegated me in his place when he was too busy; the Gruppenstab also conferred hourly with the men from the HSSPF, and Jeckeln himself was expected that night or the next day. In the morning, the Wehrmacht was still thinking of civilian saboteurs and had asked us to help search them out and repress them; then, in the course of the day, the Abwehr found a demolition plan of the Red Army, listing almost sixty objectives prepared for destruction before their departure. Engineers were sent to inspect and seemed to confirm the information. More than forty of the objectives were still waiting to explode, some equipped with wireless detonators, controlled from a distance; the sappers were furiously demining, as fast as possible. The Wehrmacht wanted to take radical measures; at the Group too, measures were being discussed.

On Friday the Sicherheitspolizei began its activities. With the help of information I gathered, 1,600 Jews and Communists were arrested during the day. Vogt had set up seven commandos for the interrogations—in the Dulags, in the camp for the Jews, in the civilian camp, and in town—in order to sift through the masses of prisoners and pick out the dangerous elements. I reported this during one of Eberhard’s meetings; he nodded, but the army wanted more. The acts of sabotage continued: a young Jew had tried to cut one of the pipes set in the Dnieper by the sappers to feed their fire hoses; the Sonderkommando shot him, as well as a band of Gypsies caught rummaging around in an outlying neighborhood near an Orthodox church. On Blobel’s orders, one of our platoons liquidated the mentally ill in the Pavlov Hospital, for fear they might escape and add to the disorder. Jeckeln had arrived; in the afternoon, he presided over a large meeting at the Ortskommandantur, which was attended by General Eberhard and staff officers from the Sixth Army, officers from the Group, including Dr. Rasch, and officers from the Sonderkommando. Rasch looked out of sorts: tapping on the table with his pen, he didn’t speak, his somewhat vacant gaze straying distractedly over the faces surrounding him. Jeckeln, by contrast, was brimming with energy. He gave a short speech about the sabotage, the danger represented by the masses of Jews in the city, and the necessity to have recourse to the most rigorous possible measures of retaliation, but also of prevention. Sturmbannführer Hennicke, the Leiter III of the Einsatzgruppe, presented some statistics: according to his information, Kiev must at that time have been harboring some 150,000 Jews, permanent residents or refugees from western Ukraine. Jeckeln suggested, as a preliminary measure, shooting 50,000 of them; Eberhard warmly approved and pledged the logistic support of the Sixth Army. Jeckeln turned to us: “Gentlemen,” he declared, “I give you twenty-four hours to prepare a plan for me.” Blobel leaped up: “Obergruppenführer, it will be done!” Rasch spoke for the first time: “With Standartenführer Blobel, you can count on it.” His tone held a rather marked irony, but Blobel took it as a compliment: “Absolutely, absolutely.”—“We have to make a strong impression,” Eberhard concluded, calling the meeting to a close.

I was already working night and day, and snatching two hours of sleep when I could; but to tell the truth, I didn’t really contribute to the planning: the officers of the Teilkommandos, who weren’t yet entirely snowed under (they were shooting politruki unmasked by Vogt’s interrogators and a few suspects picked up more or less at random, but no more than that), took charge of it. The meetings with the Sixth Army and the HSSPF resumed the next day. The Sonderkommando proposed a site: west of the city, in the Syrets neighborhood, near the Jewish cemetery but still outside the inhabited zones, there were some wide ravines that would do well. “There’s also a freight depot there,” Blobel added. “That will let the Jews think we’re sending them away to settle somewhere else.” The Wehrmacht sent some surveyors to plot the land: based on their report, Jeckeln and Blobel decided on the ravine known as the Grandmother or the Old Lady, at the bottom of which ran a little stream. Blobel called together all his officers: “The Jews to be executed are antisocials, without any value, useless for Germany. We will also include asylum patients, Gypsies, and any other useless mouths to feed. But we’ll start with the Jews.” We studied the maps attentively; we had to position the cordons, arrange the routes, and plan the transports; reducing the number of trucks and the distances would save gasoline; it was also necessary to consider the munitions and food supplies for the troops; everything had to be calculated. For that we also had to decide on the method of execution: Blobel finally settled on a variation of the Sardinenpackung. For the shooters and the escorts of the condemned, Jeckeln insisted we use his two Orpo battalions, which visibly upset Blobel. There were also Grafhort’s Waffen-SS and Hauptmann Krumme’s Orpos. For the cordons, the Sixth Army placed several companies at our disposal, and they would supply the trucks. Häfner set up a depot for sorting the valuables, between the Lukyanovskoe and the Jewish cemeteries, a hundred and fifty meters from the ravine: Eberhard insisted the apartment keys be recovered and labeled, since the fires had thrown twenty-five thousand civilians out on the street, and the Wehrmacht wanted to rehouse them as soon as possible. The Sixth Army delivered one hundred thousand cartridges to us and printed up posters, in German, Russian, and Ukrainian, on cheap gray wrapping paper. Blobel, when he wasn’t immersed in his maps, somehow found time for other activities; that afternoon, with the help of the engineers, he had the Cathedral of the Dormition dynamited, a superb little eleventh-century Orthodox church in the middle of the lavra: “The Ukrainians have to pay a little too,” he explained to us later on with satisfaction. I discussed this in passing with Vogt, since I didn’t understand the sense of this action at all; according to him, it was definitely not an initiative of Blobel’s, but he had no idea who could have authorized or ordered it. “The Obergruppenführer, probably. It’s his style.” In any case it wasn’t Dr. Rasch, whom we saw hardly at all anymore. When I met Thomas in a hallway I asked him furtively: “What’s happening with the Brigadeführer? He doesn’t look right.”—“He’s been arguing with Jeckeln. And also with Koch.” Erich Koch, the Gauleiter of East Prussia, had been named Reichskommissar of the Ukraine a month before. “What about?” I asked.—“I’ll tell you later. Anyway he won’t be around much longer. One question, though: the Jews in the Dnieper, is that you guys?” The night before, all the Jews who had gone to synagogue for Shabbat had disappeared; their bodies had been found in the morning, floating in the river. “The army has filed a complaint,” he went on. “They say that actions like that disturb the civilian population. It’s not gemütlich.”—“And what we’re planning is gemütlich? I think the civilian population will soon have other things to worry about.”—“It’s not the same. On the contrary, they’ll be delighted to be rid of their Jews.” I shrugged: “No, it wasn’t us. As far as I know. We’re a little busy, right now, we have other things to see to. And also those are not really our methods.”

On Sunday we put the posters up all over the city. The Jews were asked to gather the next morning in front of their cemetery on the Melnikova, each with fifty kilograms of luggage, to be relocated as settlers in various regions of the Ukraine. I had my doubts as to the success of this ploy: this wasn’t Lutsk anymore, and I knew that rumors had seeped through the front lines about the fate that awaited the Jews; the farther east we got, the fewer Jews we were finding; they were fleeing before us now with the Red Army, whereas in the beginning they had waited for us trustingly. On the other hand, as Hennicke pointed out to me, the Bolsheviks were keeping remarkably silent about our executions: in their radio broadcasts, they accused us of monstrous, exaggerated atrocities, but without ever mentioning the Jews; maybe, according to our experts, they were afraid of weakening the sacred unity of the Soviet people. We knew, through our informants, that many Jews were designated for evacuation to the rear, but they seemed to be selected according to the same criteria as the Ukrainians and the Russians, as engineers, doctors, members of the Party, specialized workers; most of the Jews who fled left on their own. “It’s hard to understand,” Hennicke added. “If the Jews really dominate the Communist Party, they should have made more effort to save their brethren.”—“They’re clever,” Dr. von Scheven, another officer from the Group, suggested. “They don’t want to lay themselves open to our propaganda by too obviously favoring their own people. Stalin must also be counting on Great Russian nationalism. To keep power, they sacrifice their poor cousins.”—“You’re probably right,” Hennicke said. I smiled to myself, but bitterly: as in the Middle Ages, we were reasoning with syllogisms that proved each other. And these proofs led us down the path of no return.

The Grosse Aktion began on Monday, September 29, on the morning of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Blobel had let us know this the day before: “They will atone, they will atone.” I had stayed in my offices in the palace to write a report. Callsen appeared on the threshold: “You aren’t coming? You know very well that the Brigadeführer gave the order that all officers should be present.”—“I know. I’ll finish this and then I’ll come.”—“As you like.” He disappeared and I went on working. An hour later I got up, picked up my cap and gloves, and went to find my driver. Outside it was cold; I thought about going back in for a sweater, but decided not to. The sky was overcast; fall was advancing; soon it would be winter. I passed by the still-smoking ruins on Kreshchatik, then went up Shevchenko Boulevard. The Jews were marching west in long columns, in family groups, calmly, carrying bundles or backpacks. Most of them looked very poor, probably refugees; the men and boys all wore Soviet worker’s caps, but here and there you could also make out a soft hat. Some were coming in carts drawn by bony horses, loaded with old people and suitcases. I had my driver make a detour, since I wanted to see more; he turned left and went past the university, then veered off toward the station by Saksaganskaya Street. Jews were coming out with their things from the houses and mingling with the stream of people flowing by in a peaceful murmur. Almost no German soldiers could be seen. On the streetcorners these human streams merged, grew larger, and went on; there was no agitation. I drove back up the hill away from the station and rejoined the boulevard at the corner of the great botanical garden. A group of soldiers was standing there with some Ukrainian auxiliaries and were roasting a whole pig on an enormous spit. It smelled very good, the Jews passing by contemplated the pig with yearning, and the soldiers were laughing and making fun of them. I stopped and got out of the car. People were pouring out of all the side streets and coming to join the main flow, streams merging into a river. Periodically, the interminable column stopped, then started up again with a jolt. In front of me, old women with garlands of onions around their necks were holding the hands of kids with runny noses; I noticed a little girl standing between jars of preserves piled up higher than she. There seemed to me to be mostly old people and children, but it was hard to judge: the able-bodied men must have joined the Red Army, or else fled. To the right, in front of the botanical garden, a corpse lay in the gutter, one arm folded over its face; the people filed by alongside it without looking at it. I went up to the soldiers gathered around the pig: “What happened?” A Feldwebel saluted and replied: “An agitator, Herr Obersturmführer. He was shouting, exciting the crowd and telling lies about the Wehrmacht. We told him to be quiet, but he kept shouting.” I looked at the crowd again: the people seemed calm, a little nervous maybe, but passive. Through my network of informers, I had contributed to spreading some rumors: the Jews were going to Palestine, they were going to a ghetto, to Germany to work. The local authorities put in place by the Wehrmacht had also done their part to avert panic. I knew that rumors of a massacre had also spread, but all these rumors canceled one another out; people must not have known what to think anymore, and so we could count on their memories of the German occupation of 1918, on their trust in Germany, and on hope too, vile hope.

I left. I hadn’t given any directions to my driver, but he followed the flow of Jews, toward Melnikova Street. Still almost no German soldiers were visible; just a few checkpoints at the crossroads, such as at the corner of the botanical garden, or another one where Artyoma joins Melnikova. There, I witnessed my first incident of the day: Feldgendarmen were beating some bearded Jews with long curly sidelocks in front of their ears, rabbis possibly, dressed only in shirts. They were red with blood, their shirts were soaked, women were screaming, ripples ran through the crowd. Then the Feldgendarmen seized hold of the rabbis and took them away. I studied the people: they knew that these men were going to die, that was obvious from their anguished looks; but they were still hoping that it would just be the rabbis, the pious.

At the end of Melnikova, in front of the Jewish cemetery, some antitank barriers and barbed wire made the roadway narrower, guarded by soldiers from the Wehrmacht and some Ukrainian Polizei. The cordon started there; after this bottleneck, the Jews could no longer turn back. The sorting zone was a little farther on, to the left, in an empty lot in front of the immense Christian cemetery of Lukyanovskoe. A long red-brick wall, rather low, surrounded the necropolis; behind, some tall trees barred the sky, half bare or else still red and yellow. On the other side of Degtiarovska Street, a row of tables had been set up in front of which the Jews were made to line up. There I found some of our officers: “So, it’s already begun?” Häfner motioned his head to the north: “Yes, it started hours ago. Where have you been? The Standartenführer is furious.” Behind every table was a noncom from the Kommando, flanked by an interpreter and some soldiers; first the Jews had to hand over their papers, then their money, their valuables and jewelry, then the keys to their apartments, legibly labeled, and finally their clothes and shoes. They must have suspected something, but they didn’t say anything; in any case, the zone was sealed behind the cordon. Some Jews tried to argue with the Polizei, but the Ukrainians shouted, struck them, sent them back into the line. A stinging wind was blowing; I was cold and regretted not having brought my sweater; from time to time, when the wind rose, a faint crackling noise could be heard; most of the Jews didn’t seem to notice it. Behind the row of tables, our Askaris were bundling the confiscated clothing into trucks; the vehicles set off for the city, where we had set up a sorting center. I went to examine the pile of papers, thrown in a heap in the middle of the lot to be burned later on. There were torn passports, workbooks, union or ration cards, family photos; the wind was carrying away the lighter papers, the square was littered with them. I gazed at some of the photographs: snapshots, studio portraits, of men, women, and children, grandparents and chubby-faced babies; sometimes a shot of vacation scenery, of the happiness and normality of their lives before all this. It reminded me of a photograph I kept in my drawer, next to my bed, in high school. It was the portrait of a Prussian family from before the Great War, three young Junkers in cadet uniforms and probably their sister. I don’t remember where I found it, maybe during one of our rare outings, in a thrift store or a postcard shop. At that time I was very unhappy, I had been placed by force in that horrible boarding school after a major transgression (this all took place in France, where we had gone a few years after my father’s disappearance). At night, I would examine this photo for hours on end, by moonlight or beneath the covers with a little pocket flashlight. Why, I wondered, couldn’t I have grown up in a perfect family like that one, rather than in this polluted hell? The Jewish families in the scattered photos seemed happy too; hell, for them, was here, now, and they could only lament the vanished past. Beyond the tables, the Jews in underclothing were trembling with cold; the Ukrainian Polizei separated the men and boys from the women and little children; the women, children, and old people were loaded into Wehrmacht trucks to be transported to the ravine; the others had to go on foot. Häfner had joined me. “The Standartenführer is looking for you. Watch out, he’s really in a rage.”—“Why?”—“He’s mad at the Obergruppenführer for imposing his two police battalions on him. He thinks the Obergruppenführer wants to take all the credit for the Aktion.”—“But that’s idiotic.” Blobel arrived, he had been drinking and his face was glistening. As soon as he saw me he began railing at me rudely: “What the hell have you been up to? We’ve been waiting for you for hours.” I saluted him: “Standartenführer! The SD has its own tasks. I was examining the arrangements, to prevent any incidents.” He calmed down a little: “So?” he grumbled. —“Everything seems in order, Standartenführer.”—“Good. Go up there. The Brigadeführer wants to see all the officers.”

I got back into my car and followed the trucks; at the end of the road, the Polizei unloaded the women and children, who rejoined the men arriving on foot. A number of Jews, as they walked, were singing religious songs; few tried to run away; the ones who did were soon stopped by the cordon or shot down. From the top, you could hear the gun bursts clearly, and the women especially were starting to panic. But there was nothing they could do. The condemned were divided into little groups and a noncom sitting at a table counted them; then our Askaris took them and led them over the brink of the ravine. After each volley, another group left, it went very quickly. I walked around the ravine by the west to join the other officers, who had taken up positions above the north slope. From there, the ravine stretched out in front of me: it must have been some fifty meters wide and maybe thirty meters deep, and went on for several kilometers; the little stream at the bottom ran into the Syrets, which gave its name to the neighborhood. Boards had been placed over this stream so the Jews and their shooters could cross easily; beyond, scattered pretty much everywhere on the bare sides of the ravine, the little white clusters were multiplying. The Ukrainian “packers” dragged their charges to these piles and forced them to lie down over them or next to them; the men from the firing squad then advanced and passed along the rows of people lying down almost naked, shooting each one with a submachine bullet in the neck; there were three firing squads in all. Between the executions some officers inspected the bodies and finished them off with a pistol. To one side, on a hill overlooking the scene, stood groups of officers from the SS and the Wehrmacht. Jeckeln was there with his entourage, flanked by Dr. Rasch; I also recognized some high-ranking officers of the Sixth Army. I saw Thomas, who noticed me but didn’t return my greeting. On the other side, the little groups tumbled down the flank of the ravine and joined the clusters of bodies that stretched farther and farther out. The cold was becoming biting, but some rum was being passed around, and I drank a little. Blobel emerged suddenly from a car on our side of the ravine, he must have driven around it; he was drinking from a little flask and shouting, complaining that things weren’t going fast enough. But the pace of the operations had been stepped up as much as possible. The shooters were relieved every hour, and those who weren’t shooting supplied them with rum and reloaded the clips. The officers weren’t talking much; some were trying to hide their distress. The Ortskommandantur had set up a field kitchen, and a military pastor was preparing some tea to warm up the Orpos and the members of the Sonderkommando. At lunchtime, the superior officers returned to the city, but the subalterns stayed to eat with the men. Since the executions had to continue without pause, the canteen had been set up farther down, in a hollow from which you couldn’t see the ravine. The Group was responsible for the food supplies; when the cases were broken open, the men, seeing rations of blood pudding, started raging and shouting violently. Häfner, who had just spent an hour administering deathshots, was yelling and throwing the open cans onto the ground: “What the hell is this shit?” Behind me, a Waffen-SS was noisily vomiting. I myself was livid, the sight of the pudding made my stomach turn. I went up to Hartl, the Group’s Verwaltungsführer, and asked him how he could have done that. But Hartl, standing there in his ridiculously wide riding breeches, remained indifferent. Then I shouted at him that it was a disgrace: “In this situation, we can do without such food!” Hartl turned his back to me and walked away; Häfner threw the cans into a box while another officer, the young Nagel, tried to calm me down: “Come now, Obersturmführer…”—“No, it’s not normal, you have to think about things like that. It’s his responsibility.”—“Absolutely,” Häfner growled. “I’m going to go look for something else.” Someone poured me a glass of rum that I swallowed in one draught; it burned, and did me good. Hartl had returned and was pointing a finger at me: “Obersturmführer, you don’t have to talk to me like that.”—“And you didn’t have to…to…to…,” I stammered, pointing to the overturned crates.—“Meine Herren!” Vogt barked. “Let’s end this, shall we?” Everyone was visibly on edge. I drew away and ate a little bread and a raw onion; behind me, the officers were arguing animatedly. A little later, the superior officers had returned, and Hartl must have made a report, because Blobel came to see me and reprimanded me in the name of Dr. Rasch: “In these circumstances, we must behave like officers.” He gave me the order, when Janssen had come back up from the ravine, to replace him. “You have your weapon? Yes? No sissies in my Kommando, you understand?” He was spluttering, he was completely drunk and almost out of control. A little later on I saw Janssen climb back up. He threw me a dour look: “Your turn.” The side of the ravine, where I stood, was too steep for me to climb down, I had to walk back around and come in from the rear. Around the bodies, the sandy earth was soaked with blackish blood; the stream too was black with blood. The horrible smell of excrement was stronger than that of blood, a lot of people defecated as they died; fortunately there was a brisk wind that blew away some of the stench. Seen close up, things were proceeding much less calmly: the Jews who arrived at the top of the ravine, driven by the Askaris and the Orpos, screamed with terror when they saw the scene and struggled, the “packers” hit them with iron rods or metal cables to force them to go and lie down, even on the ground they kept yelling and trying to stand up, and the children clung to life as much as the adults, they’d leap up and start running until a “packer” caught them and knocked them out, often the shots missed their mark and people were only wounded, but the shooters didn’t pay any attention and already moved on to the next victim, the wounded rolled over, writhed, groaned in pain, others, silent and in shock, remained paralyzed, their eyes wide open. Men came and went, they shot round after round, almost without stopping. I was petrified, I didn’t know what to do. Grafhorst came over and shook me by the arm: “Obersturmführer!” He pointed his gun at the bodies. “Try to finish off the wounded.” I took out my pistol and headed for a group: a very young man was sobbing in pain, I aimed my gun at his head and squeezed the trigger, but it didn’t go off, I had forgotten to lift the safety catch, I lifted it and shot him in the forehead, he twitched and was suddenly still. To reach some of the wounded, you had to walk over bodies, it was terribly slippery, the limp white flesh rolled under my boots, bones snapped treacherously and made me stumble, I sank up to my ankles in mud and blood. It was horrible and it filled me with a rending feeling of disgust, like that night in Spain, in the outhouse with the cockroaches, I was still young, my father-in-law had treated us to a vacation in Catalonia, we were sleeping in a village, and one night I got diarrhea, I ran to the outhouse at the back of the garden, lighting my way with a pocket flashlight, and the pit, clean during the day, was swarming with giant brown cockroaches, they filled me with horror, I tried to hold it in and go back to sleep, but the cramps were too strong, there was no chamber pot, I put on my big rain boots and went back to the outhouse, telling myself that I could chase the roaches away with my foot and be quick about my business, I put my head through the door as I lit up the ground, then I noticed a shimmer on the wall, I pointed my flashlight at it, the wall too was swarming with cockroaches, all the walls, the ceiling too, and above the door, I slowly turned my head and they were there on the lintel too, a black swarming mass, then I slowly withdrew my head, very slowly, and went back to my room and held it in till morning. Walking on the bodies of the Jews gave me the same feeling, I fired almost haphazardly, at anything I saw wriggling, then I pulled myself together and tried to pay attention, but in any case I could only finish off the most recent ones, underneath them already lay other wounded, not yet dead, but soon to be. I wasn’t the only one to lose my composure, some of the shooters also were shaking and drinking between batches. I noticed a young Waffen-SS, I didn’t know his name: he was beginning to shoot any which way, his submachine gun at his hip, he was laughing insanely and emptying his cartridge clip at random, first shooting from left to right, then two shots and then three, like a child following the cracks in the pavement according to some mysterious internal topography. I went up to him and shook him but he kept on laughing and shooting right in front of me, I took away his submachine gun and slapped him, then sent him over to the men who were reloading the magazines; Grafhorst sent me another man in his place and I threw him the submachine gun, shouting, “And do it right, understand?!” Nearby, another group was being brought up: my gaze met that of a beautiful young woman, almost naked but very elegant, calm, her eyes full of an immense sadness. I moved away. When I came back she was still alive, half turned onto her back, a bullet had come out beneath her breast and she was gasping, petrified, her pretty lips trembled and seemed to want to form a word, she stared at me with her large surprised incredulous eyes, the eyes of a wounded bird, and that look stuck into me, split open my stomach and let a flood of sawdust pour out, I was a rag doll and didn’t feel anything, and at the same time I wanted with all my heart to bend over and brush the dirt and sweat off her forehead, caress her cheek and tell her that it was going to be all right, that everything would be fine, but instead I convulsively shot a bullet into her head, which after all came down to the same thing, for her in any case if not for me, since at the thought of this senseless human waste I was filled with an immense, boundless rage, I kept shooting at her and her head exploded like a fruit, then my arm detached itself from me and went off all by itself down the ravine, shooting left and right, I ran after it, waving at it to wait with my other arm, but it didn’t want to, it mocked me and shot at the wounded all by itself, without me; finally, out of breath, I stopped and started to cry. Now, I thought, it’s over, my arm will never come back, but to my great surprise it was there again, in its place, solidly attached to my shoulder, and Häfner was coming up to me and saying, “That’s enough, Obersturmführer. I’ll take over for you.”

I climbed back out and they gave me some tea; the warmth of the liquid comforted me a little. The moon, three-quarters full, had risen and hung in the gray sky, pale and scarcely visible. A little hut had been put up for the officers. I went in and sat down on a bench in the back, to smoke and drink my tea. There were three other men in this hut but no one talked. Down below, the salvos continued to crackle: tireless, methodical, the giant system we had set in motion went on destroying people. It seemed it would never stop. Ever since the beginnings of human history, war has always been regarded as the ultimate evil. But we had invented something compared to which war had come to seem clean and pure, something from which many were already trying to escape by taking refuge in the elementary certainties of war and the front. Even the insane butcheries of the Great War, which our fathers or some of our older officers had lived through, seemed almost clean and righteous compared to what we had brought into the world. I found this extraordinary. It seemed to me that there was something crucial in this, and that if I could understand it then I’d understand everything and could finally rest. But I couldn’t think, my thoughts clashed with each other, reverberating in my head like the roar of Metro cars rushing through stations one after another, going in different directions on different levels. In any case no one cared about what I might think. Our system, our State couldn’t care less about the thoughts of its servants. It was all the same to the State whether you killed Jews because you hated them or because you wanted to advance your career or even, in some cases, because you took pleasure in it. It did not mind, either, if you did not hate the Jews and the Gypsies and the Russians you were killing, and if you took absolutely no pleasure in eliminating them, no pleasure at all. It did not even mind, in the end, if you refused to kill, no disciplinary action would be taken, since it was well aware that the pool of available killers was bottomless, it could fish new men out at will, and you could just as easily be put to some other use more in keeping with your talents. Schulz, for example, the Kommandant of Ek 5 who had asked to be replaced after receiving the Vernichtungsbefehl, had finally been relieved, and it was said that he had landed a cushy job in Berlin, at the Staatspolizei. I too could have asked to leave, I would probably even have gotten a positive recommendation from Blobel or Dr. Rasch. So why then didn’t I? Probably because I hadn’t yet understood what I wanted to understand. Would I ever understand it? Nothing was less certain. A sentence of Chesterton’s ran through my head: I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous. Is that what war was, then, a perverted fairyland, the playground of a demented child who breaks his toys and shouts with laughter, gleefully tossing the dishes out the window?

A little before six o’clock, the sun set and Blobel ordered a break for the night: the shooters couldn’t see anymore in any case. He held a quick meeting, standing behind the ravine among his officers, to discuss the problems. Thousands of Jews were still waiting in the square and on Melnikova Street; according to calculations, almost twenty thousand had already been shot. Several officers complained about the condemned being sent over the edge of the ravine: when they saw the scene at their feet, they panicked and became difficult to control. After some discussion, Blobel decided to have engineers from the Ortskommandantur dig entrances into the small ravines that led to the main one, and to have the Jews come in that way; then they wouldn’t see the bodies until the last minute. He also ordered the dead to be covered over with quicklime. We returned to our quarters. On the square in front of Lukyanovskoe, hundreds of families were waiting, sitting on their suitcases or on the ground. Some had made fires and were preparing their food. In the street it was the same thing: the line stretched back to the city, guarded by a thin cordon. The next morning, at dawn, it began again. But I don’t think it is necessary to continue the description.

By October 1, it was all over. Blobel had the sides of the ravine dynamited to cover the bodies over; we were expecting a visit from the Reichsführer, and he wanted everything cleaned up. At the same time the executions continued: Jews, still, but also Communists, officers of the Red Army, sailors from the Dnieper fleet, looters, saboteurs, officials, Banderists, Gypsies, Tatars. And then Einsatzkommando 5, headed now, instead of by Schulz, by one Sturmbannführer Meier, was arriving in Kiev to take over the executions and the administrative tasks; our own Sonderkommando would continue to advance in the wake of the Sixth Army, toward Poltava and Kharkov; so in the days following the Great Action, I was very busy, since I had to hand over all my networks and contacts to my successor, the Leiter III of Ek 5. We also had to attend to the results of the action: we had collected 137 truckloads of clothing, destined for the needy Volksdeutschen of the Ukraine; the blankets would go to the Waffen-SS for a military hospital. And then there were all the reports: Blobel had reminded me of Müller’s order, and had put me in charge of preparing a visual presentation of the action. Himmler finally arrived, accompanied by Jeckeln, and that same day was pleased to address us. After explaining the necessity of wiping out the Jewish population, in order to eradicate Bolshevism at the root, he gravely noted that he was aware of the difficulty of the task; then, almost without transition, he revealed to us his concept of the future of the German East. The Russians, at the end of the war, pushed back beyond the Urals, could form a rump Slavland; of course, they would regularly try to return; to prevent them from doing so, Germany would set up a line of garrison towns and small forts in the mountains, entrusted to the Waffen-SS. All young Germans would be drafted for two years in the SS and would be sent there; of course there would be losses, but these small, permanent, low-intensity conflicts would allow the German nation not to wallow in the weakness of conquerors, but to preserve all the vigor of the warrior, vigilant and strong. Protected by this line, Russian and Ukrainian land would be open for German colonization, to be developed by our veterans: each one, a soldier-peasant like his sons, would manage a great, rich property; the labor in the fields would be provided by Slav helots, and the German would limit himself to administering. These farms would be placed in a constellation around little garrison and market towns; as for the frightful Russian industrial cities, they would eventually be razed; Kiev, a very ancient German city originally called Kiroffo, might however be spared. All these cities would be linked to the Reich by a network of highways and double-decker express trains, with individual sleeper cabins, for which special wide-gauge railways would be built; these vast projects would be carried out by the remaining Jews and war prisoners. Finally the Crimea, once the land of the Goth, as well as the German regions of the Volga and the oil center of Baku, would be annexed to the Reich, to become a vacation and leisure territory, directly connected to Germany, via Brest-Litovsk, by an express; the Führer, after finishing his great works, would come there to retire. This speech made a strong impression: clearly, even if to me the vision outlined evoked the fantastic utopias of a Jules Verne or an Edgar Rice Burroughs, there really was, elaborated in rarified spheres far above our own, a plan, a final objective.

The Reichsfürer also took advantage of the occasion to introduce to us the SS-Brigadeführer and Generalmajor der Polizei Dr. Thomas, who had come with him to replace Dr. Rasch as the head of the Einsatzgruppe. Rasch, in fact, had left Kiev on the second day of the action, without even saying goodbye: Thomas, as always, had anticipated events correctly. Rumors were flying: people speculated about his conflict with Koch; some said he had collapsed during the action. Dr. Thomas, who had the Iron Cross and spoke French, English, Greek, and Latin, was cast in a different mold: a doctor specializing in psychiatry, he had left his practice for the SD in 1934, out of idealism and National Socialist convictions. I quickly had occasion to get to know him better, since as soon as he arrived he began visiting all the offices of the Group and the Kommandos and talking individually with the officers. He seemed especially concerned with the psychological troubles of the men and officers: as he explained to us, in the presence of the Leiter from Ek 5 who was taking over my caseload, and of several other SD officers, it was impossible for a sane man to be exposed to such situations for months on end without suffering aftereffects, sometimes very serious ones. In Latvia, in Einsatzgruppe A, an Untersturmführer had gone mad and killed several other officers before he himself was shot; this case profoundly worried Himmler and the hierarchy, and the Reichsführer had asked Dr. Thomas, on whom his old specialty conferred a particular sensitivity to the problem, to recommend some measures. The Brigadeführer quickly promulgated an unusual order: all those who could no longer force themselves to kill Jews, either out of a sense of conscience or out of weakness, should present themselves to the Gruppenstab to have other tasks assigned to them or even to be sent back to Germany. This order gave rise to lively discussions among the officers; some thought that recognizing your weakness officially in this way would leave damaging traces in your personal file, and would limit any chance for promotion; others, on the contrary, declared they were ready to take Dr. Thomas at his word, and asked to leave. Still others, like Lübbe, were transferred without having asked for anything, on the advice of doctors from the Kommandos. Things were slowing down a little. For my report I had decided, rather than just delivering a stack of photographs, to make a display album. That turned out to be quite a job. One of our Orpos, an amateur photographer, had taken several rolls of color film during the executions, and also had the chemicals to develop them; I had some equipment requisitioned for him from a small photographer’s studio so he could prepare prints of his best pictures for me. I also collected some black-and-white photographs and had all our reports dealing with the action copied on good paper, provided by the supply officer of the Twenty-ninth Corps. A clerk from the Stab wrote out captions and a title page in his fine official script, with The Great Action of Kiev as a title, and in smaller letters, Reports and Documents, with the dates. Among the specialized Arbeitsjuden kept in the new Syrets Lager, I unearthed an old leatherworker who had restored books for some Party offices and even made fancy albums for a conference; von Radomski, the camp commander, lent him to me for a few days, and with some black leather found among the confiscated goods, he bound the reports and the pages of photographs for me, in a cover embossed with the insignia “Sk 4a.” Then I presented the book to Blobel. He was delighted; he leafed through it, went into raptures over the binding and the calligraphy: “Oh, I’d so like to have one too, as a souvenir.” He congratulated me and assured me it would be given to the Reichsfürer, and even shown to the Führer himself; the whole Kommando could take great pride from it. I don’t think he thought of this album as I did: for him, it was a trophy; for me, it was a bitter remembrance, a solemn reminder. I discussed it that night with a new acquaintance, an engineer from the Wehrmacht named Osnabrugge. I had met him in the officers’ Kasino, when he had offered me a drink; he had turned out to be an interesting man, and I liked talking with him. I spoke to him about the album and he had this curious thought: “Every man must do his work with love.” Osnabrugge was a graduate of a polytechnic university in the Rhineland, specializing in bridge construction; his vocation fascinated him, and he spoke eloquently about it: “You understand, I was trained with a sense of cultural mission. A bridge is a literal and material contribution to the community; it creates new roads, new links. And also, it’s a beautiful thing. Not just to look at: if only you could understand the poetry of the calculations, the tensions and forces, the arches and cables, how it’s all balanced by the play of mathematics!” He himself, however, had never built a bridge: he had drawn up some plans, but none had been realized. Then the Wehrmacht had sent him here to assess the bridge destructions carried out by the Soviets. “It’s fascinating, really. Just as no bridge is ever built in the same way, no bridge blows up in the same way. There are always surprises, it’s very instructive. But still, it pains me to see it. They’re such fine works. If you like, I can show you.” I accepted with pleasure; I had some free time now. He made an appointment with me at the foot of the largest of the destroyed bridges over the Dnieper, and I found him there one morning. “It’s really impressive,” he commented, examining the debris, hands on hips, motionless. This immense metal bridge with arches, built just under the cliffs of Pechersk, rested on five massive stone pillars; three whole spans were in the water, cut clean off by the explosives; across the river, two sections were still standing. The corps of engineers was building a floating bridge right next to it, with girders and wooden beams thrown across large inflatable boats; they had already reached almost halfway across. In the meantime, traffic was carried by means of barges, and a crowd was waiting on the bank, soldiers and civilians. Osnabrugge had a motor boat. We went round the pontoon bridge being built and he slowly drew alongside the twisted girders of the collapsed bridge. “You see,” he showed me, pointing at the pillars, “there they even brought down the supporting arch, but over there they didn’t. Actually it wasn’t necessary, all they had to do was blow the load-bearing elements and all the rest would have come straight down. They overdid it.”—“What about the pillars?”—“They’re all good, except maybe the one in the middle. We’re still checking it. Anyway we’ll definitely rebuild it, but not right away.” I looked around while Osnabrugge pointed out more details. At the top of the wooded cliffs, transformed by autumn into an orange-and-yellow blaze, with touches of bright red scattered about, the golden cupolas of the lavra were glittering in the sunlight. The city lay hidden behind it, and we couldn’t see any houses on that side. Farther downstream, two other demolished bridges barred the river. The river flowed lazily between the half-sunken girders; in front of us, a barge loaded with peasant women in colorful scarves and sleepy soldiers calmly advanced. Contemplating the long seaweed undulating beneath the surface, I suddenly had a kind of dual vision: I could clearly see the seaweed and at the same time I thought I saw the bodies of Napoleonic hussars, in apple-green, bottle-green, or yellow uniforms, with cockades and ostrich feathers waving, drifting with the current. This was very intense, and I must have spoken the emperor’s name, since Osnabrugge suddenly said: “Napoleon? I actually came across a book about Eblé before I left—you know, his chief engineer? An admirable man. Almost the only one, aside from Ney, who got his feet wet, literally, and the only one of Napoleon’s superior officers who died, too. In Königsberg, at the end of the year, as a consequence of his bridge work over the Berezina.”—“Yes, the Berezina, that’s famous.”—“We crossed it in less than a week. Did you know that Eblé had two bridges built over it? One for the men and one for the wagons, and the officers’ carioles of course.” We were heading back toward the shore. “You should read Herodotus,” I said to him. “He has some fine stories about bridges too.”—“Oh, I know, I know that.” He pointed to the engineer’s floating pontoon: “The Persians were already building on boats, like that.” He made a face. “Better, probably.” He left me on the shore and I shook his hand warmly. “Thanks for the expedition. It’s done me a lot of good. See you soon!”—“Oh, I don’t know. I have to leave tomorrow for Dniepropetrovsk. I have to examine twenty-three bridges in all, can you imagine! But I’m sure we’ll meet again one of these days.”

My birthday falls on October 10, and that year Thomas had invited me to dinner. At the end of the afternoon, some officers came with a bottle of Cognac to congratulate me and we had a few drinks together. Thomas joined us in a very good mood, raised a toast to my health, then drew me aside, shaking my hand: “My friend, I’m bringing you some good news as a gift: you’re going to be promoted. It’s still a secret, but I saw the papers at Hartl’s. The Reichsfürer, after the Aktion, asked the Gruppenchef to submit a list of deserving men and officers to him. Your album made a very good impression and your name was added to the list. I know that Hartl tried to oppose it, he never forgave you for your words during the Aktion, but Blobel supported you. You’d do well anyway if you went and apologized to Hartl one of these days.”—“That’s out of the question. He’s the one who should apologize.” He laughed and shrugged his shoulders: “As you like, Hauptsturmführer. But your attitude isn’t making things any easier for you.” I darkened: “My attitude is the attitude of an SS officer and a National Socialist. Whoever can say as much is welcome to criticize me.” I changed the subject: “What about you?”—“What do you mean, me?”—“Aren’t you also getting promoted?” He smiled broadly: “I don’t know. You’ll see.”—“Watch out! I’m catching up with you.” He laughed and I laughed with him. “That would surprise me,” he said.

The city was slowly resuming normal life. After renaming the main streets—Kreshchatik had become Eichhornstrasse, in honor of the German general who entered Kiev in 1918; Shevchenko Boulevard became Rovnoverstrasse, Artyoma Street, Lembergstrasse, and my favorite, Tchekistova Street, a very common Gotenstrasse—the Ortskommandantur had authorized some private restaurants to open; the best one, apparently, was run by a Volksdeutscher from Odessa who had taken over the canteen for high-ranking Party officials where he used to work as a cook. Thomas had reserved a table there. All the customers were German officers, aside from two Ukrainian officials who were talking with some officers from the AOK: I recognized Bahazy, the “mayor” of Kiev put in place by Eberhard; the SD suspected him of massive corruption, but he supported Melnyk and von Reichenau had given his assent, so we had ended up withdrawing our objections. Thick velveteen curtains masked the windows, a candle illumined each alcove; we were given a corner table, a little set back, and brought some Ukrainian zakuski—pickles, marinated garlic, and smoked lard—along with some ice-cold honey-and-pepper vodka. We drank a few toasts while nibbling on the zakuski and chatting. “So,” Thomas joked, “did you let yourself be tempted by the Reichsfürer’s offer—do you plan on settling down as a gentleman farmer?”—“I don’t think so! Working the fields is not my line.” Thomas had already moved on to the Great Action: “It was really hard, really unpleasant,” he commented. “But it was necessary.” I didn’t want to pursue it: “What happened to Rasch, then?” I asked.—“Oh, him! I was sure you were going to ask me that.” He pulled a few folded sheets of paper out of the pocket of his tunic: “Look, read this. But keep it to yourself, all right?” It was a report on the Group’s letterhead, signed by Rasch, dated a few days before the Grosse Aktion. I quickly skimmed over it; toward the end, Rasch expressed his doubts that all the Jews could be eliminated, and emphasized that they were not the only danger: The Bolshevik apparatus is by no means identical with the Jewish population. Under such conditions we would miss the goal of political security if we replaced the main task of destroying the communist machine with the relatively easier one of eliminating the Jews. He also insisted on the negative impact, for the reconstruction of Ukrainian industry, of the destruction of the Jews, and outlined an argument for the large-scale implementation of a Jewish labor force. I handed the report back to Thomas, who carefully refolded it and put it back in his pocket. “I see,” I said, pinching my lips. “But you’ll agree that he isn’t entirely wrong.”—“Of course! But there’s no point in shooting your mouth off. That doesn’t help get anything done. Remember your report in ’39. Brigadeführer Thomas, now, had Parisian synagogues dynamited by French extremists. The Wehrmacht kicked him out of France, but the Reichsführer was delighted.” The vodka was finished and they cleared things away; then they brought us some French wine, a Bordeaux. “Where on earth did they find that?” I asked.—“A little surprise: I had it sent to me from France by a friend. Can you believe it, they arrived intact! There are two bottles.” I was very touched; in the present circumstances, it was really a fine gesture. I tasted the wine with delight. “I let it settle a while,” Thomas said. “It’s a change from Moldavian rotgut, isn’t it?” He raised his glass: “You’re not the only one celebrating your birthday, I think.”—“That’s true.” Thomas was one of my few colleagues who knew that I had a twin sister; ordinarily I didn’t talk about her, but he had noticed it at the time in my file, and I had explained everything to him. “How long has it been since you saw her?”—“Going on seven years.”—“Do you ever hear from her?”—“From time to time. Not very often, actually.”—“She still lives in Pomerania?”—“Yes. They go regularly to Switzerland. Her husband spends a lot of time in sanatoriums.”—“Does she have any children?”—“I don’t think so. That would surprise me. I don’t know if her husband is even capable of it. Why?” He raised his glass again: “To her health, then?”—“To her health.” We drank in silence; they brought us our meals and we ate, conversing pleasantly. After the meal Thomas had the second bottle opened and drew two cigars out of his jacket: “Now or with the Cognac?” I blushed with pleasure, but at the same time I felt vaguely embarrassed: “You’re a real magician. We’ll smoke them with the Cognac, but let’s finish the wine first.” The discussion turned to the military situation. Thomas was very optimistic: “Here, in the Ukraine, it’s going well. Von Kleist is nearly at Melitopol and Kharkov is going to fall in a week or two. As for Odessa, it’s a matter of days. But above all, the offensive on Moscow is smashing everything. Since Hoth and Hoepner linked up in Vyazma, we’ve taken another half a million prisoners! The Abwehr is talking about thirty-nine divisions annihilated. The Russians will never be able to bear those kinds of losses. And also, Guderian is already almost in Mtsensk and will soon meet up with the others. It was a real stroke of genius of the Führer’s, to send Guderian here to finish Kiev, then send him back toward Moscow. The Reds didn’t understand it at all. In Moscow they must be panicking. In one month we’ll be there and after that, the war is over.”—“Yes, but what if we don’t take Moscow?” “We are going to take Moscow.” I insisted: “Yes, but what if we don’t take it? What will happen? How will the Wehrmacht spend the winter? Have you spoken with the supply officers? They have nothing planned for the winter—nothing at all. Our soldiers are still in summer uniforms. Even if they begin delivering warm clothing right now, they can never equip the troops properly. It’s criminal! Even if we take Moscow, we’ll lose tens of thousands of men, just from cold and sickness.”—“You’re a pessimist. I’m sure the Führer has everything planned.” “No. the winter is not planned. I’ve discussed it, at the AOK, they don’t have anything, they keep sending messages to Berlin, they’re in despair.” Thomas shrugged: “We’ll find a way. In Moscow we’ll find whatever we need.”—“You can be sure the Russians will destroy everything before they retreat. And what if we don’t take Moscow?”—“Why do you think we won’t take Moscow? The Reds are incapable of resisting our Panzers. They put everything they had into Vyazma and we crushed them.”—“Yes, because the good weather is holding out. But sooner or later the rains are going to come. In Uman, it’s already snowing!” I was becoming heated, I felt the blood rising to my face. “You saw this summer what happens when it rains for a day or two? Now it’ll last two or three weeks. Then the armies will have to stop too. And afterward, it will be the cold.” Thomas stared at me sardonically; my cheeks were burning, I must have been red. “My oh my, you’ve become a real military expert,” he commented.—“Not at all. But when you spend your days with soldiers, you learn things. And also I read. For instance, I read a book on Charles the Twelfth.” I was gesticulating now. “You know Romny? Close to where Guderian made his junction with von Kleist? Well, that’s where Charles the Twelfth had his headquarters, in December 1708, a little before Poltava. Peter and he were maneuvering with expensive troops, which they had to spare; they danced around each other for months. And then in Poltava Peter had a go at the Swedes and all of a sudden they retreated. But that’s still feudal warfare, a war of feudal lords who care about honor and who especially fight as equals, so their war remains basically a courtly war, a kind of ceremonial game or a parade, almost theater, in any case not too deadly. Whereas later on, when the king’s subjects, peasant or bourgeois, become citizens—when the State is democratized—then all of a sudden war becomes total and terrible, it becomes serious. That’s why Napoleon crushed all of Europe: not because his armies were bigger or because he was a better strategist than his enemies, but because the old monarchies were still waging old-fashioned war, in a limited way. Whereas he had already moved beyond limited war. Napoleon’s France was open to talents, as they said, the citizens participated in the administration, the State regulated, but it was the people who were sovereign; so that France naturally waged a total war, with all its forces put into play. And it’s only when its enemies understood this and began to do the same thing, when Rostopchin burned Moscow and Alexander raised up the Cossacks and the peasants to harass the Great Army during its retreat, that the luck turned. In the war between Peter the Great and Charles the Twelfth, the stakes were small: if you lose, you stop playing. But when it’s the entire nation that’s waging war, it has to wager everything and up the ante over and over again, until total bankruptcy. And that’s the problem. If we don’t take Moscow, we won’t be able to stop and negotiate a reasonable peace. So we’ll have to continue. But do you want to know what I really think? For us, this war is a gamble. A gigantic gamble, which involves the entire nation, the whole Volk, but a gamble all the same. And a gamble is something you either win or lose. The Russians don’t have that luxury. For them it’s not a gamble, it’s a catastrophe that’s come crashing down on their country, a plague. And you can lose a gamble, but you can’t lose when you’re faced with a plague, you have to surmount it, you don’t have any choice.” I had delivered this whole speech rapidly, rapidly, almost without catching my breath. Thomas was silent; he drank his wine. “And another thing,” I added heatedly. “I’m saying this to you, just to you. The murder of the Jews doesn’t serve any real purpose. Rasch is absolutely right. It has no economic or political usefulness, it has no finality of a practical order. On the contrary, it’s a break with the world of economics and politics. It’s a waste, pure loss. That’s all it is. So it can have only one meaning: an irrevocable sacrifice, which binds us once and for all, prevents us from ever turning back. You understand? With that, we leave the world of the gamble, there’s no way back. It’s the Endsieg or death. You and me, all of us, we’re bound together now, bound to the outcome of this war by acts committed in common. And if we’re mistaken in our calculations, if we’ve underestimated the number of factories the Reds have built or moved behind the Urals, then we’re fucked.” Thomas was finishing his wine. “Max,” he said finally, “you think too much. It’s bad for you. Cognac?” I began to cough and signed yes with my head. The cough continued, in fits, it was as if something heavy were stuck in my diaphragm, something that didn’t want to come out, and I belched rather violently. I quickly got up, excusing myself, and ran to the back of the restaurant. I found a door and opened it; it led to an inner courtyard. I was seized with a terrible retching: finally I vomited a little. That helped somewhat but left me exhausted, I felt empty, I had to lean for a few minutes against a cart lying there, shafts in the air. Then I went back in. I went to find the waitress and asked her for some water: she brought me a bucket, I drank a little and rinsed my face. Then I returned to the table and sat down. “I’m sorry.”—“Are you all right? Are you sick?”—“No, it’s nothing, I just didn’t feel well.” It wasn’t the first time. But I don’t know exactly when it began. In Zhitomir, maybe. I had only vomited once or twice, but often, after meals, I was seized with these unpleasant and exhausting retchings, always preceded by a dry cough. “You should see a doctor,” Thomas said. They had served the Cognacs and I drank a little. I felt better. Thomas offered me a cigar again; I took it, but didn’t light it right away. Thomas looked worried. “Max…these kinds of ideas: keep them to yourself. They could get you into trouble.”—“Yes, I know. I’m just talking about them to you, because you’re my friend.” I abruptly changed the subject: “So, have you picked one out yet?” He laughed: “No time. But it shouldn’t be too difficult. The waitress isn’t bad, did you notice?” I hadn’t even looked at the waitress. But I said yes. “And you?” he asked.—“Me? Did you see the work we have? I’m lucky if I can sleep, I don’t have any rest time to waste.”—“What about in Germany? Before you came here? We haven’t seen each other much, since Poland. And you’re a discreet guy. You don’t have a nice little Fräulein hidden away somewhere, who writes you long tearful letters, ‘Max, Max, my darling, come back soon, oh how horrible war is’?” I laughed with him and lit my cigar. Thomas was already smoking his. I had certainly drunk a lot and I suddenly wanted to speak: “No. No Fräulein. But a long time before I met you, I had a fiancée. My childhood sweetheart.” I saw he was curious: “Oh yes? Tell me.”—“There isn’t much to tell. We loved each other since we were little. But her parents were against it. Her father, or rather her stepfather, was a fat French bourgeois, a man of principles. They separated us by force, put us in boarding schools, far away from each other. She wrote me desperate letters in secret, I did too. And then they sent me to study in Paris.”—“And you never saw her again?”—“A few times, during vacations, when we were around seventeen. And then I saw her again one last time, years later, just before coming to Germany. I told her our union would be indestructible.”—“Why didn’t you marry her?”—“It was impossible.”—“What about now? You have a good position.”—“Now it’s too late: she’s married. You see, you can’t trust women. It always ends up like that. It’s disgusting.” I was sad, bitter, I shouldn’t have been speaking about these things. “You’re right,” Thomas said. “That why I never fall in love. Anyway, I prefer married women, it’s safer that way. What was her name, your sweetheart?” I made a cutting gesture with my hand: “It’s not important.” We smoked in silence, drinking our Cognacs. Thomas waited for me to finish my cigar before he got up. “Come on, don’t be nostalgic. It’s your birthday after all.” We were the last ones there, the waitress was drowsing in the back of the room. Outside, our driver was snoring in the Opel. The night sky glimmered; the waning moon, clear and calm, cast its white glow over the silent, ruined city.

I must not have been the only one asking questions. A mute but profound uncertainty was pervading the ranks of the Wehrmacht. Cooperation with the SS was still excellent, but the Great Action had provoked anxious stirrings. A new order of the day by von Reichenau was beginning to circulate, a raw, harsh text, a brutal disclaimer of Rasch’s conclusions. It described the men’s doubts as vague ideas about the Bolshevik system. The soldier in the territories of the East is not only a fighter according to the rules of the art of warfare, he wrote, but also the bearer of a pitiless völkisch ideology and the avenger of all the bestialities inflicted on the German and ethnically related nations. Therefore, the soldier must have a full understanding of the necessity for harsh but just countermeasures against Jewish subhumanity. Human pity had to be banished: offering a traveling Slav, possibly a Bolshevik agent, something to eat was pure thoughtlessness, a mistaken humanitarian act. The cities would be destroyed, the partisans annihilated along with the uncommitted. These ideas, of course, didn’t all come from von Reichenau; the Reichsführer must have suggested a few passages to him, but the main point was that this order worked correctly toward the Führer, along his lines and toward his aims, to use the fine expression of an obscure employee of the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture, and so it was hardly surprising that the Führer was delighted with it, that he caused it to be distributed as an example to all the armies in the East. But I doubted if it was enough to set people’s minds at rest. National Socialism was a complete, total philosophy, a Weltanschauung, as we said; each person had to be able to find his place within it; there had to be room for all. But now, it was as if an opening had been forced into this whole, and all the destinies of National Socialism had been driven into it, on a one-way path of no return, which everyone had to follow until the end.

