placed by the Ministry of Munitions, something unprecedented since September 1939.
Liss refused an invitation to observe the experiments being conducted in the laboratory. He did, however, look through pages of records signed by various physiologists, chemists and biochemists. He also met the young researchers responsible for the experiments: a physiologist and a biochemist (both women), a specialist in pathological anatomy, a chemist who specialized in organic compounds with a low boiling-point, and Professor Fischer himself, the toxicolog-ist who was in charge of the group.
Liss found these people very impressive. Although they were obviously concerned that he should approve of their methods, they nevertheless admitted their doubts and made no attempt to conceal the weak points in their work.
On the third day Liss flew to the site itself, accompanied by an engineer from the Oberstein construction firm. He felt good; the trip was proving entertaining. The best part of it – the visit to Berlin with the technical directors of the construction work – was still to come.
The weather was foul – cold November rain. It was only with some difficulty that they managed to land at the central camp airfield – there was mist on the ground, and the wings had begun to freeze as they reached a low altitude. Snow had fallen at dawn; here and there, in spite of the rain, grey frozen patches still clung to the clay. Impregnated with the leaden rain, the brims of the engineers' felt hats had begun to droop.
A railway track had been laid down, leading directly off the main line to the construction site. The tour of inspection began with the depots alongside the railway line. First, under an awning, was the sorting depot. This was filled with component parts of a variety of machines, tubes and pipes of every diameter, unassembled conveyor belts, fans and ventilators, ball-mills for human bones, gas and electricity meters soon to be mounted on control panels, drums of cable, cement, tip-wagons, heaps of rails, and office furniture.
Non-commissioned SS officers guarded a special building studded with softly humming ventilators and air- extractors. Here were housed the supplies that were beginning to arrive from the chemical factory: cylinders with red taps and fifteen-kilogram canisters with red and blue labels that looked from a distance like pots of Bulgarian jam.
The last building was partly below ground level. As they emerged, Liss and his companions met Professor Stahlgang, the chief architect of the project, who had just arrived by train from Berlin. He was accompanied by von Reineke, the chief site engineer, a vast man in a yellow leather jacket.
Stahlgang was having difficulty breathing; the damp air had brought on an attack of asthma. The engineers began reproaching him for not taking enough care of himself; they all knew that there was an album of his work in Hitler's personal library.
The site itself was no different from that of any other gigantic construction of the mid-twentieth century. Round the excavations you could hear the whistles of sentries, the grinding of excavators, the creaking of cranes as they manoeuvred, and the bird-like hoots of the locomotives.
Liss and his companions then went up to a grey rectangular building without windows. The whole group of buildings – the red-brick furnaces, the wide-mouthed chimneys, the control-towers, the watch-towers with their glass hoods – was centred on this faceless rectangle.
The roadmen were just finishing laying asphalt over the paths. Clouds of hot grey steam rose from beneath the rollers to mingle with the cold grey mist.
Von Reineke told Liss that recent tests had revealed that the hermetic qualities of number one complex were still inadequate. Then, forgetting his asthma, Stahlgang began outlining the architectural principles of the building; his voice was hoarse and excited.
For all its apparent simplicity and small dimensions, the ordinary industrial hydro-turbine is the point of concentration of enormous masses, forces and speeds. Within its spirals the geological power of water is transformed into work.
Number one complex was constructed according to the principle of the turbine. It was capable of transforming life itself, and all forms of energy pertaining to it, into inorganic matter. This new turbine had to overcome and harness the power of psychic, nervous, respiratory, cardiac, muscular and circulatory energy. And in this building the principle of the turbine was combined with those of the slaughterhouse and the garbage incineration unit. His task had been to find a way of integrating these various factors in one architectural solution.
'Even when he's inspecting the most mundane of industrial installations,' said Stahlgang, 'our beloved Hitler, as you know, never forgets questions of architectural form.'
He lowered his voice so that only Liss could hear him.
'An excessive mysticism in the architectural realization of the camps near Warsaw – as I'm sure you know – caused our Fuhrer grave annoyance. All these things have to be taken into account.'
The interior of the building corresponded perfectly to the epoch in which it was built, the epoch of the industry of mass and speed.
Once life had entered the supply canals, it was impossible for it to stop or turn back; its speed of flow down the concrete corridor was determined by formulae analogous to that of Stokes regarding the movement of liquid down a tube (a function of its density, specific gravity, viscosity and temperature, and of the friction involved).
Electric lights, protected by thick, almost opaque glass, were set into the ceiling. The light grew brighter as you walked down the corridor; by the polished steel door that closed off the chamber, it was cold and blinding.
Here you could sense the peculiar excitement which always grips builders and fitters when a new installation is about to be tested. Some labourers were washing down the floor with hoses. A middle-aged chemist in a white coat was measuring the pressure. Reineke gave orders for the door to be opened. As they entered the vast chamber with its low concrete ceiling, several of the engineers took off their hats. The floor consisted of heavy, movable slabs in metal frames; the joints between these frames were close and perfect. A mechanism operated from the control-room allowed the slabs to be raised on end in such a way that the contents of the chamber were evacuated into a hall beneath. Here the organic matter was examined by teams of dentists who extracted any precious metals used in dental work. Next, a conveyor-belt leading to the crematoria themselves was set in motion; there the organic matter, already without thought or feeling, underwent a further process of decomposition under the action of thermal energy and was transformed into phosphate fertilizer, lime, cinders, ammoniac, and sulphurous and carbonic acid gas.
A liaison officer came up to Liss and handed him a telegram. They all watched Liss's face darken as he read that Obersturmbannfuhrer Eichmann was to meet him not in Berlin, but at the site that very evening: he had already set out by car down the Munich autobahn.
So much for Liss's trip to Berlin. He had counted on spending the night at his country house, together with his sick wife who missed him very badly. He'd have sat for an hour or two in his armchair, in warmth and comfort, wearing his fur slippers, and forgotten about the harsh times he lived in. It would have been very pleasant to go to bed in peace, listening to the distant rumble of the anti-aircraft guns in Berlin.
And during the quiet period before the air-raids, before he left for the country after the meeting on Prinz- Alberstrasse, he had meant to visit a young student at the Institute of Philosophy. She was the only person who understood how difficult his life was, what confusion reigned in his soul. At the bottom of his briefcase, ready for this meeting, lay a bottle of cognac and a box of chocolates. Well, so much for that.
The engineers, chemists and architects all looked at him, wondering what anxieties could be troubling a man of Liss's importance.
There were moments when they felt the chamber might already have broken free of its creators, might already be about to live its own concrete life, feeling its own concrete hunger, secreting toxins, masticating with its steel jaws, beginning the long process of digestion.
Stahlgang winked at von Reineke and whispered: 'Liss has probably only just been told that the Gruppenfuhrer wishes to hear his report here and not in Berlin. I heard this morning. And he'd hoped to visit his family – and probably some pretty young lady as well!'
29
Liss met Eichmann that night.
Eichmann was thirty-five years old. His gloves, cap and boots -embodiments of the poetry, arrogance and
