Kolchak's gold

important.

“Now Maxim sees that there is no hope of gaining a wider reprieve. The shtetl, only the shtetl. Yet Maxim knows about German honor. He insists that he be given a guarantee of safety for the villagers from a higher, more responsible official than Krausser. He picks a name out of the air, a name he has heard-General von Bock’s name because von Bock is known, even to his enemies, to be an honorable old-fashioned soldier.

“A guarantee in writing, personally signed by von Bock. Only then will he reveal the location of the gold.

“Now it goes through Krausser’s mind that he could torture this Jew and make him talk. But he is impressed by Maxim. Maxim is a very big man, powerful. His eyes are calm and level. He has lived with torture half his life-the torture from within. He will not break easily. It would take a long time and the results are never guaranteed: men under torture have willed themselves to die. In any case it would take time and these SS do not have a great deal of time. The Nazis are always in a hurry. There are other villages: Jews to kill.

“My brother gains a temporary reprieve. In the morning the villagers queue up for registration. The twelve hundred and seven men, women and children are stripped of their valuables and ordered to wear Star of David armbands at all times-and then they are released to go home.

“Krausser allows an appropriate interval to pass and then in due course a written guarantee over General von Bock’s signature is presented to my brother by Herr Krausser. Two or three army command orders, bearing von Bock’s signature, are shown to my brother so that he may be sure the signature is genuine.

“Krausser speaks with feigned anger, talking very fast, insisting that my brother realize that the reprieve remains only temporary until it is ascertained whether his story is true. Until that time the shtetl remains in jeopardy, and only if the gold is found will the Jews be spared. In the meantime the village must consider itself collectively under arrest and subject to the strictures of Nazi martial law.

“Actually what has transpired in the interval, one must assume, is a series of communications between Krausser and General von Geyr, between Krausser and other officers, and between Krausser’s superiors and Berlin.* Krausser was not an educated man-I doubt he had any Russian history, I doubt he knew whether there ever had been a Czarist treasury, let alone what happened to it. Confirming those details of Maxim’s account which could be proved must have taken some part of this time.

“Now everything the Germans learn tends to support the authenticity of Maxim’s story. In time, as we know, an expedition was sent to look for the gold. But in the meantime.…

“The village had been spared, it appeared. The Spandaus had been dismounted from their tripods. The main body of Krausser’s force had moved on to some other slaughtering ground. According to Zalmanson, a platoon of Waffen SS under the combined command of an SS Leutnant and some sort of Gestapo official was left to maintain German order in the shtetl.

“Krausser himself would reappear from time to time-at intervals of four or five days-to meet with his Leutnant and, two or three times, in private with Maxim. Maxim never told anyone what was said in these conferences. The villagers knew he had saved them somehow, but no one was able to persuade him to explain it-not even Zalmanson.

“Rather than indicating relief and triumph, my brother became morose and despondent and would not speak to anyone except in grunts. He withdrew completely into himself.

“Late in September the fall rains came, and then an early winter.”

“I never saw this von Bock document. Zalmanson did not see it either. Certain things he said were what led me to believe it must have been produced by Krausser. Besides, I knew my brother’s thinking-his way of thinking. I’m sure there must have been such a written guarantee. Zalmanson said that my brother had intimated that von Bock had personally decided to spare the shtetl. Maxim wouldn’t have made that up.*

“I have good reason to suspect, however, that to whatever extent this letter existed, it must have been a forgery.

“On October fourth, late in the day, Krausser’s battalion returned to the shtetl. They came in motorized sleds, the big ones that carried thirty men each. I can remember the grating roar of those machines crossing the valleys of the Ukraine a year later.

“Krausser did not arrive with the force. The SS men posted themselves in the town and said nothing-not a single word-to the inhabitants. No questions were answered. There were several incidents, Jews being knocked down in the snow and trampled, that sort of thing. After dark the Germans became steadily more belligerent, although they still did not speak to the people except to bark obscenities or arrogant orders at them.

“You must recall the mentalities of these necrophiles. This village had been denied them for weeks-they singled it out for special hatred. During the night several Jews were murdered by the SS swine. The corpses were left in the streets, mutilated horribly. Zalmanson told me of the naked severed arms of a small boy lying shriveled in the slush, and an old man’s head impaled on a staff before the old synagogue.

“Zalmanson knew what these things portended; he went around to the poultry farm and tried to persuade my brother to join him and many others in attempting to escape in the night.

“My brother refused to go.

“One can spend hours speculating on his reasons, and many more hours recounting the details of the flight which Zalmanson described to me, but there’s no point in it. My brother stayed, he wouldn’t budge. Zalmanson and perhaps eighty others crept away in the night. He himself was with a party of eight, of whom he was the only survivor in the end-the seven others were killed by the winter, or the Germans, or the Cossacks.…

“I have no further firsthand reports of what happened in the shtetl. I do not know whether Krausser arrived and took charge of the slaughter personally; I suspect he must have, he wouldn’t have missed that. Undoubtedly they followed the usual pattern.

“My brother undoubtedly protested. Equally undoubtedly, once he saw the hopelessness of it, he did not resist. In a way I’m sure he welcomed his death.”

German documents indicate that Standartenfuhrer Heinz Krausser was relieved of his command of Einsatzgruppe “E” temporarily, on October 7, 1942, and given a special assignment.

A set of RSHA travel orders from Himmler’s office in Prinz Albrecht Strasse sent Krausser to Kiev, apparently for a meeting with Gruppenfuhrer Otto von Geyr and others.

A new unit was established on paper with the designation Jagdsonderkommando Ein, reflecting the crude sense of humor of-probably-Himmler; Jagd means “hunt” but Goldjagd means “gold rush”; an SS Sonderkommando was defined as a probe unit assigned to special duties. Krausser, with no promotion in rank, was placed in command of Jagdsonderkommando Ein.

At this point Reinhard Gehlen’s branch of the Abwehr-the German secret intelligence network-was incorporated into the operation, along with the captured ordnance section of Field Marshal von Paulus’ headquarters battalion. The purpose of the former was to provide intelligence, false documentation and training for the members of Jagdsonderkommando Ein; the purpose of the latter was to provide uniforms and equipment from captured Russian sources.

It is mentioned in Krausser’s dossiers that he spoke Russian, although there is no indication of the degree of his proficiency. All the others who were assigned to his Jagdsonderkommando were Russian-speaking Germans.

The actual operating force numbered three officers, nine noncommissioned officers and seventeen enlisted men.

These personnel were drawn from SD, Ordnungspolizei, Sicherheitspolizei and line-Wehrmacht units; they were specialists in varied fields, the one common denominator being their knowledge of the Russian languages. Among the members of Jagdsonderkommando Ein was a disproportionate number of automatic weapons experts, railroad men and commando-demolitions specialists.

One of Krausser’s two lieutenants was a former civil engineer with a background in earth-moving operations. The other had been recruited from his post as deputy commander of the railraod marshaling yards at Dresden; in civilian pre-war life he had been a locomotive driver and had spent four months working on the Trans-Siberian Railway during the period of nonaggression-pact detente.