The fatality of things in Kiev only increased my unease. In the hallway of the palace of young virgins, I met an acquaintance from Berlin: “Sturmbannführer Eichmann! You’ve been promoted. Congratulations!”—“Ah! Dr. Aue. I’ve been looking for you. I have a package for you. It was given to me at the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais.” I had known this officer back when he was setting up for Heydrich the Central Offices for Jewish Emigration; he would often come to my department to consult us on legal questions. He was an Obersturmführer then; now, he was sporting his four new diamonds on the neck of a black dress uniform that contrasted sharply with our campaign feldgrau. He strutted about like a little rooster; it was curious, he had left me with the impression of a hurried, plodding civil servant; I hardly recognized him now. “And what brings you here?” I asked him, inviting him into my office.—“Your package, and I have another one for one of your colleagues.”—“No, I mean to Kiev.” We had sat down and he leaned forward with a conspiratorial air: “I came to see the Reichsführer.” He was obviously beaming with pride and seemed eager to talk: “With my Amtschef. On special invitation.” He leaned over again: now he looked like a bird of prey, small and furtive. “I had to present a report. A statistical report. Prepared by my staff. You know that I head a whole Referat now?”—“No, I didn’t know. My congratulations.”—“The Four-B-four. Jewish affairs.” He had put his cap on my desk and was holding a black leather briefcase tightly on his knees; he pulled a case out of his tunic pocket, took out some large glasses, put them on, and opened the briefcase to extract a large envelope, quite thick, which he gave me. “Here it is. Of course, I won’t ask you what it is.”—“Oh, I can tell you. They’re scores.”—“You’re a musician? Me too, a little bit. I play the violin.”—“Actually not. It was for someone else, but he’s dead now.” He took off his glasses: “Ah. I’m very sorry. This war is really terrible. Actually,” he went on, “your friend Dr. Lulley also gave me a small bill, for the shipping costs.”—“No problem. I’ll send you some money this evening. Where are you staying?”—“With the Reichsführer’s staff.”—“Fine. Thank you very much for the favor. It was very kind of you.”—“Oh, it was nothing. We SS men have to help each other out. I’m just sorry it arrived too late.” I shrugged: “That’s how it is. Can I pour you a drink?”—“Oh, I shouldn’t. Work, you know. But…” He seemed sorry and I took the bait: “In the last war, they used to say Krieg ist Krieg…” He finished the sentence with me: “…und Schnaps ist Schnaps. Yes, I know. A very little one, then.” I opened my safe and took out two glasses and the bottle I kept for my guests. Eichmann got up to offer the toast, ceremoniously: “To the health of our Führer!” We clinked glasses. I saw he still wanted to talk. “So what was in your report, then?…If it isn’t a secret.”—“Well, it’s all very hush-hush, as the English say. But I can tell you. The Gruppenführer and myself were sent here by the Chief”—he meant Heydrich, now stationed in Prague as Assistant Reichsprotektor—“to discuss with the Reichsführer the plan for the evacuation of the Jews from the Reich.”—“Evacuation?”—“Exactly. To the East. By the end of the year.”—“All of them?”—“All of them.”—“And where will they be sent?”—“Most of them to the Ostland, probably. And down South too, for the construction of the Durchgangstrasse Four. It hasn’t yet been settled.”—“I see. And your report?”—“A statistical summary. I presented it in person to the Reichsführer. On the global situation regarding Jewish emigration.” He raised a finger. “Do you know how many there are?”—“Of what?”—“Of Jews. In Europe.” I shook my head: “No idea.”—“Eleven million! Eleven million, can you believe it? Of course, for the countries we don’t control yet, like England, the numbers are approximate. Since they don’t have any racial laws, we had to base our figures on religious criteria. But still that gives a rough estimate. Here in the Ukraine alone you have almost three million.” He took on a more pedantic tone: “Two million nine hundred ninety-four thousand six hundred and eighty-four, to be exact.”—“That is exact. But tell me, with one Einsatzgruppe we won’t be able to do much.”—“Precisely. Other methods are being studied.” He looked at his watch and got up. “You’ll have to excuse me now. I have to go back and find my Amtschef. Thank you for the drink.”—“Thank you for the package! I’ll send you the money for Lulley right away.” Together, we raised our arms and bellowed, “Heil Hitler!”

After Eichmann had left, I sat down and contemplated the package left on my desk. It contained the Rameau and Couperin scores that I had ordered for the little Jew in Zhitomir. That had been a mistake, a sentimental naïveté; still it filled me with a great melancholy. I now thought I could understand better the reactions of the men and officers during the executions. If they suffered, as I had suffered during the Great Action, it wasn’t just because of the smells and the sight of blood, but because of the terror and the moral suffering of the people they shot; in the same way, their victims often suffered more from the suffering and death, before their eyes, of those they loved, wives, parents, beloved children, than from their own deaths, which came to them in the end like a deliverance. In many cases, I said to myself, what I had taken for gratuitous sadism, the astonishing brutality with which some men treated the condemned before executing them, was nothing but a consequence of the monstrous pity they felt and which, incapable of expressing itself otherwise, turned into rage, but an impotent rage, without object, and which thus almost inevitably had to turn against those who had originally provoked it. If the terrible massacres of the East prove one thing, paradoxically, it is the awful, inalterable solidarity of humanity. As brutalized and habituated as they may have become, none of our men could kill a Jewish woman without thinking about his wife, his sister, or his mother, or kill a Jewish child without seeing his own children in front of him in the pit. Their reactions, their violence, their alcoholism, the nervous depressions, the suicides, my own sadness, all that demonstrated that the other exists, exists as an other, as a human, and that no will, no ideology, no amount of stupidity or alcohol can break this bond, tenuous but indestructible. This is a fact, not an opinion.

The hierarchy was beginning to perceive this fact and take it into consideration. As Eichmann had explained to me, new methods were being studied. A few days after his visit, a certain Dr. Widmann arrived in Kiev, come to deliver a new sort of truck to us. This truck, a Saurer, was driven by Findeisen, Heydrich’s personal driver, a taciturn man who stubbornly refused, despite numerous requests, to explain to us why he had been chosen for this journey. Dr. Widmann, who headed the chemistry department at the Criminal-Technical Institute attached to the Kripo, gave the officers a long presentation: “Gas,” he declared, “is a more elegant method.” The truck, hermetically sealed, used its own exhaust gas to asphyxiate the people locked up inside; this solution, indeed, lacked neither elegance nor economy. As Widmann explained to us, other solutions had been tried out first; he himself had conducted experiments in Minsk, on the patients of an asylum, in the company of his Amtschef, Gruppenführer Nebe; one attempt, using explosives, had given disastrous results. “Indescribable. A catastrophe.” Blobel looked enthusiastic: he liked this new toy and was eager to try it out for the first time. Häfner objected that the truck didn’t hold many people—Dr. Widmann had told us fifty, sixty at most—and didn’t work very quickly, and therefore seemed inefficient. But Blobel swept these reservations aside: “We’ll keep it for the women and children, it will be good for morale.” Dr. Widmann dined with us; afterward, around the billiard table, he told us how the thing had been invented: “Actually it’s Gruppenführer Nebe who had the idea. One night, in Berlin, he had had a little too much to drink, and he fell asleep in his car, in his garage; the engine was still running and he almost died. We were already working on a truck model, but we were planning on using bottled carbon monoxide, which isn’t at all practical in the conditions in the East. It’s the Gruppenführer, after his accident, who thought of using the gas of the truck itself. A brilliant idea.” He had heard the anecdote from his superior, Dr. Heess, who had told it to him on the U-Bahn. “Between Wittenbergplatz and Thielplatz, to be precise. I was very impressed.”

For several days already, Blobel had been sending Teilkommandos outside Kiev to clean up the little towns, Pereyaslav, Yagotin, Kozelets, Chernigov, there were a lot of them. But the Teilkommandoführers were in despair: after an action, if they returned to the town, they found still more Jews there; the ones who had hidden kept coming back after they left. They complained that it upset all their statistics. According to Blobel’s accrued totals, the Kommando had liquidated fifty-one thousand people, including fourteen thousand without outside help (meaning without Jeckeln’s Orpo battalions). A Vorkommando was being formed to enter Kharkov, and I was supposed to be part of it; in the meantime, since I had nothing to do in Kiev (the Ek 5 had taken over all our tasks), Blobel asked me to go inspect the Teilkommandos. The rains had started, and as soon as you crossed the swollen Dnieper, you sank into the mud. The trucks, the cars were dripping with black, thick mud mixed with strands of the hay that the soldiers looted from the haystacks along the road to spread in front of their cars, uselessly. It took me two days to reach Häfner in Pereyaslav, towed most of the time by the Wehrmacht’s tracked vehicles and covered in mud up to my eyes from wading around trying to push the Admiral. I spent the night in a little village with some officers from an infantry division that was moving up to the front from Zhitomir—exhausted men, who anxiously saw winter approaching and wondered what their ultimate objective was. I took care not to tell them about the Urals; we couldn’t even advance up to Kharkov. They complained about the new recruits, sent from Germany to replace the casualties, but poorly trained and with a tendency to panic under fire, at least more readily than before. The equipment was falling to pieces: the modern German general-service wagons, with their rubber tires and ball bearings, were breaking apart on the tracks; they replaced them with almost indestructible panje carts, taken from the peasants. The beautiful German, Hungarian, or Irish horses with which they had started the campaign were dying in droves; only the scrubby Russian ponies were surviving, they could eat anything at all—birch shoots, the straw from the roofs of isbas—but they were too lightweight to pull the heavier carts, and the units had to abandon tons of provisions and equipment. “Every night, the men fight with each other to find a roof or a half-dry hole. Everyone’s uniform is in rags, full of lice; we’re not receiving anything, there’s almost no more bread.” Even the officers lacked the basics: no more razors, soap, toothpaste, no more leather to repair the boots, no more needles, no more thread. It rained day and night, and they were losing many more men from illness—dysentery, jaundice, diphtheria—than from gunfire. The sick had to walk up to thirty-five kilometers a day, since there was no way to transport them, and if they stayed alone in the villages, the partisans came and killed them. The partisans now were proliferating like lice; they seemed to be everywhere, and isolated couriers and dispatch bearers were vanishing in the woods. But I had also noticed among the soldiers a number of Russians in German uniforms, with the white armband of the Hilfswillige. “The Hiwis?” replied an officer to whom I had mentioned this. “No, we’re not really allowed to. But we take them anyway, we don’t have a choice. The guys are volunteer civilians or prisoners. They do all the transport and B-echelon jobs; it works out pretty well, they’re more used to these conditions than we are. And also Headquarters couldn’t care less, they close their eyes. Anyway they must have forgotten us. By the time we reach Poltava they won’t even know who we are.”—“But aren’t you afraid the partisans will take advantage of this to infiltrate your ranks and inform the Reds of your movements?” He shrugged his shoulders in a weary, disgusted way. “If it makes them happy…. In any case, there isn’t a single Russian within a hundred kilometers. Nor a single German, either. No one. Rain and mud, that’s all.” This officer seemed completely discouraged; but he also showed me how to clean the mud off my uniform, it was useful and I didn’t want to contradict him. “First you have to dry the mud by the stove, then you scrape it with a knife, see, then with a metal brush; and only then can you wash the uniform. For the underwear, you absolutely have to have it boiled.” I watched the operation: it was disgusting, the lice came off in the boiling water in clusters, thick, swollen. I understood better Häfner’s suppressed anger when I finally reached Pereyaslav. He had three Untersturmführers with him—Ott, Ries, and Dammann—who weren’t getting much done, since they could hardly leave the town any longer, the roads were so impassable. “We would need tanks!” Häfner exclaimed when he saw me. “Soon we won’t even be able to get back to Kiev. Here,” he added before he abruptly turned away, “this is for you. All my congratulations.” It was a teletype from Blobel, confirming my promotion; I had also received the War Merit Cross, Second Class. I followed Häfner into the school the Teilkommando was occupying and looked for a place to put my things. Everyone, soldiers and officers, was sleeping in the gymnasium; the classrooms served as offices. I changed and went to find Häfner, who gave me a report on the tribulations of his adjuncts: “You see this village, Zolotonosha? Apparently there are more than four hundred Jews there. Dammann tried three times to get there; three times he had to turn back, and even then, the last time, he nearly didn’t make it here. The men are getting difficult.” At night, there was soup and the awful black Wehrmacht Kommissbrot, and we went to bed early. I slept poorly. One of the Waffen-SS, a few meters away from my bedding, ground his teeth, an atrocious sound that raised my hackles; every time I began to doze off, he woke me up; it was driving me out of my mind. I wasn’t the only one: some men shouted at him, I heard some blows and saw they were hitting him, but it didn’t do any good, the infuriating sound went on, or else stopped only to start again a few moments later. “It’s like that every night,” grumbled Ries, who was sleeping next to me. “I’m going crazy. I’m going to strangle him one of these days.” Finally I dozed off and had a strange, striking dream. Now I was a great Squid God, and I was ruling over a beautiful walled city of water and white stone. The center, especially, was all water, and tall buildings rose up all around. My city was peopled with humans who worshipped me. I had delegated part of my power and authority to one of them, my Servant. But one day I decided I wanted all these humans out of my city, at least for a while. The order went out, propagated by my Servant, and immediately droves of humans started fleeing out the gates of the city, to wait in hovels and shantytowns out in the desert beyond the walls. But they didn’t leave fast enough to my liking, and I began to thrash violently, churning up the water of the center with my tentacles, then coiling them back and bearing down on swarms of terrified humans, lashing out and roaring with my terrible voice: “Out! Out! Out!” My Servant ran frantically about, commanded, guided, prompted the sluggish, and in this way the city emptied out. But in the buildings closest to the walls and farthest from the water where I was giving vent to my divine rage, some groups of humans were not heeding my commands. These were foreigners, not really aware of my existence, of my power over this city. They had heard the evacuation orders, but thought them ridiculous and were ignoring them. My Servant had to go see these groups one after another, to convince them diplomatically to leave: such as this conference of Finnish officers, who protested that they had rented the hotel and conference room and paid in advance, and wouldn’t leave just like that. With them, my Servant had to lie skillfully, explaining for instance that there was an alert, a grave security problem, and that they had to evacuate for their own safety. I found this deeply humiliating, since the real reason was my Will; they were supposed to leave just because I wanted it, not because they were coaxed. My rage increased, I thrashed about and roared more violently than ever, sending great waves crashing through the city. When I woke up the rain was still streaming down the windows. At breakfast they served us some Kommissbrot, some coal-based margarine from the Ruhr, quite tasty, synthetic honey made from pine resin, and the frightful ersatz Schlüter tea, the identical packets of which never contained the same ingredients. The men ate in silence. Ries, glum, pointed to a soldier leaning over his tea: “That’s him.”—“Who?” Ries imitated a jaw grinding. I looked again: he was almost a teenager, he had a hollow face spotted with acne, and eyes lost in dark bags. His comrades were rough on him, sending him off on chores and insulting him, slapping him if he didn’t go fast enough. The boy didn’t say anything. “Everyone is hoping he’ll get himself killed by the partisans,” Ries whispered to me. “We’ve tried everything, everything, we’ve even gagged him. No use.”

Häfner was a narrow but methodical man. He explained his plan of action to me in front of a map, and wrote up a list of everything he lacked, so that I could support his requests. I was supposed to inspect all the Teilkommandos; that was obviously impossible, and I resigned myself to staying a few days in Pereyaslav while I waited to see what came next. In any case, the Vorkommando was already in Poltava with Blobel: given the state of the roads, I had no hope of joining them before the fall of Kharkov. Häfner was pessimistic: “The sector is swarming with partisans. The Wehrmacht is conducting sweeps but isn’t accomplishing much. They want us to back them up. But the men are exhausted, finished. You’ve seen the shit we’re eating.”—“It’s regular army food. And they’re having a much harder time of it than we are.”—“Physically, yes, I agree. But our men are morally at the end of their tether.” Häfner was right and I would soon see so for myself. Ott went out with a platoon of twenty men to search a nearby village where partisans had been reported; I decided to accompany him. We left at dawn, with a truck and a Kübelwagen, an all-terrain vehicle, lent for the occasion by the division stationed in Pereyaslav. The rain slashed down, thick, interminable, we were soaked even before we left. The smell of wet wool filled the vehicle. Harpe, Ott’s driver, maneuvered skillfully to avoid the worst mudholes; the rear wheels kept slipping sideways in the muck; sometimes he managed to control the skid, but often the vehicle went completely sideways, and we had to climb out to set it right; then we would sink up to our ankles in the sludge, some of us even lost our boots in it. Everyone swore, shouted, cursed. Ott had loaded some boards into the truck, which we wedged under the stuck wheels; sometimes that helped; but if the vehicle was off-kilter, one of the drive wheels would start spinning on its own, projecting huge sprays of liquid mud. My greatcoat and my pants were soon completely covered in mud. Some of the men had their faces coated with it, you could just see their exhausted eyes gleaming through; as soon as the vehicle was unstuck, they quickly washed their hands and faces in a puddle and climbed back in. The village was seven kilometers from Pereyaslav; the trip took us three hours. When we arrived, Ott sent a group into a blocking position beyond the last houses while he deployed the others on both sides of the main street. The wretched isbas were lined up in the rain, their thatched roofs streaming into flooded gardens; a few soaked chickens were scattered here and there; we couldn’t see anyone. Ott sent a noncom and the Dolmetscher to look for the Staroste. They returned after about ten minutes, accompanied by a little old man wrapped in a sheepskin coat and wearing a shabby rabbit fur hat. Ott interrogated him standing in the rain; the old man moaned, denied there were any partisans. Ott got angry. “He says there are only old men here, and women,” the Dolmetscher translated. “All the men have died or left.”—“Tell him that if we find anything we’ll hang him first!” Ott shouted. Then he sent his men to search the houses. “Check the ground! Sometimes they dig bunkers.” I followed one of the groups. The mud lay just as thick in the single little village lane as on the road; we entered the isbas with mud packed on our feet, and we tracked it everywhere. Inside we really did find only old men, filthy women, lice-ridden children lying on big whitewashed clay stoves. There wasn’t much to search: the ground was of beaten earth, without any wood flooring; there was almost no furniture, and no attics, either, since the roofs rested directly on the walls. Everything stank of filth, mold, and urine. Behind the houses lined up to the left of the lane began a little birch wood, slightly higher up. I walked between two isbas to the edge of the forest. Water pattered on the branches, swelling the dead, rotting leaves that carpeted the ground; the slope was slippery and hard to climb. The wood seemed empty but with the rain you couldn’t see very far. A strangely animated pile of branches drew my gaze: the brown leaves were swarming with hundreds of little black beetles; underneath, there were some decomposed human remains, still dressed in the rags of brown uniforms. I tried to cover them up, horrified by the creatures, but they kept overflowing and running everywhere. Exasperated, I aimed a kick at the mass. A skull detached itself and rolled to the bottom of the slope, scattering beetles in the mud. I walked back down. The skull was resting against a stone, quite clean, its empty sockets swarming with beetles, its gnawed lips baring yellow teeth, washed by the rain: and the skull had opened, revealing the intact flesh of the mouth, a thick, almost wriggling tongue, pink, obscene. I went back to join Ott, who was now in the center of the village with the Staroste and the Dolmetscher. “Ask him where the corpses in the wood come from,” I said to the Dolmetscher. The old man’s shapka was dripping into his beard; he muttered, half toothless, “They’re soldiers from the Red Army. There were battles in the wood, last month. A lot of soldiers were killed. The villagers buried the ones they found, but they didn’t look everywhere.”—“What about their weapons?” Once again the Dolmetscher had to translate. “They gave them to the Germans, he says.” A Scharführer approached and saluted Ott. “Untersturmführer, there’s nothing here.” Ott was in a foul mood. “Search again! I’m sure they’re hiding something.” Other soldiers and some Orpos drifted in. “Untersturmführer, we looked, and there’s nothing.”—“Search, I said!” At that moment we heard a sharp cry a little farther up. An indistinct form was running in the street. “There!” Ott shouted. The Scharführer took aim and shot through the curtain of rain. The form collapsed in the mud. The men deployed to advance, on the lookout. “It was a woman, idiot,” a voice said. “You watch out who you call an idiot!” barked the Scharführer. A man turned the body over in the mud: it was a young peasant woman, with a colored scarf on her head, pregnant. “She just panicked,” said one of the men. “You didn’t have to shoot her like that.”—“She isn’t dead yet,” said the man who was examining her. The orderly came over: “Take her into the house.” Several men picked her up; her head fell back, her muddy dress stuck to her enormous belly, the rain pummeled her body. They carried her into the house and put her on a table. An old woman sat sobbing in a corner, otherwise the isba was empty. The girl was groaning. The orderly ripped open her dress and examined her. “She’s finished. But she’s at full term, we can still save the baby, with a little luck.” He began to give directions to the two soldiers standing there. “Heat some water.” I went out into the rain to find Ott, who had gone back to the vehicles. “What’s happening, then?”—“The girl is going to die. Your orderly is trying to perform a caesarian section.”—“A caesarian?! Christ, he’s gone nuts!” He began to clamber up the street, squelching through the mud, to the house. I followed him. He burst in: “What is this mess, Greve?” The orderly was holding a little bloody bundle, swaddled in a sheet, and had just finished tying off the umbilical cord. The girl, dead, lay on the table with her eyes wide open, naked, covered in blood, sliced open from the navel to the sex. “It worked, Untersturmführer,” Greve said. “He should live. But they’ll have to find a wet nurse.”—“You’re crazy!” Ott shouted. “Give me that!”—“Why?”—“Give me that!” Ott was pale and trembling. He tore the newborn from Greve’s hands and, holding it by its feet, smashed its skull against the corner of the stove. Then he threw it on the ground. Greve was foaming at the mouth: “Why did you do that?!” Ott was shouting too: “You should have let it croak in its mother’s womb, you moron! You should have left it alone! Why did you take it out? Wasn’t it cozy enough in there?” He turned on his heels and went out. Greve was sobbing: “You shouldn’t have done that, you shouldn’t have done that.” I followed Ott, who stood raging in the mud and the rain in front of the Scharführer and some men gathered round. “Ott…,” I called out. Behind me a call resounded: “Untersturmführer!” I turned around: Greve, his hands still red with blood, was coming out of the isba, his rifle shouldered. I stepped back and he headed straight for Ott. “Untersturmführer!” Ott turned around, saw the rifle and began yelling: “What, you asshole, what do you want? You want to shoot, is that it? Go ahead!” The Scharführer was also shouting: “Greve, in the name of God, put that rifle down!”—“You shouldn’t have done that,” Greve was yelling as he kept approaching Ott.—“Well, go on, you bastard, shoot!”—“Greve, stop that right now!” the Scharführer roared. Greve fired; Ott, hit in the head, flew back and collapsed in a puddle with a great splash of water. Greve kept his rifle raised; everyone had fallen silent. All that could be heard was the beating of the rain on the puddles, on the mud, on the men’s helmets, on the roof thatch. Greve was trembling like a leaf, his rifle at his shoulder. “He shouldn’t have done that,” he repeated stupidly. “Greve,” I said softly. A wild look in his eyes, Greve aimed his rifle at me. I very slowly spread my hands apart without saying anything. Greve redirected his rifle at the Scharführer. Two of the men were aiming their rifles at Greve. Greve kept his rifle pointed at the Scharführer. The men could shoot him but he would probably also kill the Scharführer. “Greve,” the Scharführer said calmly, “You’ve really fucked up. Ott was a scumbag, okay. But now you’re really in for it.”—“Greve,” I said. “Put down your weapon. Otherwise we’ll have to kill you. If you turn yourself in I’ll testify in your favor.”—“I’m fucked anyway,” Greve said. He was still aiming at the Scharführer. “If you shoot I won’t die alone.” He aimed his rifle at me again, at point-blank range. The rain was dripping from the muzzle, just in front of my eyes, and was streaming on my face. “Hauptsturmführer!” the Scharführer called. “Do you mind if I settle this my way? To avoid any more trouble.” I nodded. The Scharführer turned toward Greve. “Greve. I’ll give you a five minutes’ head start. After that we’ll come looking for you.” Greve hesitated. Then he lowered his rifle and bolted toward the forest. We waited. I looked at Ott. His head floated in the water, his face just above the surface, with a black hole in the center of his forehead. The blood was forming blackish coils in the cloudy water. The rain had washed his face, was drumming on his open, surprised eyes, slowly filling his mouth, running out of the corners. “Andersen,” the Scharführer said. “Take three men and go look for him.”—“We won’t find him, Scharführer.”—“Go find him.” He turned toward me: “Do you have any objections, Hauptsturmführer?” I shook my head: “None.” Other men had joined us. Four of them were heading for the wood, their rifles shouldered. Four others picked up Ott’s corpse and carried it by the greatcoat to the truck. I followed them with the Scharführer. They loaded the body through a side panel; the Scharführer sent some men to give the signal to regroup. I wanted to smoke but it was impossible, even under the greatcoat. The men were drifting back to the vehicles. We waited for the ones the Scharführer had sent in search of Greve, listening for gunfire. I noticed that the Staroste had prudently disappeared, but didn’t say anything. Finally Andersen and the others reappeared, gray shadows emerging through the rain. “We looked in the wood, Scharführer. But we didn’t find anything. He must be hiding.”—“That’s fine. Get in.” The Scharführer looked at me: “The partisans will skin him alive anyway, the son of a bitch.”—“I told you, Scharführer, I have no objection to your decision. You avoided more bloodshed, I congratulate you.”—“Thank you, Hauptsturmführer.” We took to the road again, bearing Ott’s body. Getting back to Pereyaslav took even longer than the way out. When we arrived, without even changing, I went to explain the incident to Häfner. He listened and then kept silent for a long moment. “You think he’ll go join the partisans?” he finally asked.—“I think that if there are partisans there, and they find him, they’ll kill him. In any case he won’t survive the winter.”—“And if he tries to live in the village?”—“They’re much too afraid, they’ll denounce him. Either to us, or to the partisans.”—“Fine.” He thought some more. “I’m going to declare him a deserter, armed and dangerous, and that’s it.” He paused again. “Poor Ott. He was a good officer.”—“If you want my opinion,” I said dryly, “he should have been sent on leave a long time ago. That might have avoided this whole business.”—“You’re probably right.” A large puddle was forming under my chair. Häfner stretched his neck, jutting out his wide square chin: “What a mess, all the same. Do you want to deal with the report for the Standartenführer?”—“No, it’s your Kommando after all. You do it and then I’ll countersign it, as a witness. And be sure to make me a copy, for Amt Three.”—“Understood.” I finally went to change and smoke a cigarette. Outside, the rain was still beating down, as if it would never end.

Once again, I slept poorly; that seemed to be the rule in Pereyaslav. The men grunted and snored; as soon as I dozed off, the teeth-grinding of the little Waffen-SS cut into my sleep and pulled me out of it abruptly. In this groggy drowsiness, Ott’s face in the water and the skull of the Russian soldier became confused: Ott, lying in the puddle, opened his mouth wide and stuck his tongue out at me, a thick, pink, fresh tongue, as if he were inviting me to kiss him. I awoke anxious, tired. Over breakfast, once again I was overcome with coughing, then with violent retching; I slipped out to an empty hallway, but nothing came up. When I went back to the table, Häfner was waiting for me with a teletype: “Kharkov has just fallen, Hauptsturmführer. The Standartenführer is waiting for you in Poltava.”—“In Poltava?” I pointed to the sodden windows. “He has to be kidding. How does he expect me to get there?”—“The trains are still running, from Kiev to Poltava. When the partisans don’t derail them. There’s a Rollbahn convoy that’s leaving for Yagotin; I called the division, they said they’ll take you. Yagotin is on the railroad, so from there you can get a train.” Häfner was truly an efficient officer. “Fine, I’ll go tell my driver.”—“No, your driver will stay here. That Admiral will never get as far as Yagotin. You’ll travel with the Rollbahn in one of their trucks. I’ll send the driver with the car back to Kiev when it’s possible.”—“Fine.”—“The convoy leaves at noon. I’ll give you some dispatches for the Standartenführer, including the report about Ott’s death.”—“Fine.” I went to get my kit ready. Then I sat down at a table and wrote a letter to Thomas, straightforwardly describing the previous day’s incident: You discuss this with the Brigadeführer, since I know Blobel won’t do anything, aside from covering himself. We have to learn from this, otherwise it might happen again. After I finished the letter, I sealed it in an envelope and put it aside. Then I went to find Ries. “Tell me, Ries, your little child-soldier, there, the one who grates his teeth. What’s his name?”—“You mean Hanika? Franz Hanika. The one I showed you?”—“Yes, him. Can you give him to me?” He raised his eyebrows, taken aback. “Give him to you? Why?”—“I’m leaving my driver here; I left my orderly in Kiev, so I need another one. And in Kharkov I can have him put up in a separate room, that way he won’t bother anyone anymore.” Ries seemed delighted: “Listen, Hauptsturmführer, if you’re serious…I’m all for it. I’ll go ask the Obersturmführer; I don’t think he’ll have any objections.”—“Fine. I’ll go tell this Hanika.” I found him in the mess, where he was scouring pots. “Hanika!” He stood at attention and I saw he had a bruise on one cheek. “Yes?”—“I’m leaving for Poltava and then Kharkov. I need an orderly. Do you want to come?” His strained face lit up: “With you?”—“Yes. Your work won’t change much, but at least you won’t have the others on your back.” He looked radiant, like a child who has just received an unexpected present. “Go get your things ready,” I said to him.

The journey by truck to Yagotin remains for me a long wandering, an endless foundering. The men spent more time outside the trucks pushing than in the cabs. But as terrible as the mud was, the idea of what would come later scared them even more. “We have nothing, Herr Hauptsturmführer, you understand? Nothing,” a Feldwebel explained to me. “No warm underclothes, no sweaters, no winter coats, no antifreeze, nothing. The Reds are ready for winter, though.”—“They’re men like us. They’ll be cold too.”—“It’s not that. Cold can be dealt with. But you have to be equipped, and they are. And even if they aren’t, they’ll be able to improvise. They’ve lived with it all their lives.” He cited a striking example he had from one of his Hiwis: in the Red Army, the men received boots two sizes bigger than their actual foot size. “With the frost, the feet swell, and then it leaves more room to fill them with straw and newspaper. We have boots that are just at the right size. Half the men are going to end up in the infirmary with their toes amputated.”

When we reached Yagotin, I was so coated in mud that the noncom in charge of the station didn’t recognize my rank and greeted me with a torrent of abuse because I was tracking mud into his waiting room. I put my kit down on a bench and retorted harshly: “I am an officer and you are not to speak to me like that.” I went back out to join Hanika, who helped me wash up a little at a hand pump. The noncom apologized profusely when he saw my insignia, which were still those of an Obersturmführer; he invited me to take a bath and have dinner. I gave him the letter for Thomas, which would leave with the mail. He put me up in a small room for officers; Hanika slept on a bench in the waiting room, with some men on leave waiting for the train to Kiev. The station chief woke me up in the middle of the night: “There’s a train in twenty minutes. Come.” I quickly got dressed and went out. The rain had stopped but everything was still dripping, the tracks were gleaming under the bleak station lights. Hanika had joined me with our kit. Then the train arrived, its brakes squealing for a long time, in spurts, before it stopped. Like all the trains nearing the front, it was half empty; we had our choice of compartments. I lay down and fell asleep. If Hanika ground his teeth, I didn’t hear him.

When I woke up we hadn’t even passed Lubny. The train stopped often, because of alerts or to let priority convoys pass. Near the toilets, I met a Major from the Luftwaffe who was returning from leave to join his squadron in Poltava. It had been five days since he left Germany. He talked to me about the morale of the civilians of the Reich, who remained confident even though victory was slow in coming; very amiably he offered us a little bread and sausage. At the station stops too we sometimes found something to snack on. The train kept its own time, I didn’t feel hurried. At the stops I lazily contemplated the sadness of the Russian stations. The facilities, barely built, already took on a dilapidated look; brambles and weeds invaded the railways; here and there, even in this season, one could see the burst of color of a stubborn flower, lost among gravel soaked with black oil. The cows that placidly wandered onto the tracks seemed surprised each time the roaring whistle of a train came to disturb their meditation. The dull gray of mud and dust covered everything. On the paths alongside the tracks, a filthy kid pushed a ramshackle bicycle, or else an old peasant hobbled along to the station to try to sell us some of her moldy vegetables. Slowly I let this endless ramification grow in me, this vast system of tracks, of switches controlled by idiotic, alcoholic laborers. At the marshalling yards, I watched interminable lines of dirty, oily, muddy freight cars waiting, full of wheat, coal, iron, gasoline, livestock, all the wealth of occupied Ukraine seized to be sent to Germany, all the things men need, moved from one place to another according to a grandiose, mysterious plan of circulation. Was that the reason why we were waging war, why men were dying? But even in everyday life that’s the way it is. Somewhere a man wastes away his life, covered with coal dust, in the stifling depths of a mine; elsewhere, another man rests warmly, clothed in alpaca, buried in a good book in an armchair, without ever thinking whence or how this armchair, this book, this alpaca, this warmth reach him. National Socialism wanted every German, in the future, to be able to have his modest share of the good things of life; but within the limitations of the Reich, that had turned out to be impossible; so now we were taking these things from others. Was that fair? So long as we had the strength and the power, yes, since as far as justice is concerned, there is no absolute authority, and each people defines its own truth and justice. But if ever our strength weakened, if our power gave out, then we would have to endure the justice of others, terrible as it might be. And that too would be fair.

In Poltava, Blobel sent me to the delousing station as soon as he set eyes on me. Then he filled me in on the situation. “The Vorkommando finally entered Kharkov on the twenty-fourth, with the Fifty-fifth Army Corps. They’ve set up offices already.” But Callsen was sorely lacking in men and urgently asking for reinforcements. For now, though, the roads were blocked by the rains and the mud. The train didn’t run any farther, since the tracks had to be restored and widened, and that too could be done only when travel became possible again. “As soon as it freezes you’ll go to Kharkov with some other officers and troops; the Kommandostab will join you a little later on. The entire Kommando will take its winter quarters in Kharkov.”

Hanika soon turned out to be a much better orderly than Popp. Every morning, I found my boots polished and my uniform cleaned, dried, and ironed; at breakfast, he often produced something to improve the ordinary fare. He was very young; he had been drafted directly from the Hitlerjugend to the Waffen-SS, and from there had been posted to the Sonderkommando; but he wasn’t lacking in qualities. I taught him our file classification system, so he could sort or find documents for me. Ries had overlooked a pearl: the boy was friendly and obliging; you just had to know how to take him. At night, for a little, he would have slept across my doorway, like a dog or a servant in a Russian novel. Better nourished, and well rested, with his face rounded out, he was in fact a handsome boy despite his teenage acne.

As for Blobel, he was growing more and more moody; he drank and flew into hysterical rages, on the slightest pretext. He would pick out a scapegoat from among the officers and pursue him for days on end, without respite, harassing him on every aspect of his work. At the same time he was a good organizer, he had a well-developed sense of priorities and practical constraints. Fortunately, he hadn’t yet had an occasion to test his new Saurer; the truck had stayed stuck in Kiev, and he was impatiently waiting for it to be delivered. The very idea of the thing made my blood run cold, and I hoped to be long gone by the time he received it. I continued to suffer from sudden retchings, accompanied sometimes by painful and exhausting up-wellings of gas; but I kept that to myself. Nor did I speak about my dreams to anyone. Almost every night now, I rode in a metro, each time different but always skewed, strange, unpredictable, haunting me with an endless circulation of trains coming and going, escalators or elevators rising and falling from one level to another, doors opening and closing at the wrong moment, signals changing from green to red without the trains stopping, lines crossing without any shunting, and terminus stops where the passengers waited in vain, a broken-down, noisy, immense, interminable network traveled by incessant and insane traffic. When I was young I loved the Metro; I had discovered it when I was seventeen and went up to Paris, and at the slightest occasion I took it simply for the pleasure of movement, of looking at people, at the stations going by. The CMP, the previous year, had taken over the north-south line, and for the price of a single ticket I could cross the city from one end to the other. Soon I got to know the underground geography of Paris better than its surface. With other boarding students from my prépa, I slipped out at night, thanks to a copy of a key the students passed on from one generation to the next, and, armed with little flashlights, we waited on a platform for the last train so we could then climb into the tunnels and walk on the tracks from station to station. We had quickly discovered numerous tunnels and shafts closed to the public, which came in handy when railroad men, disturbed in their nighttime work, tried to chase us. This underground activity still leaves a trace of strong emotion in my memory, a friendly feeling of security and warmth, with probably a distant erotic overtone too. Back then, metros already filled my dreams, but now they bore with them a translucent, nearly acid anguish; I could never arrive where I had to be, I missed my connections, the doors to the cars slammed in my face, I traveled without a ticket, in horror of the inspectors, and I often awoke filled with a cold, abrupt panic, that left me feeling utterly lost.

Finally the first frosts seized the roads, and I could leave. The cold had settled in suddenly, overnight; in the morning, the vapor of our breath, the windows white with frost, were a joyous sight. Before leaving, I put on all my sweaters; Hanika had managed to find an otterskin shapka for me for a few reichsmarks; in Kharkov, we would quickly have to find some warm clothes. On the road, the sky was pure and blue; clouds of sparrows whirled before the woods; near the villages, peasants were reaping frozen pond rushes to cover their isbas. The road itself was treacherous: the frost, in places, had seized the chaotic ridges of the mud, raised by the passage of tanks and trucks, and these hardened crests made the vehicles skid, tore the tires, sometimes even caused cars to flip over when a driver took a curve badly and lost control of his vehicle. Elsewhere, beneath a fine crust that crumbled under the wheels, the mud remained viscous, insidious. All around stretched the empty steppe, the harvested fields, some forests. It’s about 120 kilometers from Poltava to Kharkov: the trip took a full day. We entered the city through devastated suburbs with charred, ruined, overturned walls, among which, hastily cleared away, lay piled in little stacks the twisted and burned wrecks of the fighting equipment wasted on the futile defense of the city. The Vorkommando had set itself up in the Hotel International, which sat at the side of an immense central square dominated, at the rear, by the constructivist pile of the Dom Gosprom, cubical buildings, arranged in a semicircle, with two tall square arches and a pair of skyscrapers—a surprising construction for this large lazy city with its wooden houses and old czarist churches. The House of the Plan, burned during the battles, raised its massive façades and columns of gutted windows nearby, over to the left; in the center of the square, an imposing bronze Lenin turned his back to the two blocks and, indifferent to the cars and German tanks lined up at his feet, welcomed the passersby with a large gesture. In the hotel, confusion reigned; most of the rooms had broken windows, and bitter cold swept in. I requisitioned a small suite that was more or less inhabitable, left Hanika to see to the windows and the heating, and went back down to find Callsen. “The battles for the city were very violent,” he summarized for me, “there was a lot of destruction, as you saw; it will be hard to find quarters for the whole Sonderkommando.” The Vorkommando had nonetheless started its SP work and was interrogating suspects; in addition, at the Sixth Army’s request, they had taken a number of hostages to discourage sabotage, as in Kiev. Callsen had already formed his political analysis: “The population of the city is mostly Russian, so the delicate problems stemming from our relations with the Ukrainians will be less acute here. There’s also a large Jewish population, although a lot of them fled with the Bolsheviks.” Blobel had given him the order to summon the Jewish leaders and shoot them: “For the others, we’ll see later on.”

In the bedroom, Hanika had managed to plug the windows with some cardboard and canvas tarps, and he had found a few candles for light; but the rooms were still freezing. For a long while, sitting on the sofa while he made some tea, I let a pleasant fantasy come over me: I invited him to sleep with me, for mutual warmth, then slowly, during the night, I passed my hand under his tunic, kissed his young lips, and searched through his pants to take out his stiff penis. Seducing a subordinate, even a consenting one, was out of the question; but it had been a long time since I had even thought of such things, and I didn’t try to resist the sweetness of these images. I looked at the nape of his neck and wondered if he had ever been with a girl. He was really very young, but even before his age, in the boarding school, we were already doing everything you can do among boys, and the older boys, who must then have been the age Hanika was now, knew how to find girls in the next village who were more than happy to go for a roll in the hay. Now my thoughts shifted: in place of his frail neck other powerful necks appeared, of men I had been with or even just looked at, and I considered these necks with a woman’s eyes, suddenly understanding with a terrifying clarity that men control nothing, dominate nothing, that they are just children and even toys, put there for the pleasure of women, an insatiable pleasure all the more sovereign that the men think they are in charge, think they dominate women, whereas in reality women absorb them, wreck their dominion and dissolve their control, to take far more from them than they give. Men believe in all honesty that women are vulnerable, and that they must either take advantage of this vulnerability or protect it, whereas women laugh, with tolerance and love or else with scorn, at the childish, infinite vulnerability of men, at their fragility, this brittleness so close to a permanent loss of control, this perpetually threatening collapse, this vacuity embodied in such strong flesh. That is why, without a doubt, women so rarely kill. They suffer much more, but they will always have the last word. I drank my tea. Hanika had made my bed with all the blankets he could find; I took two of them and left them for him on the sofa in the first room, where he would sleep. I closed the door and rapidly masturbated, then fell asleep immediately, my hands and stomach still damp with sperm.

For one reason or another, maybe to stay close to von Reichenau, who had his HQ there, Blobel chose to remain in Poltava, and we waited for the Kommandostab for more than a month. The Vorkommando didn’t remain inactive. As in Kiev, I set up networks of informers; it was all the more necessary given the motley population, full of immigrants from all over the USSR, among whom certainly lurked a number of spies and saboteurs; furthermore, we hadn’t found a single NKVD list or file: before retreating, they had methodically cleaned out their archives, so there was nothing left for us that might make our job easier. Working in the hotel was becoming rather difficult: while I tried to type a report or talk with a local collaborator, the screams of some man being interrogated would ring out next door, overwhelming me. One night they served us red wine at dinner: my meal was scarcely over when everything started coming back up. This had never happened to me before with such violence, and I was beginning to worry: before the war, I never vomited, when I was little I had almost never thrown up, and I wondered what the reason for it could be. Hanika, who had heard my retching through the bathroom door, suggested maybe the food was bad, or else I was suffering from an intestinal flu: I shook my head, that wasn’t it, I was sure of it, since it had started exactly like the retchings, with a cough and a feeling of heaviness or else of something blocked, except this had gone further and everything had come up all of a sudden, the scarcely digested food mixed with the wine, a frightening red mixture.

Finally Kuno Callsen obtained permission from the Ortskommandantur to set up the Sonderkommando in the premises of the NKVD, on Sovnarkomovskaya Street, the street of the Soviet People’s Commissariats. This large L-shaped building dates from the beginning of the century, and the main entrance is off a little side street, lined with trees stripped bare by winter; a plaque in Russian at the corner states that during the civil war, in May and June 1920, the famous Dzerzhinsky had his headquarters here. The officers kept living at the hotel; Hanika had found a stove for us; unfortunately, he had installed it in the little living room where he slept, and if I left the door open, his atrocious teeth-grinding ruined my sleep. I asked him to warm the two rooms well during the day, so that I could close the door when I went to sleep; but at dawn the cold would wake me, and I ended up sleeping with my clothes on, with a wool cap, until Hanika found me some duvets that I piled up so I could sleep naked, as I was used to. I continued vomiting almost every night or at least every other night, right away at the end of meals, once even before finishing—I had just drunk a cold beer with my pork chop and it came back up so quickly that the liquid was still cool, a hideous sensation. I always managed to vomit neatly, in a bathroom or a washbasin, without drawing too much attention, but it was exhausting: the huge retchings that preceded the upwelling of the food left me emptied, drained of all energy for a long time. At least the food returned so quickly that it wasn’t yet acid, digestion had scarcely begun, and it didn’t have any taste; I just had to rinse my mouth out to feel better.

The specialists from the Wehrmacht had meticulously searched all the public buildings for explosives and mines, and had defused some bombs; despite that, a few days after the first snowfall, the House of the Red Army exploded, killing the commander of the Sixtieth Division, its Chief of Staff, its Ia, and three clerks, who were found horribly mutilated. The same day there were four other explosions; the military was furious. The chief engineer of the Sixth Army, Oberst Selle, gave the order to place Jews in all the large buildings to discourage new bombings. As for von Reichenau, he wanted reprisals. The Vorkommando was not involved in this: the Wehrmacht took care of it. The Ortskommandant had prisoners hanged from all the balconies in the city. Behind our offices, two streets, Chernychevsky and Girchman, combined to form an irregular expanse, like a vague square between small buildings scattered about without any plan. Several of these buildings, from different periods and in different colors, opened onto the street at an abrupt angle, their elegant doorways topped by small balconies; soon, at each railing, one or several men were hanging like sacks. On a townhouse built before the last war, pale green with three floors, two muscular Atlases, flanking the door, supported the balcony with their white arms, bent back behind their heads: when I went by, a body was still twitching between these impassive caryatids. Each hanged man had a sign around his neck in Russian. To go to the office, I liked to walk, either under the bare linden and poplar trees of the long Karl-Liebknecht Street, or cutting across the vast Trade Unions Park with its monument to Shevchenko; it was just a few hundred meters, and during the day the streets were safe. On Liebknecht Street they were also hanging people. Under a balcony, a crowd had gathered. Several Feldgendarmen had come out the French door and were solidly attaching six ropes with slipknots. Then they went back into the dark room. After a while they reappeared, carrying a man with his arms and legs tied, his head covered with a hood. A Feldgendarm passed a slipknot around his neck, then the sign, then pulled off his hood. For an instant, I saw the man’s bulging eyes, the eyes of a bolting horse; then, as if overcome with fatigue, he closed them. Two of the Feldgendarmen lifted him and slowly let him slide from the balcony. His bound muscles convulsed with great shudders, then calmed down; he swung quietly, his neck broken cleanly, while the Feldgendarmen hanged the next one. The people watched till the end; I watched too, full of an evil fascination. I eagerly examined the faces of the hanged men, of the condemned men before they were passed over the railing: these faces, these terrified or terrifyingly resigned eyes told me nothing. Several of the dead men had their tongues sticking out, grotesque; streams of saliva ran from their mouths to the sidewalk, some of the spectators laughed. Anguish filled me like a vast tide, the noise of the drops of saliva horrified me. When I was still young, I had seen someone hanged. It had taken place in the frightful boarding school where I had been locked up; I suffered there, but I wasn’t the only one. One night, after dinner, there was a special prayer, I forget what for, and I had myself excused, because of my Lutheran origins (it was a Catholic school); that way I could return to my room. Each dormitory was organized by class and had about fifteen bunk beds. As I went up, I passed by the next room, where the premières slept (I was in seconde, I must have been fifteen); there were two boys there who had also been let off Mass: Albert, with whom I was more or less friendly, and Pierre R., a strange boy, not very well liked, who frightened the other students with his violent, frantic rages. I chatted with them for a few minutes before I went back to my room, where I lay down to read, a novel by E. R. Burroughs—such books of course were banned, like everything else in that prison. I was finishing another chapter when suddenly I heard Albert’s voice, a wild scream: “Help! Help! Come help!” I leaped out of bed, my heart beating, then a thought held me back: What if Pierre R. were killing Albert? Albert was still yelling. So I forced myself to go see; terrified, ready to flee, I went toward the door and pushed it open. Pierre R. was hanging from a beam, a red ribbon around his neck, his face already blue; Albert, screaming, was holding him by his legs and trying to lift him up. I ran out of the room and down the stairs, yelling in turn, through the yard to the chapel. Some teachers came out, hesitated, then started running toward me, followed by a crowd of students. I led them to the room, everyone tried to go in; as soon as they grasped what was happening, two teachers blocked the doorway, forcing the students back into the hallway. But I had already entered, I saw everything. Two or three teachers supported Pierre R. while another furiously struggled to cut the big ribbon with a penknife or a key. Finally Pierre R. came crashing down like a felled tree, dragging the teachers to the ground with him. Albert, huddled in a corner, was sobbing, his hands clenched in front of his face. Father Labourie, my Greek teacher, was trying to pry open Pierre R.’s jaw; he was using both hands to force apart the teeth, with all his strength, but to no avail. I distinctly remember the deep, gleaming blue of Pierre R.’s face, and his purple lips, flecked with white foam. Then they made me go out. That night I spent in the infirmary; they wanted to isolate me from the other boys, I suppose; I don’t know where they put Albert. A little later on, they sent Father Labourie to me, a gentle, patient man, rare qualities in that establishment. He wasn’t like the other priests, and I enjoyed talking with him. The next morning, all the students were gathered together in the chapel for a long sermon on the abomination of suicide. Pierre R., we were told, had survived; and we had to pray for the salvation of his sinner’s soul. We never saw him again. Since the students were quite shaken up, the good fathers decided to organize a long walk in the woods. “How stupid,” I said to Albert when I met him in the courtyard. He seemed withdrawn, tense. Father Labourie came up to me and said gently, “Come, come with us. Even if it doesn’t make a difference to you, it will do the others good.” I shrugged and joined the group. They made us walk for several hours; and it’s true, that night, everyone was calm. They let me return to my dormitory, where I was assailed by the other boys. During the walk, Albert had told me that Pierre R. had climbed onto his bed, and, after placing the slipknot around his neck, had called out, “Hey, Albert, look,” then had jumped. Over the sidewalk in Kharkov, the hanged men swung slowly. There were, I knew, Jews, Russians, Gypsies there. All these dismal, bound men hanging made me think of sleeping chrysalises patiently waiting for metamorphosis. But there still was something I couldn’t grasp. I was finally beginning to perceive that no matter how many dead people I might see, or people at the instant of their death, I would never manage to grasp death, that very moment, precisely in itself. It was one thing or the other: either you are dead, and then in any case there’s nothing else to understand, or else you are not yet dead, and in that case, even with the rifle at the back of your head or the rope around your neck, death remains incomprehensible, a pure abstraction, this absurd idea that I, the only living person in the world, could disappear. Dying, we may already be dead, but we never die, that moment never comes, or rather it never stops coming, there it is, it’s coming, and then it’s still coming, and then it’s already over, without ever having come. That’s how I was reasoning in Kharkov, very poorly no doubt, but I wasn’t doing very well.

It was the end of November; on the vast circular square, rebaptized Adolf-Hitler-Platz, a gray snow, pale as motes of light, was falling softly from the noon sky. A woman was hanging by a long rope from Lenin’s outstretched hand; some children playing beneath raised their heads to look up her skirt. The hanged were increasingly numerous; the Ortskommandant had ordered that they remain strung up, to set an example. Russian passersby walked quickly in front of them, their heads lowered; German soldiers and children examined them curiously, and the soldiers often photographed them. For several days now I had stopped vomiting, I was beginning to hope I was getting better; but it was only a respite; and when it took me again, I vomited up my sausage, cabbage, and beer, an hour after the meal, in the street, half hidden in an alleyway. A little farther on, at the corner of the Trade Unions Park, they had raised a gallows, and that day they were leading two very young men and a woman there, their hands tied behind their backs, surrounded by a crowd made up mainly of German soldiers and officers. The woman had a large sign around her neck explaining that she was being punished in retaliation for a murder attempt on an officer. Then they hanged them. One of the young men looked dumbfounded, astonished at finding himself there; the other was simply sad; the woman grimaced terribly when they snatched the support out from under her feet, but that was all. God alone knows if they had in fact been involved in the attack; we were hanging almost anyone, Jews but also Russian soldiers, people without identity papers, peasants loitering in search of food. The idea was not to punish the guilty but to prevent new attacks by spreading terror. In Kharkov itself, it seemed to work; there had been no more explosions since the hangings. But outside the city the situation was getting worse. Oberst von Hornbogen, the Ic from the Ortskommandantur whom I often visited, had a large map on his wall of the area around Kharkov dotted with red push-pins, each representing a partisan attack or a bombing. “It’s becoming a real problem,” he explained to me. “We can only leave the city in force; isolated men get shot like rabbits. We raze all the villages where we find partisans, but that’s not helping much. Food supplies are getting difficult, even for the troops; as for feeding the population this winter, it doesn’t even bear thinking about.” The city had about six hundred thousand inhabitants; there were no public food supplies, and already the elderly were dying of hunger. “Could you tell me about your discipline problems, if you don’t mind,” I asked the Oberst, with whom I had already developed fairly good relations.—“It’s true, we’re having difficulties. Especially cases of looting. Some soldiers emptied the apartment of the Russian mayor while he was visiting us. A lot of soldiers are taking coats or fur hats from the populace. There are also some cases of rape. A Russian woman was locked up in a basement and raped by six soldiers, one after the other.”—“What do you attribute that to?”—“A question of morale, I guess. The troops are exhausted, dirty, covered with vermin, they’re not even being provided with clean underwear, and also winter is coming, they sense it’s going to get worse.” He leaned forward with a faint smile: “Between you and me, I can tell you that they’ve even painted some inscriptions on the AOK buildings, in Poltava. Things like We want to go back to Germany or We’re dirty and we have lice and we want to go home. The Generalfeldmarschall was mad with rage, he took it as a personal insult. Of course, he realizes there are tensions and privations, but he thinks the officers could do more for the political education of the men. But ultimately, the most worrisome thing is still the problem of the food supplies.”

Outside, a thin layer of snow was covering the square, dusting the shoulders and the hair of the hanged. Next to me, a young Russian was rushing into the Ortskommandantur, keeping the heavy swinging door from banging back by catching it, with practiced delicacy, with his foot. My nose was running; a drop of water fell from my nose and crossed my lips with a cold streak. Von Hornbogen had made me feel extremely pessimistic. But life went on. Businesses, run by Volksdeutschen, were opening, along with Armenian restaurants, and even two nightclubs. The Wehrmacht had reopened the Shevshchenko Ukrainian Dramatic Theater, after repainting its elegant nineteenth-century façade, with its white columns and moldings mutilated by shrapnel, ochre yellow and a heavy burgundy. They had turned it into a cabaret called the Panzersprenggranate, the “Antitank Grenade,” and a garish sign proclaimed its name above the ornate doors. I took Hanika there one night, to a satirical revue. It was pretty awful, but the men, delighted, laughed and applauded furiously; some numbers were nearly funny. In one parodic scene, a choir of rabbis wearing striped prayer shawls sang, more or less on key, an aria from the St. John Passion:

Wir haben ein Gesetz

und nach dem Gesetz

soll er sterben.

Bach, I said to myself, a pious man, would not have appreciated such facetiousness. But I had to admit it was comical. Hanika’s face glowed, he applauded every number; he seemed happy. That evening, I felt at ease, I hadn’t vomited, and I appreciated the theater’s warmth and the pleasant ambiance. At intermission, I went to the refreshment stand and offered Hanika a glass of ice-cold vodka; he turned red, he wasn’t used to it. Adjusting my uniform in front of a mirror, I noticed a stain. “Hanika,” I asked, “what is that?”—“What, Hauptsturmführer?”—“The stain, there.” He looked: “I don’t see anything, Hauptsturmführer.”—“Yes, yes,” I insisted, “there’s a stain, there, it’s a little dark. Rub better when you do the wash.”—“Yes, Hauptsturmführer.” This stain troubled me; I tried to forget it by having another drink, then returned to the hall for the second part of the program. Afterward, accompanied by Hanika, I walked up the former Liebknecht Street, now rebaptized Horst-Wesselstrasse or something like that. Farther up, near the park, some old women, supervised by soldiers, were unstringing a hanged man. At least, I thought when I saw this, these Russians we’re hanging have mothers to wipe the sweat and dirt from their faces, close their eyes, cross their stiff arms, and tenderly bury them. I thought of all the Jews with their eyes still open under the earth in the ravine in Kiev: we had deprived them not only of life but also of that tenderness, for we had killed their mothers and wives and sisters with them, and hadn’t left anyone to mourn them. Their fate was the bitterness of a mass grave, their only funeral feast the rich earth of the Ukraine filling their mouths, their only Kaddish the whistling of the wind over the steppe. And the same fate awaited their brethren in Kharkov. Blobel had finally arrived with the Hauptkommando, and discovered with fury that no measures had yet been taken, except the order to wear the yellow star. “But what the hell is the Wehrmacht doing?! Do they want to spend the winter with thirty thousand saboteurs and terrorists in their midst?” He had brought Dr. Kehrig’s replacement, fresh from Germany; thus I found myself relegated to my old subordinate tasks, which, given my state of fatigue, didn’t bother me much. Sturmbannführer Dr. Woytinek was a dry, glum little man, who nourished a keen resentment for having missed the beginning of the campaign and who hoped that the opportunity to make up for it would soon present itself. The opportunity indeed soon would present itself; but not right away. As soon as they arrived, Blobel and Vogt had begun negotiations with the representatives from the AOK about another Grosse Aktion. But in the meantime, von Rundstedt had been dismissed because of the retreat from Rostov, and the Führer had appointed von Reichenau to replace him as head of Army Group South. No replacement had yet been named to take command of the Sixth Army; for now, the AOK was headed by Oberst Heim, the Chief of Staff; and he, in terms of cooperation with the SP and the SD, turned out to be less complacent than his former boss. He never uttered any outright objection, but every day he raised new practical difficulties in his correspondence, and the discussions dragged on. Blobel was fuming, and taking out his anger on the officers in his Kommando. Dr. Woytinek was getting acquainted with the files and harassed me with questions throughout the day. When Dr. Sperath saw me, he remarked: “You don’t look very well.”—“It’s nothing. I’m just a little tired.”—“You should get some rest.” I laughed: “Yes, after the war.” But I was also distracted by the traces of mud on my pants that Hanika, who seemed to be growing a little negligent, hadn’t cleaned well.

Blobel had come to Kharkov with the Saurer truck, and he was counting on using it for the action being planned. He had finally been able to try it out in Poltava. Häfner, who had been present—the Teilkommandos had gathered in Poltava before marching together to Kharkov—related the scene to me one night at the Kasino: “Actually it’s not an improvement at all. The Standartenführer loaded some women and children in it, then started the engine. When the Jews understood what was happening, they started beating on the sides, shouting ‘Dear Germans! Dear Germans! Let us get out!’ I stayed in the car with the Standartenführer, who was drinking schnapps. Afterward, during the unloading, I can tell you he was not pleased. The bodies were covered with shit and vomit, the men were disgusted. Findeisen, who was driving the truck, also inhaled some gas and was vomiting everywhere. Horrible. If that’s all they could come up with to simplify our lives, they can try again. Only some damn bureaucrat could have thought that one up.”—“But the Standartenführer still wants to use it?”—“Oh yes! But believe me, it will be without me.”

Finally the negotiations with the AOK came to a conclusion. Blobel, supported by the Ic Niemeyer, had asserted that the elimination of the Jewish population, as well as of other undesirables and political suspects, and even of non-residents, would contribute to easing the problem of the food supplies, which was growing increasingly urgent. The Wehrmacht, in cooperation with the city’s housing office, agreed to place a site at the Sonderkommando’s disposal for the evacuation: the KhTZ, a tractor factory, with barracks for the workers. It lay outside of the city, twelve kilometers from the center, beyond the river on the old road to Moscow. On December 14, an order was posted giving all Jews in the city two days to relocate there. As in Kiev, the Jews went there on their own, without escort; and at first they actually were housed in the barracks. On the day of the evacuation, it was snowing and very cold; the children were crying. I took a car to go to the KhTZ. The site hadn’t been sealed off and a huge number of people were coming and going. Since in these barracks there was no water or food or heat, the people left to find whatever they needed, and no one did anything to prevent them; informers simply pointed out those spreading negative rumors and upsetting the others; they were discreetly arrested and liquidated in the basements of the Sonderkommando’s offices. In the camp, utter chaos reigned; the barracks were going to ruin, children ran around screaming, old people were already dying, and since their families couldn’t bury them, they laid them out outside, where they remained, frozen by the frost. Finally the camp was closed and German guards were posted. But people kept flowing in, Jews who wanted to join their families, or else Russian or Ukrainian spouses, who were bringing food to their husbands, wives or children; we still let them come and go, since Blobel wanted to avoid panic and reduce the camp little by little, discreetly. The Wehrmacht had objected that a vast single action, as in Kiev, would create too much of a stir, and Blobel had accepted this argument. On Christmas Eve, the Ortskommandantur invited the officers from the Sonderkommando to a reception in the large conference hall of the Ukraine Communist Party, redecorated for the occasion; in front of a richly appointed buffet, we drank glass after glass of schnapps and brandies with the Wehrmacht officers, who raised their glasses to the Führer, to the Endsieg, and to our great common task. Blobel and the City Kommandant, General Reiner, traded gifts; then the officers who had a good voice sang some choruses. Beginning the next day—the Wehrmacht had insisted on delaying the date till after Christmas, to avoid spoiling the festivities—the Jews were invited to volunteer to go work in Poltava, in Lubny, in Romny. It was freezing cold, snow covered everything; the Jews, chilled to the bone, hurried to the selection point in the hope of leaving the camp as soon as possible. They were loaded onto trucks driven by Ukrainian drivers; their belongings were piled separately into other vehicles. Then they were brought in convoys to Rogan, a remote suburb of the city, and shot in balki, ravines chosen by our surveyors. Their belongings were brought to warehouses to be sorted and then distributed to Volksdeutschen by the NSV and the VoMi. In this way, the camp was emptied in small groups, a little each day. Just before the New Year, I went to attend an execution. The shooters were all young volunteers from the 314th Police Battalion; they weren’t used to it yet, their shots missed and there were a lot of wounded. The officers bawled them out and had alcohol served to them, which didn’t improve their performance. Fresh blood splattered the snow, flowed to the bottom of the ravine, spread in pools on the ground hardened by cold; it didn’t freeze, but stagnated, viscous. All around, the gray, dead stems of sunflowers dotted the white fields. All sounds, even the shouts and the gunfire, were muted; underfoot, the snow crunched. I was vomiting often now and felt I was getting a little sick; I had a fever, not enough to keep me in bed, but rather long shivers and a sensation of fragility, as if my skin were turning to crystal. At the balka, between the volleys, bitter upsurges of this fever ran through my body. Everything was white, terrifyingly white, except the blood staining everything, the snow, the men, my coat. In the sky, great formations of wild ducks calmly flew south.

The cold settled in and made itself at home, almost like a living organism stretching out over the earth and seeping in everywhere, in the most unexpected places. Sperath informed me that frostbite was decimating the Wehrmacht, and often led to amputations: the hobnailed soles of the regulation Kommisstiefel had turned out to be an effective conductor of cold. Every morning dead sentinels were found, their brains frozen by their helmets being placed directly on their heads, without a wool cap underneath. The tank drivers had to burn tires under their engines to be able to start them up. Some of the troops had finally received warm civilian clothing, collected in Germany by the Winterhilfe, but there was a little bit of everything there, and some soldiers strolled about in women’s fur coats, feather boas, or fancy muffs. The looting of civilians was getting worse: the soldiers took sheepskin coats and shapkas by force, then threw their owners almost naked out into the cold, where many died. In front of Moscow, reportedly, it was even worse; ever since the Soviet counteroffensive at the beginning of the month, our men, having moved to the defensive, were dying like flies in their positions without even seeing the enemy. Politically too the situation was becoming confused. In Kharkov, no one really understood why we had declared war on the Americans: “We already have enough to deal with as it is,” Häfner grumbled, seconded by Kurt Hans, “the Japanese can take care of them by themselves.” Others, more farsighted, saw danger for Germany in a Japanese victory. The purge of the army high command also gave rise to questions. In the SS, most people thought that the fact that the Führer had personally taken charge of OKH was a good thing: now, they said, those old reactionary Prussians won’t be able to subtly hinder him anymore; in the spring the Russians would be annihilated. The Wehrmacht officers, however, seemed more skeptical. Von Hornbogen, the Ic, spoke of rumors of an offensive to the south, with the oil fields of the Caucasus as objective. “I don’t understand anymore,” he confided to me after a drink or two at the Kasino. “Are our objectives political or economic?” Both, probably, I suggested; but for him the big question was that of our means. “The Americans are going to take a while to increase their production and accumulate enough material. That gives us time. But if we haven’t finished off the Reds by then, we’re screwed.” Despite everything, these words shocked me; never had I heard a pessimistic opinion expressed so crudely. I had already envisaged the possibility of a more limited victory than planned, a compromise peace, for example, where we’d leave Russia proper to Stalin but would keep the Ostland and the Ukraine, along with Crimea. But defeat? That seemed unthinkable to me. I would have liked to discuss it with Thomas, but he was far away, in Kiev, and I hadn’t heard from him since his promotion to Sturmbannführer, which he had announced to me in reply to my letter from Pereyaslav. In Kharkov, there weren’t many people to talk with. At night, Blobel drank and heaped abuse on the Jews, the Communists, even the Wehrmacht; the officers listened to him, played billiards, or withdrew to their rooms. I often did the same. At that time I was reading Stendhal’s diaries, where I found cryptic passages that surprisingly echoed my feeling: No to the Jews…The suffocation of these times is overwhelming me…Grief is making me a machine… As an aftereffect, surely, of a feeling of filth produced by the vomiting, I was also beginning to pay almost obsessive attention to my hygiene; several times, already, Woytinek had surprised me scrutinizing my uniform, searching for traces of mud or other substances, and had ordered me to stop gaping. Right after my first inspection of the Aktion I had given my soiled uniform to Hanika to wash; but every time he brought it back to me I found new stains; finally I took him aside, reproached him brutally for his laziness and incompetence, and then flung my jacket in his face. Sperath had come to ask me if I was sleeping well; when I told him I was, he seemed satisfied, and it was true, at night I fell asleep like a stone as soon as I lay down, but my sleep was full of heavy, troubled dreams, not nightmares exactly, but like long underwater currents stirring up the mud in the depths while the surface remains smooth and calm. I should note that I went back regularly to witness the executions; no one required it, but I went of my own free will. I didn’t shoot, but I studied the men who did, the officers especially, such as Häfner or Janssen, who had been there since the beginning and seemed now to have become perfectly hardened to their executioner’s work. I must have been like them. By inflicting this piteous spectacle on myself, I felt, I wasn’t trying to exhaust the scandal of it, the insurmountable feeling of a transgression, of a monstrous violation of the Good and the Beautiful, but rather this feeling of scandal came to wear out all by itself, one got used to it, and in the long run stopped feeling much; thus what I was trying, desperately but in vain, to regain was actually that initial shock, that sensation of a rupture, an infinite disturbance of my whole being; instead of that, I now felt only a dull, anxious kind of excitation, always briefer, more acrid, mixed with the fever and my physical symptoms, and thus, slowly, without truly realizing it, I was sinking into mud while searching for light. A minor incident threw a harsh light on these widening fissures. In the big snow-covered park behind the statue of Shevchenko, a young partisan was being led to the gallows. A crowd of Germans was gathering: Landsers from the Wehrmacht and some Orpos, but also men from the Organisation Todt, Goldfasanen from the Ostministerium, a few Luftwaffe pilots. The partisan was a rather thin young woman, her face, touched with hysteria, framed by heavy black hair cut short, very coarsely, as if with pruning shears. An officer bound her hands, placed her under the gallows, and put the rope around her neck. Then the soldiers and officers present filed in front of her and kissed her one after the other on the mouth. She remained silent and kept her eyes open. Some kissed her tenderly, almost chastely, like schoolboys; others took her head in both hands and forced open her lips. When my turn came, she looked at me, a clear, luminous look, washed of everything, and I saw that she understood everything, knew everything, and faced with this pure knowledge I burst into flames. My clothes crackled, the skin of my belly melted, the fat sizzled, fire roared in my eye sockets and my mouth, and cleaned out the inside of my skull. The blaze was so intense she had to turn her head away. I burned to a cinder, my remains were transformed into a salt statue; soon it cooled down, pieces broke off, first a shoulder, then a hand, then half the head. Finally I finished collapsing at her feet and the wind swept away the pile of salt and scattered it. Already the next officer was advancing, and when they had all gone by, they hanged her. For days on end I reflected on this strange scene; but my reflection stood before me like a mirror, and never returned anything to me but my own image, reversed of course, but true. The body of this girl was also a mirror for me. The rope had broken or they had cut it, and she lay in the snow in the Trade Unions Park, her neck broken, her lips swollen, one bare breast gnawed by dogs. Her rough hair formed a Medusa crest around her head and she seemed fabulously beautiful to me, inhabiting death like an idol, Our-Lady-of-the-Snows. Whatever path I took to go from the hotel to our offices, I always found her lying in my way, a stubborn, single-minded question that threw me into a labyrinth of vain speculations and made me lose my footing. This lasted for weeks.

Blobel put an end to the Aktion a few days after the New Year. They had kept several thousand Jews in the KhTZ for forced labor in the city; they would be shot later on. We had just learned that Blobel was going to be replaced. He had known it for weeks, but hadn’t said anything. It was high time in any case for him to leave. Ever since he had arrived in Kharkov, he had become a nervous wreck, in just as bad a state, almost, as in Lutsk: one moment he’d gather us together and wax enthusiastic about the recent cumulative totals of the Sonderkommando, and the next he’d shout himself hoarse with incoherent rage over some trifle, a remark taken the wrong way. One day, in the beginning of January, I went into his office to bring him a report from Woytinek. Without returning my salute, he threw a sheet of paper at me: “Look at this piece of shit.” He was drunk, white with anger. I took the paper: it was an order from General von Manstein, the commander of the Eleventh Army, in the Crimea. “Your boss Ohlendorf sent me that. Read it, read it. You see, there, on the bottom? It is dishonorable for officers to be present at the executions of Jews. Dishonorable! Those assholes. As if what they were doing was so honorable…as if they were treating their POWs with honor!…I was in the Great War. During the Great War we took care of our prisoners, we fed them, we didn’t let them die of starvation like animals.” A bottle of schnapps stood on the table; he poured himself a glassful, which he swallowed in one gulp. I was still standing facing his desk, not saying anything. “As if we all didn’t take our orders from the same source…. The bastards. They want to keep their hands clean, those little Wehrmacht shits. They want to leave the dirty work to us.” He raised his head, his face flushing bright red. “The dogs. They want to be able to say, afterward: ‘Oh no, the atrocities, that wasn’t us. That was them, those guys, those SS killers. We had nothing to do with all that. We fought like soldiers, with honor.’ But who the hell captured all these cities we’re cleansing? Whose ass are we protecting when we eliminate partisans and Jews and all the scum? You think they’re complaining? They’re begging us to do it!” He was shouting so much that he was spluttering. “That prick Manstein, that hypocrite, that half-yid who teaches his dog to raise its paw when it hears ‘Heil Hitler,’ and who hangs a sign behind his desk—Ohlendorf told me—that says What would the Führer say about this? Well, then, that’s just it, what would he say, our Führer? What would he say, when AOK Eleven asks its Einsatzgruppe to liquidate all the Jews of Simferopol before Christmas, so the officers can have a judenfrei holiday? And then they spew this garbage about the honor of the Wehrmacht? The swine. Who signed the Kommissarbefehl? Who signed the Jurisdiction order? Who? The Reichsführer maybe?” He paused to catch his breath and down another glassful; he swallowed the wrong way, choked, coughed. “And if things go sour, they’ll put all the blame on us. All of it. They’ll come out all clean, all elegant, waving about this kind of toilet paper”—he had torn the sheet from my hands and was shaking it in the air—“and saying: ‘No, we’re not the ones who killed the Jews, the Commissars, the Gypsies, we can prove it, see, we never agreed, it’s all the fault of the Führer and the SS…’” His voice turned into a whine. “Hell, even if we win they’ll screw us. Because, listen to me, Aue, listen to me carefully”—he was almost whispering, now, his voice was hoarse—“someday all of this will come out. All of it. Too many people know, too many witnesses. And when it does come out, whether we’ve won or lost the war, there’ll be hell to pay. Scapegoats needed. Heads will have to roll. And it will be our heads they’ll serve up to the crowd while all the Prusso-yids like von Manstein, all the von Rundstedts and von Brauchitsches and von Kluges, will return to their comfortable von estates and write their von memoirs, patting each other on the back for having been such decent and honorable von soldiers. And we’ll end up in the trash. They’ll pull another thirtieth of June on us, except this time the suckers will be the SS. The bastards.” He was spluttering all over his papers. “The bastards, the bastards. Our heads on a platter, and them with their little white hands all clean and elegant, well manicured, not one drop of blood. As if not a single one of them had ever signed an execution order. As if not a single one of them had ever stretched out his arm shouting ‘Heil Hitler!’ when people talked to them about killing Jews.” He leaped out of his chair and stood at attention, thrusting out his chest, his arm raised almost upright, and roared: “Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Sieg Heil!” He sat back down hard and began muttering. “The bastards. The honorable little bastards. If only we could shoot them too. Not Reichenau, he’s a muzhik, but the others, all the others.” He was growing more and more incoherent. Finally he fell silent. I took advantage of that quickly to hand him Woytinek’s report and excuse myself. He started shouting again as soon as I got through the door but I didn’t stop.

Finally his replacement arrived. Blobel didn’t drag things out: he gave us a brief farewell speech and took the first train to Kiev. No one, I think, missed him, especially since our new commander, Standartenführer Dr. Erwin Weinmann, stood in positive contrast to his predecessor. He was a young man, just a few years older than I, restrained, with a worried, almost sad face, and genuine National Socialist convictions. Like Dr. Thomas, he was a medical doctor by profession, but he had been working for several years in the Staatspolizei. He immediately made a good impression. “I spent several days in Kiev with Brigadeführer Thomas,” he informed us right away, “and he explained to me the immense difficulties the officers and men of this Kommando have had to face. You should know that it hasn’t been in vain, and that Germany is proud of you. I’m going to spend the next few days familiarizing myself with the Kommando’s work; to that end, I would like to have a frank, free discussion with each of you, individually.”

Weinmann brought us some important news. Von Reichenau had finally been replaced at the head of AOK 6, in the beginning of the year, by a newcomer to the theater of operations, General der Panzertruppe Friedrich Paulus, one of his former chiefs of staff who, since 1940, had been in charge of planning at OKW, and whom he had recommended. But Paulus had already lost his protector. On the eve of Weinmann’s arrival in Kharkov, after his morning run in twenty below, von Reichenau had collapsed, struck down by a heart attack according to some, a stroke according to others; Weinmann had learned about it on the train from an officer from the AOK. As Reichenau was still alive, the Führer had ordered him flown back to Germany; but his plane crashed near Lemberg, and they found him still strapped into his seat, his Feldmarschall baton in his hand, a sad end for a German hero. After some hesitation, Generalfeldmarschall von Bock was appointed in his place; on the very day of his nomination, the Soviets, trying to capitalize on their successes around Moscow, launched an offensive starting in Izyum, south of Kharkov, toward Poltava. It was now thirty degrees below zero; almost no vehicles were circulating, resupply had to be carried out in panje carts, and the Rollbahn was losing more men than the divisions at the front. The Russians had rolled out a formidable new tank, the T-34, invulnerable to the cold and terrifying for the Landsers; fortunately, it couldn’t hold up to our .88s. Paulus transferred AOK 6 from Poltava to Kharkov, which brought some excitement to our city. The Reds were definitely aiming to surround Kharkov, but their northern pincer never budged; the southern branch pushed through our lines and was contained with difficulty near the end of the month, in front of Krasnograd and Paulograd, which left an enormous salient seventy kilometers long wedged into our front line, a dangerous bridgehead this side of the Donets. The partisans, at the rear of our lines, were intensifying their operations; even Kharkov was becoming unsafe: the attacks, despite fierce repression, were multiplying; no doubt the open famine now rampant in the city contributed to it. The Sonderkommando wasn’t spared. One day toward the beginning of February, I had a meeting in an office of the Wehrmacht on the Tereleva Maidan in the center of town. Hanika accompanied me to try to find something to improve our rations, and I left him to his shopping. The discussion was short; I left quickly. At the top of the steps, I paused to breathe in the cold, sharp air, then lit a cigarette. I contemplated the square as I inhaled the first few drags. The sky was luminous, that pure blue of Russian winters that you don’t see anywhere else. On the side, three old Kolkhozniks, sitting on crates, were waiting to sell some meager shriveled vegetables; on the square, at the foot of the Bolshevik monument to the liberation of Kharkov (the 1919 one), half a dozen children, despite the cold, were playing with a tattered rag ball. A few of our Orpos were shuffling about a little farther down. Hanika was standing at the corner, near the Opel, whose driver was letting the engine run. Hanika looked pale, withdrawn; my recent outbursts had shaken him; he was getting on my nerves too. Another child emerged suddenly from a little side street and ran toward the square. He was holding something in his hand. When he reached Hanika he exploded. The detonation blew out the windows of the Opel; I could distinctly hear the glass tinkling on the pavement. The Orpos, panicked, started firing volleys at the children playing. The old women screamed, the ball of rags came apart in the blood. I ran toward Hanika: he was kneeling in the snow and clutching his stomach. The skin of his face, speckled with acne, was terrifyingly pale; before I could reach him his head fell back and his eyes, I saw this, his blue eyes faded into the blue of the sky. The sky erased his eyes. Then he fell on his side. The boy was dead, his arm torn off; on the square, the policemen, shocked, approached the old women who, howling, craddled the limp bodies of the children in their arms. Weinmann seemed more concerned by the blunder of our Orpos than by Hanika’s death: “It’s unacceptable. We’re trying to improve our relations with the local population and we kill their children. They should be court-martialed.” I was skeptical: “That’s going to be difficult, Standartenführer. Their reaction was unfortunate, but understandable. What’s more, we’ve been making them shoot children for months; it would be hard to punish them for the same thing.”—“It’s not the same thing! The children we execute are condemned! These were innocent children.”—“If you will allow me, Standartenführer, the basis on which the condemnations are decided makes such a distinction somewhat arbitrary.” He opened his eyes wide and his nostrils quivered with rage; then he changed his mind and calmed down all of a sudden. “Let’s move on to another matter, Hauptsturmführer. I’ve been wanting to talk with you anyway for several days now. I think you’re very tired. Dr. Sperath thinks you’re on the verge of nervous exhaustion.”—“Excuse me, Standartenführer, but allow me to reject that opinion. I feel fine.” He offered me a cigarette and lit one himself. “Hauptsturmführer, I’m a doctor by training. I too can recognize certain symptoms. You are, as the expression goes, completely fried. You’re not the only one, either: almost all the officers of the Kommando are at the end of their tether. In any case, because of the winter we’re already experiencing a strong decrease in activity and can permit ourselves to function for one or two months with reduced staff. A certain number of officers will be either relieved or sent on a prolonged medical leave. The ones with families will go back to Germany. The others, like you, will go to the Crimea, to one of the sanatoriums of the Wehrmacht. I hear it’s very nice there. You might even be able to go swimming, in a few weeks’ time.” A little smile passed over his narrow face and he held out an envelope to me. “Here are your travel authorizations and your certificates. Everything is in order. You have two months; after that we’ll see. Have a good rest.”

Weinmann’s decision had provoked an irrational surge of hatred and resentment in me; but when I arrived in the Crimea, I understood right away that he had been correct. During the long train journey, I had thought a little; I let my thoughts roam over the vast white expanses. I missed Hanika. The empty room, when I had returned to it to prepare my kit, had brought a lump to my throat; I felt as if I were covered from head to foot in Hanika’s blood, and I changed furiously; all my uniforms seemed unclean to me, and that drove me out of my mind. Once again, I had a vomiting fit; but I didn’t even think of crying. I left as soon as possible, via Dniepropetrovsk to Simferopol. Most of the men on the train were convalescents or men on leave, being sent to recover after the horrors of the front. A military doctor explained to me that in January alone, we had lost the equivalent of twelve divisions to frost and illness. Already the temperature was getting a little warmer, and we were starting to hope that the hardest part was over; but it had been one of the worst winters in memory, not just in Russia—so cold that everywhere in Europe they were burning books, furniture, pianos, even antique ones, just as from one end of the Continent to the other everything that had been the pride and joy of our civilization was burning. The Negroes in their jungle, I said to myself bitterly, must be having a good laugh at us if they’re up on the news. Our mad ambitions, for now, were not bringing the anticipated result, and everywhere suffering was increasing, expanding. Even the Reich was no longer safe: the British were launching huge air raids, especially on the Ruhr and the Rhine; the officers who had their families in those regions were very much affected by them. In my compartment alone, a Hauptmann in the artillery, wounded in the leg in front of Izyum, had lost his two children during the bombing of Wuppertal; they had told him he could go back home, but he had asked to go to the Crimea instead, as he didn’t want to face his wife. “I just couldn’t,” he let out laconically before relapsing into silence.

The military doctor, a rather chubby, almost bald Viennese named Hohenegg, turned out to be a very pleasant travel companion. He was a professor, holder of an important chair in Vienna, who had been named as the Sixth Army’s chief pathologist. Even when he was expressing the most serious opinions, his soft, almost oiled voice seemed to betray a trace of irony. Medicine had given him his philosophical views: we discussed them at some length while the train crossed the steppe beyond Zaporozhie, as empty of life as the high seas. “The advantage of forensic pathology,” he explained to me, “is that after you’ve opened up corpses of all ages and sexes, you have the impression that death loses its horror, is reduced to a physical phenomenon as ordinary and banal as the natural functions of the body. I can manage very calmly to imagine myself on a dissection table, under the hands of my successor, who would grimace slightly as he observed the state of my liver.”—“Ah, but that’s because you have the luck to get them when they’re already dead. It’s a very different thing when, as so often happens here, especially when you work in the SD, you’re present at the step beyond itself.”—“And are even contributing to it.”—“Exactly. Whatever his attitude or his ideology, the spectator can never fully grasp the experience of the deceased.” Hohenegg reflected: “I see what you mean. But this gap exists only for the person who watches. For he alone can see both sides. The man dying will only experience something confused, more or less brief, more or less brutal, but something in any case that will always escape his awareness. Do you know Bossuet?”—“In French, even,” I replied, smiling, in that language. “Excellent. I see that your education was a little broader than that of the average lawyer.” He declaimed the sentences in a rather thick, choppy French: “This final instant, which in one single stroke will erase your whole life, will itself be lost, with all the rest, in that great abyss of nothingness. No trace of what we are will remain on earth: the flesh will change its nature; the body will take on another name; even that of corpse will not long remain. ‘It will become,’ said Tertullian, ‘a strange something that no longer has a name in any language.’”—“That,” I said, “is fine for the dead man, I’ve often thought that way. The problem is only one for the living.”—“Until their own death,” he retorted, winking. I laughed gently and he did too; the other passengers in the compartment, who were discussing girls or sausages, looked at us with surprise.

In Simferopol, the terminus, they loaded us into trucks or ambulances for a convoy to Yalta. Hohenegg, who had come to visit the doctors of AOK 11, stayed in Simferopol; I parted from him regretfully. Our convoy took a mountain road, to the east, via Alushta, since Bakhchisaray was still in the zone of operations of the siege of Sebastopol. I was put up in a sanatorium west of Yalta, high over the road to Livadia, its back to the steep snow-covered mountains overlooking the city, a former royal palace converted into a Kurort for Soviet workers; it had been damaged a bit by the fighting but quickly patched up and repainted. I had a nice little bedroom on the third floor, with a bathroom and a small balcony: the furniture left something to be desired, but at my feet, beyond a few cypress trees, stretched the Black Sea, smooth, gray, calm. I couldn’t get enough of looking at it. Though it was still a little cold, the air was much softer than in the Ukraine, and I could go out to smoke on the balcony; otherwise, lying on the sofa facing the French doors, I spent long tranquil hours reading. I didn’t lack reading material: I had my own books, and the sanatorium too had a library, made up mostly of books abandoned by previous patients, very eclectic, even including, next to the unreadable Myth of the Twentieth Century, some German translations of Chekhov that I discovered with great pleasure. I didn’t have any medical obligations. At my arrival a doctor had examined me and had me describe my symptoms. “It’s nothing,” he concluded after reading Dr. Sperath’s note. “Nervous fatigue. Rest, baths, no excitement, as little alcohol as possible, and beware of Ukrainian girls. It will pass on its own. Have a nice stay.”

A joyful atmosphere reigned in this sanatorium: most of the patients and convalescents were a mix of young subalterns from all branches, whose bawdy humor was sharpened, at night, by the Crimean wine served with the meals and by the scarcity of females. That might have contributed to the surprising freedom of tone during discussions: the most cutting jokes were circulating about the Wehrmacht, about Party dignitaries; one officer, showing me his medal for the winter campaign, asked me ironically, “And what about you in the SS—you haven’t received the Order of the Frozen Meat yet?” The fact that they were in the presence of an officer from the SD didn’t bother these young men at all; they seemed to think it went without saying that I shared their wildest ideas. The most critical of them were the officers from Army Group Center; whereas in the Ukraine, people thought that the transfer south of Guderian’s Second Panzer Army, at the beginning of August, had been a stroke of genius that, by taking the Russians from the rear, had pried open the blocked Southern Front, and had led to the taking of Kiev and, in the end, the advance all the way to the Donets, the men from the Center thought it was a mad idea of the Führer’s, a mistake that some even described as criminal. Without that, they argued vehemently, instead of loitering for two months around Smolensk, we could have taken Moscow in October, the war would have been over or almost over, and the men could have been spared a winter in snow holes, a detail that the gentlemen in OKH of course couldn’t care less about, since who has ever seen a general get his feet frozen? History, since then, has certainly proven them right, as most experts would agree; yet the perspectives weren’t the same then; words like that smacked of defeatism, even insubordination. But we were on vacation, it didn’t matter, I wasn’t offended. What’s more, all this liveliness, so many handsome, cheerful young men made feelings and desires resurge that I hadn’t experienced in many months. And it didn’t seem impossible for me to satisfy them: it all depended on making the right choice. I often took my meals in the company of a young Leutnant of the Waffen-SS named Willi Partenau. Thin, with a fine bearing, his hair almost black, he was recovering from a chest wound received near Rostov. At night, while the others were playing cards or billiards, singing, or drinking at the bar, we sometimes stayed talking, sitting at a table in front of one of the bay windows of the dining room. Partenau came from a Catholic lower-middle-class family in the Rhineland. He had had a difficult childhood. Even before the 1929 crisis, his family was teetering on the brink of proletarianization; his father, an undersized but tyrannical military man, was obsessed with the question of his social status, and swallowed up their meager resources to keep up appearances: they would eat potatoes and cabbage every day, but at school the boys would wear suits with starched collars and polished shoes. Partenau had been raised in strict religiosity; for the slightest mistake, his father forced him to kneel on the cold tile floor and recite prayers; he had soon lost his faith, or rather had replaced it with National Socialism. The Hitlerjugend, then the SS, had finally allowed him to flee this stifling environment. He was still in training during the campaigns in Greece and Yugoslavia, and was disconsolate to have missed them; his joy knew no bounds when he was posted to the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler for the invasion of Russia. One night, he confessed to me that he was horrified by his first experience of the radical methods used by the Wehrmacht and the SS to combat the partisans; but his profound conviction that only a barbarous, completely inhuman enemy could necessitate such extreme measures had in the end been reinforced. “In the SD, you must have seen some atrocious things,” he added; I assured him I had, but preferred not to elaborate. Instead I told him a little about my life, especially my childhood. I had been a fragile child. My sister and I were just a year old when our father left for the war. Milk and food were rare; I grew up thin, pale, nervous. I loved playing in the forest near our house; we lived in Alsace, there were big forests there, I would go out to gaze at insects or wet my feet in the streams. One incident remained clearly in my memory: in a meadow or a field, I found an abandoned puppy, looking forlorn, and my heart was filled with pity for it, I wanted to bring it home; but when I approached to pick it up, the little dog, frightened, ran away. I tried to speak to it gently, to cajole it so it would follow me, but without success. It didn’t run away, it always stayed a few meters away from me, but it didn’t let me approach. Finally I sat down in the grass and burst out crying, broken with pity for this puppy that didn’t want to let me help it. I begged it: “Please, puppy, come with me!” Finally it gave in. My mother was horrified when she saw it yapping in our garden, tied to the fence, and after a long argument convinced me to take it to the SPCA where, I’ve always thought, they must have killed it as soon as I turned my back. But maybe this incident took place after the war and my father’s definitive return, maybe it took place in Kiel, where we had moved after the French reoccupied Alsace. My father, finally back among us, spoke little, and seemed somber, full of bitterness. Thanks to his diplomas, he soon landed a good job in a large company; at home, he often stayed by himself in his library, where, when he wasn’t around, I would sneak in to play with his butterfly collection, some of them as big as a grown-up’s hand; I took them out of their boxes and turned them around on their long needles like a pinwheel, until one day when he surprised me and punished me. Around that time, I began pinching things from our neighbor—no doubt, as I understood later, to attract his attention: I stole toy pistols, flashlights, other toys, which I buried in a hiding place in the back of our garden; even my sister didn’t know; finally the whole thing came out. My mother thought I stole for the pure pleasure of doing evil; my father patiently explained the Law to me, then gave me a spanking. This happened not in Kiel but on the island of Sylt, where we spent our summer vacations. To get there, you took the train that runs along the Hindenburg Dam: at high tide, the tracks are surrounded by water, and from the train you have the impression of traveling on the sea, with the waves rising up to the wheels, beating against the hubs. At night, over my bed, electric trains burst through the starry sky of my dreams.

Very early, it seems to me, I greedily sought the love of everyone I met. This instinct, with adults at least, was generally repaid in kind, since I was both handsome and very intelligent as a boy. But at school, I found myself confronted with cruel, aggressive children, many of whom had lost their fathers in the war, or were beaten and neglected by fathers who had returned from the trenches brutalized and half mad. They avenged themselves, at school, for this lack of love at home by turning viciously against other children who were frailer and more sensitive. They hit me, and I had few friends; in sports, when teams were being formed, no one ever picked me. Then, instead of begging for their affection, I sought their attention. I also tried to impress the teachers, who were fairer than the boys my age; since I was intelligent, this was easy: but then the others called me a teacher’s pet and beat me up even more. Of course, I never mentioned any of this to my father.

After the defeat, when we had settled in Kiel, he had had to leave again—we didn’t really know where or why; from time to time he returned to see us, then he would disappear again; he didn’t settle down with us for good till the end of 1919. In 1921, he fell seriously ill and had to stop working. His convalescence dragged on, and the atmosphere at home grew tense and gloomy. Around the beginning of the summer, still gray and cold as I remember it, his brother came to visit us. This younger brother, cheerful and funny, told wonderful stories about the war and about his travels that made me roar in admiration. My sister didn’t like him so much. A few days later, my father left with him on a trip, to visit our grandfather, whom I had seen only once or twice and whom I scarcely remembered (my mother’s parents, I think, were already dead). Even today I remember this departure: my mother, my sister, and I were lined up in front of the gate to the house, my father was loading his suitcase into the trunk of the car that would take him to the train station: “Goodbye, little ones,” he said with a smile, “don’t worry, I’ll come back soon.” I never saw him again. My twin sister and I were almost eight then. I learned much later that after some time my mother had gotten a letter from my uncle: after the visit to their father, it said, they had had a falling-out, and my father, apparently, had left in a train for Turkey and the Middle East; my uncle didn’t know anything else about his disappearance; his employers, contacted by my mother, didn’t know anything either. I never saw this letter from my uncle; it was my mother who explained it to me one day, and I could never confirm what she said, or locate this brother who nevertheless did exist. I did not tell all of this to Partenau: but I am telling it to you.

I spent a lot of time with Partenau now. Sexually, he left me with an uncertain impression. His rigor and his National Socialist and SS enthusiasm could turn out to be an obstacle; but deep down, I felt, his desire must not have been more oriented than anyone else’s. In high school I had quickly learned that there was no homosexuality, as such; the boys made do with what there was, and in the army, as in prisons, it was certainly the same. Of course, since 1937, the date of my brief arrest for the Tiergarten affair, the official attitude had grown considerably harsher. The SS seemed particularly targeted. The previous autumn, when I arrived in Kharkov, the Führer had signed a decree, “On the Maintenance of Purity Within the SS and the Police,” condemning to death any SS man or police employee who engaged in indecent behavior with another man or even permitted himself to be abused. This decree, out of fear it might give rise to misinterpretation, had not been published, but in the SD we had been informed of it. For my part, I thought it was mostly rhetorical posturing; in actual fact, if you stayed discreet, there were rarely any problems. It all depended on not compromising yourself with a personal enemy; but I didn’t have any personal enemies. Partenau, however, must have been influenced by the hysterical rhetoric of the Schwarzes Korps and other SS publications. But my intuition told me that if one could provide him with the necessary ideological framework, the rest would come on its own.

It wasn’t necessary to be subtle: it was just a question of being methodical. In the afternoons, occasionally, if there was some free time, we would go out and walk about town, strolling through the little streets or along the quays lined with palm trees; then we would go sit in a café and drink a glass of Crimean muscatel, a little sweet to my taste, but pleasant. On the esplanade, we met mostly Germans, sometimes accompanied by girls; as for the men of the region, aside from a few Tatars or Ukrainians wearing the white armband of the Hiwis, we didn’t see any; in January, in fact, the Wehrmacht had evacuated the entire male population, first to transit camps, then to the Nikolayev Generalkommissariat: a radical solution indeed to the problem of partisans, but it must be acknowledged that with all those wounded or convalescent soldiers, they couldn’t take any risks. Before springtime, there wasn’t much in the way of entertainment, aside from the theater, or some movies arranged by the Wehrmacht. Even bacilli fall asleep in Yalta, wrote Chekhov, but this slow boredom suited me. Sometimes several other young officers joined us, and we would go sit on a café terrace overlooking the sea. If we found one—provisions from the requisitioned supplies were ruled by mysterious laws—we’d order a bottle of wine; along with the muscatel, there was a red Portwein, just as sweet but suited to the climate. Talk centered on the local women sadly deprived of husbands, and Partenau didn’t seem indifferent to this. In the midst of bursts of laughter, one of the bolder officers would accost some young women and, talking gibberish, invite them to join us; sometimes they blushed and went on their way, and sometimes they came and sat down; Partenau, then, cheerfully joined in on a conversation made up mainly of gestures, onomatopoeia, and isolated words. This had to be cut short. “Meine Herren, I don’t want to be a spoilsport,” I began on one of these occasions. “But I should warn you of the risks you’re running.” I rapped sharply a few times on the table. “In the SD, we receive and synthesize all the reports on incidents in the rear zones of the Wehrmacht. That gives us an overview of problems that you can’t have. I should tell you that having relations with Soviet, Ukrainian, or Russian women is not only unworthy of a German soldier, but dangerous. I’m not exaggerating. Many of these females are Jews, whose Jewish origins can’t be seen; that by itself is already risking Rassenschande, racial soiling. But there’s something else. Not only the Jewesses but also Slav females are in league with the partisans; we know that they make unscrupulous use of their physical advantages, and our soldiers’ trust, for espionage. You might think you can hold your tongue, but I can tell you that there’s no such thing as a harmless detail, and the work of an intelligence service consists of creating giant mosaics from minuscule elements that are insignificant if taken individually but, when connected to thousands of others, make sense. The Bolsheviks don’t go about it any differently.” My pronouncements seemed to be putting my comrades ill at ease. I continued. “In Kharkov, in Kiev, we had many cases of men and officers who slipped off to a rendezvous and were found horribly mutilated. And then of course there are the diseases. Our health services believe, based on Soviet statistics, that ninety percent of Russian females are afflicted with gonorrhea, and fifty percent with syphilis. Many of our soldiers are already infected; and these men, when they go home on leave, contaminate their wives or their girlfriends; the medical services of the Reich are horrified, and are talking of an epidemic. Such a profanation of the race, if it isn’t violently combated, can lead in the end only to a form of Entdeutschung, a de-Germanizing of our race and our blood.”

My speech had visibly affected Partenau. I didn’t add anything else; it was enough to disturb him a little. The next day, when I was reading in the sanatorium’s beautiful park of cypresses and fruit trees, he came to find me: “Tell me, do you really believe what you were saying yesterday?”—“Of course! It’s nothing but the truth.”—“But then how do you think we should manage? You understand…” He blushed, he was embarrassed but wanted to speak. “You understand,” he went on, “soon we’ll have been here for a year, without going back to Germany, it’s really hard. A man has needs.”—“I understand very well,” I replied in a learned tone. “All the more so since masturbation, according to all the specialists, also involves grave risks. Of course, some people argue it is only a symptom of mental illness, and never the cause; others, however, like the great Sachs, are convinced it’s a pernicious habit that leads to degeneracy.”—“You know your medicine,” Partenau said, impressed.—“I’m not a professional, of course. But I’m interested in it, I’ve read some books.”—“And what are you reading now?” I showed him the cover: “The Symposium. Have you read it?”—“I must confess I haven’t.” I closed it and held it out to him: “Take it. I know it by heart.”

The weather was getting warmer; soon we could go swimming, but the sea was still cold. You could sense spring in the air and everyone impatiently awaited its arrival. I brought Partenau to visit Nicholas II’s summer palace in Livadia, burned out during the fighting, but still imposing with its regular and asymmetrical façades and its beautiful Florentine and Arabic-style courtyards. From there we climbed the Sunny Path that leads, between the trees, to a headland overhanging Oreanda; one has a magnificent view of the coast there, of the tall, still snow-covered mountains dominating the road to Sebastopol and, way down below, of the elegant building made of white Crimean granite we had set out from, still black from the smoke but luminous in the sunlight. The day promised to be magnificent, the walk to the headland had us dripping with sweat and I took off my uniform jacket. Farther away, to the west, you could make out a construction perched on the tall cliffs of a promontory, the Swallow’s Nest, a medieval fantasy thrown up there by a German baron, an oil magnate, not long before the Revolution. I suggested to Partenau that we push on to this tower; he agreed. I started out on a path that ran along the cliffs. Below, the sea calmly beat on the rocks; above our heads, the sun sparkled on the snow of the jagged peaks. A delicious odor of pine and heather scented the air. “You know,” he said suddenly, “I finished the book you lent me.” For some days now we’d been addressing each other with the familiar du. “It was very interesting. Of course, I knew that the Greeks were inverts, but I didn’t realize how much they’d made an ideology of it.”—“It’s something they thought a lot about, for centuries. It goes much further than simple sexual activity. For them, it was a complete way of life and organization, which embraced friendship, education, philosophy, politics, even the arts of war.” I stopped talking; we continued in silence, our jackets thrown over our shoulders. Then Partenau continued: “When I was little, in catechism, they taught me that it was an abomination, a horror. My father talked about it too, he said homosexuals went to hell. I still remember the text by St. Paul he quoted: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. I reread it the other night in the Bible.”—“Yes, but remember what Plato says: On this subject nothing is absolute; the thing is, in and of itself, neither beautiful nor ugly. I’ll tell you what I think: the Christian prejudice, the Christian prohibition, is a Jewish superstition. Paul, whose name was Saul, was a Jewish rabbi, and he couldn’t overcome this prohibition, as he did so many others. It has a concrete origin: the Jews lived surrounded by pagan tribes, and in many of them the priests practiced ritual homosexuality during certain religious ceremonies. It was very common. Herodotus relates similar things on the subject of the Scythians, who peopled this region and later the whole Ukrainian steppe. He speaks of the Enarees, descendants of the Scythians who supposedly pillaged the temple of Eskalon and whom the goddess struck with a female sickness. According to him they were soothsayers who behaved like women; thus he calls them androgynoi, men-women who had their periods every month. Obviously, he is describing shamanic rituals that he misunderstood. I’ve heard it said that you can still see such things in Naples, when during pagan ceremonies a young man gives birth to a doll. Note too that the Scythians are the ancestors of the Goths, who lived here, in the Crimea, before they migrated west. Whatever the Reichsführer may say, there are strong reasons to think that they too were familiar with homosexual practices before they were corrupted by Judaicized priests.”—“I didn’t know that. But still, our Weltanschauung condemns homosexuality. In the Hitlerjugend they gave us a lot of speeches about it, and in the SS they teach us that it’s a crime against the Volksgemeinschaft, the community of the people.”—“I believe that what you’re talking about is an example of poorly assimilated National Socialism, which serves to hide other interests. I know the Reichsführer’s views on the subject very well; but the Reichsführer, like you, comes from a very repressive Catholic background; and despite all the force of his National Socialist ideology, he couldn’t get rid of certain Catholic prejudices, so he confuses things that shouldn’t be confused. And when I say ‘Catholic’ you understand very well that I mean ‘Jewish,’ Jewish ideology. There’s nothing in our Weltanschauung, carefully considered, that could object to a masculine eros. Quite the contrary, and I can demonstrate it to you. You’ll notice that the Führer himself has never really said anything about the question.”—“Still, after the thirtieth of June, he violently condemned Röhm and the others for their perverse practices.”—“For our nice German middle class frightened by everything, it was a strong argument, and the Führer knew it. But what you might not know is that before the thirtieth of June, the Führer had always defended Röhm’s behavior; within the Party there were a lot of critics, but the Führer refused to listen to them; he told the malicious gossips that the SA is not an institute for the moral education of genteel young ladies, but a formation of seasoned fighters.” Partenau burst out laughing. “After the thirtieth of June,” I went on, “when it turned out that many of Röhm’s accomplices, like Heines, were also his lovers, the Führer was afraid that the homosexuals might form a State within a State, a secret organization, like the Jews, which would pursue its own interests and not the interests of the Volk, an ‘Order of the Third Sex,’ like our Black Order. That’s what was behind the denunciations. But it’s a political problem, not an ideological one. From a truly National Socialist point of view, you could on the contrary regard brotherly love as the real cement of a warlike, creative Volksgemeinschaft. Plato thought the same thing, in his way. You remember Pausanias’s speech, where he criticizes the other nations, such as the Jews, that reject masculine eros: Among the barbarians, that is deemed shameful, along with the love of knowledge and physical exercise…. Thus, where it is deemed shameful to yield to a lover, custom is based on the moral defect of its authors: a wish for domination among masters, and cowardliness among subjects. I have a French friend who regards Plato as the first authentically fascist author.”—“Yes, but still! Homosexuals are effeminate, men-women as you said. How do you think a State could tolerate men that are unfit to be soldiers?”—“You’re wrong. It’s a false notion that contrasts the virile soldier with the effeminate invert. That type of man does exist, of course, but he’s a modern product of the corruption and degeneration of our cities, Jews or Jewified men still caught in the clutches of priests or ministers. Historically, the best soldiers, the elite soldiers, have always loved other men. They kept women, to watch over their household and give them children, but reserved all their emotions for their comrades. Look at Alexander! And Frederick the Great, even if no one wants to acknowledge it, was the same. The Greeks even drew a military principle from it: in Thebes, they created the Sacred Band, an army of three hundred men that was the most famous of its time. The men fought as couples, each man with his lover; when the lover grew old and retired, his beloved became the lover of a younger man. Thus, mutually, they stimulated their courage to the point of becoming invincible; neither of them dared turn his back and flee in the presence of his lover; in battle, they pushed each other to excel. They were killed to the last man in Chaeronea, by Philip’s Macedonians: a sublime example for our Waffen-SS. You can find a similar phenomenon in our Freikorps; any honest veteran will acknowledge it. You see, you have to consider it from an intellectual standpoint. It’s obvious that only man is truly creative: woman gives life, she brings up children and nourishes them, but she doesn’t create anything new. Blüher, a philosopher who was very close in his day to the men of the Freikorps, and who even fought alongside them, showed that intramasculine eros, by stimulating men to rival each other in courage, virtue, and morality, contributes both to war and to the formation of States, which are only an extended version of masculine societies like the army. Thus it’s a question of a superior form of development, for intellectually evolved men. A woman’s embrace is good for the masses, the herd, but not for leaders. You remember Phaedrus’s speech: As we see clearly, the beloved is most ashamed in front of his lovers, when he is surprised doing something shameful. If there were a way to form an army, or a city, with lovers and their beloveds, there could be no better government for them than rejecting everything that is ugly, and rivaling each other in the way of honor. And if such lovers fought elbow to elbow, even if they were only a handful, verily they could conquer the entire world. That is certainly the text that inspired the Thebans.”—“This Blüher you talked about, what became of him?”—“He’s still alive, I think. During the Kampfzeit, the ‘time of struggle,’ he was very widely read in Germany and, despite his monarchist convictions, was much respected by certain rightist circles, including National Socialists. Afterward I think he was too closely identified with Röhm, and since 1934 he has been banned from publication. But someday they’ll lift that ban. There’s one other thing I’d like to tell you: even today, National Socialism makes too many concessions to the Churches. Everyone is aware of this, and the Führer is troubled by it, but in wartime he cannot allow himself to oppose them openly. The two Churches have too much sway over the minds of the middle class, and we’re forced to tolerate them. That won’t last forever: after the war, we’ll be able once again to turn against the internal enemy and break this stranglehold, this moral asphyxia. When Germany is purified of its Jews, it will have to be purified of their pernicious ideas too. Then you’ll see that many things will appear in a different light.” I stopped speaking; Partenau didn’t say anything. The path plunged along the rocks to the sea; then we walked in silence alongside a narrow empty beach. “Do you want to go swimming?” I suggested.—“It must be freezing.”—“It’s cold; but the Russians go swimming in winter. On the Baltic they do it too. It gets your blood flowing.” We stripped naked and I ran into the sea; Partenau followed me, shouting; for a few instants the cold water bit into my skin, we shouted and laughed and wrestled with each other, staggering about in the waves, before running back out just as quickly. I lay down on my jacket, on my stomach; Partenau stretched out next to me. I was still wet but my body was warm, I felt the drops and the pale sun on my skin. For a long while I voluptuously resisted the desire to look at Partenau, then I turned to him: his white body was gleaming with seawater, but his face was red, speckled beneath the skin. He kept his eyes closed. As we were getting dressed, he looked at my penis: “You’re circumcised?” he exclaimed with surprise, blushing. “I’m sorry.”—“Oh, it’s nothing. A teenage infection, it happens quite often.” The Swallow’s Nest was still two kilometers away, so we had to climb back up the cliffs; on top, on the terrace behind the crenellated tower, there was a little bar, empty of customers, perched over the sea; the building was closed, but they had some Portwein and an immense view of the coast and the mountains and Yalta nestled in back of the bay, white and vague. We had a few drinks, speaking little. Partenau was pale now; he was still winded from the climb and seemed withdrawn into himself. Then a truck from the Wehrmacht brought us back to Yalta. This little game lasted a few more days; but finally it ended as I wanted it to. It hadn’t been so complicated in the end. Partenau’s solid body concealed few surprises; he came with his mouth wide open, a black hole; and his skin had a sweetish, vaguely nauseating smell, which wildly excited me. How to describe these sensations to someone who has never experienced them? In the beginning, when it enters, it can be difficult, especially if it’s a little dry. But once inside, oh how nice it is, you can’t imagine. Your back arches and it’s like a blue, luminous stream of molten lead filling your pelvis and rising slowly up your spine to seize your head and erase it. This remarkable effect might be due to the contact of the penetrating organ with the prostate, the poor man’s clitoris, which, in the one penetrated, sits just against the rectum, whereas in the woman, if my notions of anatomy are correct, it’s separated from it by a part of the reproductive apparatus, which would explain why women, in general, seem to have so little taste for sodomy, or else just as an intellectual pleasure. For men, it’s different; and I’ve often told myself that the prostate and war are God’s two gifts to man to compensate him for not being a woman.

I had not always liked boys, though. When I was young, still a child, as I had told Thomas, I had loved a girl. But I hadn’t told Thomas everything. Like Tristan and Isolde, it had begun on a boat. A few months before, in Kiel, my mother had met a Frenchman named Moreau. My father must have been gone for three years, I think. This Moreau owned a small company in the South of France and was traveling in Germany on business. I don’t know what went on between them, but some time afterward he returned and asked my mother to come live with him. She consented. When she spoke to us about it, she presented the thing to us skillfully, praising the fine weather, the sea, the plentiful food. This latter point was particularly attractive: Germany was just emerging from the great inflation, and even if we were too small to have understood much about it, we had suffered from it. So my sister and I replied: Fine, but what will we do when Papa comes back? “Well, he’ll write to us and we’ll return.”—“Promise?”—“I promise.”

Moreau lived in a large family house, a little old-fashioned and full of hiding places, in Antibes, near the sea. The rich food was soaked in olive oil, and the bright warm April sun, which in Kiel we saw only in July, delighted us right away. Moreau, who, despite his coarseness, was far from being a stupid man, made special efforts to win if not our affection then at least our acceptance. That same summer he rented a large sailboat from an acquaintance and took us on a cruise to the Îles des Lérins and even farther, up to Fréjus. At first I got seasick, but that passed quickly; she—the one I’m talking about—she didn’t get seasick. We settled down together, in the bow of the boat, and we looked at the waves breaking into whitecaps, and then we looked at each other, and through this look, fired by the bitterness of our childhood and the all-consuming roar of the sea, something happened, something irremediable: love, bittersweet, until death. But at the time it was still just a look.

It didn’t stay that way for long. It wasn’t right away but maybe a year later that we discovered those things; then a boundless pleasure filled our childhood. And then one day, as I said, we were caught. There were endless scenes, my mother called me a pig and a degenerate, Moreau cried, and it was the end of all that is beautiful. A few weeks later, when school began, they sent us to Catholic boarding schools, hundreds of kilometers away from each other, and so, vom Himmel durch die Welt zur Hölle, began a nightmare that lasted many years and that, in a way, still continues. Frustrated, bitter priests, informed of my sins, forced me to spend hours on my knees on the ice-cold flagstones of the chapel, and let me take nothing but cold showers. Poor Partenau! I too have known the Church, and worse still. Yet my father was a Protestant, and I already despised the Catholics; under this treatment, the few remnants of my naïve child’s faith disintegrated, and rather than repentance, I learned hatred.

Everything in that school was deformed and perverted. At night, the older boys came and sat down on the edge of my bed and put their hands between my legs until I slapped them; then they laughed, calmly got up, and left; but in the showers, after gym, they slipped up against me and quickly rubbed their things on my rear end. The priests also sometimes invited boys into their offices to hear their confessions, then, with promises of gifts or through intimidation, forced them to commit criminal acts. It was hardly surprising that the unhappy Pierre R. tried to kill himself. I was disgusted, I felt as if I were covered in mud. I didn’t have anyone to appeal to: my father would never have allowed such things, but I had no idea where my father was.

Since I refused to submit to their hateful desires, the older boys treated me as viciously as the reverend fathers. They beat me up at the slightest pretext, forced me to serve them, to shine their shoes, to brush their suits. One night I opened my eyes: three of them were standing next to my bed, rubbing themselves over my face; before I could react, their horrible stuff blinded me. There was only one way to escape this kind of situation, the classic way—to choose a protector. For that the school had developed a precise ritual. The younger boy was called the shot; the older boy was supposed to make advances, which could be rejected right away; otherwise, he had the right to make his case. But I wasn’t ready yet: I preferred to suffer, and dream of my lost love. Then an odd incident made me change my mind. The boy in the bunk next to mine, Pierre S., was my age. One night his voice woke me up. He wasn’t moaning: on the contrary, he was speaking loudly and clearly, but to all appearances he was asleep. I myself was only half awake, but though I don’t remember his words exactly, the horror they filled me with is still keen. It was something like: “No, no more, that’s enough,” or else: “Please, that’s too far, just half.” Thinking about it, the meaning of these words is ambiguous; but in the middle of the night my interpretation didn’t seem doubtful at all. And I was frozen, overcome by this great fear; I curled up in the middle of my bed, trying not to hear. Even then, the violence of my terror, the quickness with which it had filled me, surprised me. These words, as I came to understand in the next few days, which said openly things that were hidden and unnamable, must have found their hidden counterparts deep down within me, and these, once awakened, raised their sinister heads and opened their shining eyes. Little by little, I came to tell myself this: If I can’t have her, then what possible difference can any of this make? One day a boy confronted me on the staircase: “I saw you during gym,” he said, “I was underneath you, on the hurdle, your shorts were wide open.” He was an athletic boy about seventeen years old with disheveled hair, strong enough to intimidate the others. “All right,” I replied, before running down the steps. After that I didn’t have any more problems. This boy, whose name was André N., gave me little gifts and from time to time took me into the bathroom stalls. A poignant smell of fresh skin and sweat emanated from his body, sometimes mingled with slight hints of shit, as if he hadn’t wiped himself properly. The stalls stank of urine and disinfectant, they were always dirty, and even today the smell of men and sperm reminds me of the odor of carbolic acid and urine, along with dirty porcelain, flaking paint, rust, and broken locks. In the beginning, he didn’t do anything except touch me, or else I took him in my mouth. Then he wanted more. I was familiar with that already, I had already done it with her, after her periods had started; and it had given her pleasure, why couldn’t it give me pleasure too? And also, I reasoned, it brought me even closer to her; in that way, I would feel almost everything she felt, when she touched me, kissed me, licked me, then offered me her thin, narrow buttocks. It hurt me, it must have hurt her too, and then I waited, and when I came, I imagined that it was she who was coming, a blinding, heartrending orgasm, I almost managed to forget how my coming was a poor, limited thing next to hers, her oceanic pleasure of a woman already.

Afterward it became a habit. When I looked at girls, trying to imagine myself taking their milk-white breasts in my mouth and then rubbing my penis in their mucous membrane, I said to myself: What’s the point? It’s not her and it never will be her. Better then for me to be her and all the others, me. I didn’t love those others, I already explained that to you at the outset. My mouth, my hands, my penis, my ass desired them, intensely sometimes, breathlessly, but from them I only wanted their hands, their penises, and their mouths. That doesn’t mean I didn’t feel anything. When I contemplated Partenau’s beautiful naked body, already so cruelly wounded, a secret anguish filled me. When I ran my fingers over his breast, grazing the nipple and then his scar, I imagined this breast once again crushed under metal; when I kissed his lips, I saw his jaw torn off by burning jagged shrapnel; and when I went down between his legs, plunging into the luxuriant forest of his genitals, I knew that somewhere a landmine was lurking, waiting to tear them to shreds. His powerful arms, his lean thighs were just as vulnerable, no part of his beloved body was safe from harm. Next month, in a week, tomorrow, an hour from now, all this beautiful, soft flesh could in an instant be transformed into pulp, into a bloody, charred mass of meat, and his green eyes be extinguished forever. Sometimes I almost cried thinking about it. But when he was healed, and had finally left, I didn’t feel any sadness. He was killed in the end, the following year, at Kursk.

Alone, I read, took walks. In the sanatorium garden, the apple trees were in flower, the bougainvilleas, wisteria, lilacs, laburnum, were all in bloom and assailed the air with a riot of violent, heavy, contrasting odors. I also went every day to stroll about in the botanical gardens, east of Yalta. The different sections rose in tiers above the sea, with grand views over the blue and then the gray of the horizon, and always to the back the omnipresent snow-covered range of the Yaila Mountains. In the arboretum, signs guided the visitor to a pistachio tree over a thousand years old and a yew tree that might have been five hundred; higher up, in the Verkhniy Park, the rose garden displayed two thousand species that were just opening up but were already humming with bees, like the lavender of my childhood; in Primorsky Park there were subtropical plants in glass houses, hardly damaged at all, and I would sit facing the sea to read, at rest. One day, returning through town, I visited Chekhov’s house, a comfortable little white dacha turned into a museum by the Soviets; the staff, judging from the signs on the walls, seemed especially proud of the living room piano, on which Rachmaninoff and Chaliapin had played; but for my part, I was stunned by the caretaker of the place, Masha, the actual sister, now an octogenarian, of Chekhov, who stayed seated on a simple wooden chair in the entryway, motionless, silent, her hands flat on her thighs. Her life, I knew, had been broken by the impossible, just like mine. Was she still dreaming, there in front of me, of the one who should have been standing at her side, Pharaoh, her dead brother and husband?

One evening near the end of my leave, I went to the Kasino in Yalta, set up in a sort of slightly outmoded, rather pleasant rococo palace. In the large stairway leading to the main hall, I ran into an SS-Oberführer whom I knew well. I stepped aside and stood at attention to salute him, and he returned my salute absentmindedly; but two steps farther down he stopped, turned around suddenly, and his face lit up: “Dr. Aue! I didn’t recognize you.” It was Otto Ohlendorf, my Amtschef in Berlin, who now commanded Einsatzgruppe D. He nimbly climbed back up the steps and shook my hand, congratulating me on my promotion. “What a surprise! What are you doing here?” I briefly explained my story. “Oh, you were with Blobel! I pity you. I don’t understand how they can keep mentally ill men like that in the SS, even less entrust them with a command.”—“Whatever the case,” I replied, “Standartenführer Weinmann seemed like a serious man.”—“I don’t know him much. He’s an employee of the Staatspolizei, isn’t he?” He contemplated me for an instant and then abruptly suggested: “Why don’t you stay with me? I need an adjunct for my Leiter III, in the Gruppenstab. My old one got typhus and was sent home. I know Dr. Thomas well, he won’t refuse your transfer.” The offer caught me by surprise: “Do I have to give you an answer right away?”—“No. Actually, yes!”—“All right, then, if Brigadeführer Thomas gives his consent, I accept.” He smiled and shook my hand again. “Excellent, excellent. Now I have to run. Come see me tomorrow in Simferopol, we’ll arrange everything and I’ll explain the details to you. You won’t have any trouble finding us, we’re next to the AOK, just ask. Good night!” He ran down the steps, waving, and disappeared. I headed for the bar and ordered a Cognac. I liked Ohlendorf enormously, and always took keen pleasure in our conversations; a chance to work with him again was more than I could have hoped for. He was a remarkably intelligent, penetrating man, definitely one of the best minds of National Socialism, and one of the most uncompromising; his attitude made him a lot of enemies, but for me he was an inspiration. The lecture he had given in Kiel, the first time I met him, had dazzled me. Speaking eloquently from a few scattered notes, in a clear, well-modulated voice, which marked each point forcefully and precisely, he had begun with a vigorous criticism of Italian fascism, which, according to him, was guilty of deifying the State without recognizing human communities, whereas National Socialism was based on community, the Volksgemeinschaft. Worse, Mussolini had systematically suppressed all institutional constraints on the men in power. That led directly to a totalitarian version of State control, where neither power nor its abuses knew the slightest limit. In principle, National Socialism was based on the reality of the value of the life of the human individual and of the Volk as a whole; thus, the State was subordinate to the requirements of the Volk. Under fascism, people had no value in themselves, they were objects of the State, and the only dominant reality was the State itself. Nevertheless, certain elements within the Party wanted to introduce fascism into National Socialism. Since the Seizure of Power, National Socialism, in certain sectors, had deviated, and was falling back on old methods to overcome temporary problems. These foreign tendencies were especially strong in the agricultural economy, and also in heavy industry, which was National Socialist in name only and which was profiting from the uncontrolled overspending of the State to expand beyond all measure. The arrogance and megalomania that reigned in certain sectors of the Party only aggravated the situation. The other mortal danger for National Socialism was what Ohlendorf called its Bolshevist deviation, mainly the collectivist tendencies of the DAF, the Labor Front. Ley was constantly denigrating the middle classes; he wanted to destroy small-and medium-size businesses, which formed the real social basis of the German economy. The fundamental and decisive measure of political economy should be Man; economics—and in this, one could follow Marx’s analyses completely—was the most important factor in the fate of mankind. It was true that a National Socialist economic order did not yet exist. But National Socialist policies in all sectors—economic, social, or constitutional—should always keep in mind that their object was man and the Volk. The collectivist tendencies in economic and social policies, like the absolutist tendencies in constitutional policies, deviated from this line. As the wellspring of National Socialism, we students, the future elite of the Party, should always remain faithful to its essential spirit, and let this spirit guide each of our actions and decisions.

It was the most incisive critique of the state of things in modern Germany that I had ever heard. Ohlendorf, a man scarcely older than I, had obviously meditated for a long time on these questions and had based his conclusions on profound and rigorous analyses. What’s more, I later learned, when he was a student in Kiel, in 1934, he had been arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo for his virulent denunciations of the prostitution of National Socialism; this experience had no doubt contributed to inclining him toward the security services. He had a high opinion of his work; he saw it as an essential part of the implementation of National Socialism. After the lecture, when he had suggested that I collaborate with him as a V-mann, I had the misfortune, when he described the tasks, of blurting out stupidly: “But that’s a snitch’s job!” Ohlendorf had reacted dryly: “No, Herr Aue, it’s not the job of an informer. We’re not asking you to squeal, we couldn’t care less if your cleaning lady tells an anti-Party joke. But the joke interests us, since it reveals the mood of the Volk. The Gestapo has perfectly competent services to take care of the enemies of the State, but that’s not the jurisdiction of the Sicherheitsdienst, which is essentially an organ of information.” In Berlin, after I arrived, I had little by little attached myself to him, thanks especially to the intervention of my professor, Höhn, with whom he had stayed in touch after Höhn had left the SD. We saw each other from time to time over coffee; he invited me to his house to explain the Party’s latest unhealthy tendencies, and his ideas for correcting and fighting them. At that time he wasn’t working in the SD full time, he was also conducting research at the University of Kiel and later on became an important figure in the Reichsgruppe Handel, the Organization of German Commerce. When I finally entered the SD, he acted, as did Dr. Best, a little like my protector. But his ever-worsening conflict with Heydrich, and his difficult relations with the Reichsführer, had weakened his position, which didn’t prevent him from being appointed Amtschef III—head of the Sicherheitsdienst—during the formation of the RSHA. In Pretzsch, there were a lot of rumors about the reasons for his departure for Russia; they said he had refused the position several times, until Heydrich, supported by the Reichsführer, forced him to accept it in order to shove his nose in the mud.

The next morning, I took a military shuttle and went up to Simferopol. Ohlendorf welcomed me with his usual politeness, which perhaps lacked warmth, but was suave and pleasant. “I forgot to ask you yesterday how Frau Ohlendorf is doing?”—“Käthe? Fine, thanks. Of course she misses me, but Krieg ist Krieg.” An orderly served us some excellent coffee and Ohlendorf launched into a quick presentation. “You’ll find that the work will be very interesting to you. You won’t have to worry about executive measures, I leave all that to the Kommandos; in any case, the Crimea is already nearly judenrein, and we’ve almost finished with the Gypsies too.”—“All the Gypsies?” I interrupted, surprised. “In the Ukraine, we’re not so systematic.”—“For me,” he replied, “they’re just as dangerous as the Jews, if not more so. In every war, the Gypsies act as spies, or as agents to communicate through the lines. Just read the narratives by Ricarda Huch or Schiller on the Thirty Years’ War.” He paused. “At first, you’ll mostly have to deal with research. We’re going to advance into the Caucasus in the spring—that’s a secret that I recommend you keep to yourself—and since it’s still a mostly unknown region, I’d like to gather some information for the Gruppenstab and the Kommandos, especially about the different ethnic minorities and their relationships among themselves and with the Soviet government. In principle, the same system of occupation will be applied as in the Ukraine; we’ll form a new Reichskommissariat, but of course the SP and the SD have to put their two cents in, and the better backed up those two cents are, the more chances they’ll have of being listened to. Your immediate superior will be Sturmbannführer Dr. Seibert, who is also the Group’s Chief of Staff. Come with me, I’ll introduce you to him, and to Hauptsturmführer Ulrich, who will take care of your transfer.”

I knew Seibert vaguely; in Berlin, he headed the SD Department D (Economics). He was a serious man, sincere, cordial, an excellent economist from the University of Göttingen, who seemed as out of place here as Ohlendorf. The premature loss of his hair had accelerated since his departure; but neither his broad bare forehead nor his preoccupied air nor the old dueling scar that gashed his chin managed to make him lose a kind of adolescent, perpetually dreamy look. He welcomed me kindly, introduced me to his other colleagues, and then, when Ohlendorf had left us, took me to the office of Ulrich, who seemed to me a fussy little bureaucrat. “The Oberführer has a somewhat loose vision of transfer procedures,” he informed me sourly. “Normally, you have to send a request to Berlin, then wait for the reply. You can’t just pick people off the street like that.”—“The Oberführer didn’t find me in the street, he found me in a Kasino,” I pointed out. He took off his glasses and looked at me, squinting: “Tell me, Hauptsturmführer, are you trying to be funny?”—“Not at all. If you really think it isn’t possible, I’ll tell the Oberführer and return to my Kommando.”—“No, no, no,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It’s complicated, that’s all. It will make more paperwork for me. However that may be, the Oberführer has already sent a letter about you to Brigadeführer Thomas. When he receives a reply, if it’s positive, I’ll refer to Berlin. It will take time. Go back to Yalta, then, and then come see me at the end of your leave.”

Dr. Thomas quickly gave his assent. While we waited for Berlin to endorse the transfer, I was “temporarily detached” from Sonderkommando 4a to the Einsatzgruppe D. I didn’t even have to return to Kharkov; Strehlke forwarded to me the few things I had left there. I was quartered in Simferopol in a pleasant pre-Revolutionary middle-class house, emptied of its occupants, on Chekhov Street, a few hundred meters from the Gruppenstab. I dove with pleasure into my Caucasian studies, beginning with a series of books, historical works, traveler’s accounts, anthropological treatises, most of them unfortunately dating back to before the Revolution. This is not the place to expand on the peculiarities of that fascinating region: the interested reader should refer to the libraries or, if he likes, to the archives of the Federal Republic, where he might find, with persistence and a little luck, my original reports, signed by Ohlendorf or Seibert, but identifiable thanks to the dictation sign M.A. We knew very little about present conditions in the Soviet Caucasus. A few Western travelers had still been able to go there in the twenties; since then, even the information provided by the Auswärtiges Amt, our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was pretty scant. To find facts, you had to dig deep. The Gruppenstab had a few copies of a German scientific journal called Caucasica: most of the articles dealt with linguistics, in an extremely technical way, but you could also glean quite a few things from them; Amt VII, in Berlin, had ordered the complete collection. There was also copious Soviet scientific literature, but it had never been translated and was only partly available; I asked a Dolmetscher who wasn’t a complete idiot to read the works available and provide me with extracts and synopses. In terms of intelligence, we had abundant information about the oil industry, the infrastructure, communications, and manufacturing; on the subject of ethnic or political relationships, on the other hand, our files were almost empty. A certain Sturmbannführer Kurreck, from Amt VI, had joined the Group to start up a Sonderkommando Zeppelin, a project of Schellenberg’s: he was recruiting “anti-Bolshevist activists” from the Stalags and the Oflags, often from ethnic minorities, to send them behind the Russian lines for espionage or sabotage. But the program was just getting started and hadn’t yielded anything yet. Ohlendorf sent me to consult the Abwehr. His relations with the AOK, very tense at the beginning of the campaign, had gotten noticeably better ever since the arrival of von Manstein as the replacement for General von Schobert, killed in September in a plane accident. Yet he still couldn’t manage to get along with the Chief of Staff, Oberst Wöhler, who tended to want to treat the Kommandos as units of the Secret Military Police, and refused to call Ohlendorf by his rank, a serious insult. But working relations with the Ic/AO, Major Eisler, were good, and with the CI officer, Major Riesen, excellent, especially since the Einsatzgruppe began actively participating in the anti-partisan struggle. So I went to see Eisler who directed me to one of his specialists, Leutnant Dr. Voss. Voss, an affable man about my age, wasn’t a genuine officer but rather a university researcher seconded to the Abwehr for the duration of the campaign. He came from the University of Berlin, like me; he was neither an anthropologist nor an ethnologist, but a linguist, a profession that, as I would soon find out, could quickly go beyond the narrow problems of phonetics, morphology, or syntax to generate its own Weltanschauung. Voss received me in a little office where he was reading, his feet on a table covered with piled-up books and scattered sheets of paper. When he saw me knock on his open door, without even saluting me (I was his hierarchical superior and he should at least have stood up), he asked me: “Do you want some tea? I have real tea.” Without waiting for a reply he called out: “Hans! Hans!” Then he grumbled: “Oh, where has he gone?” put down his book, got up, went past me and disappeared into the hallway. He reappeared an instant later: “It’s fine. The water’s heating.” Then he said: “But don’t stay standing there! Come in.” Voss had a delicate, narrow face and animated eyes; with his rebellious blond hair, shaved on the sides, he looked like a teenager just out of high school. But his uniform was well tailored, and he wore it with elegance and assurance. “Hello! What brings you here?” I explained the object of my studies. “So the SD is interested in the Caucasus. Why? Are we planning on invading the Caucasus?” At my crestfallen demeanor, he burst out laughing. “Don’t make such a face! Of course I know. In fact, I’m here only for that. I’m a specialist in Indo-Germanic and Indo-Iranian languages, with a subspecialization in Caucasian languages. So everything of interest to me is over there; here I’m just treading water. I learned Tatar, but it’s not of great interest. Fortunately, I found some good scientific works in the library. As our advance progresses I have to gather a complete scientific collection and send it to Berlin.” He burst out laughing. “If we’d remained at peace with Stalin, we could have just ordered them. It would have been pretty expensive, but certainly less than an invasion.” An orderly brought some hot water and Voss took some tea out of a drawer. “Sugar? I can’t offer you any milk, unfortunately.”—“No, thanks.” He prepared two cups, handed me one, and fell back into his chair, one leg raised against his chest. The pile of books partly masked his face and I shifted. “What should I tell you, then?”—“Everything.”—“Everything! You have some time, then.” I smiled: “Yes. I have time.”—“Excellent. So let’s begin with the languages, since I’m a linguist. You should know that the Arabs, in the tenth century, called the Caucasus the Mountain of Languages. It’s just that. A unique phenomenon. No one really agrees on the exact number, since they’re still arguing about certain dialects, especially in Dagestan, but it’s around fifty. If you reason in terms of groups or families of languages, first you have the Indo-Iranian languages: Armenian, of course, a magnificent language; Ossetian, which particularly interests me, and Tat. Of course I’m not counting Russian. Then there are the Turkic languages, which are distributed around the perimeter of the mountains: Karachai, Balkar, Nogai, and Kumyk Turkish to the north, then Azeri and the Meskhetian dialect in the south. Azeri is the language that most resembles the one they speak in Turkey, but it has kept all the old Persian words that Kemal Atatürk purified out of so-called modern Turkish. All these peoples, of course, are leftovers from the Turco-Mongolian hordes that invaded the region in the thirteenth century, or else the remnants of subsequent migrations. And the Nogai Khans reigned for a very long time over the Crimea. You saw their palace in Bakhchisaray?”—“Unfortunately not. It’s in the frontline zone.”—“That’s true. I have a permit, though. The troglodyte complexes are extraordinary too.” He drank a little tea. “Where were we? Ah, yes. You then have by far the most interesting family, which is the Caucasian, or Ibero-Caucasian, family. I’ll stop you right away: Kartvelian, that is Georgian, has no connection to Basque. That was an idea of Humboldt’s, may his great soul rest in peace, and taken up since then, but wrongly. The term Ibero simply refers to the South Caucasian group. What’s more, we’re not even sure that these languages have any connection to each other. We think so—it’s the basic postulate of Soviet linguists—but it’s impossible to demonstrate genetically. At the very most we can outline subfamilies that form genetically related units. For the South Caucasian, that is, Kartvelian, Svan, Mingrelian, and Laz, it’s almost certain. Likewise for Northwest Caucasian: despite the”—he emitted a sort of strange hissing whistle—“of the Abkhaz dialects that are a little perplexing, it’s mainly a question, together with Abaza, Adyghe, and Kabardo-Cherkess, along with Ubykh, which is almost extinct and can still be found only among a few speakers in Anatolia, of a single language with strong dialectal variants. The same goes for Vainakh, which has several forms, of which the main ones are Chechen and Ingush. On the other hand, in Dagestan, it’s still very confusing. We’ve distinguished a few major groups like Avar and the Andi, the Dido or Tsez, the Lak, and the Lesghian languages, but some researchers think that the Vainakh languages are related to them, and others not; and within the subgroups there are major controversies, for instance on the relationship between Kubachi and Dargva; or else on the genetic affiliation of Khynalug, which some prefer to regard as a language-isolate, along with Archi.” I didn’t understand much of this, but I marveled as I listened to him summarizing his material. And his tea was very good. Finally I asked: “Excuse me, but do you know all these languages?” He burst out laughing: “You’ve got to be joking! Can’t you see how old I am? And also, without fieldwork, you can’t do anything. No, I have an adequate theoretical knowledge of Kartvelian, and I’ve studied elements of the other languages, especially of the Northwest Caucasian family.”—“And you know how many languages altogether?” He laughed again. “Speaking a language isn’t the same thing as knowing how to read and write it; and having a precise knowledge of its phonology or its morphology is another thing entirely. To go back to the Northwest Caucasian or Adyghe languages, I’ve done some work on the consonantic systems—but much less on the vowels—and I have a general idea of the grammar. But I’d be incapable of talking with a native speaker. Now, if you consider that in everyday language you rarely use more than five hundred words and a pretty basic grammar, I can probably assimilate pretty much any language in ten or fifteen days. After that, each language has its own difficulties and problems that you have to work through if you want to master it. You could say, if you like, that language as a scientific subject is quite a different thing, in its approach, from language as a tool of communication. A four-year-old Abkhaz kid will be capable of phenomenally complex articulations that I could never reproduce correctly, but I, on the other hand, can then break down and describe, for instance, a plain or labialized alveolo-palatal series, which will mean absolutely nothing to the boy, who has his whole language in his head but can never analyze it.” He thought for a minute. “For example, I once took a look at the consonantic system of a southern Chadian language, but it was just to compare it to that of Ubykh. Ubykh is a fascinating language. They were an Adyghe tribe, or Circassians, as they say in Europe, who were completely driven out of the Caucasus by the Russians, in 1864. The survivors settled in the Ottoman Empire, but mostly lost their language, which was replaced by Turkish or other Circassian dialects. The first partial description of it was made by a German, Adolf Dirr. He was a great pioneer in the description of Caucasian languages: he studied one a year, during his vacations. Unfortunately, during the Great War, he got stuck in Tiflis; he was finally able to escape, but only after losing most of his notes, including the ones on Ubykh that he had collected in 1913, in Turkey. He published what he had managed to keep in 1927, and it was still admirable. After that, a Frenchman, Dumézil, took it up and published a complete description of the language in 1931. Now, Ubykh has the peculiarity of having between eighty and eighty-three consonants, depending on how you count them. For several years people thought that was the world record. Then it was argued that some languages from southern Chad, like Margi, have more. But no conclusions have been reached yet.”

I had set down my teacup: “All that is fascinating, Leutnant. But I have to stick to more concrete questions.”—“Oh, sorry, of course! What you’re interested in, basically, is the Soviet nationalities policies. But you’ll see that my digressions weren’t useless: those policies are based precisely on language. In czarist times, everything was much simpler: the conquered natives could do pretty much whatever they wanted, so long as they behaved and paid their taxes. The elite could be educated in Russian and even be Russianized—a number of Russian princely families were of Caucasian origin, especially after the marriage of Ivan the Fourth with a Kabardian princess, Maria Temrukovna. At the end of the last century, Russian researchers began studying these peoples, especially from an ethnological standpoint, and they came out with some remarkable studies, like those of Vsevolod Miller, who was also an excellent linguist. Most of these works are available in Germany and some have even been translated; but there’s also a number of obscure or limited-edition monographs that I hope to locate in the libraries of the autonomous republics. After the Revolution and the civil war, the Bolshevik government, inspired in the beginning by a work of Lenin’s, little by little outlined an absolutely original nationalities policy: Stalin, who at that time was the People’s Commissar for Nationalities, played a major role. This policy is an astonishing synthesis of, on one hand, entirely objective scientific studies, like those of the great Caucasologists Yakovlev and Trubetskoy; on the other, of an internationalist communist ideology, incapable at the beginning of taking the fact of ethnicity into account; and, finally, of the reality of ethnic relationships and aspirations in the field. The Soviet solution can be summarized in this way: a people, or a nationality as they say, equals a language plus a territory. It’s in order to obey this principle that they tried to provide the Jews, who had a language—Yiddish—but not a territory, with an autonomous region in the Far East, Birobidjan; but apparently the experiment failed, and the Jews didn’t want to live there. Then, according to the demographic weight of each nationality, the Soviets created a complex scale of levels of administrative sovereignty, with precise rights and limitations for each level. The most important nationalities, such as the Armenians, the Georgians, and the so-called Azeris, just like the Ukrainians and the Byelorussians, are entitled to an SSR, a Soviet Socialist Republic. In Georgia, even university studies can be carried out, all the way through, in Kartvelian, and scientific works of great value are published in that language. The same is true for Armenian. It should be said that those are two very old literary languages, with a very rich tradition, that were written down long before Russian and even Slavonic, first transcribed by Cyril and Methodius. Also, if you’ll allow me a digression, Mesrop, who at the beginning of the fifth century created the Georgian and Armenian alphabets—although those two languages don’t have the slightest connection to each other—must have been a linguist of genius. His Georgian alphabet is entirely phonemic. Which is not something you can say about the Caucasian alphabets created by the Soviet linguists. It is also said that Mesrop invented a script for the Caucasian Albanians; but unfortunately no trace of that remains. To continue, you then have the autonomous republics, such as Kabardino-Balkaria, Chechnya-Ingushetia, or Daghestan. The Volga Germans had the same status, but as you know they were all deported and their republic was dissolved. And then it continues with the autonomous territories and so on. A key point is the notion of literary language. To have its own republic, a people must necessarily have a literary, that is to say, written, language. Now, aside from Kartvelian, as I’ve just explained, no Caucasian language fulfilled this condition at the time of the Revolution. There were some attempts made in the nineteenth century, but solely for scientific purposes, and there are some Avar inscriptions in Arabic characters that go back to the tenth or eleventh century, but that’s all. This is where the Soviet linguists have carried out a formidable, colossal work: they created alphabets, based on Latin characters first and then on Cyrillic, for eleven Caucasian languages as well as for a large number of Turkic languages, including many Siberian tongues. These alphabets of course are far from perfect from a technical standpoint. Cyrillic is hardly adapted to these languages: modified Latin characters, as they attempted in the 1920s, or even the Arabic alphabet would have suited them much better. They did make a curious exception for Abkhaz, which is written now with a modified Georgian alphabet; but the reasons for this are certainly not technical. This obligatory use of Cyrillic has generated somewhat grotesque contortions, such as the use of diacritic signs and of digraphs, trigraphs, and even, in Kabardian, to represent the voiceless aspirated labialized uvular plosive, of a tetragraph.” He snatched a piece of paper and scribbled some signs on the back, then held it out to show me the inscription КХЪУ. “That’s one letter. It’s as ridiculous as when we write, for Щ”—he scribbled again—“shch, or even worse, like the French, chtch. And then, also, some of the new spelling systems are extremely erratic. In Abkhaz, the marking of aspirates and ejectives is amazingly inconsistent. Mesrop would have been scandalized. Finally, and this is the worst, they insisted that each language have a different alphabet. Linguistically, that makes for some absurd situations, like Щ which in Kabard represents sh and in Adyghe ch, whereas it’s the same language; in Adyghe, sh is written as Щ, and in Kabardian ch is written as ЩЪ. It’s the same thing for the Turkic languages, where for instance the soft g is noted in a different way in almost every dialect. Of course, they did it on purpose: it was a political decision, not a linguistic one, which obviously aimed at separating the neighboring peoples as much as possible. Now here’s a key for you: related peoples had to stop functioning as a network, horizontally, so that they would all refer vertically in parallel to each other, to the central government, which thus takes the position of the final arbiter of conflicts that it itself continually stirs up. But to return to these alphabets, despite all my criticisms, it’s still an immense achievement, all the more so since it came with an entire educational program. In fifteen, sometimes ten years, entire illiterate peoples were provided, in their own language, with newspapers, books, magazines. Children are learning to read in their native language before they learn Russian. It’s extraordinary.”

Voss went on; I took notes as fast as I could. But what charmed me the most, more than the details, was his relation to his knowledge. The intellectuals I had known, like Ohlendorf or Höhn, were continually developing their knowledge and their theories; when they spoke, it was either to present their ideas or to drive them forward. Voss’s knowledge, on the other hand, seemed to live inside him almost like an organism, and Voss enjoyed this knowledge as he would a mistress, sensually; he bathed in it, constantly discovered new aspects of it, already present in him but of which he had not yet been aware, and from it he took the pure pleasure of a child who has learned how to open and close a door or fill a pail with sand and empty it; and whoever listened to him shared this pleasure, since his talk was made up of capricious meanderings and perpetual surprises; you could laugh at it, but only with the laughter of pleasure of the father who watches his child open and close a door ten times in succession while laughing. I went back to see Voss many times, and each time he welcomed me with the same relaxed courtesy and the same enthusiasm. We soon struck up that frank, rapid friendship that war and exceptional situations favor. We would stroll through the noisy streets of Simferopol, enjoying the sun, in the midst of a motley crowd of German, Romanian, and Hungarian soldiers, of exhausted Hiwis, of tanned and turbaned Tatars, and of Ukrainian peasant women with rosy cheeks. Voss knew all the chaikhonas in the city and conversed familiarly, in various dialects, with the obsequious or jolly natives who served us, apologizing for the bad green tea. He took me one day to Bakhchisaray to visit the superb little palace of the Khans of Crimea, built in the sixteenth century by Italian, Persian, and Ottoman architects and by Russian and Ukrainian slaves; and the Chufut-Kale, the Fort of the Jews, a city of caves first dug into the chalk cliffs in the sixth century and occupied by various peoples, the last of whom, who had given the place its Persian name, were in fact Karaïtes, a dissident Jewish sect that, as I explained to Voss, had been exempted in 1937, based on a decision from the Ministry of the Interior, from the German racial laws, and had consequently, here in Crimea, also been spared by the special measures of the SP. “Apparently, the Karaïtes of Germany presented some czarist documents, including a ukase signed by Catherine the Great, that affirmed that they were not of Jewish origin but had converted to Judaism at a later period. The specialists in the ministry accepted the authenticity of these documents.”—“Yes, I heard talk of that,” Voss said with a little smile. “They were clever.” I would have liked to ask him what he meant by that, but he had already changed the subject. The day was radiant. It wasn’t too hot yet, and the sky was pale and clear; in the distance, from the top of the cliffs, you could see the sea, a somewhat grayer expanse beneath the sky. From the southwest vaguely reached us the monotonous rumble of the artillery pounding Sebastopol, resounding gently along the mountains. Filthy little Tatars in rags were playing among the ruins or guarding their goats; many of them observed us curiously, but bolted when Voss hailed them in their language.

On Sundays, when I didn’t have too much work, I’d take an Opel and we’d go to the beach, to Eupatoria. Often I’d drive myself. The heat was increasing by the day, we were in the heart of springtime, and I had to watch out for the clusters of naked boys who, lying on their stomachs on the burning asphalt of the road, scattered like sparrows before each vehicle, in a lively jumble of thin little tanned bodies. Eupatoria had a fine mosque, the largest one in the Crimea, designed in the sixteenth century by the famous Ottoman architect Sinan, and some curious ruins; but we couldn’t find any Portwein there, or even really any tea; and the lake water was stagnant and muddy. So we would leave the city for the beaches, where we sometimes met groups of soldiers coming up from Sebastopol to rest from the fighting. Most of the time naked, almost always completely white, apart from their faces, necks, and forearms, they played around like children, rushing into the water, then sprawling on the sand still wet, breathing in its warmth like a prayer, to chase away the winter cold. Often the beaches were empty. I liked the old-fashioned look of these Soviet beaches: brightly colored parasols missing their canvas, benches stained with bird droppings, changing booths made of rusty metal with their paint flaking off, revealing your feet and head to the kids lazing by the fences. We had our favorite place, a beach south of the city. The day we discovered it, half a dozen cows, scattered around a brightly colored trawler lying on the sand, were grazing on the new grass of the steppe invading the dunes, indifferent to the blond child on a rickety bicycle weaving between them. Across the narrow bay, a sad little Russian tune drifted from a blue shack perched on a shaky dock, in front of which rocked, tied up with old ropes, three poor fishing boats. The place was bathed in calm forsakenness. We had brought some fresh bread and some red apples from the previous year that we snacked on while we drank some vodka; the water was cold, invigorating. To our right stood two old ramshackle refreshment stalls, padlocked, and a lifeguard’s tower on the verge of collapse. The hours passed without our saying much. Voss read; I slowly finished the vodka and plunged back into the water; one of the cows, for no reason, galloped off down the beach. When we left, passing by a little fishing village to get our car, which was parked farther up, I saw a flock of geese slipping one after another beneath a wooden gate; the last one, with a little green apple wedged in her beak, was running to catch up with her sisters.

I often saw Ohlendorf too. At work, I mostly dealt with Seibert; but in the late afternoon, if Ohlendorf wasn’t too busy, I would go to his office for a cup of coffee. He drank it constantly; gossips said it was his sole nourishment. He seemed always busy with a multitude of tasks that sometimes had little to do with the Group. Seibert, in fact, managed the daily work; he was the one who supervised the other officers from the Gruppenstab, and who led the regular meetings with the Chief of Staff or the Ic of the Eleventh Army. To submit an official question to Ohlendorf, you had to go through his adjutant, Obersturmführer Heinz Schubert, a descendent of the great composer and a conscientious man, although a little slow. So when Ohlendorf received me, a little like a professor meeting with a student outside of class, I never spoke to him about work; instead we discussed theoretical or ideological questions. One day I brought up the Jewish question. “The Jews!” he exclaimed. “Damn them! They’re worse than the Hegelians!” He smiled one of his rare smiles before going on, in his precise, musical, slightly shrill voice. “You could say that Schopenhauer saw all the more correctly that Marxism, at bottom, is a Jewish perversion of Hegel. Isn’t that so?”—“I wanted especially to ask your opinion about our work,” I hazarded.—“You want to talk about the destruction of the Jewish people, I suppose?”—“Yes. I should confess to you that it poses some problems for me.”—“It poses problems for everyone,” he replied categorically. “To me too it poses problems.”—“What is your opinion, then?”—“My opinion?” He stretched, and joined his fingertips in front of his lips; his eyes, usually piercing, had gone almost empty. I wasn’t used to seeing him in uniform; Ohlendorf, for me, remained a civilian, and I had trouble imagining him other than in his discreet, perfectly cut suits. “It’s a mistake,” he finally said. “But a necessary mistake.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his desk. “I should explain. Have some coffee. It’s a mistake, because it’s the result of our inability to manage the problem in a more rational way. But it’s a necessary mistake because, in the present situation, the Jews present a phenomenal, urgent danger for us. If the Führer ended up imposing the most radical solution, it’s because he was forced into it by the indecision and incompetence of the men put in charge of the problem.”—“What do you mean by our inability to solve the problem?”—“I’m about to explain that. You must remember how, after the Seizure of Power, all the irresponsible idiots and psychopaths in the Party started bellowing for radical measures, and how all kinds of illegal or detrimental actions were launched, like Streicher’s imbecilic initiatives. The Führer, very wisely, reined in those unrestrained actions and undertook a legal resolution of the problem, which ended with the racial laws of 1935, on the whole satisfactory. But even after that, between the fussy bureaucrats who drowned out every advance beneath a flood of paper, and the overexcited fools who encouraged Einzelaktionen, often for their own personal interests, a solution to the Jewish problem as a whole was still far from being found. The pogroms of 1938, which did so much harm to Germany, were a logical consequence of this lack of coordination. It was only when the SD began to concentrate seriously on the problem that an alternative to all these ad hoc initiatives could emerge. After lengthy studies and discussions we were able to elaborate and propose a coherent overall policy: accelerated emigration. I think even today that this solution could have satisfied everyone, and that it was perfectly realizable, even after the Anschluss. The structures that were created to promote emigration, especially the use of ill-gotten Jewish funds to finance the emigration of poor Jews, turned out to be very effective. You might remember that little obsequious half-Austrian, who worked under Knochen, then under Behrends…?”—“You mean Sturmbannführer Eichmann? Indeed, I saw him again last year, in Kiev.”—“Yes, that’s right. Well, in Vienna, he put a remarkable organization into place. It worked very well.”—“Yes, but afterward there was Poland. And no country in the world was ready to accept three million Jews.”—“Exactly.” He had straightened up and crossed one leg over the other. “But even then we could have resolved the difficulties step by step. Ghettoization, of course, was a catastrophe; but Frank’s attitude contributed a lot to that, in my opinion. The real problem is that we wanted to do everything at the same time: repatriate the Volksdeutschen and resolve the Jewish problem as well as the Polish problem. So of course it was chaos.”—“Yes, but really, the repatriation of the Volksdeutschen was urgent: no one could know how long Stalin would continue to cooperate. He could have slammed the door shut any day. And we never did manage to save the Volga Germans.”—“We could have, I think. But they didn’t want to come. They made the mistake of trusting Stalin. They felt protected because of their status, isn’t that so? In any case, you’re right: we absolutely had to begin with the Volksdeutschen. But that concerned only the Incorporated Territories, not the Generalgouvernement. If everyone had agreed to cooperate, there would have been a way to move the Jews and the Poles out of the Warthegau and Danzig-Westpreussen and into the Generalgouvernement, to make room for the repatriated Volksdeutschen. But here we’re touching the limits of our National Socialist State as it now exists. It’s a fact that the organization of the National Socialist administration is not yet equal to meeting the political and social requirements of our mode of society. The Party is eaten away by too many corrupt elements, who defend their private interests. So each dispute turns immediately into an exaggerated conflict. In the case of the repatriation, the Gauleiters of the Incorporated Territories behaved with phenomenal arrogance, and the Generalgouvernement reacted similarly. Everyone accused everyone else of treating his territory as a dumping ground. And the SS, which had been put in charge of the problem, didn’t have enough power to impose a systematic regulation. At every stage, somebody would take an unauthorized initiative, or else challenge the Reichsführer’s decisions by making use of his private access to the Führer. Our State is so far an absolute, national, and socialist Führerstaat only in theory; in practice, and it’s only getting worse, it’s a form of pluralist anarchy. The Führer can try to arbitrate, but he can’t be everywhere, and our Gauleiters know very well how to interpret his orders, deform them, and then proclaim that they’re following his will when actually they’re doing whatever they want.”

All this had brought us quite a way from the Jews. “Ah yes, the Chosen People. Even with all these obstacles, an equitable solution remained possible. For instance, after our victory over France, the SD, in conjunction with the Auswärtiges Amt, began to think seriously about a Madagascar option. Before that, we had envisaged parking all the Jews around Lublin, in a kind of large reservation where they could have lived quietly without posing any risks for Germany; but the Generalgouvernement categorically refused, and Frank, taking advantage of his connections, managed to have the project shelved. But Madagascar was serious. We carried out studies, there was room there for all the Jews within our sphere of control. We went very far in our planning, we even had employees of the Staatspolizei vaccinated against malaria, in preparation for their departure. It was mostly Amt IV that headed the project, but the SD provided information and ideas, and I read all the reports.”—“Why didn’t it come about?”—“Quite simply because the British, very unreasonably, refused to accept our crushing superiority and sign a peace treaty with us! Everything depended on that. First of all because France had to cede Madagascar to us, which would have figured in the treaty, and also because England would have had to contribute its fleet, isn’t that so?”

Ohlendorf paused to go ask his orderly for another pot of coffee. “Here too, in Russia, the initial idea was much more limited. Everyone thought the campaign would be short and we planned to do what we did in Poland, that is, decapitate the leaders, the intelligentsia, the Bolshevist chiefs, all the dangerous men. A horrible task in itself, but vital and logical, given the excessive character of Bolshevism, its absolute lack of scruples. After the victory, we could have once again considered a global, final solution, creating for instance a Jewish reservation in the North or in Siberia, or sending them to Birobidjan, why not?”—“It’s a horrible task whatever the case,” I said. “Can I ask you why you accepted? With your rank and your abilities, you could have been more useful in Berlin.”—“Of course,” he replied briskly. “I’m neither a soldier nor a policeman, and this minion’s work doesn’t suit me. But it was a direct order and I had to accept. And also, as I told you, we all thought it would last a month or two, no more.” I was surprised that he answered me so frankly; we had never had such an open conversation. “And after the Vernichtungsbefehl?” I went on. Ohlendorf didn’t reply right away. The orderly brought the coffee; Ohlendorf offered me some more: “I’ve had enough, thanks.” He remained plunged in his thoughts. Finally he replied, slowly, choosing his words carefully. “The Vernichtungsbefehl is a terrible thing. Paradoxically, it’s almost like an order from the God of the Jews’ Bible, isn’t it? Now go and strike Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. You know that, it’s in the first Book of Samuel. When I received the order, that’s what I thought about. And as I told you, I believe that it’s a mistake, that we should have had the intelligence and ability to find a more…humane solution, let’s say, one more in agreement with our conscience as Germans and as National Socialists. In that sense, it’s a failure. But you also have to look at the realities of war. The war goes on, and every day that this enemy force remains behind our lines reinforces our adversary and weakens us. It’s a total war, all the forces of the nation are involved in it, and we can’t afford to neglect any means to victory, any. That’s what the Führer understood clearly: he cut the Gordian knot of doubts, hesitations, divergent interests. He did it, as he does everything, to save Germany, aware that if he can send hundreds of thousands of Germans to their deaths, he can and must also send to theirs the Jews and all our other enemies. The Jews are praying and striving for our defeat, and so long as we haven’t won we can’t nourish such an enemy in our midst. And for us, who have received the heavy burden of carrying out this task to the end, our duty toward our people, our duty as true National Socialists, is to obey. Even if obedience is the knife that guts the will of man, as St. Joseph of Cupertino said. We have to accept our duty in the same way that Abraham accepts the unimaginable sacrifice of his son Isaac demanded by God. You’ve read Kierkegaard? He calls Abraham the knight of faith, who must sacrifice not only his son, but also and especially his ethical principles. For us it’s the same, isn’t that so? We have to accomplish Abraham’s sacrifice.”

Ohlendorf, I could tell from what he said, would have preferred not to have been placed in this position; but who, these days, had the good fortune to do what he preferred? He had understood this and accepted it lucidly. As a Kommandant, he was strict and conscientious; unlike my old Einsatzgruppe, which had quickly abandoned this impractical method, he insisted that executions be conducted according to the military method, with a firing squad, and he often sent his officers, such as Seibert or Schubert, on inspection to make sure the Kommandos were respecting his orders. He also insisted on curbing as much as possible all acts of theft or misappropriations by the soldiers in charge of the executions. Finally, he had strictly forbidden anyone to strike or torment the condemned; according to Schubert, these orders were followed as well as they could be. Aside from that, he always sought to take positive initiatives. The previous autumn, in collaboration with the Wehrmacht, he had organized a brigade of Jewish artisans and farmers to bring in the harvest, near Nikolaev; he was forced to put an end to this experiment on direct orders from the Reichsführer, but I knew that he regretted that, and in private he regarded the order as a mistake. In the Crimea, he had invested himself in developing relations with the Tatar population, with considerable success. In January, when the Soviets’ surprise offensive and the capture of Kerch had put our whole position in the Crimea in danger, the Tatars, spontaneously, placed a tenth of their male population at Ohlendorf’s disposal to help defend our lines; they also provided considerable help to the SP and the SD in the anti-partisan struggle, handing over to us those they captured, or liquidating them themselves. The army appreciated this assistance, and Ohlendorf’s efforts in this area had contributed a lot to improving his relations with the AOK, after the conflict with Wöhler. Still, he was hardly at ease in his role; and I wasn’t unduly surprised when, immediately upon Heydrich’s death, he began to negotiate his return to Germany. Heydrich was wounded in Prague on May 29 and died on June 4; the next day, Ohlendorf flew to Berlin to attend the funeral; he returned in the second half of the month promoted to SS-Brigadeführer and with a promise of a rapid replacement; as soon as he got back, he began making his farewell rounds. One evening, he briefly told me how it had happened: four days after Heydrich’s death, the Reichsführer had called him to a meeting with most of the other Amtschefs, Müller, Streckenbach, and Schellenberg, to discuss the future of the RSHA, and the very ability of the RSHA to continue as an independent organization without Heydrich. The Reichsführer had chosen not to replace Heydrich right away; he himself would be in charge during the interim, but from a distance; and this decision required the presence of all the Amtschefs in Berlin, to supervise directly their Ämter in Himmler’s name. Ohlendorf’s relief was obvious; beneath his customary reserve, he seemed almost happy. But that was scarcely noticed amid the general excitement: we were on the point of launching our big summer campaign in the Caucasus. Operation Blue got under way on June 28 with Bock’s offensive on Voronej; two days later, Ohlendorf’s replacement, Oberführer Dr. Walter Bierkamp, arrived in Simferopol. Ohlendorf wasn’t leaving alone: Bierkamp had brought his own adjutant with him, Sturmbannführer Thielecke, and the plan was to replace most of the veteran officers of the Gruppenstab, as well as the leaders of the Kommandos, during the summer, according to the availability of their replacements. At the beginning of July, in the enthusiasm generated by the fall of Sebastopol, Ohlendorf gave us an eloquent departure speech, invoking, with his natural dignity, all the grandeur and difficulty of our deadly fight against Bolshevism. Bierkamp, who came to us from Belgium and France, but who before had headed the Kripo in Hamburg, his native city, then served as IdS in Düsseldorf, spoke a few words to us. He seemed very satisfied with his new position: “The work in the East, especially in wartime, is the most challenging possible for a man,” he declared. By profession, he was a jurist and a lawyer; his statements, during his speech and the reception that followed, revealed a policeman’s mentality. He must have been about forty and was stocky, a little short-legged, with a sly look; despite his doctorate, he was definitely not an intellectual, and his language mixed Hamburg slang with SP jargon; but he seemed determined and capable. I saw Ohlendorf again only one more time after that evening, during the banquet offered by the AOK to celebrate the fall of Sebastopol: he was busy with the army officers, and spent a long time conversing with von Manstein; but he wished me good luck, and invited me to come see him whenever I was in Berlin.

Voss had left too, suddenly transferred to the AOK of Generaloberst von Kleist, whose Panzers had already passed the Ukrainian border and were charging toward Millerovo. I felt a little lonely. Bierkamp was absorbed in the reorganization of the Kommandos, some of which were to be dissolved in order to form the permanent structures of the SP and the SD in the Crimea; Seibert was getting ready for his own departure. With summer, the interior of the Crimea had become stifling, and I continued to take advantage of the beaches as much as possible. I went to visit Sebastopol, where one of our Kommandos had set to work: around the long harbor of the southern bay stretched a field of still-smoking ruins, haunted by exhausted and shocked civilians who were already being evacuated. Haggard, filthy kids ran between the soldier’s legs begging for bread; the Romanians especially responded by cuffing them or kicking their backsides. I went down to visit the underground bunkers of the harbor, where the Red Army had set up weapons and ammunition factories; most of them had been looted, or burned out by flame-throwers; sometimes too, during the final battle, Commissars, entrenched there or in caves under the cliffs, had blown themselves up with their men and the civilians they were sheltering, along with German soldiers who had advanced too far. But all the Soviet officers and high-ranking functionaries had been evacuated by submarine before the city fell; we had captured only soldiers and underlings. The bare mountaintops overlooking the immense northern bay, around the city, were covered with ruined fortifications; the steel housings of their 30.5-centimeter artillery had been crushed by our 80-centimeter shells, fired from giant howitzers mounted on rails; and their long twisted gun barrels lay on their sides, or else stood aimed straight at the sky. In Simferopol, AOK 11 was packing up; von Manstein, promoted to Generalfeldmarschall, was leaving with his army to finish off Leningrad. Of Stalingrad, of course, no one spoke at that time: it was still a secondary objective.

In the beginning of August, the Einsatzgruppe went on the march. Our forces, reorganized into two Army Groups B and A, had just retaken Rostov after bitter street fighting, and the Panzers, having crossed the Don, were advancing into the Kuban Steppe. Bierkamp appointed me to the Vorkommando of the Gruppenstab and sent us, by Melitopol and then Rostov, to catch up with the First Panzer Army. Our little convoy quickly crossed the isthmus and the immense Trench of the Tatars, transformed by the Soviets into an antitank ditch, then veered off after Perekop to begin crossing the Nogai Steppe. The heat was terrible, I sweated profusely, the dust stuck to my face like a gray mask; but at dawn, soon after we left, subtle and magnificent colors altered the sky, slowly turning to blue, and I wasn’t unhappy. Our guide, a Tatar, regularly made the vehicles stop so he could pray; I let the other officers grumble and got out to stretch my legs and smoke. On both sides of the road, the rivers and streams were dry, and traced a network of ravined balki, carved deep into the steppe. We could see neither trees nor hills around; only the regularly spaced poles of the Anglo-Iranian telegraph line, built at the beginning of the century by Siemens, punctuated this dismal expanse. The well water was salty, the coffee tasted salty, the soup seemed to be full of salt; several officers, who had gorged on unripe melons, suffered bouts of diarrhea, which slowed down our march even more. After Mariupol we followed a bad coastal road to Taganrog and then Rostov. Hauptsturmführer Remmer, an officer from the Staatspolizei who was in charge of the Vorkommando, twice gave the order to stop the convoy, near immense beaches of pebbles and yellowing grass, so the men could rush into the water; sprawled on the burning pebbles, we dried in a few minutes; already it was time to get dressed and leave. In Rostov, our column was welcomed by Sturmbannführer Dr. Christmann, who was replacing Seetzen as the head of Sonderkommando 10a. He had just finished executing the Jewish population, in a ravine known as the Snakes, on the other side of the Don; he had also sent a Vorkommando to Krasnodar, which had fallen two days before, and where the Fifth Army Corps had seized a mountain of Soviet documents. I asked him to have them analyzed as quickly as possible and to send me any information concerning the functionaries and members of the Party, to complete the little confidential handbook that Seibert, in Simferopol, had entrusted to me for his replacement; it contained, printed in tiny typeface on extra-thin paper, the names, addresses, and often the telephone numbers of active Communists or of non-Party intellectuals, of scholars, teachers, writers, and well-known journalists, of functionaries, directors of State companies and kolkhozes or sovkhozes, for the entire region of Kuban-Caucasus; there were even lists of friends and family relations, physical descriptions, and some photographs. Christmann also informed us of the advance of the Kommandos: Sk 11, still under the command of Dr. Braune, a close friend of Ohlendorf’s, had just entered Maikop with the Thirteenth Panzer Division; Persterer, with his Sk 10b, was still waiting in Taman, but a Vorkommando from Ek 12 was already in Voroshilovsk, where the Gruppenstab was supposed to be based until Groznyi was taken; Christmann himself was getting ready, according to our preestablished plan, to move his Hauptkommando to Krasnodar. I saw almost nothing of Rostov; Remmer wanted to advance, and gave the order for departure as soon as the meal was over. After the Don, immense, spanned by one of the Engineer Corps’ floating pontoons, stretched kilometers of fields of ripe corn, which little by little died out in the vast desert steppe of the Kuban; farther on, to the east, ran the long irregular line of lakes and swamps, interrupted by reservoirs maintained by colossal dams of the Manych River, which for some geographers marks the borderline between Europe and Asia. The leading columns of the First Panzer Army, which were advancing in motorized squares with the tanks surrounding the trucks and artillery, could be seen fifty kilometers away: immense pillars of dust in the blue sky, followed by the lazy curtain of black smoke coming from the burned villages. In their wake, we met only the odd Rollbahn convoy or some reinforcements. In Rostov, Christmann had shown us a copy of von Kleist’s now-famous dispatch: In front of me, no enemies; behind me, no reserves. And the emptiness of this endless steppe was quite enough to terrify anyone. We progressed with difficulty: the tanks had transformed the roads into seas of fine sand; our vehicles often got stuck in it and, when we set foot outside, we sometimes sank up to our knees, as if it were mud. Finally, before Tikhoretsk, appeared the first fields of sunflowers, yellow expanses turned toward the sky, presaging water. Then began the paradise of the Kuban Cossacks. The road now passed through fields of corn, wheat, millet, barley, tobacco, and melons; there were also stretches of thistles tall as horses, crowned with pink and purple; and beyond all that a vast sky, pale and soft, cloudless. The Cossack villages were rich; each isba had its plum trees, its grape vines, a farmyard, a few pigs. When we stopped to eat we were warmly welcomed, we were brought fresh bread, omelettes, grilled pork chops, green onions, and cold water from the wells. Then came Krasnodar, where we found Lothar Heimbach, the Vorkommandoführer. Remmer ordered a three-day halt, to discuss and rapidly review the captured documents, which Christmann would have translated after he arrived. Dr. Braune also came up from Maikop for our meetings. After that our Vorkommando headed for Voroshilovsk.

The city rose up in the distance, spread out on a high plateau surrounded by fields and orchards. The road here was lined with overturned vehicles, wrecked heavy weaponry and tanks; on open stretches of track, in the distance, hundreds of freight cars were still burning brightly. In old times this city was called Stavropol, which in Greek means “the city of the Cross,” or rather “the city of the Crossroads”; it had been established at the junction of the old roads to the north, and at one time, in the nineteenth century, during the campaign to pacify the mountain tribes, it had served as a military base for the Russian forces. Today it was a little provincial town, sleepy and peaceful, which hadn’t grown fast enough to be disfigured, like so many others, by hideous Soviet suburbs. A long two-lane boulevard framing a mall of plane trees climbs up from the train station; toward the bottom, I noticed a fine Art Nouveau pharmacy, with an entryway and bay windows in the shape of circles, their panes blown out by the detonations. The Kommandostab from Ek 12 was also arriving, and they put us up temporarily at the Kavkaz Hotel. Sturmbannführer Dr. Müller, head of the Einsatzkommando, was supposed to have prepared for the Gruppenstab’s arrival, but no arrangement had yet been decided on; everything was still in flux, since the general staff of Army Group A was also expected, and Oberst Hartung, from the Feldkommandantur, was taking his time in assigning quarters: the Einsatzkommando already had its offices in the House of the Red Army, opposite the NKVD, but there was talk about setting up the Gruppenstab with the OKHG. Yet the Vorkommando hadn’t been idle. They had immediately gassed, in a Saurer truck, more than six hundred patients from a psychiatric hospital who might have caused difficulties; they had tried to shoot some of them, but that had caused an incident: one of the lunatics had started running in circles, and the Hauptscharführer who was trying to kill him had finally pulled the trigger when one of his colleagues was in the line of fire; the bullet, passing through the madman’s head, had wounded the noncom in the arm. Some Jewish leaders, summoned to the old offices of the NKVD, had also been gassed. Finally, the Vorkommando had shot a number of Soviet prisoners outside of town, near a hidden storehouse of aircraft fuel; the bodies had been thrown into the underground storage tanks.

Einsatzkommando 12 wasn’t supposed to stay in Voroshilovsk, since it had been assigned to the zone that the Russians call the KMV, the Kavkazskie Mineralnye Vodi or “Mineral Waters of the Caucasus,” a string of little towns famous for their curative springs and their spas, scattered among volcanoes; the Kommando would move to Piatigorsk as soon as the region was occupied. Dr. Bierkamp and the Gruppenstab arrived a week after we did; the Wehrmacht had finally assigned us living quarters and offices, in a separate wing of the large complex of buildings housing the OKHG: they had built a wall to separate us from them, but we shared the same mess, which allowed us to celebrate together with the military the ascent, by a PK of the First Alpine Division, of the summit of Mount Elbruz, the highest mountain in the Caucasus. Dr. Müller and his Kommando had gone, leaving a Teilkommando under the command of Werner Kleber to finish cleaning up Voroshilovsk. Bierkamp was still awaiting the arrival of Brigadeführer Gerret Korsemann, the new HSSPF for the Kuban-Caucasus. As for Seibert’s replacement, he still hadn’t arrived, and Hauptsturmführer Prill was filling in for the interim. Prill sent me on a mission to Maikop.

A perpetual summer haze kept you from seeing the mountains of the Caucasus until you were at their feet. I crossed the foothills, passing the towns of Armavir and Labinskaya; as soon as you left Cossack territory, flags, green with a white crescent, burgeoned on the houses, raised by the Muslims to bid us welcome. The town of Maikop, one of the great oil centers of the Caucasus, was nestled right against the mountains, crossed by the Bielaya, a deep river above which rises the old city, perched atop tall chalk cliffs. Before the suburbs, the road ran alongside a railroad cluttered with thousands of cars, loaded with goods that the Soviets had not had time to evacuate. Then you crossed a bridge, still intact, and entered the city, a grid of long, straight streets, all identical, running alongside a Park of Culture where the plaster statues of heroes of labor slowly went on crumbling. Braune, a man with rather equine features, his large moon-face surmounted by a bulbous forehead, welcomed me eagerly: I sensed he was reassured to see again one of the last of “Ohlendorf’s men” still left in the Group, even though he himself was awaiting his replacement from one week to the next. Braune was worried about the oil installations in Neftegorsk: the Abwehr, just before taking the city, had managed to infiltrate a special unit, the Shamil, made up of mountain peoples from the Caucasus and disguised as a special battalion of the NKVD, to try to seize the oil wells intact; but the mission had failed and the Russians had dynamited the installations under the Panzers’ noses. Already, though, our specialists were working to repair them, and the first vultures of Kontinental-Öl were making their appearance. These bureaucrats, all connected to Göring’s Four-Year Plan, benefited from the support of Arno Schickedanz, the Reichskommissar-designate of the Kuban-Caucasus. “You know of course that Schickedanz owes his appointment to government minister Rosenberg, who was his high-school classmate in Riga. But then he had a falling out with his former schoolmate. I’ve heard that it’s Herr Körner, Reichsmarschall Göring’s Staatssekretär, who brought the two together; and Schickedanz has been appointed to the board of directors of KontiÖl, the holding company set up by the Reichsmarschall to exploit the oil fields of the Caucasus and Baku.” In Braune’s opinion, when the Caucasus came under civilian control, we could expect an even more chaotic and unmanageable situation than in the Ukraine, where Gauleiter Koch did as he pleased, refusing to cooperate either with the Wehrmacht and the SS or with his own ministry. “The only positive point for the SS is that Schickedanz appointed SS officers as Generalkommissars for Vladikavkaz and Azerbaijan: in those districts, at least, it will make relations easier.”

I spent three days working with Braune, helping him prepare documents and draw up reports. My only distraction consisted of going out to drink bad local wine in the courtyard of a canteen run by a wrinkled old mountain native. Still I made the acquaintance, not entirely by chance, of a Belgian officer, the Kommandeur of the Wallonia Legion, Lucien Lippert. I had in fact wanted to meet Léon Degrelle, the head of the Rexist movement, who was fighting in the area; Brasillach, in Paris, had spoken to me about him with wild lyricism. But the Hauptmann from the Abwehr whom I asked laughed in my face: “Degrelle? Everyone wants to see him. He’s probably the most famous noncom in our army. But he’s at the front, you know, and it’s pretty hot up there. General Rupp was almost killed last week in a surprise attack. The Belgians have lost a lot of people.” Instead, he introduced me to Lippert, a lanky, smiling young officer wearing worn, patched feldgrau a little too big for him. I took him out to talk about Belgian politics under the apple tree at my canteen. Lippert was a career soldier, an artilleryman; he had agreed to sign up for the Legion out of hostility to Bolshevism, but he remained a true patriot, and complained that despite promises to the contrary, the Legionnaires had been forced to wear a German uniform. “The men were furious. Degrelle had trouble calming things down.” Degrelle, when he had signed up, had thought that his political role would earn him officer’s stripes, but the Wehrmacht had refused outright: no experience. Lippert still laughed about it. “Fine, so he left anyway, as an ordinary rifleman. To tell the truth, he didn’t have much of a choice, things weren’t going so well for him in Belgium.” Since then, despite an initial muddle in Gromovo-Balka, he fought courageously and had been promoted in combat. “The annoying thing is that he takes himself for some sort of political officer, you know? He wants to go himself to discuss the Legion’s engagement, and that’s not right. He’s just a noncom, after all.” Now he was dreaming of transferring the Legion to the Waffen-SS. “He met your General Steiner, last fall, and that completely turned his head. But I say no. If he does that, I’ll ask to be replaced.” His face had become very serious. “Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the SS. But I’m a soldier, and in Belgium soldiers don’t mix in politics. That’s not our role. I’m a royalist, I’m a patriot, I’m an anti-Communist, but I’m not a National Socialist. When I signed up, I was assured, at the Palace, that this decision was compatible with my oath of loyalty to the king, and I still don’t consider myself absolved from that oath, no matter what they say. The rest, all the political games with the Flemish, that’s not my problem. But the Waffen-SS is not a regular branch, it’s a Party formation. Degrelle says that only those who have fought alongside Germany will have a right to speak, after the war, and have a place in the new European order. I agree with that. But there are limits.” I smiled: despite his vehemence, I liked this Lippert, he was an upright, honest man. I poured him some more wine and changed the subject: “You must be the first Belgians ever to fight in the Caucasus.”—“Don’t be so sure!” he laughed, and rapidly sketched out the fantastic adventures of Don Juan van Halen, a hero of the Belgian revolution of 1830, a half-Flemish, half-Spanish nobleman, and a former Napoleonic officer, who because of his liberal convictions had landed in the prisons of the Inquisition in Madrid, in the reign of Ferdinand VII. He had escaped and ended up, God knows how, in Tiflis, where General Yermolov, the head of the Russian army in the Caucasus, had offered him a command. “He fought against the Chechens,” Lippert laughed, “imagine that.” I laughed with him, I found him very likeable. But he had to leave; AOK 17 was preparing the offensive on Tuapse, to take control of the pipeline terminals, and the Legion, attached to the Ninety-seventh Alpine Division, would have its role to play. As we parted I wished him good luck. But though Lippert, like his compatriot Van Halen, left the Caucasus alive, luck unfortunately deserted him a little farther on: near the end of the war, I learned that he had been killed in February 1944, during the Cherkasy breakthrough. The Wallonia Legion had been transferred to the Waffen-SS in June 1943, but Lippert hadn’t wanted to leave his men without a Kommandeur, and was still waiting for a replacement eight months later. Degrelle, on the other hand, survived it all; during the final debacle, he abandoned his men on the road to Lübeck and fled to Spain in Speer’s private plane; despite being sentenced to death in absentia, he was never really bothered. Poor Lippert would have been ashamed.

I returned to Voroshilovsk as our forces were taking Mozdok, an important Russian military center; the front now followed the Terek and Baksan rivers, and the 111th Infantry Division was getting ready to cross the Terek toward Groznyi. Our Kommandos were getting active: in Krasnodar, Sk 10a had liquidated the three hundred patients of the regional psychiatric hospital as well as those of a psychiatric clinic for children; in the KMV, Dr. Müller was preparing a large-scale Aktion, and had already formed Jewish Councils in every city; the Jews of Kislovodsk, headed by a dentist, had shown themselves to be so eager that they had come to hand over their carpets, jewelry, and warm clothes before they had even received the order. The HSSPF, Korsemann, had just arrived in Voroshilovsk with his staff and invited us, the night of my return, to his introductory speech. I had already heard about Korsemann, in the Ukraine: he had been a member of the Freikorps and the SA, had worked mostly with the Hauptamt Orpo and hadn’t joined the SS until late, just before the war. Heydrich, they said, didn’t want him and called him an SA agitator; but he was supported by Daluege and von dem Bach-Zelewski, and the Reichsführer had decided to make him an HSSPF, raising him up step-by-step. In the Ukraine, he was already serving as HSSPF z.b.V., that is, “for special tasks,” but he had remained largely in the shadow of Prützmann, who had succeeded Jeckeln as HSSPF Russland-Süd in November 1941. So Korsemann still hadn’t proven himself; the offensive in the Caucasus offered him the chance to demonstrate his capabilities. That seemed to have stimulated an enthusiasm in him that bubbled over in his speech. The SS, he hammered out, had to carry out not only negative tasks, of security and repression, but also positive tasks, to which the Einsatzgruppe could and should contribute: positive propaganda for the natives; fighting infectious diseases; renovating sanatoriums for the Waffen-SS wounded; and economic production, especially in the oil industry, but also in other mining assets still to be allocated, which the SS could assume control of for its businesses. He also urgently stressed the subject of relations with the Wehrmacht: “You’re all certainly aware of the problems related to this that severely affected the work of the Einsatzgruppe at the beginning of the campaign. From now on, to avoid any incident, relations of the SS with the OKHG and the AOK will be centralized by my office. Beyond the usual liaisons and working relations, no SS officer under my command is authorized to negotiate questions of importance directly with the Wehrmacht. In case of any inopportune initiative in this domain, I will be ruthless, believe me.” But despite this unusual stiffness, which seemed to stem from the lack of confidence of a newcomer still ill at ease in his functions, Korsemann spoke eloquently, and showed great personal charm; the general impression was mostly positive. Later that night, during a small informal meeting of subaltern officers, Remmer offered an explanation for Korsemann’s pettifogging attitude: what worried him was still having almost no actual authority. According to the principle of double subordination, the Einsatzgruppe reported directly to the RSHA, and therefore Bierkamp could countermand any order from Korsemann that didn’t suit him: the same was true for the SS economists from the WVHA, and of course for the Waffen-SS, which in any case was subordinated to the Wehrmacht. Ordinarily, to establish his authority and dispose of his own troops, an HSSPF had a few Orpo battalions; but Korsemann hadn’t yet received such forces, and so in fact remained an HSSPF “without special tasks”: he could make suggestions, but if Bierkamp didn’t like them, he wasn’t obliged to follow them.

At the KMV, Dr. Müller was launching his action and Prill asked me to go inspect it. I began to find this curious: I didn’t have anything against inspections, but Prill seemed to be doing everything to keep me away from Voroshilovsk. We were expecting the imminent arrival of Seibert’s replacement, Dr. Leetsch; perhaps Prill, whose rank was the same as mine, was worried that, playing on my relations with Ohlendorf, I could scheme with Leetsch to be named adjunct instead of him. If that was the case, it was idiotic: I had no ambition in that regard, and Prill had nothing to fear from me. But maybe I was imagining things for no reason? It was hard to say. I had never mastered the baroque rituals of precedence in the SS, and it was easy to err in either direction; instinct and Thomas’s advice here would have been precious to me. But Thomas was far away, and I didn’t have any close friend in the Group. To tell the truth, they weren’t the kind of people with whom I could easily strike up a bond. They had been picked out of the most obscure offices of the RSHA, and most of them were very ambitious and saw the work of the Einsatzgruppe only as a springboard; almost all of them, as soon as they arrived, seemed to regard the work of extermination as self-evident, and they didn’t even ask themselves the questions that had so worried the men in the first year. In the midst of these men, I was seen as a somewhat complicated intellectual, and I remained isolated. That didn’t bother me: I have always been able to do without the friendship of coarse loudmouths. But I had to stay on my guard.

I reached Pyatigorsk early in the morning. It was the beginning of September and the blue-gray of the sky was still hazy and heavy with summer dust. The road from Voroshilovsk crosses the railroad just before Mineralnye Vody, then, running alongside it, snakes between the five volcanic peaks that give Pyatigorsk its name. You enter the city from the north, skirting round the great hump of the Mashuk; the road rises at this point, and the town appeared suddenly at my feet, with beyond it the undulating sweep of the foothills, dotted with volcanoes, their collapsed domes scattered about. The Einsatzkommando was occupying one of the turn-of-the-century sanatoriums sprawled at the foot of Mount Mashuk, in the eastern part of town; von Kleist’s AOK had requisitioned the immense Lermontov Sanatorium, but the SS had been able to obtain the Voenaya Sanatoria, which would serve as a lazaretto for the Waffen-SS. The Leibstandarte was fighting in the area, and I thought with a vague twinge about Partenau; but it isn’t good to try to revive old affairs, and I knew I wouldn’t make any effort to see him again. Pyatigorsk was still mostly intact; after a brief skirmish with a factory’s self-defense militia, the town had been captured without combat; the streets were swarming like those of an American mining town during the Gold Rush. Wagons and even camels got in the way of military vehicles pretty much everywhere to create traffic jams that the Feldgendarmen broke up with a liberal sprinkling of insults and blows. Opposite the large Tsvetnik Garden, in front of the Bristol Hotel, neatly parked cars and motorcycles marked the emplacement of the Feldkommandantur; the offices of the Einsatzkommando were lower down, on Kirov Boulevard, in a two-story former institute. The trees on the boulevard hid its pretty façade; and I examined the ceramic floral motifs, set under stucco moldings representing, seated above two pigeons, a cherub with a basket of flowers on his head; at the top, you could make out a parrot perched on a ring, and the head of a sad little girl with pinched nostrils. On the right an archway led to an inner courtyard. My driver parked there next to the Saurer truck while I showed the guards my papers. Dr. Müller was busy, and I was received by Obersturmführer Dr. Bolte, an officer from the Staatspolizei. The staff occupied large rooms with high ceilings, well lit by tall wooden casement windows; Dr. Bolte had his office in a pretty little circular room, at the very top of one of the two towers set at the corners of the building. He curtly explained the procedures of the action: each day, according to a timetable drawn up on the basis of the figures provided by the Jewish Councils, a part or all of the Jews of one of the towns of the KMV were evacuated by train; the posters inviting them to come “resettle in the Ukraine” had been printed by the Wehrmacht, which also provided the train and the escort troops; they were sent to Mineralnye Vody, where they were held in a glass factory before they were taken a little farther off, to a Soviet antitank ditch. The figures had turned out larger than expected: we had found a lot of Jews evacuated from the Ukraine or from Byelorussia, as well as the teaching staff and students from the University of Leningrad, sent to the KMV the previous year for their safety, many of whom were either Jews or Party members, or were regarded as dangerous because they were intellectuals. The Einsatzkommando was taking advantage of the occasion to liquidate arrested Communists, Komsomols, Gypsies, common law criminals found in jail, and the staff and patients of several sanatoriums. “You understand,” Bolte explained, “the infrastructure here is ideal for our administration. Envoys of the Reichskommissar, for example, asked us to free up the sanatorium of the People’s Commissariat for the oil industry, in Kislovodsk.” The Aktion was already well under way: on the first day they had finished with the Jews of Minvody, then of Yessentuki and Zheleznovodsk; the next day, they would start with the Jews of Pyatigorsk, then the action would end with the Jews of Kislovodsk. In each case, the evacuation order was posted two days before the operation. “Since they can’t travel from one town to the other, they don’t suspect anything.” He invited me to come with him to inspect the action under way; I replied that I would rather visit the other towns of the KMV first. “Then I won’t be able to go with you: Sturmbannführer Müller is waiting for me.” “That’s all right. You can just lend me a man who knows the offices of your Teilkommandos.”

The road left the town from the west, skirting round Beshtau, the largest of the five volcanoes; below, one could glimpse now and then the bends of the Podkumok, its waters gray and muddy. I didn’t actually have much to do in these other towns, but I was curious to visit them, and I wasn’t burning with desire to go see the Aktion. Yessentuki, under the Soviets, had been transformed into an industrial city of not much interest; I met the officers of the Teilkommando there, discussed their arrangements, and didn’t linger. Kislovodsk, on the other hand, turned out to be very pleasant, an old spa town with a faded, outmoded charm, greener and prettier than Pyatigorsk. The main baths were housed in a curious imitation Indian temple, built around the turn of the century; I tasted the water they call Narzan, and found it pleasantly sparkling, but a little too bitter. After my discussions I took a stroll in the large park, then returned to Pyatigorsk.

The officers ate together in the sanatorium’s dining room. Conversation dealt mostly with military events, and most of the diners showed proper optimism. “Now that Schweppenburg’s Panzers have crossed the Terek,” argued Wiens, Müller’s adjunct, a bitter Volksdeutscher who hadn’t set foot outside of the Ukraine until he was twenty-four, “our forces will soon be in Groznyi. After that, Baku is just a matter of time. Most of us will be able to celebrate Christmas at home.”—“General Schweppenburg’s Panzers are making no headway whatsoever, Hauptsturmführer,” I politely remarked. “They’ve barely managed to establish a bridgehead. Soviet resistance in Chechnya-Ingushetia is much stiffer than they expected.”—“Bah,” exclaimed Pfeiffer, a fat red Untersturmführer, “it’s their last gasp. Their divisions are bled dry. They’re just leaving a thin screen in front of us to try to deceive us; but at the first serious thrust, they’ll collapse or cut and run like rabbits.”—“How do you know that?” I asked curiously.—“That’s what they’re saying at the AOK,” Wiens answered for him. “Ever since the beginning of the summer, very few prisoners have been taken in the areas surrounded, like at Millerovo. From that they deduce that the Bolsheviks have exhausted their reserves, as our high command had foreseen.”—“We talked a lot about this aspect of things at the Gruppenstab and with the OKHG,” I said. “Not everyone shares your opinion. Some think that the Soviets learned a lesson from their terrible losses last year, and changed their strategy: they’re withdrawing before us in an orderly way, so as to mount a sudden counteroffensive when our lines of communication are vulnerable and stretched too thin.”—“I think you’re too much of a pessimist, Hauptsturmführer,” grumbled Müller, the head of the Kommando, his mouth full of chicken.—“I’m not a pessimist, Sturmbannführer,” I replied. “I’m just saying that there are different opinions, that’s all.”—“Do you think our lines are stretched too thin?” Bolte asked curiously.—“That depends on what’s actually facing them. The front line of Army Group B follows the course of the Don, where there are still Soviet bridgeheads that we haven’t been able to eliminate, all the way from Voronezh, which the Russians still hold despite all our efforts, down to Stalingrad.”—“Stalingrad won’t last much longer,” said Wiens, who had just emptied his stein. “Our Luftwaffe crushed the defense last month; the Sixth Army will just have to clean up.”—“Maybe. But since all our troops are concentrated on Stalingrad, the flanks of Army Group B are held only by our allies, on the Don and in the steppe. You know as well as I do that the quality of Romanian or Italian troops doesn’t come close to that of the German forces; the Hungarians might be good soldiers, but they have no supplies. Here, in the Caucasus, it’s the same, we don’t have enough men to form a continuous front along the ridges. And between the two Army Groups, the front peters out in the Kalmuk Steppe; we only send patrols out there, and we’re not safe from unpleasant surprises.”—“On that point,” interrupted Dr. Strohschneider, an immensely tall man, whose lips jutted out from under a bushy moustache and who commanded a Teilkommando on assignment in Budyonnovsk, “Hauptsturmführer Aue is not entirely wrong. The steppe is wide open. A bold attack could weaken our position.”—“Oh,” said Wiens as he drank some more beer, “they’ll never be anything but mosquito bites. And if they take a shot at our allies, the German ‘corsetting’ will be more than enough to control the situation.”—“I hope you’re right,” I said.—“In any case,” Dr. Müller sententiously concluded, “the Führer will always be able to impose the right decisions on all those reactionary generals.” That was certainly one way of seeing things. But the conversation had already shifted to the day’s Aktion. I listened in silence. As always, there were the inevitable anecdotes about the way the condemned behaved, how they prayed, cried, sang the Internationale, or were silent, and then commentaries on the problems of organization and our men’s responses. I put up with all this wearily; even the old-timers were only repeating what we’d been hearing for a year, there wasn’t a single authentic reaction in all these boasts and platitudes. One officer, though, stood out because of his particularly prolonged, coarse invectives against the Jews. He was the Leiter IV of the Kommando, Hauptsturmführer Turek, a disagreeable man I’d already met in the Gruppenstab. This Turek was one of the few visceral, obscene anti-Semites, in the Streicher mode, whom I had met in the Einsatzgruppen; at the SP and the SD, traditionally, we cultivated an intellectual kind of anti-Semitism, and these kinds of emotional remarks were poorly viewed. But Turek was afflicted with a remarkably Jewish physique: he had dark curly hair, a prominent nose, sensual lips; behind his back, some people cruelly called him “Jew Süss,” while others insinuated that he had Gypsy blood. He must have suffered from this since childhood; and at the slightest provocation he boasted about his Aryan ancestry: “I know it’s hard to see,” he would begin before explaining that for his recent wedding he had had to carry out exhaustive research and had been able to go back to the seventeenth century; he would go so far as to produce his RuSHA certificate attesting that he was of pure race and fit to procreate German children. I understood all that, and might have pitied him; but his outrageousness and obscenities surpassed all bounds: at the executions, I had heard, he taunted the condemned men for their circumsized penises, and forced women to strip naked so he could tell them that their Jewish vaginas would never produce any more children. Ohlendorf would not have tolerated such behavior, but Bierkamp closed his eyes to it; as for Müller, who should have called him to order, he said nothing. Turek was talking now with Pfeiffer, who directed the firing squads during the action; Pfeiffer was laughing at his jokes and egging him on. Sickened, I excused myself before dessert and went up to my room. My bouts of nausea had started up again; since Voroshilovsk, or earlier maybe, I was again suffering from the brutal retching that had so exhausted me in the Ukraine. I had vomited only once, in Voroshilovsk, after a rather heavy meal, but sometimes I had to make an effort to control the nausea: I coughed a lot, grew red, I found this unseemly and preferred to withdraw.

The next morning, I went to Minvody with the other officers to supervise the Aktion. I watched the arrival and unloading of the train: the Jews seemed surprised at getting out so soon, since they thought they were being transferred to the Ukraine, but they stayed calm. To avoid any agitation, the known Communists were kept under separate guard. In the cluttered, dusty main hall of the glass factory, the Jews had to hand over their clothes, luggage, personal effects, and the keys to their apartments. That provoked a commotion, especially since the factory floor was strewn with broken glass, and the people, in their bare socks, were cutting their feet. I pointed this out to Dr. Bolte, but he shrugged his shoulders. The Orpos were hitting people left and right; the Jews, terrified, would run and sit down in their underwear, the women trying to calm the children. Outside blew a cool breeze; but the sun was beating down on the glass roof, and the heat inside was stifling, as in a greenhouse. A man of a certain age, in distinguished clothes with glasses and a little moustache, approached me. He was holding a very young boy in his arms. He took off his hat and addressed me in perfect German: “Herr Offizier, can I have a few words with you?”—“You speak German very well,” I replied.—“I studied in Germany,” he said with a slightly stiff dignity. “It was once a great country.” He must have been one of the professors from Leningrad. “What do you wish to say to me?” I asked curtly. The little boy, who was holding the man by the neck, was gazing at me with large blue eyes. He was about two. “I know what you are doing here,” the man said coolly. “It is an abomination. I simply want to wish that you’ll survive this war and wake up for twenty years, every night, screaming. I hope you’ll be incapable of looking at your children without seeing ours, the ones you murdered.” He turned his back on me and went away before I could reply. The boy kept staring at me over his shoulder. Bolte came up to me: “What insolence! How dare he? You should have reacted.” I shrugged my shoulders. What did it matter? Bolte knew perfectly well what we were going to do to that man and his child. It was natural that he should want to insult us. I walked away and headed for the exit. Some Orpos were organizing a group of people in their underwear and herding them toward the antitank trench, half a mile away. I watched them move off. The ditch was too far away for the gunfire to be heard; but these people must have suspected what fate was awaiting them. Bolte hailed me: “Are you coming?” Our car passed the group that I had seen leaving; they were shivering from the cold, the women were clutching their children by the hand. Then in front of us was the ditch. Some soldiers and Orpos were standing at ease, jeering; I heard a commotion and shouts. I passed through the group of soldiers and saw Turek, holding a shovel, striking an almost naked man lying on the ground. Other bloody bodies were lying in front of him; farther on, some terrorized Jews were standing under guard. “Vermin!” Turek bellowed, his eyes bulging. “Grovel, Jew!” He hit the man’s head with the sharp edge of the shovel; the man’s skull cracked, spraying Turek’s boots with blood and brains; I clearly saw an eye, knocked out by the blow, fly a few meters away. The men were laughing. I reached Turek in two strides and seized him roughly by the arm: “You’re insane! Stop that at once!” I was trembling. Turek turned on me in a rage and made as if to raise his shovel; then he lowered it and shrugged his arm free. He was trembling too. “Mind your own business,” he spat. His face was purple; he was sweating and rolling his eyes. He threw down the shovel and strode away. Bolte had joined me; with a few curt words, he ordered Pfeiffer, who was standing there breathing heavily, to have the bodies picked up and to continue the execution. “It wasn’t your place to intervene,” he reproached me.—“But that sort of thing is unacceptable!”—“Maybe, but Sturmbannführer Müller is in charge of this Kommando. You’re here only as an observer.”—“Well, where is Sturmbannführer Müller, then?” I was still trembling. I returned to the car and ordered the driver to take me back to Pyatigorsk. I wanted to light a cigarette; but my hands were still shaking, I couldn’t control them and had trouble with my lighter. Finally I managed it and took a few drags before throwing the cigarette out the window. We were passing, from the other direction, the column that was advancing at a walk; from the corner of my eye I saw a teenager break rank and run to pick up my cigarette butt before going back to his place.

In Pyatigorsk, I couldn’t find Müller. The soldier on guard thought he must have gone to the AOK, but he wasn’t sure; I thought about waiting for him, then decided to leave: might as well report the incident directly to Bierkamp. I went to the sanatorium to get my things and sent my driver to scare up some gasoline at the AOK. It wasn’t very polite to leave without saying goodbye; but I had no desire to say goodbye to these people. In Mineralnye Vody, the road passed close to the factory, which lay behind the railroad, at the foot of the mountain; I didn’t stop. Back in Vorshilovsk, I wrote my report, confining myself mostly to the technical and organizational aspects of the action. But I also inserted a sentence about “certain deplorable excesses on the part of officers supposed to set an example.” I knew that would be enough. The next day, in fact, Thielecke came to my office to let me know that Bierkamp wanted to see me. Prill, after reading my report, had already asked some questions: I had refused to answer him, telling him it concerned no one but the Kommandant. Bierkamp received me politely, had me sit down, and asked what had happened; Thielecke was also present at the discussion. I related the incident to them as neutrally as possible. “And what do you think should be done?” Thielecke asked when I had finished.—“I think, Sturmbannführer, that it’s a case for the SS-Gericht, a court of the SS and the police,” I replied. “Or at the very least for a psychiatrist.”—“You exaggerate,” Bierkamp said. “Hauptsturmführer Turek is an excellent officer, very capable. His indignation and legitimate anger at the Jews, bearers of the Stalin system, are understandable. And also you yourself acknowledge that you didn’t get there till the end of the incident. No doubt there was provocation.”—“Even if those Jews were insolent or tried to run away, his reaction was unworthy of an SS officer. Especially in front of the men.”—“On that point you’re probably right.” He looked at Thielecke for an instant, then turned to me: “I’m planning on going to Pyatigorsk in a few days. I’ll discuss the incident myself with Hauptsturmführer Turek. Thank you for letting me know about these facts.”

Sturmbannführer Dr. Leetsch, Dr. Seibert’s replacement, was arriving that same day, accompanied by an Obersturmbannführer, Paul Schultz, who was supposed to take over for Dr. Braune in Maikop; but before I could even meet him, Prill asked me to leave again for Mozdok, to inspect Sk 10b, which had just arrived there. “That way you’ll have seen all the Kommandos,” he said. “You can report to the Sturmbannführer when you return.” The road to Mozdok took about six hours, going through Minvody and then Prokhladny; so I decided to leave the next morning, but didn’t see Leetsch. My driver woke me up a little before dawn. We had already left the Voroshilovsk plateau when the sun rose, softly illuminating the fields and orchards and outlining the first volcanoes of the KMV in the distance. After Mineralnye Vody, the road, lined with linden trees, followed the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, still barely visible; only the Elbruz, its rounded humped peak covered with snow, showed in the gray of the sky. North of the road began the fields, with here and there a poor little Muslim village. We drove behind long convoys of trucks from the Rollbahn, difficult to pass. Mozdok was crawling with men and vehicles, long columns clogging the dusty streets; I parked my Opel and left on foot to look for the HQ of the Fifty-second Corps. I was met by an officer from the Abwehr, very excited: “You haven’t heard? Generalfeldmarschall List was dismissed this morning.”—“But why?” I exclaimed. List, a newcomer on the Eastern Front, had barely lasted two months. The AO shrugged his shoulders: “We were forced to go on the defensive after the failure of our breakthrough on the right bank of the Terek. That must not have been appreciated in high places.”—“Why couldn’t you advance?” He raised his arms: “We lack the forces, that’s all! Dividing Army Group South in half was a fatal error. Now we don’t have enough forces for either objective. In Stalingrad they’re still mired down on the outskirts.”—“And who was appointed in place of the Feldmarschall?” He guffawed bitterly: “You’re not going to believe me: the Führer took the command himself!” That was, in fact, unheard-of: “The Führer personally took command of Army Group A?”—“Exactly. I don’t know how he plans on doing it; the OKHG is staying in Voroshilovsk, and the Führer is in Vinnitsa. But since he’s a genius, he must have a solution.” His tone was becoming more and more acerbic. “He’s already commanding the Reich, the Wehrmacht, and the land forces. Now Army Group A. Do you think he’ll go on this way? He could take command of an army, then a corps, then a division. In the end, who knows, he might end up as a corporal at the front, just like at the beginning.”—“I find you extremely insolent,” I said coldly.—“And you, old man,” he replied, “can fuck off. You’re in a sector of the front, here; the SS has no jurisdiction.” An orderly came in. “There’s your guide,” the officer pointed. “Have a nice day.” I went out without saying anything. I was shocked, but worried too: if our offensive in the Caucasus, on which we had staked everything, was getting bogged down, it was a bad sign. Time wasn’t working on our side. Winter was approaching, and the Endsieg kept drawing farther back, like the magic peaks of the Caucasus. At least, I reassured myself, Stalingrad will soon fall; that will free up forces to resume the advance here.

The Sonderkommando was set up in a partially ruined wing of a Russian base; some rooms were still usable, others had been sealed off with boards. I was received by the head of the Kommando, a slender Austrian with a well-trimmed moustache just like the Führer’s, Sturmbannführer Alois Persterer. He was a man from the SD who had been a Leiter in Hamburg back when Bierkamp was heading the Kripo there; but the two didn’t seem any closer for it. He gave me a concise outline of the situation: in Prokhladny, a Teilkommando had shot some Kabards and Balkars associated with the Bolshevik authorities, along with a number of Jews and partisans; in Mozdok, aside from a few suspicious cases handed over by the Fifty-second Corps, they hadn’t really begun. Someone had mentioned a Jewish kolkhoz in the region; he would look into it and take care of it. In any case there weren’t too many partisans, and in the frontline areas the natives seemed hostile to the Reds. I asked him what his relations were with the Wehrmacht. “I can’t even say they’re mediocre,” he finally replied. “They seem just to be ignoring us.”—“Yes, the failure of the offensive is worrying them.” I spent the night in Mozdok, on a camp bed set up in one of the offices, and left the next morning; Persterer had suggested I attend an execution in Prokhladny, with their gas truck, but I had politely declined. In Voroshilovsk, I introduced myself to Dr. Leetsch, an older officer, with a narrow, rectangular face, graying hair, and glum lips. After reading my report, he wanted to discuss it. I told him my impressions about the morale of the Wehrmacht. “Yes,” he said finally, “you’re completely right. That’s why I think it’s important to reestablish good ties with them. I’ll take care of relations with the OKHG myself, but I want to appoint a good liaison officer in Pyatigorsk, with the Ic of the AOK. I wanted to ask you to take this position.” I hesitated for an instant; I wondered if the idea really came from him, or had been suggested to him by Prill during my absence. Finally I replied: “To tell the truth, my relations with Einsatzkommando 12 are not the best. I had an altercation with one of their officers, and I’m afraid it might create complications.”—“Don’t worry about that. You won’t have much to do with them. You’ll have your quarters at the AOK and you’ll report directly to me.”

So I returned to Pyatigorsk and they gave me a place to stay some ways from the center, in a sanatorium at the foot of the Mashuk (the highest part of the town). I had a French window and a little balcony that looked out on the long bare ridge of the Goriatchaya Gora, with its Chinese pavilion and a few trees, and then the plain and the volcanoes behind it, ranged in tiers in the haze. If I turned around and leaned backward, I could see a wedge of the Mashuk over the roof, crossed by a cloud that seemed to be moving almost at my level. It had rained during the night and the air smelled good and fresh. After going to the AOK to introduce myself to the Ic, Oberst von Gilsa, and his colleagues, I went out for a walk. A long paved lane rises from the center and follows the side of the mountain; behind the monument to Lenin, you have to climb some wide steep steps, then, past some basins, between lines of young oak and fragrant pine trees, the slope grows gentler. I passed the Lermontov Sanatorium, where von Kleist and his staff were staying; my quarters were set a little farther back, in a separate wing, right up against the mountain, now almost completely hidden by clouds. Farther up, the lane widened into a road that skirts round the Mashuk to connect a string of sanatoriums; there I veered off toward the little pavilion called the Aeolian Harp, from which one has a broad view of the plain to the south, scattered with otherworldly mounds, one volcano and then another and then another, extinct, peaceful. To the right, the sun drew gleams from the metal roofs of the houses, scattered in thick greenery; and farther on, in the distance, clouds were forming, masking the peaks of the Caucasus. A cheerful voice rose up behind me: “Aue! Have you been here a long time?” I turned around: Voss was approaching, smiling, beneath the trees. I shook his hand warmly. “I’ve just arrived. I’ve been appointed liaison officer to the AOK.”—“Oh, excellent! I’m at the AOK too. Have you eaten yet?”—“Not yet.”—“Come with me, then. There’s a good café just down below.” He set off on a narrow stone path cut into the rock and I followed him. Below, framing the tip of the long ravine that separates the Mashuk from the Goriatchaya Gora, lay a long columned gallery made of pink granite, decorated in an Italian style both ponderous and frivolous. “That’s the Academic Gallery,” Voss said.—“Oh!” I exclaimed, very excited, “but that’s the old Elisabeth Gallery! This is where Pechorin saw Princess Mary for the first time.” Voss burst out laughing: “So you know Lermontov? Everyone here is reading him.”—“Of course! A Hero of Our Time was my favorite book, at one time.” The path had brought us to the level of the gallery, built to shelter a sulfur spring. Some crippled soldiers, pale and slow, were strolling or sitting on benches, facing the long hollow that opens up toward the city; a Russian gardener was weeding the tulip and red carnation beds along the grand staircase that descends toward Kirov Street, at the bottom of the depression. The copper roofs of the spas nestled against the Goriatchaya Gora, rising above the trees, glittered in the sunlight. Beyond the ridge you could only make out one of the volcanoes. “Are you coming?” said Voss.—“Just a minute.” I entered the gallery to look at the spring, but I was disappointed: the room was bare and empty, and the water was pouring from an ordinary faucet. “The café is in the back,” said Voss. He passed under the arch that separates the left wing of the gallery from the central building; behind, the wall joined the rock to form a wide alcove, where they had placed a few tables and some stools. We sat down and a pretty young girl appeared through a door. Voss exchanged a few words with her in Russian. “There isn’t any shashlik today. But they have Kiev cutlets.”—“That’s perfect.”—“Do you want some water from the spring or a beer?”—“I think I’d rather have a beer. Is it cold?”—“Cold enough. But I warn you, it’s not German beer.” I lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall of the gallery. It was pleasantly cool; water streamed down the rock, two little brightly colored birds were pecking at the ground. “So you like Pyatigorsk, then?” Voss asked me. I smiled, I was happy to see him here. “I haven’t seen much yet,” I said.—“If you like Lermontov, the city is a veritable pilgrimage. The Soviets created a nice little museum in his house. When you have an afternoon free, we’ll go see it.”—“Gladly. Do you know where the location of the duel is?”—“Pechorin’s or Lermontov’s?”—“Lermontov’s.”—“Behind Mashuk. There’s a hideous monument, of course. And just imagine: we’ve even found one of his descendants.” I laughed: “Not possible.”—“Yes, yes. A Frau Evgenia Akimovna Shan-Girei. She is very old. The general had a pension allocated to her, larger than the one she had under the Soviets.”—“Did she know him?”—“You’ve got to be kidding. The Russians were just preparing to celebrate the centenary of his death the day of our invasion. Frau Shan-Girei was born ten or fifteen years later, in the fifties, I think.” The waitress returned with two dishes and some silverware. The “cutlets” were in fact chicken rolls, stuffed with melted butter and breaded, and accompanied by a fricassee of wild mushrooms with garlic. “This is delicious. And even the beer isn’t too bad.”—“I told you, didn’t I? I come here whenever I can. It’s never crowded.” I ate without talking, deeply content. “You have a lot of work?” I finally asked him.—“Let’s say that I have some free time for my research. Last month I looted the Pushkin library in Krasnodar and found some very interesting things. They had a lot of books about the Cossacks, but I also unearthed some Caucasian grammar books and some pretty rare monographs by Troubetskoy. I still have to go to Cherkessk, I’m sure they’ll have some books on the Circassians and the Karachai. My dream, though, is to find an Ubykh who still knows his language. But for now, not a chance. Otherwise, I write leaflets for the AOK.”—“What kind of leaflets?”—“Propaganda leaflets. They scatter them over the mountains by plane. I did one in Karachai, Kabardian, and Balkar, consulting the locals, of course, that was very funny: Mountain people—Before, you had everything, but Soviet power took it away from you! Welcome your German brothers who have flown like eagles over the mountains to free you! Et cetera.” I chuckled along with him. “I’ve also made some passes that we’re sending to the partisans to encourage them to switch sides. I wrote that we’d welcome them as soyuzniki in the general fight against Judeo-Bolshevism. The Jews among them must be having a good laugh. These propuska are valid until the end of the war.” The girl cleared the dishes and brought us some Turkish coffee. “They have everything here!” I exclaimed.—“Oh, yes. The markets are open, there’s even food for sale in the stores.”—“It’s not like in the Ukraine.”—“No. And with a little luck, it won’t be.”—“What do you mean?”—“Oh, some things might be changing.” We paid the bill and went back through the arch. The wounded soldiers were still strolling in front of the gallery, drinking their water in little sips. “Does that really help?” I asked Voss, pointing at a glass.—“The region has a reputation. You know that people came to take the waters here long before the Russians. Have you ever heard of Ibn Battuta?”—“The Arab traveler? I know the name.”—“He came through here, around 1375. He was in the Crimea, with the Tatars, where he had gotten married on the way. The Tatars were still living in large nomadic camps, cities on wheels made of tents on enormous wagons, with mosques and shops. Every year in the summer, when it began to get too warm in the Crimea, the Nogai Khan, with his entire city on the march, crossed the isthmus of Perekop and came as far as here. Ibn Battuta describes the place quite precisely, and praises the medicinal virtues of the sulfur water. He calls the site Bish or Besh Dagh, which, like Pyatigorsk in Russian, means ‘the five mountains.’” I laughed with surprise: “And what became of Ibn Battuta?”—“Afterward? He continued on, through Daghestan and Afghanistan, and ended up in India. He was a qadi in Delhi for a long time, and served Mohammed Tughluq, the paranoid sultan, for seven years before falling into disgrace. Then he was a qadi in the Maldives, and he even went as far as Ceylon, Indonesia, and China. And then he went home, to Morocco, to write his book before he died.”

That night, in the mess, I realized that Pyatigorsk truly was a place of reunions: sitting at a table with some other officers, I saw Dr. Hohenegg, the good-natured, cynical pathologist I had met in the train between Kharkov and Simferopol. I went up to greet him: “I see, Herr Oberstarzt, that General von Kleist surrounds himself only with the best people.” He got up to shake my hand: “Oh, but I’m not with Generaloberst von Kleist: I’m still attached to the Sixth Army, with General Paulus.”—“What are you doing here, then?”—“The OKH decided to take advantage of the KMV infrastructures to organize an interarmy medical conference. A very useful exchange of information. Everyone competes to describe the most atrocious case.”—“I’m sure that honor will fall to you.”—“Listen, I’m dining with my colleagues; but if you like, come by afterward, have a brandy in my room.” I went to dine with the officers from the Abwehr. They were realistic, sympathetic men, but almost as critical as the officer in Mozdok. Some stated openly that if we didn’t take Stalingrad soon, the war was lost; von Gilsa was drinking French wine and didn’t contradict them. Afterward I went out to walk by myself in Tsvetnik Park, behind the Lermontov gallery, a curious pavilion of pale blue wood, in a medieval style, with pointed turrets and Art Deco windows tinted pink, red, and white: an utterly disparate effect, but wholly in keeping here. I smoked, absent-mindedly contemplating the faded tulips, then climbed back up the hill to the sanatorium and went to knock on Hohenegg’s door. He welcomed me lying on his sofa, his feet bare, his hands crossed on his large round belly. “Excuse me for not getting up.” He made a sign with his head toward an end table. “The brandy is over there. Pour me one too, will you?” I poured two measures into the glasses and held one out to him; then I settled into a chair and crossed my legs. “So what’s the most atrocious thing you’ve seen?” He waved his hand: “Man, of course!”—“I meant medically.”—“Medically, atrocious things don’t interest me in the least. On the other hand one does see extraordinary curiosities, which completely revise our notions of what our poor bodies can endure.”—“What, for example?”—“Well, a man will catch a tiny piece of shrapnel in the calf that will slice through the peroneal artery and he’ll die in two minutes, still standing, his blood emptied into his boot without his noticing. Yet another man might take a bullet through the head, from one temple to the other, and will get up on his own to walk to the first-aid post.”—“What an insignificant thing we are,” I commented.—“Precisely.” I tasted Hohenegg’s brandy: it was Armenian, a little sweet but drinkable. “You’ll excuse my brandy,” he said without turning his head, “but I couldn’t find any Rémy-Martin in this town of barbarians. To go back to what I was saying, almost all of my colleagues have stories like that. And it’s not new: I once read the memoirs of a military doctor in Napoleon’s army, and he talked about the same things. Of course, we’re still losing far too many men. Military medicine has come a long way since 1812, but so have the methods of butchery. We’re still lagging behind. But, little by little, we’re getting better, and it’s true that Gatling has done more for modern surgery than Dupuytren.”—“But still you perform real wonders.” He sighed: “Maybe. The fact is I can no longer bear to see a pregnant woman. It depresses me too much to think about what’s in store for her fetus.”—“Nothing ever dies except what is born,” I recited. “Birth is indebted to death.” He let out a short cry, got up suddenly, and swallowed his brandy in one gulp. “That’s what I like about you, Hauptsturmführer. A member of the Sicherheitsdienst who quotes Tertullian instead of Rosenberg or Hans Frank is always a pleasure. But I could criticize your translation: Mutuum debitum est nativitati cum mortalitate, I’d say rather: ‘Birth has a mutual debt with death,’ or ‘Birth and death are mutually indebted to each other.’”—“You’re probably right. I was always better in Greek. I have a linguist friend here, I’ll ask him.” He held out his glass for me to fill. “Speaking of mortality,” he asked me pleasantly, “are you still murdering poor defenseless people?” I handed him his glass coolly. “Coming from you, Doktor, I won’t take that the wrong way. But in any case, I’m nothing but a liaison officer, which suits me fine. I observe and do nothing, that’s my favorite position.”—“You would have made a very poor physician, then. Observation without practice isn’t worth much.”—“That’s why I’m a jurist.” I got up and went to open the French window. Outside, the air was sweet, but you couldn’t see the stars and I could feel rain coming. A light wind was rustling through the trees. I went back to the sofa where Hohenegg had stretched out again after unfastening his tunic. “What I can tell you,” I said, standing in front of him, “is that some of my dear colleagues here are absolute bastards.”—“I don’t doubt it for an instant. It’s a common defect in people who practice without observing. It even occurs among doctors.” I rolled my glass between my fingers. I suddenly felt hollow, heavy. I finished my glass and asked him: “Are you here for long?”—“There are two sessions: now we’re going over the wounds, then we’ll come back at the end of the month for diseases. One day for venereal diseases, and two whole days devoted to lice and scabies.”—“We’ll see each other again, then. Good night, Doktor.” He held out his hand and I shook it. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t get up,” he said.

Hohenegg’s brandy turned out to be a poor choice of after-dinner drink: back in my room, I vomited up my dinner. The retchings caught me so quickly I barely had the time to reach the bathtub. Since I had already digested, it was easy to rinse out; but it had a bitter, acidic, revolting taste; I preferred to vomit my meals right away, it came up more painfully and with more difficulty, but at least it didn’t have any taste, or else it tasted like food. I thought about returning to have another drink with Hohenegg, to ask his advice; but finally I just washed out my mouth with water, smoked a cigarette, and went to bed. The next day, I had to go to the Kommando to pay a courtesy visit; they were also expecting Oberführer Bierkamp. I went there around eleven o’clock. From the lower part of town, on the boulevard, you could clearly see, in the distance, the jagged peaks of the Beshtau, rising like a guardian idol; it hadn’t rained, but the air was still fresh. At the Kommando, they told me that Müller was busy with Bierkamp. I waited on the steps of the little courtyard, watching one of the drivers wash the mud off the bumpers and wheels of the Saurer truck. The rear door was open: out of curiosity, I went over to it to look inside, since I hadn’t yet seen what it looked like; I recoiled and immediately began coughing; it was foul, a stinking pool of vomit, excrement, urine. The driver noticed my reaction and said a few words to me in Russian: “Griaznyi, kazhdi raz,” but I didn’t understand the words. An Orpo, probably a Volksdeutscher, came over and translated: “He says that it’s always like that, Hauptsturmführer, very dirty, but they’re going to modify the interior, have the floor slope down, and put a little trapdoor in the middle. That will make it easier to clean out.”—“Is he a Russian?”—“Who, Zaitsev? He’s a Cossack, Hauptsturmführer, we have several of them.” I went back to the steps and lit a cigarette; just at that instant I was summoned, and had to throw it away. Müller received me together with Bierkamp. I saluted him and introduced my mission in Pyatigorsk. “Yes, yes,” Müller said, “the Oberführer explained it to me.” They asked me some questions and I talked about the feeling of pessimism that seemed to be reigning among the army officers. Bierkamp shrugged: “The soldiers have always been pessimists. Already, when it came to the Rhineland and the Sudetenland, they were wailing like sissies. They have never understood the strength of the Führer’s will and of National Socialism.—Tell me something else, have you heard this story about a military government?”—“No, Oberführer. What is it?”—“A rumor is circulating to the effect that the Führer has approved of a military government for the Caucasus, instead of a civilian administration. But we can’t manage to get any official confirmation. At the OKHG they’re very evasive.”—“I’ll try to find out more at the AOK, Oberführer.” We exchanged a few more remarks and I took my leave. In the hallway, I met Turek. He gave me a sardonic, angry look and said with incredible rudeness: “Ah, the Papiersoldat. Don’t worry, your turn will come.” Bierkamp must have talked to him. I answered him amiably, with a little smile: “Hauptsturmführer, I’m at your service.” He stared at me for an instant with a furious look, then disappeared into an office. There, I said to myself, you’ve made yourself an enemy; that’s not so hard.

At the AOK, I requested a meeting with von Gilsa and put Bierkamp’s question to him. “It’s true,” he replied, “they’re talking about it. But the details aren’t clear yet for me.”—“And what will happen to the Reichskommissariat, then?”—“The establishment of the Reichskommissariat will be delayed for a while.”—“And why haven’t the representatives of the SP and the SD been informed?”—“I couldn’t say. I’m still waiting for more information. But you know, this question concerns the OKHG. Oberführer Bierkamp should apply directly to them.” I left von Gilsa’s office with the impression that he knew more than he was saying. I wrote a brief report and addressed it to Leetsch and Bierkamp. In general, that was what my work consisted of now: the Abwehr sent me a copy of the reports they wanted, generally having to do with the evolution of the partisan problem; I threw in some information gleaned here and there, most of the time at meals, and sent the whole thing on to Voroshilovsk; in exchange, I received other reports that I communicated to von Gilsa or one of his colleagues. Thus, the activity reports of Ek 12, whose offices were half a mile away from the AOK, had to be sent first to Voroshilovsk, then, collated with those of Sk 10b (the other Kommandos were operating in the theater of operations or the rear areas of the Seventeenth Army), some of them came down to me, and I passed them on to the Ic; and the whole time, of course, the Einsatzkommando maintained its own direct relations with the AOK. I didn’t have much work to do. I took advantage of this: Pyatigorsk was a pleasant town, there were lots of things to see. Accompanied by Voss, always curious, I went to visit the local museum, located a little below the Hotel Bristol, across from the post office and Tsvetnik Park. There were some fine collections there, accumulated in the course of decades by the Kavkazskoe Gornoe Obshchestvo, an association of amateur but enthusiastic naturalists: they had brought back from their expeditions heaps of stuffed animals, minerals, skulls, plants, dried flowers; old gravestones and pagan idols; moving photographs in black-and-white, representing mostly elegant gentlemen in cravats, celluloid collars, and straw boaters perched on the steep slope of a peak; and (I remembered my father’s office with delight) a whole wall of large cases of butterflies containing hundreds of specimens, each one labeled with the date and place of its capture, the name of the collector, and the sex and scientific name of the butterfly. They came from Kislovodsk, from Adyghea, from Chechnya, as far as Daghestan and Adjaria; the dates were 1923, 1915, 1909. At night, we sometimes went to the Teatr Operetty, another eccentric building, decorated with red ceramic tiles embossed with books, musical instruments, and garlands, and recently reopened by the Wehrmacht; then we would dine at the mess or in a café or at the Kasino, which was none other than the old hotel-restaurant Restoratsiya where Pechorin met Mary and where, as a plaque in Russian that Voss translated for me indicated, Lev Tolstoy celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday. The Soviets had turned it into a Central Government Institute of Balneology; the Wehrmacht had left this impressive title on the pediment, in gold letters above the massive columns, but had returned the building to its original use, and you could drink dry wine from Kakhetia there and eat shashlik and sometimes even venison; there, too, I introduced Voss to Hohenegg and they spent the evening discussing the origins of the names of diseases, in five languages.

Around the middle of the month, a dispatch from the Group shed some light on the situation. The Führer had in fact approved the setting up, for the Kuban-Caucasus, of a military administration under OKHG A, headed by the General der Kavallerie Ernst Köstring. The Ostministerium was detaching a high functionary to serve with this administration, but the creation of the Reichskommissariat was delayed indefinitely. Even more surprising, the OKH had ordered the OKHG to form autonomous territorial entities for the Cossacks and the different mountain peoples; the kolkhozes would be dissolved and forced labor prohibited: the systematic opposite of our policy in the Ukraine. That seemed to me too intelligent to be true. I had to return urgently to Voroshilovsk to attend a meeting: the HSSPF wanted to discuss the new decrees. All the leaders of the Kommandos were present, with most of their adjuncts. Korsemann seemed worried. “The disturbing thing is that the Führer made this decision at the beginning of August; but I myself was only informed of it yesterday. It’s incomprehensible.”—“The OKH must be worried about SS interference,” Bierkamp said.—“But why?” Korsemann plaintively asked. “Our collaboration is excellent.”—“The SS spent a lot of time cultivating good relations with the Reichskommissar-designate. For the time being, all that work has gone up in smoke.”—“In Maikop,” interrupted Schultz, Braune’s replacement who’d been nicknamed Eisbein-Paule because of his girth, “they say the Wehrmacht will keep control of the oil installations.”—“I will also point out to you, Brigadeführer,” Bierkamp added, addressing Korsemann, “that if these ‘local self-governments’ are established, they will control police functions in their district themselves. From our point of view, that is unacceptable.” The discussion went on in this vein for a while; the consensus seemed to be that the SS had been well and truly taken in. Finally we were dismissed and instructed to gather as much information as possible.

In Pyatigorsk, I had begun to develop tolerable relations with some officers in the Kommando. Hohenegg had left, and aside from the officers of the Abwehr, I saw almost no one except Voss. At night, I sometimes met SS officers in the Kasino. Turek of course never spoke to me; as for Dr. Müller, ever since I’d heard him publicly explain why he didn’t like the gas truck, but found execution by firing squad much more gemütlich, I had decided that we wouldn’t have much to say to each other. But among the subordinate officers there were some decent men, even if they were often boring. One night, as I was having a brandy with Voss, Obersturmführer Dr. Kern came over and I invited him to join us. I introduced him to Voss: “Oh, so you’re the linguist from the AOK,” said Kern.—“Apparently so,” Voss replied with amusement.—“That’s good,” said Kern, “I wanted to submit a case to you. They tell me you know the peoples of the Caucasus well.”—“A little,” Voss admitted.—“Professor Kern teaches in Munich,” I interrupted. “He is a specialist in Muslim history.”—“That’s an extremely interesting subject,” Voss approved.—“Yes, I spent seven years in Turkey and I know a little about it,” Kern said.—“How did you end up here, then?”—“Like everyone else, I was mobilized. I was already a member of the SS and a correspondent of the SD, and I ended up in the Einsatz.”—“I see. And your case?”—“A young woman they brought me. A redhead, very beautiful, charming. Her neighbors denounced her as Jewish. She showed me an internal Soviet passport, delivered in Derbent, where her nationality is inscribed as Tatka. I checked in our files: according to our experts, the Tats are assimilated with the Bergjuden, the Mountain Jews. But the girl told me I was mistaken and that the Tats were a Turkic people. I had her speak: she has a curious dialect, a little hard to understand, but it was indeed a Turkic language. So I let her go.”—“Do you remember the terms or expressions she used?” An entire conversation in Turkish ensued: “That can’t be it exactly,” Voss said, “are you sure?” and they started up again. Finally Voss declared: “According to what you’re describing, it does in fact more or less resemble the vernacular Turkic spoken in the Caucasus before the Bolsheviks imposed Russian. I read they still used it in Daghestan, especially in Derbent. But all the peoples there speak it. Did you take down her name?” Kern pulled a notebook out of his pocket and leafed through it: “Here it is. Tsokota, Nina Shaulovna.”—“Tsokota?” said Voss, knitting his brows. “That’s strange.”—“It’s her husband’s name,” Kern explained.—“Oh, I see. And tell me, if she is Jewish, what will you do with her?” Kern looked surprised: “Well, we…we…” He was visibly hesitating. I came to his aid: “She’ll be transported elsewhere.”—“I see,” said Voss. He thought a moment and then said to Kern: “To my knowledge, the Tats have their own language, which is an Iranian dialect and has nothing to do with Caucasian languages or with Turkish. There are Muslim Tats; in Derbent, I don’t know, but I’ll look into it.”—“Thank you,” said Kern. “You think I should have kept her?”—“Not at all. I’m sure you did the right thing.” Kern looked reassured; he had obviously not grasped the irony in Voss’s last words. We chatted a little longer and he took his leave. Voss watched him leave with a puzzled look. “Your colleagues are a little strange,” he said finally.—“How do you mean?”—“They sometimes ask disconcerting questions.” I shrugged my shoulders: “They’re doing their work.” Voss shook his head: “Your methods seem a little arbitrary to me. But it’s not my business.” He seemed displeased. “When will we go to the Lermontov Museum?” I asked to change the subject.—“Whenever you like. Sunday?”—“If the weather is nice, you can take me to see the place of the duel.”

The most divergent information, and sometimes the most contradictory, flowed in concerning the new military administration. General Köstring was setting up his offices in Voroshilovsk. He was an already elderly officer, called back from retirement, but my informants at the Abwehr claimed that he was still vigorous, and called him the Wise Marabu. He had been born in Moscow, had led the German military mission to Hetman Skoropadsky in Kiev in 1918, and had served twice as military attaché to our embassy in Moscow: he was seen as one of the best German experts on Russia. Oberst von Gilsa arranged an interview for me with the new representative of the Ostministerium to Köstring’s office, a former consul in Tiflis, Dr. Otto Bräutigam. With his round wire-rimmed glasses, his starched collar, and his light brown uniform displaying the Party’s Gold Badge, I found him a bit stiff; he remained distant, almost cold, but gave me a better impression than most of the Goldfasanen. Gilsa had explained to me that he had an important position at the political department in the ministry. “I’m pleased to meet you,” I said to him as I shook his hand. “Perhaps you can finally bring us some clarifications.”—“I met Brigadeführer Korsemann in Voroshilovsk and I had a long conversation with him. Was the Einsatzgruppe not informed?”—“Oh, of course! But if you have a few minutes, I’d be delighted to speak with you, since these questions interest me greatly.” I led Bräutigam to my office and offered him a drink; he politely refused. “The Ostministerium must have been disappointed by the Führer’s decision to suspend the establishment of the Reichskommissariat, I imagine?” I began.—“Not at all. On the contrary, we think the Führer’s decision is a unique opportunity to correct the disastrous policies we are carrying out in this country.”—“How do you mean?”—“You must realize that the two Reichskommissars now in place were appointed without Minister Rosenberg’s being consulted, and that the Ostministerium exercises almost no control over them. So it’s not our fault if Gauleiters Koch and Lohse do exactly as they please; responsibility falls on those who support them. It’s their thoughtless and aberrant policies that have earned the ministry its reputation as the Chaostministerium.” I smiled; but he remained serious.—“In fact,” I said, “I spent a year in the Ukraine, and Reichskommissar Koch’s policies caused quite a few problems for us. You could say that he was a very good recruiter for the partisans.”—“Just like Gauleiter Sauckel and his slave-hunters. That’s what we want to avoid here. Don’t you see, if we treat the Caucasian tribes as we treated the Ukrainians, they’ll rise and take to the mountains. Then we’ll never be finished with them. Last century, the Russians spent thirty years trying to make the imam Shamil submit. There were only a few thousand rebels; to crush them, the Russians had to deploy up to three hundred and fifty thousand soldiers!” He paused and went on: “Minister Rosenberg, along with the political department of the ministry, has since the beginning of the campaign argued in favor of a clear political stance: only an alliance with the peoples of the East oppressed by the Bolsheviks will allow Germany to crush the Stalin system once and for all. Until now, this strategy, this Ostpolitik if you like, hasn’t been accepted; the Führer has always supported the people who think Germany can carry out this task all by itself, repressing the peoples it should be liberating. The Reichskommissar-designate Schickendanz, despite his old friendship with the minister, also seems to be going along with this. But there are cool heads in the Wehrmacht, especially Generalquartiermeister Wagner, who wanted to avoid a repetition in the Caucasus of the Ukrainian disaster. Their solution, to keep the region under military control, seems good to us, all the more so since General Wagner expressly insisted on involving the most clearsighted elements of the ministry, as my presence here proves. For us as for the Wehrmacht, it’s a unique opportunity to demonstrate that the Ostpolitik is the only valid one; if we succeed here, we might have the possibility of repairing the harm done in the Ukraine and in Ostland.”—“So the stakes are considerable,” I noted.—“Yes.”—“And hasn’t the Reichskommissar-designate Schickedanz been upset at finding himself sidelined in this way? He too has some support.” Bräutigam made a scornful gesture with his hand; his eyes were gleaming behind his glasses: “No one asked his opinion. In any case, the Reichskommissar-designate Schickedanz is much too busy studying the sketches of his future palace in Tiflis, and discussing the number of gates with his deputies, to worry about practical matters in the way we must.”—“I see.” I thought for an instant: “One more question. How do you see the role of the SS and the SP in this arrangement?”—“The Sicherheitspolizei of course has important tasks to carry out. But they should be coordinated with the Army Group and the military administration in order not to interfere with the positive initiatives. In plain language, as I suggested to Brigadeführer Korsemann, we’ll have to show a certain delicacy in our relations with the mountain and Cossack minorities. There are elements among them, in fact, who collaborated with the Communists, but out of nationalism rather than out of Bolshevist conviction, to defend the interests of their people. It’s not a question of automatically treating them like Commissars or Stalinist functionaries.”—“And what do you think of the Jewish problem?” He raised his hand: “That’s another thing entirely. It’s clear that the Jewish population remains one of the main supports of the Bolshevist system.” He got up to take his leave. “Thank you for taking the time to speak with me,” I said as I shook his hand on the steps.—“Not at all. I think it’s very important that we keep up good relations with the SS as well as with the Wehrmacht. The better you understand what we want to do here, the better things will go.”—“You can be sure that I’ll make that clear in my report to my superiors.”—“Very good! Here’s my card. Heil Hitler!”

Voss deemed this conversation quite comical when I reported it to him. “It was about time! Nothing like failure to sharpen the wits.” We had met as agreed, on Sunday, toward noon, in front of the Feldkommandantur. A troop of kids was clustered around the barricades, fascinated by the motorcycles and an amphibious Schwimmwagen parked there. “Partisans!” bellowed a territorial who was vainly trying to scatter them with a stick; no sooner were they chased away from one side than they streamed in on the other, and the reservist was already out of breath. We climbed the steep slope of Karl Marx Street, toward the museum, and I finished summing up Bräutigam’s remarks. “Better late than never,” Voss commented, “but in my opinion it won’t work. We’ve developed too many bad habits. This business with the military administration is just a grace period. In six or ten months they’ll have to hand over the reins, and then all the jackals being kept on the leash will pour in, the Schickedanzes, the Körners, the Sauckel-Einsatzes, and all hell will break loose again. You see, the problem is that we don’t have a colonial tradition. Even before the Great War, we were managing our African possessions very badly. And then afterward, we didn’t have any more possessions at all, and the little bit of experience we had accumulated in colonial administration was lost. Just compare us to the English: look at the delicacy, the tact with which they govern and exploit their empire. They know very well how to wield the stick when they have to, but they always offer the carrot first, and go back to the carrot right after they hit with the stick. Even the Soviets, at bottom, have done better than us: despite their brutality, they were able to create a feeling of a shared identity, and their empire is holding. The troops that kept us in check on the Terek were made up mostly of Georgians and Armenians. I’ve spoken with some Armenian prisoners: they think of themselves as Soviet, and fight for the USSR without hesitation. We haven’t been able to offer them anything better.” We had arrived at the green door of the museum and I knocked. After a few minutes the vehicle gate, a little higher up, opened a little, giving us a glimpse of an old wrinkled peasant wearing a cap, his beard and callous fingers yellowed by makhorka. He exchanged a few words with Voss, then pulled the gate open a little more. “He says the museum is closed, but if we like, we can come in and look. Some German officers live here, in the library.” The gate opened onto a little paved courtyard, surrounded by charming little whitewashed buildings; on the right, a second floor had been built over a shed, with a staircase outside; the library was there. In the background rose the Mashuk, omnipresent, massive, tatters of clouds clinging to its eastern slope. To the left, lower down, you could see a little garden, with vines on a trellis, then some other buildings, their roofs covered with thatch. Voss climbed the steps to the library. Inside, the varnished wooden shelves took up so much space that you could barely slip past them. The old man had followed us; I handed him three cigarettes; his face lit up, but he remained near the door, watching us. Voss examined the books through the glass but didn’t touch anything. My gaze came to rest on a little oil portrait of Lermontov, rather nicely done: he was represented in a red dolman decked with epaulettes and gilt braid, his lips moist, his eyes surprisingly anxious, wavering between rage, fear, and unbridled mockery. In another corner hung an engraved portrait, under which I could just make out an inscription in Cyrillic: this was Martynov, Lermontov’s killer. Voss was trying to open one of the cases, but it was locked. The old man said something and they conversed a little. “The curator has run away,” Voss translated for me. “One of the employees has the keys, but she isn’t in today. Too bad, they have some nice things.”—“You’ll be back.”—“Certainly. Come, he’s going to open Lermontov’s house for us.” We crossed the courtyard and the little garden to reach one of the low houses. The old man pushed open the door; inside, it was dark, but the light let in by the opening was enough to see by. The walls had been whitewashed, and the furniture was simple; there were some beautiful oriental carpets and Caucasian sabers hanging from nails. A narrow sofa looked very uncomfortable. Voss had paused in front of a desk and was stroking it with his fingers. The old man explained something to him. “He wrote A Hero of Our Time at this table,” Voss translated pensively.—“Right here?”—“No, in St. Petersburg. When the museum was created, the government had the table sent here.” There was nothing else to see. Outside, clouds were veiling the sun. Voss thanked the old man, and I gave him a few more cigarettes. “We’ll have to come back when there’s someone who can explain everything,” said Voss. “By the way,” he added at the gate, “I forgot to tell you: Professor Oberländer is here.”—“Oberländer? But I know him. I met him in Lemberg, at the beginning of the campaign.”—“All the better. I was going to suggest we have dinner with him.” In the street, Voss turned left, toward the wide flagstone-paved lane that started at Lenin’s statue. The path kept rising; I was short of breath already. Instead of leaving the lane to head for the Aeolian Harp and the Academic Gallery, Voss kept going straight ahead, along the Mashuk, on a paved road that I hadn’t yet taken. The sky was darkening rapidly and I was afraid it would rain. We passed a few sanatoriums, then the pavement ended and we continued on a wide dirt path. This place was not much traveled: a peasant sitting on a wagon passed us, the jingling of the harnesses mingled with the lowing of the ox and the grating squeal of ill-sprung wheels; after that, the road was deserted. A little farther on, to the left, a brick archway opened into the mountainside. We went up to it and squinted to see into the darkness; an iron gate, padlocked, barred access to the tunnel. “That’s the Proval,” Voss said. “At the end, there’s an open-air grotto, with a sulfur spring.”—“Isn’t this where Pechorin meets Vera?”—“I’m not sure. Isn’t that in the grotto beneath the Aeolian Harp?”—“We’ll have to check.” The clouds were passing just over our heads: I felt that if I lifted my arm I could stroke the swirls of vapor. We couldn’t see the sky at all and the atmosphere had become muffled, silent. Our footsteps crunched on the sandy earth; the path rose gently; and soon the clouds surrounded us. We could barely make out the tall trees lining the path; the air seemed heavy; the world had disappeared. In the distance, a cuckoo’s call echoed in the woods, an anxious, sorrowful cry. We walked in silence. This lasted a long time. Here and there, I caught a fleeting glimpse of large, dark, indistinct masses, buildings probably; then forest again. The clouds were dissipating, the gray shone with a confused gleam and all of a sudden they unraveled and scattered and we found ourselves in the sunlight. It hadn’t rained. To our right, beyond the trees, the jagged shapes of the Beshtau stood out; another twenty minutes’ walk brought us to the monument. “We’ve taken the long way round,” said Voss. “From the other side it’s faster.”—“Yes, but it was worth it.” The monument, a white obelisk erected in the middle of a poorly maintained lawn, offered little of interest: faced with this setting, carefully landscaped by bourgeois piety, it was hard to imagine the gunshots, the blood, the hoarse cries, the rage of the murdered poet. A few German vehicles were lined up in the parking area; below, in front of the forest, there were tables and benches where some soldiers were eating. For the sake of thoroughness I went over to examine the bronze medallion and the inscription on the monument. “I saw the photo of a temporary monument that they built in 1901,” Voss told me. “A kind of fanciful half-rotunda made of wood and plaster, with a bust perched high up top. It was much funnier.”—“They must have had trouble funding it. Should we go eat?”—“Yes, they make good shashlik here.” We crossed the parking area and went down to the tables. Two vehicles bore the tactical marks of the Einsatzkommando; I recognized several officers at one of the tables. Kern waved at us and I waved back, but I didn’t go over to say hello. There were also Turek, Bolte, Pfeiffer. I chose a table that was set somewhat back, near the woods, with coarse stools. A local mountain man in a skullcap, his cheeks badly shaved around his thick moustache, approached: “No pork,” Voss translated. “Just mutton. But there’s vodka and kompot.”—“That’s fine.” Bursts of conversation reached us from the other tables. There were also some junior officers from the Wehrmacht and a few civilians. Turek was watching us, then I saw him talking animatedly with Pfeiffer. Some Gypsy children were running between the tables. One of them came up to us: “Khleb, khleb,” he chanted, holding out a hand black with filth. The mountain man had brought us some slices of bread and I held one out to the boy, which he immediately crammed into his mouth. Then he pointed to the forest: “Sestra, sestra, dyev. Krasivaya.” He made an obscene gesture. Voss exploded in laughter and flung some words at him that made him run away. He headed toward the SS officers and repeated his gestures. “You think they’ll follow him?” Voss asked.—“Not in front of everyone,” I said. Turek in fact gave the boy a clout that sent him rolling onto the grass. I saw him make as if to take out his gun; the kid bolted into the trees. The native, who was officiating behind a long metal box on legs, came back to us with two skewers that he laid on top of the bread; then he brought us the drinks and glasses. The vodka went wonderfully well with the meat dripping with juice, and we each drank several measures, washing it all down with kompot, a juice of marinated berries. The sun was shining on the grass, the slender pines, the monument, with the slope of the Mashuk behind it all; the clouds had completely disappeared on the other side of the mountain. I thought again about Lermontov dying on the grass a few steps away, his chest shattered, for an empty remark about Martynov’s clothes. Unlike his hero Pechorin, Lermontov had fired into the air; his adversary, not. What could Martynov have been thinking as he looked at his enemy’s corpse? He himself had wanted to be a poet, and he had certainly read A Hero of Our Time; so he could savor the bitter echoes and slow ripples of the growing legend, he knew too that his name would remain only as that of Lermontov’s murderer, another d’Anthès encumbering Russian letters. But he must have had other ambitions when he started out in life; he too must have wanted to create, and create good things. Perhaps he was simply jealous of Lermontov’s talent? Or perhaps he chose to be remembered for the harm he had done, rather than not at all? I tried to remember his portrait but already couldn’t manage to. And Lermontov? His last thought, when he had emptied his pistol into the air and saw that Martynov was aiming at him, had it been bitter, desperate, furious, ironic? Or had he simply shrugged his shoulders and looked at the sunlight on the pine trees? As with Pushkin, they said that his death had been a setup, a contrived assassination; if that was the case, he had gone to it with his eyes wide open, obligingly, demonstrating his dissimilarity from Pechorin. What Blok wrote about Pushkin was no doubt even truer for him: It wasn’t Dantes’s bullet that killed him, it was the lack of air. I too lacked air, but the sun and the shashliks, and Voss’s joyous kindness, helped me breathe for an instant. We settled our bill with the native using occupation carbovanets and started again toward the Mashuk. “I suggest we go to the old cemetery,” Voss said. “There’s a stele there where Lermontov was buried.” After the duel, his friends had laid the poet to rest here; one year later, a hundred years before our arrival in Pyatigorsk, his maternal grandmother had come for his remains and had brought them home with her, to bury them next to his mother, near Penza. I readily agreed to this suggestion of Voss’s. Two cars passed us in a whirl of dust: the officers of the Kommando returning. Turek was driving the first vehicle himself; his hateful look, which I glimpsed through the window, made him look truly Jewish. The little convoy continued straight on but we went to the left, following a long zigzagging path that climbed up the side of the Mashuk. With the meal, the vodka, and the sun, I felt heavy; then the hiccups started and I left the path for the woods. “Are you all right?” Voss asked when I returned. I made a vague gesture and lit a cigarette. “It’s nothing. The tail end of something I caught in the Ukraine. It comes back from time to time.”—“You should see a doctor.”—“Maybe. Dr. Hohenegg must be coming back soon, I’ll see.” Voss waited for me to finish my cigarette, then followed close behind me. I was warm and I took off my cap and jacket. At the top of the knoll, the path formed a wide loop from which there was a fine view over the city and the plain beyond. “If you continue straight on, you return to the sanatoriums,” Voss said. “For the cemetery, we can go by these orchards.” The steep slope, with its faded grass, was planted with fruit trees; a tethered mule was nuzzling the ground in search of fallen apples. We descended the hill, sliding a little, then cut through a wood that was dense enough for us soon to lose the path. I put my jacket back on as the branches and brambles were scratching my arms. Finally, following Voss, I emerged onto a little muddy hollow that ran alongside a cemented stone wall. “This must be it,” said Voss. “We’ll go around.” Since the cars had passed us we hadn’t seen anyone, and I felt as if I were walking in the open countryside; but a few steps farther on a young boy, his feet bare, leading a donkey, passed us without a word. Following the wall, we finally arrived at a little square, in front of an Orthodox church. An old woman dressed in black, sitting on a crate, was selling some flowers; others were coming out of the church. Beyond the gate, the graves lay scattered under tall trees that plunged the sloping cemetery into shadow. We followed a rising path paved with coarse stones buried in the ground, between old graves lost in dry grass, ferns, and thorn bushes. Patches of light fell in places between the trees and in these islands of sun, little black-and-white butterflies were dancing around faded flowers. Then the path curved and the trees opened out a little to reveal the plain to the southwest. In an enclosure, two little trees had been planted to give shade to the stele that marks the place of Lermontov’s first grave. The only sounds were the chirping of crickets and the breeze rustling the leaves. Near the stele were the graves of Lermontov’s relations, the Shan-Gireis. I turned around: in the distance, the long green balki furrowed the plain to the first rocky foothills. The mounds of the volcanoes looked like clumps of earth fallen from the sky; in the distance, I could make out the snowy peaks of the Elbruz. I sat down on the steps leading to the stele, while Voss went to nose about a little farther on, thinking again about Lermontov: like all poets, first they kill him, then they venerate him.

We went back down to the town by the Verkhnyi rynok, where the peasants were finishing packing up their unsold chickens, fruits, and vegetables onto carts or mules. Around them the crowd of sunflower seed sellers and boot polishers was dispersing; boys sitting on little wagons improvised from boards and baby carriage wheels were still waiting for a lingering soldier to ask them to cart his packages. At the foot of the hill, on Kirov Boulevard, rows of fresh crosses were lined up on a small knoll surrounded by a low wall: the pretty little park, with its monument to Lermontov, had been transformed into a cemetery for German soldiers. The boulevard heading toward Tsvetnik Park passed in front of the ruins of what had been the Orthodox cathedral, dynamited in 1936 by the NKVD. “Have you noticed,” Voss remarked as he pointed to the collapsed stones, “they didn’t touch the German church. Our men still go there to pray.”—“Yes, but they emptied the three surrounding villages of Volksdeutschen. The czar had invited them to settle here in 1830. They were all sent to Siberia last year.” But Voss was still thinking about his Lutheran church. “Did you know that it was built by a soldier? A man named Kempfer, who fought against the Cherkess under Yevdokimov, and settled here.” In the park, just after the entrance gate, stood a two-level wooden gallery, sporting turrets with futuristic cupolas and a loggia that wrapped around the upper level. There were some tables there where they served, to those who could pay, Turkish coffee and sweets. Voss chose a place on the side of the park’s main path, above the groups of grizzled, cantankerous, grouchy old men, who came in the evening to sit on the benches and play chess. I ordered coffee and brandy; they also brought us some little lemon cakes; the brandy came from Daghestan and seemed even sweeter than the Armenian, but it went well with the cakes and my good mood. “How are your studies going?” I asked Voss. He laughed: “I still haven’t found an Ubykh speaker; but I’m making considerable progress in Kabard. What I’m really waiting for is for us to take Ordzhonikidze.”—“Why is that?”—“Well, I’ve already told you that Caucasian languages are only my subspecialty. What really interests me are the so-called Indo-Germanic languages, especially the languages of Iranian origin. And Ossetic is a particularly fascinating Iranian language.”—“How so?”—“You can see the geographic situation of Ossetia: whereas all the other non-Caucasian speakers live on the rim or in the foothills of the Caucasus, they straddle the massif, just at the level of the most accessible pass, the Darial where the Russians built their Voyennaya doroga from Tiflis to Ordzhonikidze, the old Vladikavkaz. Although these people adopted the clothing and customs of their mountain neighbors, it’s obviously a late invasion. It is believed that these Ossetes or Osses are descended from the Alans and hence the Scythians; if that is correct, their language would constitute a living archeological remnant of the Scythian language. And there’s something else: in 1930 Dumézil published a collection of Ossetian legends having to do with a fabulous people, half-divine, whom they call the Narts. Now Dumézil also postulates a connection between these legends and the ancient Scythian religion as it is reported by Herodotus. Russian researchers have been working on this subject since the end of the last century; the library and institutes in Ordzhonikidze must be overflowing with extraordinary materials, inaccessible in Europe. I just hope we don’t burn everything down during the attack.”—“In short, if I’ve understood you correctly, these Ossetes are an Urvolk, one of the original Aryan peoples.”—“Original is a word that is much used and misused. Let’s say that their language has some very interesting archaic characteristics from a scientific standpoint.”—“What do you mean about the notion of ‘original’?” He shrugged his shoulders: “Original is more a fantasy, a psychological or political pretense, than a scientific concept. Take German, for instance: for centuries, even before Martin Luther, people claimed it was an original language under the pretext that it had no recourse to roots of foreign origin, unlike the Romance languages, to which it was compared. Some theologians, in their delirium, even went so far as to claim that German was the language of Adam and Eve, and that Hebrew later derived from it. But that’s a completely illusory claim, since even if the roots are ‘native’—actually, all derived directly from the languages of Indo-European nomads—our grammar is entirely structured by Latin. Our cultural imagination, however, was very strongly marked by these ideas, and by this peculiarity German has in contrast to other European languages: the way it can sort of self-generate its vocabulary. It’s a fact that any eight-year-old German child knows all the roots of our language and can take apart and understand any word, even the most abstruse compound, which is not the case for a French child, for instance, who will take a very long time to learn the ‘difficult’ words derived from Greek or Latin. That, moreover, has a lot to do with the idea we have of ourselves: Deutschland is the only country in Europe that doesn’t have a geographic designation, that doesn’t bear the name of a place or a people like the Angles or the Franks, it’s the country of the ‘people’ per se; deutsch being an adjectival form of the old German Tuits, ‘people.’ That’s why none of our neighbors call us by the same name: Allemands, Germans, Duits, Tedeschi in Italian which also stems from Tuits, or Nyemtsi here in Russia, which means ‘the Mutes,’ those who don’t know how to speak, like Barbaros in Greek. And our whole present-day racial and völkisch ideology, in a certain way, is built on these very ancient German pretensions. Which, I will add, are not unique to us: Goropius Becanus, a Flemish author, made the same argument in 1569 about Dutch, which he compared to what he called the original languages of the Caucasus, vagina of peoples.” He laughed gaily. I would have liked to continue the conversation, especially about racial theories, but he was already standing up: “I have to go. Would you like to have dinner with Oberländer, if he’s free?”—“Of course.”—“Shall we meet at the Kasino? Around eight o’clock.” He ran down the steps. I sat back down and contemplated the old men playing chess. Fall was advancing: already the sun was passing behind the Mashuk, tinting the crest with pink and, farther down on the boulevard, casting orange-colored reflections through the trees, up to the windows and the gray roughcast of the façades.

Around seven thirty I went down to the Kasino. Voss hadn’t yet arrived and I ordered a brandy, which I carried into an alcove set a little back. A few minutes later Kern came in, examined the room, and headed toward me. “Herr Hauptsturmführer! I was looking for you.” He took off his cap and sat down, casting glances around him: he looked embarrassed, nervous. “Hauptsturmführer. I wanted to let you know about something that concerns you, I think.”—“Yes?” He hesitated: “They…You are often in the company of that Leutnant from the Wehrmacht. That…how should I say it? That’s giving rise to some rumors.”—“What sort of rumors?”—“Rumors…let’s say dangerous rumors. The kind of rumors that lead straight to the concentration camp.”—“I see.” I remained impassive. “And might this kind of rumor by chance be spread by a certain kind of person?” He turned pale: “I don’t want to say anything else about it. I think it’s low, shameful. I just wanted to warn you so that you could…could act in a way that would prevent it from going any further.” I got up and held out my hand: “Thank you for this information, Obersturmführer. But I have nothing but contempt for those who spread sordid rumors in a cowardly way instead of confronting someone face-to-face, and I ignore them.” He shook my hand: “I completely understand your reaction. But take care all the same.” I sat back down, overcome with rage: so that’s the game they wanted to play! What’s more, they were completely mistaken. I’ve said it already: I never form bonds with my lovers; friendship is something else entirely. I loved a single person in this world, and even if I never saw her, that was enough for me. But narrow-minded scum like Turek and his friends could never understand that. I resolved to get my revenge; I didn’t know how yet, but the opportunity would present itself. Kern was an honest man, he had done well to warn me: that would give me time to think.

Voss arrived soon after, accompanied by Oberländer. I was still plunged in my thoughts. “Hello, Professor,” I said as I shook Oberländer’s hand. “It’s been a long time.”—“Yes, yes, lots of things have happened since Lemberg. And that other young officer, who had come with you?”—“Hauptsturmführer Hauser? He must still be with Group C. I haven’t heard from him for a while.” I followed them to the restaurant and let Voss order. They brought us some Kakhetian wine. Oberländer seemed tired. “I heard you’re commanding a new special unit?” I asked him.—“Yes, the Bergmann Kommando. All my men are Caucasian mountain tribesmen.”—“Of what nationality?” Voss asked curiously.—“Oh, a little of everything. There are Karachai and Circassians, of course, but also some Ingush, some Avars, a few Laks whom we recruited in the Stalags. I even have a Svan.”—“Magnificent! I’d very much like to talk with him.”—“You’ll have to go to Mozdok, then. They’re engaged in anti-partisan operations there.”—“You don’t have any Ubykhs, by any chance?” I asked him maliciously. Voss giggled. “Ubykhs? No, I don’t think so. Who are they?” Voss choked to hold in his laughter and Oberländer looked at him, perplexed. I made an effort to remain serious and replied: “It’s an obsession of Dr. Voss’s. He thinks the Wehrmacht should absolutely carry out a pro-Ubykh policy, to restore the natural balance of power between the peoples of the Caucasus.” Voss, who was trying to drink some wine, almost spat out what he had just swallowed. I also had trouble restraining myself. Oberländer still didn’t understand and was beginning to get annoyed: “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said dryly. I tried to explain: “They’re a Caucasian nationality deported by the Russians. To Turkey. Before, they dominated a whole part of this region.”—“They were Muslims?”—“Yes, of course.”—“In that case, support of these Ubykhs would be entirely in keeping with our Ostpolitik.” Voss, red, got up, murmured an excuse, and made for the bathroom. Oberländer was startled: “What’s wrong with him?” I tapped my stomach. “Oh, I see,” he said. “That’s common here. Where was I?”—“Our pro-Muslim policy.”—“Yes. Of course, it’s a traditional German policy. What we hope to accomplish out here is in a way only a continuation of the pan-Islamic policy of Ludendorff. By respecting the cultural and social achievements of Islam, we are making useful allies for ourselves. What’s more, it’s a gesture toward Turkey, which still remains important, especially if we want to go past the Caucasus to take the English from the rear in Syria and Egypt.” Voss returned; he seemed calmer. “If I understand you correctly,” I said, “the idea would be to unite the peoples of the Caucasus and especially the Turkic-speaking peoples into a giant Islamic anti-Bolshevist movement.”—“That’s an option, but it hasn’t yet been accepted high up. Some people are worried about a pan-Turanian resurgence that could give too much power to Turkey, on a regional level, and encroach on our conquests. Minister Rosenberg favors a Berlin-Tiflis axis. But that’s the influence of that Nikuradze.”—“And you, what do you think?”—“At the moment, I’m writing an article on Germany and the Caucasus. You know perhaps that after the disbanding of the Nachtigall, I worked as the Abwehroffizier with Reichskommissar Koch, who is an old friend from Königsberg. But he’s almost never in the Ukraine and his subordinates, especially Dargel, carried out an irresponsible policy. That’s why I left. In my article, I try to demonstrate that in the conquered territories we need the cooperation of the local populations to avoid overly heavy losses during the invasion and occupation. Any pro-Muslim or pro-Turanian policy should fit within this framework. Of course, only one power, and one alone, should have the last word.”—“I thought that one of the objectives of our advance into the Caucasus was to persuade Turkey to enter into war on our side?”—“Of course. And if we reach Iraq or Iran, it certainly will. Saraco?glu is cautious, but he won’t want to let this chance to recover ancient Ottoman territories slip by.”—“But wouldn’t that encroach on our Grossraum?” I asked.—“Not at all. We are aiming for a continental empire; we have neither the interest nor the means to burden ourselves with distant possessions. We’ll keep the oil-rich regions in the Persian Gulf, of course, but we can give all the rest of the British Near East to Turkey.”—“And what would Turkey do for us, in exchange?” Voss asked.—“It could be very useful to us. Strategically, it holds a key position. It can procure naval and land bases that would allow us to finish off the British presence in the Middle East. It could also provide troops for the anti-Bolshevist front.”—“Yes,” I said, “they could send us an Ubykh regiment, for example.” Voss was overcome again with uncontrollable laughter. Oberländer got angry: “But what is it with these Ubykhs? I don’t understand.”—“I told you, it’s an obsession of Dr. Voss’s. He’s desperate because he keeps writing report after report, but no one at HQ wants to believe in the strategic importance of the Ubykhs. Here, they stick to the Karachai, Kabards, and Balkars.”—“But then why is he laughing?”—“Yes, Dr. Voss, why are you laughing?” I asked him very seriously. “I think he’s nervous,” I said to Oberländer. “Here, Dr. Voss, have some more wine.” Voss drank a little and tried to regain control of himself. “For my part,” said Oberländer, “I don’t know enough about this question to judge it.” He turned to Voss: “If you have reports about these Ubykhs, I’d be delighted to read them.” Voss nervously shook his head: “Doktor Aue,” he said, “I would be grateful if you changed the subject.”—“As you like. In any case, the meal is arriving.” They served us. Oberländer seemed annoyed; Voss was very red. To get the conversation going again, I asked Oberländer: “Are your Bergmänner effective in the struggle against the partisans?”—“In the mountains, they’re formidable. Some of them bring us heads or ears back every day. In the plains, they’re not much better than our own troops. They burned a lot of villages around Mozdok. I try to explain to them that it’s a bad idea to do it systematically, but it’s as if it’s in their genes. And also we’ve had somewhat serious problems of discipline: desertion, especially. It seems that a lot of them got involved only to go home; ever since we’ve been in the Caucasus, they keep disappearing. But I’ve had all the ones we caught shot in front of the others: I think that calmed them down a little. And also I have a lot of Chechens and Daghestanis; their homes are still in the hands of the Bolsheviks. Speaking of that, have you heard of an uprising in Chechnya? In the mountains.”—“There are rumors,” I replied. “A special unit attached to the Einsatzgruppe is going to try to parachute in some agents to make contact with the rebels.”—“Oh, that’s very interesting,” said Oberländer. “Apparently there is fighting going on and the repression is fierce. That could create some possibilities for our forces. How could I find out more?”—“You should go see Oberführer Bierkamp, in Voroshilovsk.”—“Very good. And here? Are you having a lot of problems, with the partisans?”—“Not too many. There’s a unit roaming around Kislovodsk. The Lermontov detachment. It’s rather fashionable, here, to call everything Lermontov.” Voss laughed, this time heartily: “Are they active?”—“Not really. They stick to the mountains, they’re afraid of coming down. They mostly provide information to the Red Army. They send kids to count the motorcycles and trucks in front of the Feldkommandantur, for example.” We finished eating; Oberländer was still talking about the Ostpolitik of the new military administration: “General Köstring is a very good choice. I think that with him the experiment has a chance to succeed.”—“You know Dr. Bräutigam?” I asked.—“Herr Bräutigam? Of course. We often exchange ideas. He’s a very motivated man, very intelligent.” Oberländer finished his coffee and took his leave. We saluted each other and Voss went with him. I waited for him while I smoked a cigarette. “You were odious,” he said to me as he sat back down.—“Why?”—“You know very well why.” I shrugged my shoulders: “It wasn’t very mean.”—“Oberländer must have thought we were making fun of him.”—“But we were making fun of him. Except: he’ll never dare admit it. You know professors as well as I do. If he acknowledged his ignorance of the Ubykh question, that could harm his reputation as ‘The Lawrence of the Caucasus.’” We left the Kasino. A fine, light rain was falling. “There it is,” I said as if to myself. “It’s autumn.” A horse tied in front of the Feldkommandantur neighed and snorted. The sentinels had put on their waxed cloaks. In Karl Marx Street, the water was flowing down the slope in little streams. The rain intensified. We parted in front of our quarters, wishing each other good night. In my room, I opened the French door and stayed for a long while listening to the water streaming on the leaves of the trees, on the windows of the balcony, on the metal roofs, on the grass and the wet earth.

It rained for three days straight. The sanatoriums were filling up with wounded, brought from Malgobek and Sagopchi, where our renewed offensive on Groznyi was being run into the ground by the fierce resistance. Korsemann came to distribute medals to the Finnish volunteers of the Wiking, handsome, somewhat distraught blond boys decimated by the gunfire encountered in the Zhuruk Valley, below Nizhni Kurp. The new military administration of the Caucasus was being set in place. At the beginning of October, by decree of Generalquartiermeister Wagner, six Cossack raions, with 160,000 inhabitants, were accorded the new status of “self-government”; the Karachai autonomy would officially be announced during a big celebration in Kislovodsk. With the other leading officers of the SS in the region I was again summoned to Voroshilovsk by Korsemann and Bierkamp. Korsemann was worried about the limitation of SS police power in the self-governed districts, but wanted to pursue a reinforced policy of cooperation with the Wehrmacht. Bierkamp was furious; he called the Ostpolitiker “czarists” and “Baltic barons”: “This famous Ostpolitik is nothing but a resurrection of the spirit of Tauroggen,” he protested. In private, Leetsch gave me to understand in veiled words that Bierkamp was worried stiff because of the number of executions carried out by the Kommandos, which didn’t exceed a few dozen a week: the Jews in the occupied regions had all been liquidated, aside from a few artisans preserved by the Wehrmacht to serve as leatherworkers and tailors; we didn’t catch many partisans or Communists; as for the national minorities and the Cossacks, the majority of the population, they were now almost untouchable. I found Bierkamp’s state of mind quite narrow, but I could understand it: in Berlin, the effectiveness of an Einsatzgruppe was judged based on its tallies, and a lessening of activity could be interpreted as a lack of energy on the part of the Kommandant. But the Group wasn’t remaining inactive. In Elista, at the confines of the Kalmuk Steppe, Sk Astrakhan was being formed ahead of the fall of that city; in the region of Krasnodar, having carried out all the other priority tasks, Sk 10a was liquidating the asylums for the retarded, the hydrocephalics, and the insane, mostly using a gas truck. In Maikop, the Seventeenth Army was relaunching its offensive toward Tuapse, and Sk 11 was taking part in the repression of an intense guerilla warfare in the mountains, in very rough terrain made even more difficult by the persistent rain. On October 10, I celebrated my birthday at the restaurant with Voss, but without telling him about it; the next day, we went with most of the AOK to Kislovodsk to celebrate the Uraza Bairam, the breaking of the fast that ends the month of Ramadan. This was a kind of triumph. In a large field outside the city, the imam of the Karachai, a wrinkled old man with a firm, clear voice, led a long collective prayer; facing the nearby hills, hundreds of caps, skullcaps, felt or fur hats, in dense rows, bowed to the ground and stood up in time to his threnody. Afterward, on a platform decorated with German and Muslim flags, Köstring and Bräutigam, their voices amplified by a PK loudspeaker, proclaimed the establishment of the Autonomous Karachai District. Cheers and gunshots punctuated each phrase. Voss, his hands behind his back, translated Bräutigam’s speech; Köstring read his directly in Russian, and was then thrown into the air, several times, by young enthusiasts. Bräutigam had presented the qadi Bairamukov, an anti-Soviet peasant, as the new head of the district: the old man, wearing a cherkesska and a beshmet, with an enormous white woollen papakha on his head, solemnly thanked Germany for having delivered the Karachai from the Russian yoke. A young child led a superb white Kabarda horse up to the platform, its back covered in a bright-colored Daghestani sumak. The horse snorted, the old man explained that it was a present from the Karachai people to the leader of the Germans, Adolf Hitler; Köstring thanked him and assured him the horse would be conveyed to the Führer, in Vinnitsa in the Ukraine. Then some young natives in traditional garb carried Köstring and Bräutigam on their shoulders to the cheers of the men, the ululations of the women, and the redoubled salvos of the rifles. Voss, red with pleasure, looked on all this with delight. We followed the crowd: at the end of the field, a small army of women were loading foodstuffs onto long tables beneath some awnings. Incredible quantities of lamb, which they served with broth, were simmering in large cast-iron pots; there was also boiled chicken, wild garlic, caviar, and manti, a kind of Caucasian ravioli; the Karachai women, many of them beautiful and laughing, kept pushing more dishes in front of the guests; the young men stayed packed together at the side, whispering busily, while their seated fathers ate. Köstring and Bräutigam were sitting beneath a canopy with the elders, in front of the Kabarda horse, which they seemed to have forgotten and which, dragging its leash, was sniffing at the dishes to the laughter of the spectators. Some mountain musicians were singing long laments accompanied by small high-pitched stringed instruments; later on, they were joined by percussionists and the music became frantic, frenzied; a large circle formed and the young men, led by a master of ceremonies, danced the lesghinka, noble, splendid, virile, then some other dances with knives, of an astounding virtuosity. No alcohol was served, but most of the German guests, heated up by the meats and the dances, seemed drunk, bright-red, sweating, overexcited. The Karachai saluted the best dance movements with gunshots and that contributed even more to the frenzy. My heart was beating wildly; along with Voss, I tapped with my feet and clapped my hands, shouted like a madman in the circle of spectators. At nightfall they brought torches and it went on; when you felt too tired, you went over to the tables to drink some tea and eat a little. “The Ostpolitiker have certainly pulled it off!” I shouted to Voss. “This would convince anyone.”

But the news from the front wasn’t good. In Stalingrad, despite the military bulletins that daily announced a decisive breakthrough, the Sixth Army, according to the Abwehr, had gotten completely bogged down in the center of town. The officers who came back from Vinnitsa affirmed that a deplorable atmosphere reigned at GHQ, and that the Führer had almost stopped talking to Generals Keitel and Jodl, whom he had banished from his table. Sinister rumors were rampant in military circles, which Voss reported to me sometimes: the Führer was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, he regularly flew into mad rages and was making contradictory, incoherent decisions; the generals were starting to lose confidence. It was certainly exaggerated, but I found the fact that such rumors were spreading in the army worrisome, and I mentioned it in the section of my report on the Morale of the Wehrmacht. Hohenegg was back, but his conference was taking place in Kislovodsk, and I hadn’t seen him yet; after a few days he sent me a note inviting me to dinner. Voss had gone to join the Third Panzer Corps in Prokhladny; von Kleist was preparing another offensive toward Nalchik and Ordzhonikidze, and he wanted to be right behind the first units to protect the libraries and institutes.

That same morning, Leutnant Reuter, an adjunct of Gilsa’s, came to my office: “We have a strange case that you should see. An old man, who presented himself here on his own. He’s talking about strange things and he says he’s Jewish. The Oberst suggested you interrogate him.”—“If he’s a Jew, he should be sent to the Kommando.”—“Maybe. But don’t you want to see him? I can assure you he’s surprising.” An orderly led the man in. He was a tall old man with a long white beard, still visibly vigorous; he wore a black cherkesska, a Caucasian peasant’s soft leather ankle boots tucked into rubber galoshes, and a handsome embroidered skullcap, purple, blue, and gold. I motioned to him to take a seat and, a little annoyed, asked the orderly: “He only speaks Russian, I suppose? Where is the Dolmetscher?” The old man looked at me with piercing eyes and said to me in strangely accented but understandable classical Greek: “You are an educated man, I see. You must know Greek.” Taken aback, I dismissed the orderly and replied: “Yes, I know Greek. And you? How do you come to speak this language?” He ignored my question. “My name is Nahum ben Ibrahim, from Magaramkend in the gubernatorya of Derbent. For the Russians, I took the name of Shamilyev, in honor of the great Shamil with whom my father fought. And you, what is your name?”—“My name is Maximilien. I come from Germany.”—“And who was your father?” I smiled: “Why does my father interest you, old man?”—“How am I supposed to know who I’m talking to if I don’t know who your father is?” His Greek, I heard now, contained unusual turns of phrase, but I managed to understand it. I told him my father’s name and he seemed satisfied. Then I questioned him: “If your father fought with Shamil, you must be very old.”—“My father died gloriously in Dargo after killing dozens of Russians. He was a very pious man, and Shamil respected his religion. He said that we, the Dagh Chufuti, believe in God better than the Muslims do. I remember the day he declared that in front of his murid, at the mosque in Vedeno.”—“That’s impossible! You couldn’t have known Shamil yourself. Show me your passport.” He held out a document to me and I quickly leafed through it. “See for yourself! It’s written here that you were born in 1866. Shamil was already a prisoner of the Russians then, in Kaluga.” He took the passport calmly from my hands and slipped it into an inner pocket. His eyes seemed to be sparkling with humor and mischief. “How do you think a poor chinovnik”—he used the Russian term—“from Derbent, a man who never even finished elementary school, could know when I was born? He guessed I was seventy when he wrote up this paper, without asking me anything. But I am much older. I was born before Shamil roused the tribes. I was already a man when my father died in Dargo, killed by those Russian dogs. I could have taken his place by Shamil’s side, but I was already studying the law, and Shamil told me that he had enough warriors, but that he needed scholars too.” I had absolutely no idea what to think: he would have had to be at least 120 years old. “And Greek?” I asked again. “Where did you learn that?”—“Daghestan isn’t Russia, young officer. Before the Russians killed them without mercy, the greatest scholars in the world lived in Daghestan, Muslims and Jews. People came from Arabia, from Turkestan, and even from China to consult them. And the Dagh Chufuti are not the filthy Jews from Russia. My mother’s language is Farsi, and everyone speaks Turkish. I learned Russian to do business, for as Rabbi Eliezer said, the thought of God does not fill the belly. Arabic I studied with the imams of the madrasas of Daghestan, and Greek, as well as Hebrew, from books. I never learned the language of the Jews of Poland, which is nothing but German, a language of Nyemtsi.”—“So you are truly a scholar.”—“Don’t make fun of me, meirakion. I too have read your Plato and your Aristotle. But I have read them along with Moses de Leon, which makes a big difference.” For some time I had been staring at his beard, square-cut, and especially his bare top lip. Something fascinated me: beneath his nose, his lip was smooth, without the usual hollow in the center, the philtrum. “How is it that your lip is like that? I’ve never seen that.” He rubbed his lip: “That? When I was born, the angel didn’t seal my lips. So I remember everything that happened before.”—“I don’t understand.”—“But you are well educated. It’s all written in the Book of the Creation of the Child, in the Lesser Midrashim. In the beginning, the man’s parents mate. That creates a drop into which God introduces the man’s spirit. Then the angel takes the drop in the morning to Paradise and at night to Hell, then he shows it where it will live on Earth and where it will be buried when God recalls the spirit he has sent. Then this is what is written. Excuse me if I recite badly, but I have to translate from the Hebrew, which you don’t know: But the angel always brings the drop back into the body of its mother and The Holy One, blessed be his name, closes the doors and bolts behind it. And The Holy One, blessed be his name, says to it: You will go up to there, and no further. And the child remains in his mother’s womb for nine months. Then it is written: The child eats everything the mother eats, drinks everything the mother drinks and does not eliminate any excrement, for if he did, it would make the mother die. And then it is written: And when the time comes when he must come into the world, the angel presents itself before him and says to him: Leave, for the time has come for your appearance in the world. And the spirit of the child replies: I have already said in front of the One who was there that I am satisfied with the world in which I have lived. And the angel replies: The world to which I am taking you is beautiful. And then: Despite yourself, you have been formed in the body of your mother, and despite yourself, you have been born to come into the world. Immediately the child begins to cry. And why does he cry? Because of the world in which he had lived and which he is forced to leave. And as soon as he has left, the angel gives him a blow on the nose and extinguishes the light above his head, he makes the child leave in spite of himself and the child forgets all he has seen. And as soon as he leaves, he begins to cry. This blow on the nose the book talks about is this: the angel seals the lips of the child and this seal leaves a mark. But the child does not forget right away. When my son was three years old, a long time ago, I surprised him one night near his little sister’s cradle: ‘Tell me about God,’ he was saying. ‘I’m beginning to forget.’ That is why man must relearn everything about God through study, and that is why men become mean and kill each other. But the angel had me come out without sealing my lips, as you see, and I remember everything.”—“So you remember the place where you will be buried?” I asked. He smiled wide: “That is why I came here to see you.”—“And is it far from here?”—“No. I can show you, if you like.” I got up and took my cap: “Let’s go.”

Going out, I asked Reuter for a Feldgendarm; he sent me to his company chief, who pointed to a Rottwachtmeister: “Hanning! Go with the Hauptsturmführer and do what he says.” Hanning took his helmet and shouldered his rifle; he must have been close on to forty; his large metal half-moon plate bounced on his narrow chest. “We’ll need a shovel, too,” I added. Outside, I turned to the old man: “Which way?” He raised his finger to the Mashuk, whose summit, caught in a cloud bank, looked as if it were spitting out smoke: “That way.” Followed by Hanning, we climbed the streets to the last one, which encircles the mountain; there the old man pointed to the right, toward the Proval. Pine trees lined the road and at one place a little path headed into the trees. “It’s that way,” said the old man.—“Are you sure you’ve never come here before?” I asked him. He shrugged. The path climbed and zigzagged and the slope was steep. The old man walked in front with a nimble, sure step; behind, the shovel on his shoulder, Hanning was panting heavily. When we emerged from the trees, I saw that the wind had chased the clouds away from the summit. A little farther on I turned around. The Caucasus barred the horizon. It had rained during the night, and the rain had finally swept away the ever-present summer haze, revealing the mountains, clear, majestic. “Stop daydreaming,” the old man said to me. I started walking again. We climbed for about half an hour. My heart was pounding wildly, I was out of breath, Hanning too; the old man seemed as fresh as a young tree. Finally we reached a kind of grassy terrace, a scant hundred meters or so from the top. The old man went forward and contemplated the view. This was the first time I really saw the Caucasus. Sovereign, the mountain chain unfurled like an immense sloping wall, to the very edge of the horizon; you felt as though if you squinted you could see the last mountains plunging into the Black Sea far to the right, and to the left into the Caspian. The hills were blue, crowned with pale-yellow, whitish ridges; the white Elbruz, an overturned bowl of milk, sat atop the peaks; a little farther away, the Kazbek loomed over Ossetia. It was as beautiful as a phrase of Bach. I looked and said nothing. The old man stretched out his hand to the east: “There, beyond the Kazbek, that’s Chechnya already, and afterward, that’s Daghestan.”—“And your grave, where is that?” He examined the flat terrace and took a few steps. “Here,” he said finally, stamping the ground with his foot. I looked at the mountains again: “This is a fine place to be buried, don’t you think?” I said. The old man had an immense, delighted smile: “Isn’t it?” I began to wonder if he wasn’t making fun of me. “You really saw it?”—“Of course!” he said indignantly. But I had the impression that he was laughing in his beard. “Then dig,” I said.—“What do you mean, ‘dig’? Aren’t you ashamed, meirakiske? Do you know how old I am? I could be the grandfather of your grandfather! I’d curse you rather than dig.” I shrugged and turned to Hanning, who was still waiting with the shovel. “Hanning. Dig.”—“Dig, Herr Hauptsturmführer? Dig what?”—“A grave, Rottwachtmeister. There.” He gestured with his head: “And the old man there? Can’t he dig?”—“No. Go on, start digging.” Hanning set his rifle and cap down in the grass and headed to the place indicated. He spat onto his hands and began to dig. The old man was looking at the mountains. I listened to the rustling of the wind, the vague rumor of the city at our feet; I could also hear the sound of the shovel hitting earth, the fall of the clumps of earth thrown out, Hanning’s panting. I looked at the old man: he was standing facing the mountains and the sun, and was murmuring something. I looked at the mountains again. The subtle and infinite variations of blue tinting the slopes looked as if they could be read like a long line of music, with the summits marking time. Hanning, who had taken off his neck plate and jacket, was digging methodically and was now at knee level. The old man turned to me with a gay look: “Is it coming along?” Hanning had stopped digging and was blowing, leaning on his shovel. “Isn’t that enough, Herr Hauptsturmführer?” he asked. The hole seemed a good length now but was only a few feet deep. I turned to the old man: “Is that enough for you?”—“You’re joking! You aren’t going to give me a poor man’s grave, me, Nahum ben Ibrahim! Come on, you’re not a nepios.”—“Sorry, Hanning. You have to keep digging.”—“Tell me, Herr Hauptsturmführer,” he asked me before going back to work, “what language are you speaking to him in? It’s not Russian.”—“No, it’s Greek.”—“He’s a Greek?! I thought he was a Jew?”—“Go on, keep digging.” He went back to work with a curse. After about twenty minutes he stopped again, panting hard. “You know, Herr Hauptsturmführer, usually there are two men to do this. I’m no longer young.”—“Pass me the shovel and get out of there.” I took off my cap and jacket and took Hanning’s place in the ditch. Digging wasn’t something I had much experience of. It took me some minutes to find my pace. The old man leaned over me: “You’re doing it very badly. It’s obvious you’ve spent your life in books. Where I come from, even the rabbis know how to build a house. But you’re a good boy. I did well to go to you.” I dug; the earth had to be thrown out quite high up now, a lot of it fell back into the hole. “Now is it all right?” I finally asked. “A little more. I want a grave that’s as comfortable as my mother’s womb.”—“Hanning,” I called, “come spell me.” The pit was now chest level and he had to help me climb out. I put my jacket and cap back on, and smoked while Hanning started digging again. I kept looking at the mountains; I couldn’t get enough of the view. The old man was looking too. “You know, I was disappointed I wasn’t to be buried in my valley, near the Samur,” he said. “But now I understand that the angel is wise. This is a beautiful place.”—“Yes,” I said. I glanced to the side: Hanning’s rifle was lying on the grass next to his cap, as if abandoned. When Hanning’s head had just cleared the ground, the old man declared he was satisfied. I helped Hanning get out. “And now?” I asked.—“Now, you have to put me inside. What? You think God is going to send me a thunderbolt?” I turned to Hanning: “Rottwachtmeister. Put your uniform back on and shoot this man.” Hanning turned red, spat on the ground, and swore. “What’s wrong?”—“With respect, Herr Hauptsturmführer, for special tasks, I have to have an order from my superior.”—“Leutnant Reuter put you at my disposal.” He hesitated: “Well, all right,” he finally said. He put his jacket, his big crescent neck plate, and his cap back on, brushed off his pants, and seized his rifle. The old man had positioned himself at the edge of the grave, facing the mountains, and was still smiling. Hanning shouldered his rifle and aimed it at the old man’s neck. Suddenly I was overcome with anguish. “Wait!” Hanning lowered his rifle and the old man turned his head toward me. “And my grave,” I asked him, “have you seen that too?” He smiled: “Yes.” I sucked in my breath, I must have turned pale, a vain anguish filled me: “Where is it?” He kept smiling: “That, I won’t tell you.”—“Fire!” I shouted to Hanning. Hanning raised his rifle and fired. The old man fell like a marionette whose string has been cut all at once. I went up to the grave and leaned over: he was lying at the bottom like a sack, his head turned aside, still smiling a little into his blood-splattered beard; his open eyes, turned toward the wall of earth, were also laughing. I was trembling. “Close that up,” I curtly ordered Hanning.

At the foot of the Mashuk, I sent Hanning back to the AOK and went by the Academic Gallery to the Pushkin baths, which the Wehrmacht had partially reopened for its convalescents. There I stripped naked and plunged my body into the scalding, brackish, sulfurous water. I stayed in it for a long time and then rinsed myself off in a cold shower. This treatment reinvigorated my body and soul: my skin was mottled red and white, and I felt more awake, almost light. I returned to my quarters and lay down for an hour, my feet crossed on the sofa, facing the open French window. Then I changed and went down to the AOK to find the car I had requested that morning. On the way, I smoked and contemplated the volcanoes and the soft blue mountains of the Caucasus. Night was already setting in; it was fall. Entering Kislovodsk, the road passed the Podkumok; below, peasants’ carts were fording the river; the last one, just a board on wheels, was pulled by a camel with long hair and a thick neck. Hohenegg was waiting for me at the Kasino. “You look fit,” he said when he saw me.—“I’m a new man. But I had a strange day.”—“Tell me all about it.” Two bottles of white wine from the Palatinate were waiting next to the table in ice buckets: “I had those sent to me by my wife.”—“You’re in a class by yourself, Doktor.” He uncorked the first one: the wine was cool and bit the tongue, leaving behind it a fruity caress. “How is your conference going?” I asked him.—“Very well. We’ve gone over cholera, typhus, and dysentery, and now we’re coming to the painful subject of frostbite.”—“It’s not the season for that yet.”—“It will be soon enough. And you?” I told him about the old Bergjude. “A wise man, this Nahum ben Ibrahim,” he commented when I had finished. “We can envy him.”—“You’re probably right.” Our table was placed right against a partition; behind it was a private booth, from which laughter and bursts of indistinct voices were emanating. I drank a little wine. “Still,” I added, “I have to admit that I had trouble understanding him.”—“Not me,” Hohenegg asserted. “You see, in my view there are three possible attitudes faced with this absurd life. First the attitude of the mass, hoi polloi, which simply refuses to see that life is a joke. They don’t laugh at it, but work, accumulate, masticate, defecate, fornicate, reproduce, get old, and die like oxen harnessed to the plow, as idiotic as they lived. That’s the large majority. Then there are those, such as me, who know that life is a joke and who have the courage to laugh at it, like the Taoists or your Jew. Finally there are those, and if my diagnosis is correct you are one of them, who know that life is a joke, but who suffer from it. It’s like your Lermontov, whom I’ve finally read: I zhizn takaya pustaya i glupaya shutka, he writes.” I knew enough Russian now to understand and complete the phrase: “He should have added: i grubaya, ‘an empty, stupid and dirty joke.’”—“He certainly thought of it. But it wouldn’t have scanned right.”—“Those who have that attitude do know, however, that the other laughing one exists,” I said.—“Yes, but they don’t manage to adopt it.” The voices on the other side of the partition had become clearer: a waitress had left the curtain of the booth open as she went out. I recognized the coarse intonations of Turek and his lackey Pfeiffer. “Women like that should be banned from the SS!” Turek was screeching.—“That’s right. He should be in a concentration camp, not a uniform,” Pfeiffer replied.—“Yes,” said another voice, “but you need evidence.”—“We saw them,” said Turek. “The other day, behind the Mashuk. They left the road to go do their things in the woods.”—“Are you sure?”—“I give you my word as an officer.”—“And you recognized him?”—“Aue? He was as close to me as you are now.” The men suddenly fell silent. Turek turned slowly around and saw me standing in the entrance to the booth. His flushed face drained of blood. Pfeiffer, at the head of the table, went yellow. “It is very regrettable that you should use your word as an officer so lightly, Hauptsturmführer,” I said clearly, in a measured, neutral tone. “That devalues it. Yet there is still time to withdraw your despicable words. I warn you: if you don’t, we must fight.” Turek had gotten up, abruptly pushing back his chair. An absurd tic was deforming his lips, giving him an even more spineless and lost look than usual. His eyes sought out Pfeiffer, who encouraged him with a sign of his head. “I have nothing to withdraw,” he squeaked in a monotone. He still hesitated to go all the way. I was filled with a strong exaltation; but my voice remained calm, precise. “Are you quite sure?” I wanted to push him, to inflame him and slam all the doors shut behind him. “I won’t be as easy to kill as an unarmed Jew, you can be sure of that.” These words provoked a commotion. “You’re insulting the SS!” Pfeiffer roared. Turek was pale; he looked at me like a mad bull, without saying anything. “Very well, then,” I said. “I will send someone soon to the Teilkommando offices.” I turned on my heel and left the restaurant. Hohenegg caught up with me on the steps: “That’s not very smart, what you did there. Lermontov has decidedly gone to your head.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Doktor, I believe you are a man of honor. Will you be my second?” Now it was his turn to shrug his shoulders. “If you like. But it’s idiotic.” I patted him amiably on the shoulder. “Don’t worry! Everything will go well. But don’t forget your wine, we’ll need it.” He brought me to his room and we finished the first bottle. I spoke to him a little about my life and my friendship with Voss: “I like him a lot. He’s an astonishing man. But it has nothing to do with what those swine are imagining.” Then I sent him to the Teilkommando offices and began the second bottle as I waited for him, smoking and watching the autumn sun play on the large park and the slopes of the Maloe Sedlo. He returned from his errand after an hour. “I should warn you,” he said point-blank, “they’re plotting something.”—“How’s that?”—“I went into the Kommando and heard them bellowing. I missed the beginning of the conversation, but I heard the fat one say: ‘That way we won’t run any risks. Anyway he doesn’t deserve anything else.’ Then your enemy, the one who looks like a Jew, right? replied: ‘And what about his second?’ The other one shouted: ‘Too bad for him.’ After that I came in and they shut up. In my opinion they’re getting ready to simply massacre us. Talk about the honor of the SS!”—“Don’t worry, Doktor. I’ll take my precautions. Did you settle on the arrangements?”—“Yes. We’ll meet them tomorrow night at six o’clock outside of Zheleznovodsk and we’ll go find an isolated balka. The dead man will be chalked up to the partisans lurking around there.” “Yes, Pustov’s gang. That’s a good idea. Shall we go eat?”

I returned to Pyatigorsk after eating and drinking heartily. Hohenegg, during the dinner, had been glum: I saw that he disapproved of my action and of the whole business. I was still strangely exalted; it was as if a great weight had been taken from my shoulders. I would kill Turek with pleasure; but I had to think about how to foil the trap that he and Pfeiffer wanted to set for me. An hour after I got back, someone knocked on my door. It was an orderly from the Kommando, who handed me a piece of paper. “Sorry to disturb you so late, Hauptsturmführer. It’s an urgent order from the Gruppenstab.” I tore it open: Bierkamp was summoning me at eight o’clock the next day, along with Turek. Someone had given the game away. I dismissed the orderly and collapsed on the sofa. I felt as if I were being pursued by a curse: whatever I tried to do, any pure action would be denied me! I thought I saw the old Jew, in his grave on the Mashuk, laughing at me. Drained, I burst into tears and fell asleep crying, fully dressed.

The next morning I presented myself at the appointed time at Voroshilovsk. Turek had come separately. We stood at attention in front of Bierkamp’s desk, side by side, without any other witness. Bierkamp came straight to the point: “Meine Herren. Word has reached me that you have spoken words unworthy of SS officers to each other in public, and that, to resolve your quarrel, you were planning on engaging in an action that is formally forbidden by regulations, an action that would moreover have deprived the Group of two valuable and difficult-to-replace officers; for you can be sure that the survivor would have been immediately brought before a court of the SS and the police, and would have been sentenced to capital punishment or to a concentration camp. I would like to remind you that you are here to serve your Führer and your Volk, and not to satisfy your personal passions: if you lay down your lives, you will do so for the Reich. Consequently I have called you both here so that you can apologize to each other and make peace. I will add that that’s an order.” Neither Turek nor I replied. Bierkamp looked at Turek: “Hauptsturmführer?” Turek remained silent. Bierkamp turned to me: “And you, Hauptsturmführer Aue?”—“With all due respect, Oberführer, the insulting words I said were in response to Hauptsturmführer Turek’s. So I believe that it is up to him to apologize first; otherwise I will be forced to defend my honor, whatever the consequences.” Bierkamp turned to Turek: “Hauptsturmführer, is it true that the first offensive words were uttered by you?” Turek was clenching his jaw so hard that his muscles were quivering: “Yes, Oberführer,” he finally said, “that is correct.”—“In that case, I order you to apologize to Hauptsturmführer Dr. Aue.” Turek pivoted a quarter turn, clicking his heels, and faced me, still at attention; I imitated him. “Hauptsturmführer Aue,” he said slowly, in a harsh voice, “please accept my apologies for the insulting statements I made about you. I was under the influence of drink, and let myself get carried away.”—“Hauptsturmführer Turek,” I replied, my heart pounding, “I accept your apology, and present you my own in the same spirit for my wounding reaction.”—“Very good,” Bierkamp said curtly. “Now shake hands.” I took Turek’s hand and found it clammy. Then we turned to face Bierkamp again. “Meine Herren, I don’t know what you said to each other and I don’t want to know. I am happy you are reconciled. If such an incident were to occur again, I will have you both sent to a disciplinary battalion of the Waffen-SS. Is that clear? Dismissed.”

Leaving his office, still very upset, I headed toward Dr. Leetsch’s office. Von Gilsa had informed me that a reconnaissance plane from the Wehrmacht had flown over the region of Shatoi and photographed a number of bombed villages; but our Fourth Air Corps was insisting on the fact that its aircraft had conducted no attack on Chechnya, and the destruction was now being attributed to the Soviet air force, which seemed to confirm the rumors of a rather extensive insurrection. “Kurreck has already parachuted a number of men into the mountains,” Leetsch told me. “But since then we haven’t had any contact with them. Either they’ve deserted, or they’ve been killed or captured.”—“The Wehrmacht thinks that an uprising behind the Soviet lines could facilitate the offensive on Ordzhonikidze.”—“Maybe. But in my opinion they’ve already crushed it, if it ever even took place. Stalin wouldn’t take such a risk.”—“No doubt. If Sturmbannführer Kurreck finds anything out, can you let me know?” As I was going out, I ran into Turek, leaning against a doorframe talking with Prill. They stopped and stared at me as I passed them. I politely saluted Prill, and went back to Pyatigorsk.

Hohenegg, whom I met again that night, didn’t look too disappointed. “It’s the reality principle, my dear friend,” he declared. “That will teach you to try to play the romantic hero. So let’s go have a drink.” But the business was worrying me. Who could have denounced us to Bierkamp? It was certainly one of Turek’s comrades, who was afraid of the scandal. Or maybe one of them, aware of the trap being prepared, wanted to prevent it? It was hardly conceivable that Turek himself had had second thoughts. I wondered what he was plotting with Prill: nothing good, certainly.

A new burst of activity made this affair fade into the background. Von Mackensen’s Third Panzer Corps, supported by the Luftwaffe, was launching its offensive on Ordzhonikidze; the Soviet defenses around Nalchik collapsed in two days, and at the end of October our forces took the city while the tanks continued their push to the east. I asked for a car and went first to Prokhladny, where I met Persterer, then on to Nalchik. It was raining but that didn’t hinder traffic too much; after Prokhaldny, columns of the Rollbahn were bringing up food supplies. Persterer was getting ready to transfer his Kommandostab to Nalchik and had already dispatched a Vorkommando there to prepare quarters. The city had fallen so quickly that they had been able to arrest a lot of Bolshevik officials and other suspects; there were also many Jews, both bureaucrats from Russia and a large native community. I reminded Persterer of the orders from the Wehrmacht concerning the attitude toward the local populations: they were planning on quickly forming an autonomous Kabardo-Balkar district, and it was imperative not to damage good relations in any way. In Nalchik, I found the Ortskommandantur, still being set up. The Luftwaffe had bombed the city, and many houses and gutted buildings were still smoking in the rain. I found Voss there, sorting through some books in an empty room; he seemed delighted at his finds. “Look at that,” he said, holding out an old book in French. I examined the title page: On the peoples of the Caucasus and the countries north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the Xth Century, or, The Journey of Abu-el-Cassim, published in Paris in 1828 by a certain Constantin Mouradgea d’Ohsson. I handed it back to him with an approving look: “Did you find a lot of them?”—“Quite a few. A bomb hit the library, but there wasn’t too much damage. On the other hand, your colleagues wanted to seize a part of the collections for the SS. I asked them what interested them, but since they don’t have an expert, they didn’t really know. I offered them the shelf on Marxist political economy. They told me they had to consult with Berlin. By then I’ll be done.” I laughed: “My duty should be to throw a spanner in your works.”—“Maybe. But you won’t do that.” I told him about the quarrel with Turek, which he found highly comical: “You wanted to fight a duel because of me? Doktor Aue, you are incorrigible. That’s absurd.”—“I wasn’t going to fight because of you: I was the one who was insulted.”—“And you say that Dr. Hohenegg was ready to serve as your second?”—“Somewhat against his will.”—“That surprises me. I thought he was an intelligent man.” I found Voss’s attitude rather annoying; he must have noticed my vexed air, since he burst out laughing: “Don’t make that face! Remind yourself that coarse and ignorant men punish themselves.”

I couldn’t spend the night at Nalchik; I had to go back up to Pyatigorsk to file a report. The next day, I was summoned by von Gilsa. “Hauptsturmführer, we have a little problem in Nalchik that also concerns the Sicherheitspolizei.” The Sonderkommando, he explained, had already begun to shoot some Jews, near the racecourse: Russian Jews, most of them Party members or officials, but also some local Jews, who seemed to be those famous “Mountain Jews,” or Jews of the Caucasus. One of their elders had gone to find Selim Shadov, the Kabard lawyer chosen by the military administration to be the leader of the future autonomous district; he in turn had met in Kislovodsk with Generaloberst von Kleist, to whom he had explained that the Gorski Yevrei were not racially Jewish, but a mountain people converted to Judaism just as the Kabards had been converted to Islam. “According to him, these Bergjuden eat like the other mountain people, dress like them, get married like them, and speak neither Hebrew nor Yiddish. They’ve been living for more than one hundred and fifty years in Nalchik and they all speak both Kabard and Balkar Turkish, along with their own language. Herr Shadov told the Generaloberst that the Kabards would not accept having their mountain brothers killed, and that they should be spared and even excused from wearing the yellow star.”—“And what does the Generaloberst say about this?”—“As you know, the Wehrmacht is carrying out a policy here that aims to create good relations with the anti-Bolshevist minorities. These good relations should not be thoughtlessly imperiled. Of course, the security of the troops is also a vital consideration. But if these people are not racially Jewish, it may be that they present no danger. The question is a delicate one and should be studied carefully. So the Wehrmacht is going to form a commission of specialists and conduct an assessment. In the meantime, the Generaloberst is asking the Sicherheitspolizei not to take any measures against this Group. Of course, the Sicherheitspolizei is entirely free to submit its own opinion on the question, which the Army Group will take into consideration. I think the OKHG will delegate the affair to General Köstring. After all, it concerns a zone that is intended for self-government.”—“Very good, Herr Oberst. I have made a note of it and will send a report.”—“Thank you. I would also be grateful to you if you would ask Oberführer Bierkamp to confirm to us in writing that the Sicherheitspolizei will not undertake any action without a decision from the Wehrmacht.”—“Zu Befehl, Herr Oberst.”

I called Obersturmbannführer Hermann, the replacement for Dr. Müller, who had left the week before, and explained the matter to him: Bierkamp was arriving within the hour, he told me, and invited me to come down to the Kommando. Bierkamp already knew: “That’s absolutely inadmissible!” he shouted. “The Wehrmacht is really going too far. Protecting Jews is a direct violation of the will of the Führer.”—“If you will allow me, Oberführer, I thought I understood that the Wehrmacht was not convinced that these people should be considered Jews. If it is demonstrated that they are, the OKHG should not have any objections to the SP proceeding with the necessary measures.” Bierkamp shrugged his shoulders: “You are naïve, Hauptsturmführer. The Wehrmacht will demonstrate what it wants to demonstrate. This is nothing but one more pretext to oppose the work of the Sicherheitspolizei.”—“Excuse me,” interrupted Hermann, a man with delicate features and a severe but rather dreamy aspect, “have we already had similar cases?”—“To my knowledge,” I replied, “only individual cases. We’ll have to check.”—“That’s not all,” Bierkamp added. “The OKHG wrote to me that according to Shadov we have liquidated an entire village of these Bergjuden near Mozdok. They’re asking me to send them a report justifying it.” Hermann seemed to be having trouble following. “Is it true?” I asked.—“Listen, if you think I know the list of our actions by heart…I’ll ask Sturmbannführer Persterer, that must be his sector.”—“Anyway,” Hermann said, “if they were Jews, he can’t be reproached for anything.”—“You don’t know the Wehrmacht here yet, Obersturmbannführer. They’ll take any chance they can get to pick a quarrel with us.”—“What does Brigadeführer Korsemann think?” I hazarded. Bierkamp shrugged his shoulders again. “The Brigadeführer says we shouldn’t stir up useless friction with the Wehrmacht. That’s his obsession, now.”—“We could launch a counterassessment,” Hermann suggested.—“That’s a good idea,” Bierkamp said. “Hauptsturmführer, what do you think?”—“The SS has ample documentation on the subject,” I replied. “And of course, if we have to, we can have our own experts come.” Bierkamp shook his head. “If I am not mistaken, Hauptsturmführer, you carried out some research on the Caucasus for my predecessor?” “That is correct, Oberführer. But it didn’t exactly concern these Bergjuden.”—“Yes, but at least you already know the documentation. And it’s obvious from your reports that you understand these nationality questions. Could you take charge of this question for us? Centralize all the information and prepare our replies to the Wehrmacht. I’ll write you a mission order to show them. Of course, you will consult with me, or with Dr. Leetsch, at every stage.”—“Zu Befehl, Oberführer. I’ll do my best.”—“Fine. And, Hauptsturmführer?”—“Yes, Oberführer?”—“In your research, not too much theory, all right? Try not to lose sight of the interests of the SP.”—“Zu Befehl, Oberführer.”

The Gruppenstab kept all our research materials in Voroshilovsk. I compiled a brief report for Bierkamp and Leetsch with what I found: the results were meager. According to a 1941 pamphlet from the Institute for the Study of Foreign Countries, entitled List of Nationalities Living in the USSR, the Bergjuden were in fact Jews. A more recent SS brochure gave a few additional precisions: Mixed Oriental peoples, of Indian or other descent, but of Jewish origin, arrived in the Caucasus in the eighth century. Finally, I found a more detailed evaluation, ordered by the SS from the Wannsee Institute: The Jews of the Caucasus are not assimilated, the text asserted, referring to the Russian Jews as well as to the Bergjuden. According to the author, the Mountain Jews or Daghestani Jews (Dagh Chufuti), like the Jews of Georgia (Kartveli Ebraelebi), arrived, around the time of the birth of Jesus, from Palestine, Babylon, and the lands of the Medes. Without citing any sources, it concluded: Regardless of the accuracy of one opinion or another, the Jews as a whole, newcomers as well as Bergjuden, are Fremdkörper, foreign bodies in the region of the Caucasus. A cover note from Amt IV specified that this evaluation was enough to give the Einsatzgruppe the necessary clarity to identify the Weltanschauungsgegner, the “ideological enemies,” in its theater of operations. The next day, when Bierkamp returned, I presented my report to him, which he quickly skimmed through. “Very good, very good. Here is your mission order for the Wehrmacht.”—“What does Sturmbannführer Persterer say about the village mentioned by Shadov?”—“He says they did liquidate a Jewish kolkhoz in that region, on September twentieth. But he doesn’t know if they were Bergjuden or not. In the meantime, one of the elders of those Jews came to the Kommando, to Nalchik. I had an account of the discussion drawn up for you.” I examined the document he held out to me: the elder, a certain Markel Shabaev, had presented himself wearing a cherkesska and a tall astrakhan hat; speaking Russian, he had explained that there lived in Nalchik several thousand Tats, an Iranian people whom the Russians mistakenly called Gorski Evrei. “According to Persterer,” Bierkamp added, visibly annoyed, “it’s this same Shabaev who asked Shadov to intercede. You’ll have to see him, I guess.”

When von Gilsa called me to his office two days later, he looked preoccupied. “What’s going on, Herr Oberst?” I asked him. He showed me a line on his large wall map: “Generaloberst von Mackensen’s Panzers have stopped advancing. The Soviet resistance has dug itself in in front of Ordzhonikidze, and it’s already snowing down there. But we’re just seven kilometers away from the city.” His eyes followed the long blue line that snaked along and then rose up to vanish in the sands of the Kalmuk Steppe. “They’re stuck in Stalingrad too. Our troops are worn out. If the OKH doesn’t send reinforcements soon we’ll spend the winter here.” I didn’t say anything and he changed the subject. “Were you able to look at the problem of those Bergjuden?” I explained to him that according to our documentation they had to be considered Jews. “Our experts seem to believe the opposite,” he replied. “And Dr. Bräutigam too. General Köstring suggests we call a meeting about this tomorrow, in Voroshilovsk; he wants the SS and the SP to be represented.”—“Fine. I will inform the Oberführer.” I telephoned Bierkamp, who asked me to come; he too would attend the meeting. I went up to Voroshilovsk with von Gilsa. The sky was overcast, gray but dry; the peaks of the volcanoes disappeared into shifting, wild, capricious, nebulous whorls. Von Gilsa was in a glum mood and was brooding over his pessimism of the day before. An assault had just failed again. “The front won’t move anymore, I think.” He was also very worried about Stalingrad: “Our flanks are very vulnerable. Our allied troops are really second-rate, and the corsetting doesn’t help much. If the Soviets try to pull off something big, they’ll collapse. In that case, the position of the Sixth Army could be weakened fast.”—“You don’t really think, though, that the Russians still have the reserves necessary for an offensive? Their losses in Stalingrad are enormous, and they’re throwing in everything they have just to hold the city.”—“No one really knows what the state of the Soviet reserves is,” he replied. “Since the beginning of the war, we’ve been underestimating them. Why wouldn’t we have underestimated them again here?”

The meeting was held in a conference room of the OKHG. Köstring had come with his aide-de-camp, Hans von Bittenfeld, and two officers of Berück von Roques’s staff. Also present were Bräutigam and an officer from the Abwehr attached to the OKHG. Bierkamp had brought Leetsch and an adjunct of Korsemann’s. Köstring opened the meeting by recalling the principles of the regime of military administration in the Caucasus and of self-governance. “The peoples who have welcomed us as liberators and accept our benevolent supervision know their enemies well,” he concluded in a slow, knowing tone. “Therefore, we should know how to listen to them.”—“From the Abwehr’s standpoint,” von Gilsa explained, “it’s a purely objective question of the security of the rear areas. If these Bergjuden cause disturbances, hide saboteurs, or help partisans, then we have to treat them like any enemy group. But if they keep quiet, there’s no reason to provoke the other tribes by comprehensive repressive measures.”—“For my part,” Bräutigam said in his slightly nasal voice, “I think we have to consider the internal relations of the Caucasian peoples as a whole. Do the mountain tribes regard these Bergjuden as belonging to them, or do they reject them as Fremdkörper? The fact that Herr Shadov intervened so vigorously in itself pleads in their favor.”—“Herr Shadov may have, let’s say, political reasons that we don’t understand,” Bierkamp suggested. “I agree with Dr. Bräutigam’s premises, even if I cannot accept the conclusion he draws from them.” He read some extracts from my report, concentrating on the opinion of the Wannsee Institute. “This,” he added, “seems confirmed by all the reports of our Kommandos in the theater of operations of Army Group A. These reports show us that dislike of the Jews is general. The Aktions against the Jews—such as dismissals from public offices, yellow star, forced labor—all meet with full understanding from the general population and are heartily welcomed. Significant voices within the population even find actions so far against the Jews insufficient and demand more determined actions.”—“You are quite right when it comes to the recently settled Russian Jews,” Bräutigam retorted. “But we don’t have the impression that this attitude extends to the so-called Bergjuden, whose presence dates back several centuries at least.” He turned to Köstring: “I have here a copy of a communication to the Auswärtiges Amt from Professor Eiler. According to him, the Bergjuden are of Caucasian, Iranian, and Afghan descent and are not Jews, even if they have adopted the Mosaic religion.”—“Excuse me,” said Noeth, the Abwehr officer from the OKHG, “but where did they receive the Jewish religion from, then?”—“That’s not clear,” Bräutigam replied, tapping on the table with the tip of his pencil. “Maybe from those famous Khazars who converted to Judaism in the eighth century.”—“It isn’t the Bergjuden who converted the Khazars, is it?” Eckhardt, Korsemann’s man, hazarded. Bräutigam raised his hands: “That’s what we have to look into.” The lazy, intelligent, deep voice of Köstring rose again: “Excuse me, but didn’t we have to deal with something like this already in the Crimea?”—“Affirmative, Herr General,” Bierkamp replied in a dry tone. “That was during my predecessor’s time. I think Hauptsturmführer Aue can explain the details to you.”—“Certainly, Oberführer. Besides the case of the Karaïtes, recognized as racially non-Jewish in 1937 by the Ministry of the Interior, a controversy arose in the Crimea concerning the Krimchaks, who represented themselves as a Turkish people that converted to Judaism in recent times. Our specialists conducted an investigation and concluded that they were in fact Italian Jews, come to the Crimea around the fifteenth or sixteenth century and afterward Turkified.”—“And what did we do about it?” Köstring asked.—“They were regarded as Jewish and treated as such, Herr General.”—“I see,” he said suavely.—“If you allow me,” Bierkamp interrupted, “we also had to deal with Bergjuden in the Crimea. It was a Jewish kolkhoz, in the district of Freidorf near Eupatoria. It was inhabited by Bergjuden from Daghestan relocated there in the thirties with the assistance of the JOINT, the well-known international Jewish organization. After investigation, they were all shot in March of this year.”—“That may have been a somewhat premature action,” Bräutigam suggested. “Like the kolkhoz of Bergjuden you liquidated near Mozdok.”—“Oh yes,” Köstring said with the air of a man who has just remembered a minor detail, “were you able to find out about that matter, Oberführer?” Bierkamp replied to Köstring without paying attention to Bräutigam’s remark: “Yes, Herr General. Unfortunately our files contain few clarifications, for in the heat of action during the offensive, when the Sonderkommando had just arrived in Mozdok, some of the actions weren’t accounted for with all the precision we would have liked. According to Sturmbannführer Persterer, Professor Oberländer’s Bergmann Kommando was also very active in that region. It might have been them.”—“That battalion is under our control,” Noeth, the AO, retorted. “We would know.”—“What was the name of the village?” asked Köstring.—“Bogdanovka,” Bräutigam replied, consulting his notes. “According to Herr Shadov, four hundred and twenty villagers were killed and thrown into some wells. They were all clan relations of the Bergjuden of Nalchik, with names like Michiev, Abramov, Shamilyev; their deaths caused a major stir in Nalchik, not just among the Bergjuden but also among the Kabards and the Balkars, who were very upset by it.”—“Unfortunately,” Köstring said coldly, “Oberländer has gone. So we can’t ask him.”—“Of course,” Bierkamp went on, “it is also entirely possible that it was my Kommando. After all, their orders are clear. But I’m not certain.”—“Fine,” Köstring said. “In any case it’s not important. What counts now is to make a decision about the Bergjuden of Nalchik, of whom there are…” He turned to Bräutigam, who said, “Between six and seven thousand.”—“Exactly,” Köstring continued. “A decision, then, that is fair, scientifically based, and finally that takes into account both the security of our rear area”—he inclined his head to Bierkamp—“and our desire to follow a policy of maximum collaboration with the local populations. The opinion of our scientific commission will thus be very important.” Von Bittenfeld leafed through a bundle of papers: “We already have on-site Leutnant Dr. Voss, who despite his youth is a reputed authority in scientific circles in Germany. We are also having an anthropologist or an ethnologist come.”—“For my part,” Bräutigam interrupted, “I have already contacted my ministry. They are sending a specialist from Frankfurt, from the Institute for Jewish Questions. They will also try to have someone from Dr. Walter Frank’s institute in Munich.”—“I have already sought the opinion of the scientific department of the RSHA,” Bierkamp said. “I think I will also ask for an expert. In the meantime, I have entrusted our investigations to Hauptsturmführer Dr. Aue present, who is our specialist in matters concerning the Caucasian peoples.” I politely bowed my head. “Fine, fine,” Köstring approved. In that case, we’ll meet again when the various investigations have come to some conclusions? That will allow us, I hope, to settle this affair. Meine Herren, thank you for coming.” The assembly dispersed with a shuffling of chairs. Bräutigam had taken Köstring aside by the arm and was talking with him. The officers filed out one by one, but Bierkamp stayed there with Leetsch and Eckhardt, his cap in his hand: “They’re pulling out all the stops. We have to find a good specialist too, otherwise we’re going to be sidelined right away.”—“I’ll ask the Brigadeführer,” Eckhardt said. “Maybe in the Reichsführer’s entourage in Vinnitsa we’ll be able to find someone. Otherwise, we’ll have to get him to come from Germany.”

Voss, according to von Gilsa, was still in Nalchik; I had to see him and went there at the first opportunity. In Malka, a thin layer of snow already covered the fields; by the time I reached Baksan, flurries were darkening the sky, great whirls of flakes projected into the light from the headlamps. The mountains, the fields, the trees, everything had disappeared; the vehicles coming from the opposite direction looked like roaring monsters, surging out of the wings hidden by the curtain of the storm. I had only a wool coat from the previous year; it was still sufficient, but wouldn’t be for long. I would have to think about getting some warm clothing, I said to myself. In Nalchik, I found Voss surrounded by his books at the Ortskommandantur, where he had set up his office; he took me to have some ersatz coffee at the mess, at a little beaten-up Formica table with a vase of plastic flowers on it. The coffee was revolting and I tried to drown it in milk; Voss didn’t seem to mind it. “You aren’t too disappointed by the failure of the offensive?” I asked him. “For your research, I mean.”—“A little, of course. But I have enough to keep me busy here.” He seemed distant, a little lost. “So General Köstring has asked you to take part in the commission to investigate the Bergjuden?”—“Yes. And I heard that you were going to represent the SS.” I laughed dryly: “More or less. Oberführer Bierkamp automatically promoted me to the rank of specialist in Caucasian affairs. That’s your fault, I think.” He laughed and drank some coffee. Soldiers and officers, some still coated with snow, were coming and going or talking in low voices at the other tables. “And what do you think about the problem?” I asked.—“What do I think? The way they’ve put it, it’s absurd. The only thing you can say about these people is that they speak an Iranian language, practice the Mosaic religion, and live according to the customs of the Caucasian mountain people. That’s it.”—“Yes, but they do have an origin.” He shrugged his shoulders: “Everyone has an origin, most of the time a dreamed one. We talked about that. For the Tats, it’s lost in time and legend. Even if they really were Jews who came from Babylonia—let’s even say one of the lost tribes—in the meantime they must have mingled with the peoples from here so much that it wouldn’t mean anything anymore. In Azerbaidjan, there are Muslim Tats. Are they Jews who accepted Islam? Or did these hypothetical Jews from elsewhere trade women with an Iranian, pagan tribe whose descendants converted later on to one or the other religion of the Book? It’s impossible to say.”—“But,” I insisted, “there must be scientific clues that would allow us to decide?”—“There are plenty, and you can make them say anything. Take their language. I’ve already talked with them and I can situate it pretty well. Especially since I found a book by Vsevolod Miller about it. It’s basically a western Iranian dialect, with Hebrew and Turkish contributions. The Hebrew contribution concerns mostly the religious vocabulary, but not systematically: they call the synagogue nimaz, Passover Nisanu, and Purim Homonu; those are all Persian names. Before Soviet power, they wrote their Persian language with Hebrew characters, but according to them, those books didn’t survive the reforms. Nowadays, Tat is written in Latinic characters: in Daghestan, they publish newspapers and educate their children in that language. Now, if they really were Chaldeans or Jews who came from Babylon after the destruction of the First Temple, as some people would like us to think, they should by all logic speak some dialect derived from Middle Iranian, close to the Pahlavi language of the Sassanid era. But this Tat language is a new Iranian dialect, posterior to the tenth century and hence close to Dari, Baluch, or Kurdish. Without stretching the facts, we could conclude that there was a relatively recent immigration, followed by a conversion. But if you want to prove the opposite, you could do that too. What I don’t understand is what connection any of this has with the security of our troops. Aren’t we capable of judging their attitude toward us objectively, based on fact?”—“It’s quite simply a racial problem,” I replied. “We know that racially inferior groups exist, including the Jews, who present marked characteristics that in turn predispose them to Bolshevik corruption, theft, murder, and all kinds of other harmful manifestations. Obviously, that is not the case for all members of the group. But in wartime, in a context of occupation, and with our limited resources, it is impossible for us to carry out individual investigations. So we are forced to consider the risk-bearing groups as a whole, and to react globally. That creates great injustices, but that’s because of the exceptional situation.” Voss gazed at his coffee with a bitter, sad look. “Doktor Aue. I have always thought of you as an intelligent, sensible man. Even if everything you’re telling me is true, explain to me, if you please, what you mean by ‘race.’ Because for me, that’s a concept that is scientifically indefinable and hence without any theoretical value.”—“But race exists, that’s a fact, our best researchers are studying it and writing about it. You know that very well. Our racial anthropologists are the best in the world.” Voss suddenly exploded: “They are clowns. They have no competition in serious countries because their discipline doesn’t exist and isn’t taught there. If it weren’t for politics, none of them would have a job or be published!”—“Doktor Voss, I respect your opinions very much, but you’re going a little far, aren’t you?” I said gently. Voss struck the table with the flat of his hand, causing the cups and the vase of fake flowers to jump; the noise and his outburst made some heads turn: “This philosophy of veterinarians, as Herder called it, has stolen all its ideas from linguistics, the only social science to this day that has a scientifically valid theoretical basis. Do you understand”—he had lowered his voice and was speaking quickly and furiously—“do you even understand what a scientific theory is? A theory is not a fact: it is a tool that allows one to make predictions and generate new hypotheses. We say a theory is good, first of all, if it is relatively simple and then if it allows us to make verifiable predictions. Newtonian physics allows us to calculate orbits: if you observe the position of Earth or Mars at several months’ intervals, they are always exactly where the theory predicts they should be. On the other hand, it has been noted that the orbit of Mercury has slight irregularities that deviate from the orbit predicted by Newtonian theory. Einstein’s theory of relativity predicts these deviations with precision: so it is a better theory than Newton’s. Now, in Germany, once the greatest scientific country in the world, Einstein’s theory is denounced as Jewish science and rejected without any other explanation. That is quite simply absurd, that’s what we reproach the Bolsheviks for, with their own pseudo-sciences in the service of the Party. It’s the same thing for linguistics as against so-called racial anthropology. In linguistics, for example, Indo-Germanic comparative grammar has allowed us to draw up a theory of phonological mutations that has an excellent predictive value. As early as 1820, Bopp derived Greek and Latin from Sanskrit. By starting with Middle Iranian and following the same fixed rules, we can find words in Gaelic. It works and it’s demonstrable. So it’s a good theory, although it’s constantly being elaborated, corrected, and perfected. Racial anthropology, by comparison, has no theory. It postulates races, without being able to define them, then posits hierarchies, without the slightest criteria. All the attempts to define races biologically have failed. Cranial anthropometry was a total flop: after decades of measurements and compilations of tables, based on the most farfetched indices or angles, we still can’t tell a Jewish skull from a German skull with any degree of certainty. As for Mendelian genetics, it gives good results for simple organisms, but aside from the Habsburg chin, we’re still far from being able to apply it to man. All this is so much the case that in order to write our famous racial laws, we were forced to use the grandparents’ religion as a basis! It was postulated that the Jews of the last century were racially pure, but that’s absolutely arbitrary. Even you have to see that. As for what constitutes a racially pure German, no one knows, whatever your Reichsführer-SS may say. So racial anthropology, incapable of defining anything, was simply built on the so much more demonstrable categories of linguistics. Schlegel, who was fascinated by the work of Humboldt and Bopp, deduced from the existence of a supposedly original Indo-Iranian language the idea of an equally original people, whom he baptized Aryan, taking the term from Herodotus. The same for the Jews: once the linguists had demonstrated the existence of a so-called Semitic group of languages, the racialists jumped on the idea, which they apply in a completely illogical way, since Germany wants to cultivate the Arabs and the Führer officially welcomes the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem! Language, as a vehicle of culture, can have an influence on thought and behavior. Humboldt had already understood that a long time ago. But language can be transmitted and so can culture, although much more slowly. In Chinese Turkestan, the Muslim Turkic speakers in Ürümqi or Kashgar have an appearance we’ll call Iranian: you might take them for Sicilians. Of course they are descendants of peoples who must have migrated from the West and who once spoke an Indo-Iranian language. Then they were invaded and assimilated by a Turkic people, the Uighurs, from whom they took their language and some of their customs. They now form a cultural group that is distinct, for example, from Turkic peoples like the Kazakhs or the Kirghiz, and also from the Islamicized Chinese called the Hui, or from Indo-Iranian Muslims such as the Tadjiks. But trying to define them other than by their language, their religion, their customs, their habitat, their economic usages, or their own sense of identity would make no sense. And all that is acquired, not innate. Blood transmits a propensity for heart diseases; if it also transmits a propensity for treason, no one has ever been able to prove it. In Germany, some idiots are studying cats with their tails cut off to try to prove that their kittens will be born without a tail; and because they wear a gold button they’re given a university chair! In the USSR, on the other hand, despite all the political pressure, the linguistic studies of Marr and his colleagues, at least on a theoretical level, are still excellent and objective, because”—he rapped sharply on the table with his knuckles—“like this table, it exists. As for people like Hans Günther or that Georges Montandon, in France, who’s also made a name for himself, I say they’re full of shit. And if it’s criteria like theirs that you use to decide whether people live or die, you’d do better to go shooting at random into a crowd, the result would be the same.” I hadn’t said anything during Voss’s whole long tirade. Finally I replied, rather slowly: “Doktor Voss, I didn’t know you were so passionate. Your theses are provocative, and I cannot agree with you on every point. I think you underestimate some of the idealistic notions that form our Weltanschauung and that are far from a philosophy of veterinarians, as you say. Nevertheless, this requires thought, and I wouldn’t want to answer you lightly. So I hope you will agree to resume this conversation in a few days, when I’ve had time to think about it.”—“Of course,” Voss said, suddenly calmer. “I’m sorry I got carried away. Only, when you hear so many stupid and inept things around you, it becomes difficult at a certain point to keep quiet. I’m not talking about you, of course, but about some of my colleagues. My only wish and my only hope would be that German science, when passions have calmed down, can recover the position it had acquired with so much difficulty thanks to the work of so many fine men, subtle, attentive, and humble before the things of this world.”

I was open to some of Voss’s arguments: if the Bergjuden did in fact think of themselves as authentic Caucasian mountain people, and were regarded as such by their neighbors, their attitude toward us, in general, might indeed remain loyal, whatever the origin of their blood. Cultural and social factors could also count; one had to consider, for example, the relations this people had with the Bolshevik authorities. The words of the old Tat, in Pyatigorsk, had suggested to me that the Bergjuden were not particularly fond of the Jews of Russia, and perhaps the same was true for the whole Stalinist system. The attitude of the other tribes toward them was also important, you couldn’t depend on the word of Shadov alone: here too, perhaps, the Jews were living as parasites. Going back to Pyatigorsk, I thought about Voss’s other arguments. To deny racial anthropology as a whole in that way seemed to me to be overdoing it; of course the methods could be refined, and I didn’t doubt that people of little talent were able to profit from their Party connections to construct an undeserved career for themselves: Germany was swarming with parasites like that (and fighting that was also one of the tasks of the SD, in the minds of some people at least). But Voss, despite all his talent, had the definitive opinions of youth. Things were certainly more complex than he thought. I didn’t have the knowledge to criticize him, but it seemed to me that if you believed in a certain idea of Germany and the German Volk, the rest had to follow naturally. Some things could be demonstrated, but others simply had to be understood; it was also no doubt a question of faith.

In Pyatigorsk, the first reply from Berlin was waiting for me, sent by telex. Amt VII had sought the opinion of a certain Professor Kittel, who wrote: Difficult question, to be studied locally. That was not very encouraging. Department VII B 1, on the other hand, had prepared documentation that would arrive soon by air mail. The specialist from the Wehrmacht, von Gilsa told me, was on his way, and Rosenberg’s expert would follow him soon after. Waiting for ours to arrive, I settled the problem of my winter clothing. Reuter kindly placed one of the Jewish artisans from the Wehrmacht at my service, an old man with a long beard, quite thin; he came to take my measurements, and I ordered a long gray coat from him with an Astrakhan collar, lined with shearling, which the Russians call a shuba, and a pair of fleece-lined boots; as for the shapka (the one from the year before had disappeared a long time ago), I went myself and found one at the market, the Verkhnyi rynok, in silver fox. A number of officers from the Waffen-SS had adopted the custom of having a death’s head insignia sewn onto their non-regulation shapkas; I thought that a bit affected; but on the other hand, I removed the epaulettes and an SD insignia from one of my jackets and had them sewn onto the coat.

My bouts of nausea and vomiting caught me at irregular intervals; and harrowing dreams began to deepen my unease. Often they remained black and opaque; morning erased all images and left only the weight of them. But sometimes too this darkness was ripped apart all of a sudden, revealing visions blinding in their clarity and horror. Two or three nights after I returned from Nalchik, I ill-advisedly opened one of these doors: Voss, in a dark, empty room, was on all fours, his rear end bare, and liquid shit was streaming from his anus. Worried, I seized some paper, some pages from Izvestia, and tried to sponge up this brown liquid, which was becoming increasingly darker and thicker. I tried to keep my hands clean, but it was impossible, the almost black pitch covered the pages and my fingers, then my whole hand. Sick with disgust, I ran to wash my hands in a bathtub nearby; but during this time it was still streaming. Waking up, I tried to understand these frightful images; but I must not have been completely awake, since my thoughts, which seemed to me at the time perfectly lucid, remained as cloudy as the meaning of the image itself: it seemed to me in fact from certain signs that these people represented others, that the man on all fours must have been me, and the one who was wiping him, my father. And what could the articles from Izvestia have been about? Could there have been a piece there that might have settled the Tat question once and for all? The mail from VII B 1, sent by a certain Oberkriegsverwaltungsrat Dr. Füsslein, did nothing to resolve my pessimism; the zealous Oberkriegsverwaltungsrat, in fact, had simply contented himself with culling excerpts from The Jewish Encyclopedia. There were some very erudite things there, but their contradictory opinions, alas, led to no conclusion. Thus I learned that the Jews of the Caucasus were mentioned for the first time by Benjamin of Tudela, who had traveled to these lands around 1170, and Pethahiah of Ratisbon, who asserted that they were of Persian origin and had come to the Caucasus around the twelfth century. Willem van Ruysbroeck, in 1254, had found a large Jewish population east of the massif, in the region of Astrakhan. But a Georgian text of 314 mentioned Hebrew-speaking Jews who had adopted the old Iranian language (“Parsee” or “Tat”) after the occupation of the Transcaucasus by the Persians, mixing it with Hebrew and local languages. The Jews of Georgia, however, called, according to Koch, Huria (perhaps derived from Iberia), speak not Tat but a Kartvelian dialect. As for Daghestan, according to the Derbent-Nameh, the Arabs had already found Jews there during their conquest, in the eighth century. Contemporary researchers only complicated the affair. There was reason to despair; I resolved to send all of it to Bierkamp and Leetsch without commentary, insisting that a specialist be summoned as soon as possible.

The snow stopped for a few days, then started up again. In the mess, the officers spoke in low, worried voices: Rommel had been beaten by the English at El-Alamein, then, a few days later, the English and Americans had landed in North Africa; our forces had just occupied the Free Zone in France, in retaliation; but that had pushed the Vichy troops in Africa to go over to the Allies. “If only things were going better here,” was von Gilsa’s comment. But before Ordzhonikidze our divisions had gone on the defensive; the line ran from south of Chegem and Nalchik to Chikola and Gizel, then followed the Terek to the north of Malgobek; and soon, a Soviet counterattack recaptured Gizel. Then came the real blow. I didn’t learn about it right away, since the officers from the Abwehr blocked my access to the map room and refused to give me any details. “I’m sorry,” Reuter said. “Your Kommandant will have to discuss it with the OKHG.” At the end of the day I managed to learn that the Soviets had launched a counteroffensive on the Stalingrad front; but I couldn’t find out where or how large it was: the officers from the AOK, their faces somber and tense, obstinately refused to talk to me. Leetsch, on the telephone, told me that the OKHG was reacting in the same way; the Gruppenstab didn’t know any more than I did, and asked me to pass on any new information immediately. This attitude persisted the next day, and I got angry with Reuter, who retorted curtly that the AOK had no obligation to inform the SS about operations under way outside of its own area of responsibility. But already the rumors were spreading, the officers could no longer control the Latrinenparolen; I fell back on the drivers, dispatch riders, and noncoms and, in a few hours, by cross-checking the various tidbits, managed to form some idea of the extent of the danger. I called back Leetsch, who seemed to have the same information; but as to what the Wehrmacht’s reaction would be, no one could say. The two Romanian fronts, west of Stalingrad on the Don and to the south in the Kalmuk Steppe, were collapsing, and the Reds were evidently aiming to take the Sixth Army from the rear. Where had they found the necessary troops? I couldn’t manage to find out where they were, the situation was evolving too quickly even for the cooks to follow, but it seemed urgent that the Sixth Army begin a retreat to keep from being surrounded; yet the Sixth Army wasn’t moving. On November 21, Generaloberst von Kleist was promoted to Generalfeldmarschall and named Commander in Chief of Army Group A: the Führer must have been feeling overwhelmed. Generaloberst von Mackensen took Kleist’s place at the head of the First Panzer Army. Von Gilsa passed me this news officially; he seemed desperate, and hinted to me that the situation was becoming catastrophic. The next day, a Sunday, the two Soviet pincer movements met up at Kalach-on-the-Don, and the Sixth Army as well as part of the Fourth Panzer Army were surrounded. Rumors spoke of a debacle, of massive losses, of chaos; but every seemingly precise piece of information contradicted the previous one. By the end of the day, finally, Reuter took me to von Gilsa, who gave me a quick summary on the maps. “The decision not to try to evacuate the Sixth Army was made by the Führer himself,” he told me. The surrounded divisions now formed a giant Kessel, a “cauldron” as they said, cut off from our lines, but stretching from Stalingrad through the steppe almost to the Don. The situation was worrisome, but the rumors were exaggerating things terribly; the German forces had lost few men or materiel and kept their cohesion; what’s more, the experience of Demiansk, the previous year, showed that a Kessel, if supplied by air, could hold out indefinitely. “A breakthrough operation will soon be launched,” he concluded. A meeting called the next day by Bierkamp confirmed this optimistic interpretation: Reichsmarschall Göring, Korsemann announced, had given his word to the Führer that the Luftwaffe was able to supply the Sixth Army; General Paulus had joined his staff in Gumrak to direct operations from within the Kessel; and Generalfeldmarschall von Manstein was being recalled from Vitebsk to form a new Army Group Don, tasked with relieving the surrounded forces. This last piece of news especially created a great sense of relief: ever since the taking of Sebastopol, von Manstein was regarded as the best strategist in the Wehrmacht; if anyone could resolve the situation, it was he.

In the meantime, the expert we needed arrived. Since the Reichsführer had left Vinnitsa with the Führer at the end of October to return to East Prussia, Korsemann had applied directly to Berlin and the RuSHA had agreed to send a woman, Dr. Weseloh, a specialist in Iranian languages. Bierkamp was extremely unhappy when he learned the news: he wanted a racial expert from Amt IV, but no one was available. I reassured him by explaining that a linguistic approach would turn out to be fruitful. Dr. Weseloh had been able to take a mail plane to Rostov, via Kiev, but from there had been forced to continue by train. I went to greet her at the Voroshilovsk station, where I found her in the company of the famous writer Ernst Jünger, with whom she was having an animated conversation. Jünger, a little tired but still spruce, wore a captain’s field uniform from the Wehrmacht; Weseloh was in civilian clothes, with a jacket and a long skirt made of thick gray wool. She introduced me to Jünger, obviously proud of her new acquaintance: she had found herself by chance in his compartment at Krapotkin, and had recognized him immediately. I shook his hand and tried to say a few words to him about the importance that his books, especially The Worker, had had for me, but already some officers from the OKHG were surrounding him and taking him away. Weseloh, visibly moved, waved as she watched him leave. She was a rather thin woman, her breasts scarcely visible, but with exaggeratedly wide hips; she had a long horselike face, blond hair drawn back in a crisp bun, and glasses that revealed slightly bewildered but eager eyes. “I’m sorry I’m not in uniform,” she said after we had exchanged a German salute. “They asked me to leave so quickly that I didn’t have time to have one made.”—“That’s fine,” I replied amiably. “But you’ll be cold. I’ll find a coat for you.” It was raining, and the streets were full of mud; on the way, she enthused about Jünger, who had come from France on an inspection mission; they had spoken about Persian inscriptions, and Jünger had congratulated her on her erudition. At the Group, I introduced her to Dr. Leetsch, who explained the object of her mission; after lunch, he entrusted her to me and asked me to put her up in Pyatigorsk, to help her in her work, and to look after her. On the road, she spoke again about Jünger, then asked me about the situation in Stalingrad: “I’ve heard a lot of rumors. What exactly is happening?” I explained to her the little that I knew. She listened attentively and finally said with conviction: “I’m sure that it’s a brilliant plan of our Führer’s, to draw the enemy forces into a trap and destroy them once and for all.”—“You must be right.” In Pyatigorsk, I found her quarters in one of the sanatoriums, then showed her my documentation and reports. “We also have a lot of Russian sources,” I explained.—“Unfortunately,” she answered curtly, “I don’t read Russian. But what you have there should be enough.”—“Fine, then. When you’ve finished, we’ll go to Nalchik together.”

Dr. Weseloh wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but didn’t seem to pay any attention to the handsome soldiers around her. Yet despite her unprepossessing physique and her sweeping, clumsy gestures, in the next few days I received many more visits than usual: officers not only from the Abwehr but even from Operations, who usually disdained speaking with me, suddenly found urgent reasons to come see me. Not one failed to salute our specialist, who had set herself up in an office and remained plunged in her papers, scarcely greeting them, with a distracted word or a sign of her head, unless it was a superior officer whom she had to salute. She only really reacted once, when the young Leutnant von Open came and clicked his heels in front of her table and spoke a few words to her: “Allow me, Fräulein Weseloh, to bid you welcome to our Caucasus…” She raised her head and interrupted: “Fräulein Doktor Weseloh, if you please.” The Leutnant, disconcerted, blushed and mumbled his apologies; but the Fräulein Doktor had returned to her reading. I had trouble holding back my laughter before this stiff, puritanical old maid; but she wasn’t unintelligent and had her human side. I in turn had an occasion to experience her sharpness when I wanted to discuss with her the result of her reading. “I don’t see why they had me come here,” she sniffed haughtily. “The question seems clear to me.” I encouraged her to go on. “The question of language has no importance. The question of customs is a little more important, but not much. If they are Jewish, they’ll have remained so despite all their attempts at assimilation, just like the Jews in Germany who spoke German and dressed like Western bourgeoisie, but remained Jews under their starched shirtfronts and didn’t fool anyone. Open the pinstripe pants of a Jewish industrialist,” she went on crudely, “and you’ll find a circumcised penis. Here, it will be the same thing. I don’t see why they’re racking their brains about it.” I ignored her coarse language, which gave me reason to suspect, in this seemingly icy doctor, the troubled and agitated eddies of murky waters, but I did allow myself to point out to her that given Muslim practices, that particular sign, at least, would lead to little here. She regarded me with even more scorn: “I was speaking metaphorically, Hauptsturmführer. What do you take me for? What I mean is that Fremdkörper remain such whatever the context. I will show you what I mean on-site.”

The temperature was noticeably falling, and my greatcoat still wasn’t ready. Weseloh had a rather bulky but well-lined coat that Reuter had found for her; at least for field trips I had my shapka. But even that displeased her: “That outfit isn’t regulation, is it, Haupsturmführer?” she said when she saw me putting on my hat. “The regulations were written before we came to Russia,” I politely explained. “They haven’t yet been brought up to date. I should point out to you that your Wehrmacht coat is not regulation, either.” She shrugged her shoulders. While she was studying the documentation, I had tried going back to Voroshilovsk, hoping to find an opportunity to meet Jünger there; but it hadn’t been possible, and I had to be content with Weseloh’s commentaries, at night in the mess hall. Now I had to drive her to Nalchik. On the way, I mentioned Voss’s presence and his involvement in the Wehrmacht’s commission. “Dr. Voss?” she asked pensively. “He’s quite a well-known specialist, in fact. His studies are widely criticized, though, in Germany. But it will be interesting to meet him.” I too was very much looking forward to seeing Voss again, but alone, or at least not in the presence of this Nordic shrew; I wanted to continue our discussion of the other day; and my dream too, I had to admit, had troubled me, and I thought that a conversation with Voss, without of course mentioning those awful images, might help me clarify some things. In Nalchik, I went first to the offices of the Sonderkommando. Persterer was absent, but I introduced Weseloh to Wolfgang Reinholz, an officer from the Kommando who was also looking into the question of the Bergjuden. Reinholz explained that the experts from the Wehrmacht and the Ostministerium had already been by. “They met Shabaev, the old man who is more or less representing the Bergjuden; he gave them some long speeches and took them to visit the kolonka.”—“The kolonka?” Weseloh asked. “What is that?”—“The Jewish neighborhood. It’s a little south of the center of town, between the station and the river. We’ll take you there. According to my informers,” he added, turning to me, “Shabaev had all the carpets, beds, and armchairs taken out of the houses, to hide their wealth, and had shashliks served to the experts. They were completely taken in.”—“Why didn’t you intervene?” Weseloh asked.—“It’s a little complicated, Fräulein Doktor,” Reinholz replied. “There are questions of jurisdiction. For now, they’ve forbidden us to get involved in the affairs of these Jews.”—“Whatever the case,” she retorted stiffly, “I can assure you that I will not let myself be taken in by such manipulations.”

Reinholz sent two Orpos to summon Shabaev, and served tea to Weseloh; I telephoned the Ortskommandantur to arrange something with Voss, but he had gone out; they promised me he’d call me back when he returned. Reinholz, who like everyone else had heard about Jünger’s arrival, questioned Weseloh about the writer’s National Socialist convictions; Weseloh, obviously, didn’t know anything about it, but thought she had heard it said that he wasn’t a member of the Party. A little later on, Shabaev made his appearance: “Markel Avgadulovich,” he introduced himself. He wore traditional mountain garb and had an imposing beard and a firm, assured manner. He spoke Russian with a marked accent, but the Dolmetscher didn’t seem to have any trouble translating. Weseloh had him sit down and started the discussion in a language that none of us understood. “I know some dialects that are more or less close to Tat,” she said. “I’ll talk to him this way and I’ll explain it to you later.” I left them and went to have tea with Reinholz in another room. He spoke to me about the local situation; the Soviet successes around Stalingrad had stirred up a great deal of unease among the Kabards and the Balkars, and the partisans’ activities in the mountains were gathering strength again. The OKHG was planning soon to declare the district autonomous and, to put people’s minds at rest, was counting on dissolving the kolkhozes and sovkhozes in the mountain zone (the ones in the plains of the Baksan and the Terek, regarded as Russian, would be maintained) and on distributing the land to the natives. After an hour and a half, Weseloh reappeared: “The old man wants to show us their neighborhood and his house. Are you coming?”—“Of course. And you?” I asked Reinholz.—“I’ve already been. But you always eat well there.” He took an escort of three Orpos and drove us in a car to Shabaev’s home. The house, made of brick with a wide inner courtyard, was comprised of large bare rooms, without hallways. After asking us to remove our boots, Shabaev invited us to sit down on some uncomfortable cushions and two women spread a large piece of waxed canvas on the ground in front of us. Several children had slipped into the room and were huddled in a corner, looking at us with wide eyes and whispering and laughing among themselves. Shabaev sat down on a cushion facing us while a woman his age, her head wrapped in a colored scarf, served us tea. It was cold in the room and I kept my coat on. Shabaev said some words in his language. “He apologizes for the poor welcome,” Weseloh translated, “but they weren’t expecting us. His wife will prepare some tea for us. He has also invited some neighbors over so that we can talk together.”—“Tea,” Reinholz explained, “means eating till your belly explodes. I hope you’re hungry.” A little boy came in and said a few rapid phrases to Shabaev before running out again. “I didn’t understand that,” Weseloh said, annoyed. She exchanged some words with Shabaev. “He says that’s a neighbor’s son; they spoke in Kabard.” From the kitchen, a very pretty young woman in trousers and a scarf brought in some large round flatbread, which she set on the canvas. Then she and Shabaev’s wife set out bowls of yogurt, dried fruit, and bonbons in silver wrappers. Shabaev tore one of the breads and handed us pieces of it: it was still warm, crispy, delicious. Another old man in papakha and soft ankle boots came in and sat down next to Shabaev, then another. Shabaev introduced them. “He says the one on his left is a Muslim Tat,” Weseloh explained. “From the beginning, he’s been trying to tell me that only some Tats are Jewish. I’m going to question him.” She began a long exchange with the second old man. Vaguely bored, I nibbled at the bread and studied the room. The walls, bare of any decoration, seemed freshly whitewashed. The children were listening and examining us in silence. Shabaev’s wife and the young woman brought us some dishes of boiled mutton, with a garlic sauce and dumplings boiled in water. I started eating; Weseloh kept talking. Then they served ground chicken shashlik, which they heaped on one of the breads; Shabaev tore the other breads and handed the slices out for us to use as dishes, then with a long Caucasian knife, a kinzhal, served each of us some chunks from the skewer. They also brought us grape leaves stuffed with rice and meat. I preferred those to the boiled meat, and began eating with gusto; Reinholz imitated me, while Shabaev seemed to be chiding Weseloh, who wasn’t eating anything. Shabaev’s wife also came and sat down next to us to criticize Weseloh’s lack of appetite with large gestures. “Fräulein Doktor,” I said between mouthfuls, “can you ask them where they sleep?” Weseloh talked with Shabaev’s wife: “According to her,” she finally replied, “right here, on the ground, on the wooden floor.”—“In my opinion,” said Reinholz, “she’s lying.”—“She says that they used to have mattresses, but the Bolsheviks came and took everything away from them before the retreat.”—“That could be true,” I said to Reinholz; he was biting into his shashlik and contented himself with shrugging his shoulders. The young woman kept serving us more hot tea as we drank, following a curious technique: first she poured a black brew from a little teapot, then added hot water into it. When we had finished eating, the women took away the leftovers and removed the cloth; then Shabaev went out and returned with some men carrying instruments, whom he had sit along the wall, facing the corner with the children. “He says that now we are going to listen to traditional Tat music, and see their dances, to see that they’re the same as the other mountain peoples’,” Weseloh explained. The instruments included kinds of banjos with very long necks, called tar, others with shorter necks called saz—a Turkish word, Weseloh explained, in order to set her professional mind at rest—a clay pot into which you blow through a reed, and some hand drums. They played several pieces, and the young woman who had served us danced in front of us, quite modestly, but with extreme grace and suppleness. The men who didn’t play beat time with the percussionists. Other people came in and sat down or stood against the walls, women with long skirts with children between their legs, men in mountain garb, in old threadbare suits, or else in the smocks and caps of Soviet workers. One of the seated women was breastfeeding a baby, without concealing it at all; a young man took off his jacket and came to dance too. He was handsome, elegant, proud. The music and dances did resemble those of the Karachai, which I had seen in Kislovodsk; most of the pieces, with syncopated rhythms that fell strangely on my ears, were cheerful and exciting. One of the old musicians sang a long complaint, accompanied only by a banjo with two strings, which he struck with a plectrum. The food and the tea had plunged me into a peaceful, almost somnolent state; I let myself be carried away by the music and found this whole scene picturesque and these people very warm, very nice. When the music stopped, Shabaev gave a kind of speech that Weseloh didn’t translate; then they presented us with some gifts: a large oriental rug woven by hand for Weseloh, which two men unfolded in front of us before folding it back up, and some handsome finely worked kinzhali, in scabbards of dark wood and silver, for Reinholz and me. Weseloh also received some silver earrings and a ring from Shabaev’s wife. The whole crowd escorted us into the street, and Shabaev solemnly shook our hands: “He thanks us for having given him the chance to be able to show us Tat hospitality,” Weseloh curtly translated. “He apologizes for the poverty of the welcome, but says we have to blame the Bolsheviks, who stole everything from them.”

“What a circus!” she exclaimed in the car.—“That’s nothing compared to what they did for the commission from the Wehrmacht,” Reinholz commented.—“And those gifts!” she went on. “What are they thinking? That they can buy off SS officers? That’s really a Jewish tactic.” I didn’t say anything: Weseloh annoyed me, she seemed to have started out with her mind already made up; I didn’t think that was the right way to go about it. At the Sonderkommando offices, she explained that the old man with whom she had talked knew the Koran, the prayers, and Muslim customs well, but according to her, that didn’t prove anything. An orderly came in and addressed Reinholz: “There’s a phone call from the Ortskommandantur. They say that someone was asking for a Leutnant Voss.”—“Oh, that’s me,” I said. I followed the orderly into the communication room and took the receiver. An unknown voice spoke: “Are you the one that left a message for Leutnant Voss?”—“Yes,” I replied, perplexed.—“I’m sorry to tell you that he was wounded and won’t be able to call you back,” the man said. My throat suddenly tightened: “Is it serious?”—“Yes, pretty serious.”—“Where is he?”—“Here, at the medical station.”—“I’ll come.” I hung up and went back into the room where Weseloh and Reinholz were. “I have to go to the Ortskommandantur,” I said as I reached for my coat.—“What’s wrong?” Reinholz asked. My face must have been white; I quickly turned away. “I’ll be back soon,” I said as I went out.

Outside, night was falling, and it was very cold. I had gone by foot; in my haste I had forgotten my shapka; soon I began shivering. I walked quickly and almost slipped on a sheet of black ice; I managed to catch hold of a streetlight, but I hurt my arm. The cold gripped my bare head; my fingers, buried in my pockets, went numb. I felt long shudders pass through my body. I had underestimated the distance to the Ortskommandantur: when I got there it was pitch-dark and I was trembling like a leaf. I asked for an operations officer. “Are you the one I spoke to?” he asked when he arrived at the entryway where I was vainly trying to warm myself. “Yes. What’s happened?”—“We’re not really sure yet. Some mountain men brought him back in an ox cart. He was in a Kabard aul, in the south. According to the witnesses, he was going into houses and questioning people about their language. One of the neighbors thinks he must have been alone with a young woman and the father surprised them. They heard some gunshots: when they came in, they found the Leutnant wounded and the girl dead. The father had disappeared. So they brought him here. Of course, that’s what they tell us. We’ll have to open an investigation.”—“How is he?”—“Not well, I’m afraid. He got shot in the stomach.”—“Can I see him?” The officer hesitated, examined my face with undisguised curiosity. “This affair doesn’t concern the SS,” he said finally.—“He’s a friend.” He wavered another instant, then said abruptly: “In that case, come along. But I warn you, he’s in bad shape.”

He brought me through some hallways freshly painted gray and pale green to a large room where some sick and lightly wounded were lying in a row of beds. I didn’t see Voss. A doctor, a slightly stained white smock over his uniform, came toward us: “Yes?”—“He wants to see Leutnant Voss,” explained the operations officer, pointing to me. “I’ll leave you here,” he said. “I have work to do.”—“Thank you,” I said.—“Come along,” said the doctor. “We’ve isolated him.” He took me to a door in the back of the room. “Can I talk to him?” I asked.—“He won’t hear you,” the doctor replied. He opened the door and had me go in before him. Voss was lying under a sheet, his face damp, a little green. His eyes were closed and he was groaning softly. I went up to him. “Voss,” I said. There was no reaction. Yet the sounds kept coming from his mouth, not really groans, but rather articulate though incomprehensible sounds, like a child babbling—the translation, in a private and mysterious language, of what was going on inside him. I turned to the doctor: “Will he make it?” The doctor shook his head: “I don’t even understand how he made it this far. We couldn’t operate, it wouldn’t do any good.” I turned back to Voss. The sounds continued uninterruptedly, a description beyond language of his agony. It chilled me, I had trouble breathing, as in a dream where someone is talking and you don’t understand. But here there was nothing to understand. I pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen onto his eyelid. He opened his eyes and stared at me, but these eyes were empty of all recognition. He had reached that private, closed space from which you never return to the surface, but from which he hadn’t sunk deeper yet. Like an animal, his body was struggling with what was happening to him, and these sounds—that’s what they were, too, animal sounds. From time to time the sounds broke off so he could pant, sucking air through his teeth with an almost liquid noise. Then it began again. I looked at the doctor: “He’s suffering. Can’t you give him some morphine?” The doctor looked annoyed: “We’ve already given him some.”—“Yes, but he needs more.” I stared at him straight in the eyes; he hesitated, tapped his teeth with a fingernail. “I’m almost out of it,” he said finally. “We had to send all our stock to Millerovo for the Sixth Army. I have to keep what I have for cases that are still operable. Anyway, he’s going to die soon.” I kept staring at him. “You have no authority to give me orders,” he added.—“I’m not giving you an order, I’m asking you,” I said coldly. He blanched. “All right, Hauptsturmführer. You’re right…. I’ll give him some.” I didn’t move, didn’t smile. “Do it now. I’ll watch.” A brief tic twisted the doctor’s lips. He went out. I watched Voss: the strange, terrifying sounds, forming almost by themselves, kept coming out of his mouth, which was working convulsively. An ancient voice, come from the beginning of time; but if it was a language, it wasn’t saying anything, and expressed only its own disappearance. The doctor returned with a syringe, uncovered Voss’s arm, tapped to make the vein appear, and gave him the injection. Little by little the sounds spaced out, his breathing calmed down. His eyes had closed. Now and then another block of sounds came, like a final buoy thrown overboard. The doctor had gone out. I gently touched Voss’s cheek with the back of my fingers, and went out too. The doctor was bustling about with a manner that expressed both annoyance and resentment. I thanked him briefly, then clicked my heels and raised my arm. The doctor didn’t return my salute and I went out without a word.

A car from the Wehrmacht took me back to the Sonderkommando. I found Weseloh and Reinholz there still in midconversation, Reinholz arguing in favor of a Turkish origin of the Bergjuden. He paused when he saw me: “Ah, Hauptsturmführer. We were wondering what you were doing. I’ve had some quarters prepared for you. It’s too late for you to go back.”—“In any case,” Weseloh said, “I’ll have to stay here a few days, to continue my investigations.”—“I’m going back to Pyatigorsk tonight,” I said in a flat voice. “I have work to do. There aren’t any partisans around here and I can drive at night.” Reinholz shrugged his shoulders: “That’s against the Group’s instructions, Hauptsturmführer, but do as you please.”—“I’ll entrust Dr. Weseloh to you. Call me if you need anything.” Weseloh, her legs crossed on her wooden chair, looked perfectly at ease and happy with her adventure; my departure left her indifferent. “Thank you for your help, Hauptsturmführer,” she said. “By the way, could I see this Dr. Voss?” I was already on the threshold, shapka in hand. “No.” I didn’t wait for her reaction and went out. My driver seemed rather unhappy at the idea of driving at night, but he didn’t insist when I repeated my order in a sharper tone. The trip took a long time: Lemper, the driver, drove very slowly because of the black ice. Outside the narrow halo from the headlights, half covered because of enemy aircraft, we couldn’t see anything; from time to time, a military checkpoint rose up out of the darkness in front of us. I fiddled distractedly with the kinzhal that Shabaev had given me; I smoked cigarette after cigarette, and looked out at the vast empty night without thinking.

The investigation confirmed what the villagers had said about the death of Leutnant Dr. Voss. In the house where the tragedy occurred they found his notebook, bloodstained and filled with Kabard consonants and grammatical notations. The girl’s mother, hysterical, swore she had not seen her husband again since the incident; according to her neighbors, he had probably fled into the mountains with the murder weapon, an old hunting rifle, to turn abrek, as they say in the Caucasus, or to join a band of partisans. A few days later, a delegation of elders from the village came to see General von Mackensen: they solemnly presented their apologies in the name of the aul, reaffirmed their profound friendship for the German army, and set down a pile of carpets, sheepskins, and jewelry, which they offered to the dead man’s family. They swore they would find the murderer themselves and kill him or hand him over; the few able-bodied men remaining in the aul, they asserted, had left to search the mountains. They feared reprisals: von Mackensen reassured them, promising there would be no collective punishment. I knew that Shadov had talked about this with Köstring. The army burned down the guilty man’s house, and promulgated a new general order reiterating the prohibitions of fraternizing with mountain women, then promptly closed the case.

The Wehrmacht commission had finished its study of the Bergjuden, and Köstring wanted to hold a conference in Nalchik about it. This was becoming all the more urgent since the Kabardo-Balkar National Council was being set up and the OKHG wanted to settle the affair before the formation of the autonomous district, planned for December 18, the day of Kurban Bairam. Weseloh had finished her work and was writing her report; Bierkamp summoned us to Voroshilovsk to examine our position. After a few relatively mild days, during which it had once again snowed, the temperature had plummeted to some twenty degrees below; I had finally received my shuba and my boots; they were cumbersome, but they kept me warm. I made the trip with Weseloh; from Voroshilovsk, she would leave directly for Berlin. At the Gruppenstab, I found Persterer and Reinholz, whom Bierkamp had also summoned; Leetsch, Prill, and Sturmbannführer Holste, the Leiter IV/V of the Group, also attended the meeting. “According to my information,” Bierkamp began, “the Wehrmacht and this Dr. Bräutigam want to exempt the Bergjuden from anti-Jewish measures so as not to harm good relations with the Kabards and the Balkars. So they’re going to try to claim that they’re not really Jews, to protect themselves from criticism from Berlin. For us, that would be a serious mistake. As Jews and Fremdkörper among the surrounding peoples, this population will remain a permanent source of danger for our forces: a nest of spies and saboteurs and a breeding ground for partisans. There is no room for doubt about the necessity for radical measures. But we must have solid proof to face the Wehrmacht’s hairsplitting.”—“Oberführer, I think it won’t be difficult to demonstrate the soundness of our position,” Weseloh asserted in her reedy little voice. “I will be sorry not to be able to do it myself, but I’ll leave a complete report before I go, with all the important points. That will allow you to respond to all the Wehrmacht’s or the Ostministerium’s objections.”—“Perfect. For the scientific arguments, you’ll go over all that with Hauptsturmführer Aue, who will present that part. I myself will present the concrete position of the Sicherheitspolizei from the security standpoint.” As he was speaking, I was quickly going over the list of citations drawn up by Weseloh aiming at establishing a purely Jewish and very ancient origin of the Bergjuden. “If you don’t mind, Oberführer, I would like to make a remark about the report drawn up by Dr. Weseloh. It’s excellent work, but she has simply left out all the citations that contradict our point of view. The Wehrmacht and Ostministerium experts will not fail to use these as objections against us. So I think the scientific basis of our position is rather weak.”—“Hauptsturmführer Aue,” Prill interrupted, “you must have spent too much time talking with your friend Leutnant Voss. It seems he has influenced your judgment.” I shot him an exasperated look: so that’s what he was plotting with Turek. “You are mistaken, Hauptsturmführer. I was simply trying to point out that the scientific documentation presented here is inconclusive, and that basing our position on it would be a mistake.”—“This Voss was killed, is that right?” Leetsch asked.—“Yes,” Bierkamp replied. “By some partisans, maybe even by these very Jews. It is of course a shame. But I have reason to believe that he was actively working against us. Hauptsturmführer Aue, I understand your doubts; but you should stick to the main point and not the petty details. Here the interests of the SP and the SS are clear, and that’s what counts.”—“In any case,” said Weseloh, “their Jewish character is as plain as day. Their manners are insinuating, and they even tried to corrupt us.”—“Absolutely,” Persterer confirmed. “They’ve come many times to the Kommando to bring us fur coats, blankets, cooking utensils. They say it’s to help our troops, but they have also given us carpets, fine knives, and jewelry.”—“We shouldn’t be taken in,” threw in Holste, who looked bored.—“Yes,” said Prill, “but remember they did the same thing with the Wehrmacht.” The discussion lasted for some time. Bierkamp concluded: “Brigadeführer Korsemann will come in person to the conference in Nalchik. I don’t think, if we present the thing well, that the Army Group will dare to contradict us openly. After all, it’s their security too that’s at stake. Sturmbannführer Persterer, I’m counting on you to manage all the preparations for a rapid and effective Aktion. Once we have the green light, we have to act quickly. I want everything to be finished by Christmas, so I can include the numbers in my year-end report.”

After the meeting, I went to say goodbye to Weseloh. She shook my hand warmly. “Hauptsturmführer Aue, I can’t begin to tell you how happy I was to be able to carry out this mission. For you, here in the East, the war is an everyday affair; but in Berlin, in the offices, you soon forget the mortal danger the Heimat is in, and the difficulties and sufferings of the front. Coming here has allowed me to understand all that in a profound way. I will carry back the memory of all of you as a precious thing. Good luck, good luck. Heil Hitler!” Her face was shining, she was in the grip of a surprising exaltation. I returned her salute and left her.

Jünger was still in Voroshilovsk, and I had heard that he was receiving admirers who sought him out; he had to leave soon to inspect Ruoff’s divisions in front of Tuapse. But I had lost all desire to meet Jünger. I went back to Pyatigorsk thinking about Prill. Obviously he was trying to harm me; I didn’t really understand why: I had never tried to pick a quarrel with him; but he had chosen to take Turek’s side. He was in continual contact with Bierkamp and Leetsch, and it would not be hard, by dint of little insinuations, to set them against me. This matter of the Bergjuden risked putting me in a bad position: I had no bias, I just wanted to respect a certain intellectual honesty, and I had trouble understanding Bierkamp’s insistence on wanting to liquidate them at all costs; was he sincerely convinced of their Jewish racial origins? For me, that didn’t emerge clearly from the documentation; as to their appearance and behavior, they didn’t at all resemble the Jews we knew; seeing them at home, they seemed in every point like the Kabards, the Balkars, or the Karachai. They too offered us sumptuous gifts, it was a tradition, you didn’t have to see that as corruption. But I had to watch out: indecisiveness could be interpreted as weakness, and Prill and Turek would take advantage of the slightest misstep.

In Pyatigorsk, I again found the map room sealed: Hoth’s army, formed from the reinforced remnants of the Fourth Panzer Army, was launching its breakthrough from Kotelnikovo toward the Kessel. But the officers were acting optimistic, and their comments served to fill out the official communiqués and rumors for me; everything led us to believe that once again, as before Moscow the previous year, the Führer had been right to hold out. In any case I had to prepare for the conference on the Bergjuden and didn’t have much time for anything else. As I reread the reports and my notes, I thought about Voss’s words, during our last conversation; and examining the different accumulated proofs, I wondered: What would he have thought of this, what would he have accepted or rejected? The case, all things considered, was very thin. It honestly seemed to me that the Khazar hypothesis was untenable, that only the Persian origin made sense; as to what that meant, I was less sure than ever. I regretted Voss’s death enormously; he was truly the only person here with whom I could have talked about this seriously; the others, the ones in the Wehrmacht or the SS, couldn’t care less, really, about truth or scientific rigor: it was just a political question for them.

The conference took place around the middle of the month, a few days before the Great Bairam. There were a lot of people; the Wehrmacht had hastily replastered a large meeting hall in the former Communist Party headquarters, which had an immense oval table still scarred by the shrapnel that had come through the roof. There was a brief but animated discussion about a question of precedence: Köstring wanted each of the different delegations to be grouped together—the military administration, the Abwehr, the AOK, the Ostiministerium, and the SS—and that seemed logical, but Korsemann insisted that everyone be seated according to his rank; Köstring ended up giving in, which had Korsemann sitting on his right, Bierkamp a little lower, and me almost at the end of the table, across from Bräutigam, who was only a Hauptmann of the reserve, and next to the civilian expert from Minister Rosenberg’s institute. Köstring opened the meeting and then introduced Selim Shadov, the head of the Kabardo-Balkar National Council, who gave a long speech on the very ancient relations of hospitality, mutual aid, friendship, and sometimes even marriage between the Kabard, Balkar, and Tat peoples. He was a rather fat man, wearing a twill suit made of shiny cloth, his somewhat flabby face strengthened by a thick moustache, and he spoke a slow, emphatic Russian; Köstring translated his words himself. When Shadov had finished, Köstring got up and assured him, in Russian (this time a Dolmetscher translated for us), that the opinion of the National Council would be taken into account, and that he hoped that the question would be settled to everyone’s satisfaction. I looked at Bierkamp, sitting on the other side of the table, four seats away from Korsemann: he had placed his cap on the table next to his papers, and was listening to Köstring while tapping his fingers; Korsemann was scraping at a shrapnel gouge with his pen. After Köstring’s reply, they had Shadov leave, and the general sat down without commenting on the exchange. “I suggest we begin with the experts’ reports,” he said. “Doktor Bräutigam?” Bräutigam pointed to the man seated to my left, a civilian with yellowish skin, a drooping little moustache, and carefully combed greasy hair, sprinkled, as were his shoulders, with a cloud of dandruff, which he kept nervously brushing off. “Allow me to introduce Dr. Rehrl, a specialist in Eastern Judaism at the Institute for Jewish Questions in Frankfurt.” Rehrl slightly raised his buttocks from his chair in a little bow and began in a monotonous, nasal voice: “I believe we are dealing here with a remnant of a Turkic tribe, which adopted the Mosaic religion during the conversion of the Khazar nobility, and which later on sought refuge in the eastern Caucasus, around the tenth or eleventh centuries, during the destruction of the Khazar Empire. There, they mixed by marriage with an Iranian-speaking mountain tribe, the Tats, and a part of the group converted or reconverted to Islam while the others maintained a Judaism that became slowly corrupted.” He began to tick off the proofs: first of all, the words in Tat for food, people, and animals, that is, the fundamental substratum of language, were mainly of Turkish origin. Then he went over the little that was known of the history of the conversion of the Khazars. There were some interesting points there, but his summary tended to present things in a jumble, and was a little hard to follow. I was nonetheless impressed by his argument about proper names: one found, among the Bergjuden, names of Jewish holidays such as Hanukkah or Pessach used as proper names, for example in the Russianized name Khanukayev, a usage that exists neither among the Ashkenazy Jews nor among the Sepharad, but which is attested among the Khazars: the proper name Hanukkah, for instance, appears twice in the Kiev Letter, a letter of recommendation written in Hebrew by the Khazar community of this city at the beginning of the tenth century; once on a gravestone in the Crimea; and once in the list of Khazar kings. For Rehrl, therefore, the Bergjuden, despite their language, were comparable from a racial perspective to the Nogai, the Kumyk, and the Balkar rather than to the Jews. After that, the head of the investigatory commission from the Wehrmacht, a rubicund officer named Weintrop, spoke: “My opinion can’t be as unequivocal as that of my respected colleague. In my opinion, the traces of a Caucasian Jewish influence on these famous Khazars—about which we know in fact quite little—are as numerous as are the proofs of an opposite influence. For example, in the document known as the Anonymous Cambridge Letter, which must also date from the tenth century, it is written that some Jews from Armenia intermarried with the inhabitants of this land—this refers to the Khazars—mingled with the Gentiles, learned their practices, and continually fought alongside them; and they became a single people. The author is speaking here of Middle Eastern Jews and of the Khazars: when he mentions Armenia, it’s not the modern Armenia that we know, but the ancient Greater Armenia, that is, almost all of Transcaucasia and a large part of Anatolia….” Weintrop went on in this vein; each element of proof that he put forward seemed to contradict the one before it. “If we come now to ethnological observation, we note few differences from their neighbors who converted to Islam, or who became Christian, like the Ossetes. Pagan influences remain very strong: the Bergjuden practice demonology, wear talismans to protect themselves from evil spirits, and so on. That resembles the so-called Sufi practices of the Muslim mountain people, such as the worship of graves or the ritual dances, which are also survivals of pagan rituals. The standard of living of the Bergjuden is identical to that of the other mountain peoples, whether in the city or in the auls that we visited: it’s impossible to maintain that the Bergjuden profited from Judeo-Bolshevism in order to advance their position. On the contrary, they seem in general almost poorer than the Kabards. At the Shabbat meal, the women and children sit apart from the men: this is contrary to Jewish tradition, but it’s the mountain tradition. On the other hand, during marriages like the one we were able to attend, with hundreds of Kabard and Balkar guests, the men and women of the Bergjuden dance together, which is strictly forbidden by Orthodox Judaism.”—“Your conclusions, then?” asked von Bittenfeld, Köstring’s adjutant. Weintrop scratched his white hair, cropped almost to the skull: “As for the origin, it’s hard to say: the information is contradictory. But it seems obvious to us that they are completely assimilated and integrated and, if you like, vermischlingt, ‘mischlingized.’ The traces of Jewish blood that remain must be negligible.”—“However,” Bierkamp interrupted, “they cling obstinately to their Jewish religion, which they’ve preserved intact for centuries.”—“Oh, not intact, Herr Oberführer, not intact,” Weintrop said genially. “Quite corrupted, on the contrary. They have completely lost all Talmudic knowledge, if they ever had any. With their demonology, this makes them almost heretics, like the Karaïtes. What’s more, the Ashkenazy Jews scorn them and call them Byky, ‘Bulls,’ a pejorative term.”—“On this subject,” Köstring said suavely, turning to Korsemann, “what is the opinion of the SS?”—“It’s certainly an important question,” Korsemann opined. “I’m going to hand it over to Oberführer Bierkamp.” Bierkamp was already gathering his pages together: “Unfortunately, our own specialist, Dr. Weseloh, had to return to Germany. But she has prepared a complete report, which I forwarded to you, Herr General, and which strongly supports our opinion: these Bergjuden are extremely dangerous Fremdkörper who represent a threat to the security of our troops, a threat to which we must react with vigor and energy. This point of view, which, unlike that of the researchers, takes into account the vital question of security, is also based on a study of the scientific documentation carried out by Dr. Weseloh, whose conclusions differ from those of the other specialists present here. I will let Hauptsturmführer Dr. Aue present them to you.” I bowed my head: “Thank you, Oberführer. I think that, to be clear, it is preferable to differentiate the levels of proofs. First of all there are the historical documents, then the living document that is language; then there are the results of physical and cultural anthropology; and finally the ethnological research in the field like that carried out by Dr. Weintrop or Dr. Weseloh. If one considers the historical documents, it seems established that Jews lived in the Caucasus long before the conversion of the Khazars.” I quoted Benjamin of Tudela and a few other ancient sources, such as the Derbent-Nameh. “In the ninth century, Eldad ha-Dani visited the Caucasus and noted that the Mountain Jews had an excellent knowledge of the Talmud…”—“Well, they certainly lost it!” Weintrop interrupted.—“Absolutely, but the fact remains that at one time the Talmudists of Derbent and Chemakha, in Azerbaijan, were quite renowned. Which may moreover be a rather late phenomenon: in fact, a Jewish traveler from the eighties of the last century, a certain Judas Chorny, thought that Jews had arrived in the Caucasus not after but before the destruction of the First Temple, and lived cut off from everything, under Persian protection, until the fourth century. Only later on, when the Tatars invaded Persia, did the Bergjuden meet some Jews from Babylon who taught them the Talmud. It was only at that time that they adopted rabbinic tradition and teachings. But that is not proven. For proof of their antiquity, you would have to refer to archeological traces, like the deserted ruins in Azerbaijan known as Chifut Tebe, the ‘Hill of the Jews,’ or Chifut Kabur, the ‘Tomb of the Jews.’ They are very ancient. As to the language, Dr. Weseloh’s observations corroborate those of the late Dr. Voss: it is a modern Western Iranian dialect—I mean no older than the eighth or ninth century, maybe even the tenth—which seems to contradict a direct Chaldean descent, as Pantyukov suggests, following Quatrefages. What’s more, Quatrefages thought that the Lesghins, some Svans, and the Khevsurs also had Jewish origins; in Georgian, Khevis Uria means ‘the Jew from the Valley.’ Baron Peter Uslar, more reasonably, suggests a frequent, regular Jewish immigration to the Caucasus over two thousand years, each wave more or less mingling with the local tribes. One explanation of the problem of the language would be that the Jews traded women with an Iranian tribe, the Tat, who arrived later on; they themselves would have arrived in the time of the Achaemenids, as military colonists to defend the Derbent Pass against the nomads from the plains in the North.”—“The Jews, military colonists?” an Oberst from the AOK laughed sarcastically. “That seems ridiculous to me.”—“Not really,” Bräutigam retorted. “The Jews before the Diaspora have a long tradition of waging war. Just look at the Bible. And remember how they stood up to the Romans.”—“Oh yes, that’s in Flavius Josephus,” Korsemann added.—“True, Herr Brigadeführer,” Bräutigam agreed.—“In short,” I went on, “this collection of facts seems to contradict a Khazar origin. On the contrary, the hypothesis of Vsevolod Miller, which is that the Bergjuden brought Judaism to the Khazars, seems more plausible.”—“That’s just what I was saying,” Weintrop broke in. “But you yourself, with your linguistic argument, don’t deny the possibility of ‘racial mixing.’”—“It’s a shame that Dr. Voss is no longer with us,” Köstring said. “He would certainly have clarified this point for us.”—“Yes,” said von Gilsa sadly. “We miss him very much. He’s a great loss.”—“Judeo-Bolshevism,” Rehrl added sententiously, “is also making German science pay a heavy price.”—“Yes, but really, in the case of poor Voss, it’s more a question of a, so to speak, cultural misunderstanding,” suggested Bräutigam.—“Meine Herren, meine Herren,” Köstring cut in. “We are straying from the subject. Hauptsturmführer?”—“Thank you, Herr General. Unfortunately, physical anthropology makes it hard for us to decide between the various hypotheses. Allow me to cite for you the data gathered by the great scholar Erckert in Der Kaukasus und seine Völker, published in 1887. For the cephalic index, he gives 79.4 (mesocephalic) for the Tatars of Azerbaijan, 83.5 (brachycephalic) for the Georgians, 85.6 (hyperbrachycephalic) for the Armenians, and 86.7 (hyperbrachycephalic) for the Bergjuden.”—“Ha!” Weintrop exclaimed. “Just like the Mecklenburgers!”—“Shh…” Köstring said. “Let the Hauptsturmführer speak.” I continued: “Height of head: Kalmuks, 62; Georgians, 67.9; Bergjuden, 67.9; Armenians, 71.1. Facial index: Georgians, 86.5; Kalmuks, 87; Armenians, 87.7; and Bergjuden, 89. Finally, nasal index: the Bergjuden are at the bottom of the scale, with 62.4, and the Kalmuks at the top, with 75.3, a significant interval. The Georgians and Armenians fall between the two.”—“What does all that mean?” asked the Oberst from the AOK. “I don’t understand.”—“That means,” explained Bräutigam, who had jotted down the numbers and was hastily carrying out some mental calculations, “that if you regard the shape of the head as an indicator of a more or less elevated race, the Bergjuden form the most handsome type of Caucasian population.”—“That’s exactly what Erckert says,” I went on. “But of course, this approach, although it has not been completely refuted, is little used these days. Science has made some progress.” I briefly raised my eyes to Bierkamp: he was regarding me severely, tapping on the table with his pencil. With his fingertips he signaled to me to go on. I plunged back into my documents: “As for cultural anthropology, it provides a wealth of data. It would take me too long to go over all of it. In general, it tends to present the Bergjuden as having completely adopted the customs of the mountain people, including those concerning kanly, or ichkil, the blood feud. We know that several great Tat warriors fought alongside Imam Shamil against the Russians. Also, before Russian colonization, the Bergjuden occupied themselves mostly with agriculture, and cultivated grapes, rice, tobacco, and various grains.”—“That is not Jewish behavior,” Bräutigam noted. “The Jews hate difficult labor like agriculture.”—“Indeed, Herr Doktor. Later on, under the Russian Empire, economic circumstances turned them into artisans, specializing in leather tanning and jewelry, weapon-and carpet-making; they also became merchants. But that is a recent evolution, and some Bergjuden remain farmers.”—“Like the ones that were killed near Mozdok, right?” Köstring recalled. “We never cleared up that business.” Bierkamp’s face darkened. I went on: “On the other hand, a rather convincing fact is that aside from the few rebels who joined Shamil, most of the Bergjuden in Daghestan, perhaps because of Muslim persecutions, chose the Russian side during the Caucasian wars. After the victory, the czarist authorities rewarded them with equal rights with the other Caucasian tribes, and access to administrative positions. That, of course, is more like the parasitic Jewish methods that we are familiar with. But it should be noted that most of these rights were rescinded under the Bolshevik regime. In Nalchik, since this was a Kabardo-Balkar autonomous republic, all the positions that weren’t given to Russians or to Soviet Jews were distributed to the two titular peoples; the Bergjuden, here, mostly did not participate in the administration, aside from a few archivists and minor functionaries. It would be interesting to observe the situation in Daghestan.” I ended by citing Weseloh’s ethnological observations. “They don’t seem to contradict our own,” Weintrop grumbled. “No, Herr Major. They are complementary.”—“On the other hand,” Rehrl murmured pensively, “the bulk of your information is not very compatible with the thesis of a Khazar or Turkish origin. Nonetheless, I believe it’s solid. Even your Miller…” Köstring interrupted him, coughing: “We are all very impressed by the erudition shown by the specialists from the SS,” he said unctuously, addressing Bierkamp, “but your conclusions don’t seem very different to me from those of the Wehrmacht, wouldn’t you say?” Bierkamp seemed furious and worried now; he was chewing his lip: “As we have pointed out, Herr General, purely scientific observations remain very abstract. You have to add them to the observations provided by the work of the Sicherheitspolizei. That’s what makes us conclude that we are dealing here with a racially dangerous enemy.”—“Excuse me, Herr Oberführer,” Bräutigam intervened. “I am not convinced of that.”—“That’s because you’re a civilian and have a civilian point of view, Herr Doktor,” Bierkamp dryly retorted. “It is not by chance that the Führer thought fit to entrust matters of the Reich’s security to the SS. There is also a question of Weltanschauung here.”—“No one here is calling into question the competence of the Sicherheitspolizei or the SS, Oberführer,” Köstring continued with his slow, paternal voice. “Your forces are precious auxiliaries for the Wehrmacht. Nevertheless, the military administration, which is also the result of a decision made by the Führer, must consider all aspects of the question. Politically, an action that is not completely justified against the Bergjuden would harm us. There would have to be urgent considerations to counterbalance that. Oberst von Gilsa, what is the opinion of the Abwehr as to the level of risk posed by this population?”—“The question was already brought up during our first conference on the subject, Herr General, in Voroshilovsk. Since then, the Abwehr has been attentively observing the Bergjuden. As of today, we haven’t noticed the slightest trace of subversive activity. No contact with partisans, no sabotage, no espionage, nothing. If only all the other populations would stay so quiet, our task here would be made much easier.”—“The SP believes you shouldn’t wait for the crime, but prevent it,” Bierkamp furiously objected.—“Indeed,” said von Bittenfeld, “but in a preventive intervention, you have to weigh the benefits and the risks.”—“In short,” Köstring went on, “if there is a risk from the Bergjuden, it is not immediate?”—“No, Herr General,” von Gilsa confirmed. “Not in the Abwehr’s opinion.”—“So there’s still the racial question,” said Köstring. “We have heard a lot of arguments. But I think you will all agree that none of them was fully conclusive either way.” He paused and rubbed his cheek. “It seems to me that we lack data. It is true that Nalchik is not the natural habitat of these Bergjuden, which certainly deforms the perspective. So I suggest that we put off the question until our occupation of Daghestan. On-site, in their original habitat, our researchers should be able to find more convincing elements. We will organize another commission, then.” He turned to Korsemann. “What do you think, Brigadeführer?” Korsemann hesitated, glanced sideways at Bierkamp, hesitated again and said, “I don’t see any objection to that, Herr General. That seems to me to satisfy the interests of all parties involved, including the SS. Isn’t that right, Oberführer?” Bierkamp took a moment to reply: “If you think so, Brigadeführer.”—“Of course,” Köstring added in his friendly manner, “in the meantime, we will watch them closely. Oberführer, I am also counting on the vigilance of your Sonderkommando. If they become insolent or make contact with the partisans, that’s it. Doktor Bräutigam?” Bräutigam’s voice was more nasal than ever: “The Ostministerium has no objection to your entirely reasonable proposition, Herr General. I think we should also thank the specialists, some of whom have come here all the way from the Reich, for their remarkable work.”—“Absolutely, absolutely,” Köstring agreed. “Doktor Rehrl, Major Weintrop, Hauptsturmführer Aue, our congratulations, as well as to your colleagues.” Everyone applauded. People were standing up in a noise of chairs scraping and papers shuffling. Bräutigam skirted round the table and came to shake my hand: “Very good work, Hauptsturmführer.” He turned to Rehrl: “Of course, the Khazar thesis can still be defended.”—“Oh,” said Rehrl, “we’ll see in Daghestan. I’m sure that we’ll find more proofs there, archeological remains.” I looked at Bierkamp, who had gone off to join Korsemann and who was speaking to him quickly in a low voice, gesturing with his hand. Köstring was standing and talking with von Gilsa and the Oberst from the AOK. I exchanged a few more words with Bräutigam and then gathered my files together and headed to the antechamber, where Bierkamp and Korsemann were already waiting. Bierkamp eyed me angrily: “I thought you cared more about the interests of the SS, Hauptsturmführer.” I didn’t let myself get flustered: “Oberführer, I did not omit one single proof of their Jewishness.”—“You could have presented your arguments more clearly. With less ambiguity.” Korsemann intervened with his jerky voice: “I don’t see what you are reproaching him for, Oberführer. He did very well. What’s more, the General congratulated him, twice.” Bierkamp shrugged his shoulders: “I wonder if Prill was right, after all.” I didn’t reply. Behind us, the other attendees were coming out. “Do you have any other instructions for me, Oberführer?” I finally asked. He gestured vaguely with his hand: “No. Not now.” I saluted him and went out behind von Gilsa.

Outside, the air was dry, sharp, biting. I breathed in deeply and felt the cold burning the inside of my lungs. Everything looked frozen, silent. Von Gilsa got into his car with the Oberst from the AOK, offering me the front seat. We exchanged a few more words and then little by little everyone fell silent. I thought about the conference: Bierkamp’s anger was understandable. Köstring had played a dirty trick on us. Everyone in that room knew perfectly well that there was no chance the Wehrmacht would ever reach Daghestan. Some even suspected—but perhaps not Korsemann or Bierkamp—that Army Group A would, on the contrary, soon have to evacuate the Caucasus. Even if Hoth managed to link up with Paulus, it would only be to allow the Sixth Army to fall back to the Chir, or even the lower Don. One just had to look at a map to understand that the position of Army Group A was becoming untenable. Köstring must have had some certainty about that. Thus, it was out of the question to set the mountain people against us over an issue as unimportant as that of the Bergjuden: as it was, when they understood that the Red Army was returning, there would be troubles—even if only to prove, a little late of course, their loyalty and their patriotism—and we had, at all costs, to prevent things from going further. A retreat through a completely hostile environment, in terrain favorable to guerilla warfare, could become catastrophic. So some goodwill had to be shown to the friendly populations. I didn’t think Bierkamp could understand that; his police mentality, exacerbated by his obsession with numbers and reports, made him shortsighted. Recently, one of the Einsatzkommandos had liquidated a sanatorium for tubercular children, in a remote zone in the Krasnodar region. Most of the children were natives; the National Councils had vigorously protested, there had been skirmishes that had cost the lives of several soldiers. Bairamukov, the Karachai leader, had threatened von Kleist with a general insurrection if it happened again; and von Kleist had sent a furious letter to Bierkamp, who, according to what I had heard, had received it with a strange indifference: he didn’t see what the problem was. Korsemann, more sensitive to the influence of the military, had had to intervene and force him to send new instructions to the Kommandos. So Köstring hadn’t had a choice. When he arrived at the conference, Bierkamp thought the game wasn’t over yet; but Köstring, along with Bräutigam, no doubt, had already loaded the dice, and the exchange of opinions was only theater, a representation for the benefit of the uninitiated. Even if Weseloh had been present, or if I had stuck to a completely one-sided argumentation, it wouldn’t have changed a thing. The Daghestan trick was brilliant, irrefutable: it flowed naturally from what had been said, and Bierkamp could make no reasonable objection to it; as to saying the truth, that there would be no occupation of Daghestan, that was quite simply unthinkable; Köstring would have had an easy time, then, having Bierkamp dismissed for defeatism. It wasn’t for nothing that the soldiers also called Köstring “the old fox”: it had been, I said to myself with bitter pleasure, a masterstroke. I knew it was going to create enemies for me: Bierkamp would try to offload the blame for his defeat on someone, and I was the most likely person. I had carried out my work with energy and rigor, though; but as during my mission in Paris, I hadn’t understood the rules of the game, I had looked for the truth when what was wanted was not the truth but political advantage. Prill and Turek would now have an easy time of it to slander me. At least Voss would not have disapproved of my presentation. Alas, Voss was dead, and I was alone again.

Night was falling. A thick frost covered everything: the twisted branches of the trees, the wires and poles of the fences, the dense grass, the earth in the almost bare fields. It was like a world of horrible white shapes, harrowing, ghostlike, a crystalline universe from which life seemed banished. I looked at the mountains: the vast blue wall barred the horizon, guardian of another world, a hidden one. The sun, over toward Abkhazia probably, was setting behind the ridges, but its light still touched the summits, casting on the snow sumptuous and soft pink, yellow, orange, fuchsia glints, which ran delicately from one peak to the other. It was a cruel beauty, enough to take your breath away, almost human but at the same time very remote from any human concerns. Little by little, behind, the sea was swallowing up the sun, and the colors were extinguished one by one, leaving the snow blue, then a gray-white that gleamed calmly in the night. The frost-encrusted trees appeared in the beams of our headlights like creatures in full movement. It was almost as if I had gone over to the other side, to that country that children know well, from which no one returns.

I hadn’t been wrong about Bierkamp: the axe fell even faster than I thought it would. Four days after the conference, he summoned me to Voroshilovsk. Two days before, they had proclaimed the Autonomous Kabardo-Balkar District during the celebration of Kurban Bairam, in Nalchik, but I hadn’t attended the ceremony; Bräutigam, apparently, had made a long speech, and the mountain people had showered the officers with gifts, kinzhali, carpets, Korans copied by hand. As for the Stalingrad front, according to rumors, Hoth’s Panzers were struggling to advance, and had run aground in the Myshkova, sixty kilometers from the Kessel; in the meantime the Soviets, farther north up the Don, were launching a new offensive against the Italian sector of the front, routing them; and the Russian tanks were said to be within striking distance of the aerodromes from which the Luftwaffe was trying to supply the Kessel! The officers from the Abwehr still refused to give out any exact information, and it was hard to form a precise idea of the critical nature of the situation, even by tallying together the various rumors. I reported to the Gruppenstab what I managed to understand or corroborate, but I had the impression that they weren’t taking my reports very seriously: recently I had received from Korsemann’s staff a list of the SSPF and other SS officials appointed to the different districts of the Caucasus, including Groznyi, Azerbaidjan, and Georgia, and a study on the plant called kok-sagyz, which is found around Maikop, and which the Reichsführer wanted to start cultivating on a large scale to produce a substitute for rubber. I wondered if Bierkamp was thinking just as unrealistically; in any case, his summons worried me. On the way there I tried to muster all the arguments in my defense, to prepare a strategy, but since I didn’t know what he was going to say to me, I kept going in circles.

The interview was short. Bierkamp didn’t invite me to sit down and I remained standing at attention while he held out a piece of paper to me. I looked at it without really understanding: “What is it?” I asked.—“Your transfer. The officer in charge of all police structures in Stalingrad asked for an SD officer urgently. His previous one was killed two weeks ago. I informed Berlin that the Gruppenstab could bear a reduction in personnel, and they approved your transfer. Congratulations, Hauptsturmführer. It’s an opportunity for you.” I remained rigid: “Can I ask you why you suggested me, Oberführer?” Bierkamp still looked displeased but he smiled slightly: “In my staff, I want officers who understand what is expected of them without having to explain the details to them; otherwise, one might as well do the work oneself. I hope the SD work in Stalingrad will be a useful apprenticeship for you. Also, allow me to point out to you that your personal conduct has been questionable enough to give rise to unpleasant rumors within the Group. Some have even gone so far as to mention an intervention from the SS-Gericht. I refuse on principle to believe such rumors, especially about an officer as politically aware as you are, but I will not allow a scandal to tarnish the reputation of my Group. In the future, I advise you to be careful that your behavior doesn’t expose you to such gossip. Dismissed.” We exchanged a German salute and I withdrew. In the hallway, I walked by Prill’s office; the door was open, and I saw that he was looking at me with a slight smile. I stopped on the threshold and stared at him, while a radiant smile, a child’s smile, grew on my face. Little by little his smile vanished and he contemplated me with a puzzled, troubled look. I didn’t say anything, just kept smiling. I was still holding my transfer. Finally I went out.

It was still just as cold, but my fleece-lined coat protected me and I walked a bit, aimlessly. The snow, poorly swept, was frozen and slippery. On the corner of a street, near the Kavkaz Hotel, I witnessed a strange spectacle: German soldiers were coming out of a building carrying mannequins wearing Napoleonic uniforms. There were hussars in orange, pistachio, or daffodil-yellow shakos and dolmans, dragoons in green with amaranthine piping, soldiers of the Old Guard in blue coats with gold buttons, Hanoverians in shrimp red, a Croat lancer all in white with a red cravat. The soldiers were loading these mannequins, upright, into canvas-covered trucks, while others were securing them with rope. I approached the Feldwebel who was supervising the operation: “What’s going on?” He saluted me and replied: “It’s the regional museum, Herr Hauptsturmführer. We’re evacuating the collection to Germany. Orders from the OKHG.” I looked at them for a while and then returned to my car, my travel orders still in my hand. Finita la commedia.