“I’ve heard of him. He seems to have been a very civic-minded sort of man, for a Greek. Although speaking for myself I’d much prefer to have my own name on a park bench or on a check made out to cash than on a prison or warship.”
“I’d forgotten about the warship. You’re well informed.”
“No, not even a bit. For example, I don’t even know who you are or what you want. Just for future reference it’s normal practice for the muscle with the gun to introduce the bully who’s trying to look tough.”
“It’s not important who I am,” she said.
“You underestimate yourself, lady.”
“Better make sure you don’t make the same mistake. And in case you hadn’t already worked it out, I’m not a lady.”
“It’s probably not very polite of me but I can’t disagree with you there.”
“If you do it certainly won’t matter. That’s the great thing about this place. With sixty-six thousand empty seats we can make a scene and no one will even notice. More important than who I am is your conversation with Arthur Meissner at Averoff Prison. I’d like to know all of what he said. Every detail.”
“What’s it to you?”
“This will help to answer that question, perhaps,” she said, and pulling up the sleeve of her shirt she revealed a number tattooed on her forearm.
“It helps a little. But I need a little more to work with here. I’m German. Imagination was never my strong suit. I think I’ll have to see this picture in full Technicolor.”
“Very well. If you insist. Until 1943 I lived in Thessaloniki. My family were Sephardic Jews originally from Spain, who left there in 1492, after the Alhambra Decree ordering our expulsion. For four hundred and fifty years Jews like me and my family lived and prospered in Thessaloniki, and persecution seemed like a distant memory until July 1942 and the Black Sabbath, when the Germans arrived and rounded up all of the men in the city center. Ten thousand Jewish men of all ages were drafted for forced labor but first these men were obliged to prove that they were fit for work. This was not done for humanitarian reasons, of course, but so the SS could have some fun. After the long journey from Germany, they were bored and needed amusement. And what could be more amusing than a bit of old-fashioned Jew-baiting. So for the rest of the day, ten thousand Jewish men were made to do hard physical exercise, at gunpoint. Those who refused were beaten half to death or had Alsatian dogs set on them. It wasn’t cool like it is now; no, this was midsummer and the temperature was over thirty degrees centigrade. Many of them died, including my own grandfather. We didn’t know it then but he was lucky, for much worse was to come, and over the next few months almost sixty thousand Jews were deported to the death camps of Eastern Europe. Along with seventeen members of my family, I was sent to Auschwitz, which is where I learned to speak German. But subsequently I also learned this: that I was the only member of my family who survived and not because I was a doctor—the Nazis had no use for a doctor who was a Jew. No, I survived because of a simple clerical error. You were put to work if your age at the time of your arrival in Auschwitz was between sixteen and forty. At the time I was age forty-one and so I should have been gassed along with my mother, my grandmother, and my three elder sisters. But an SS clerk at Auschwitz had incorrectly noted my year of birth as 1912 instead of 1902, and that saved my life. Because of this mistake the camp authorities believed I was under forty and that I should be put to work in Block 24, which was their brothel. I’m alive but it has to be admitted that part of me died in Auschwitz. For example, I never practiced medicine again. The things I saw doctors—German doctors—do at Auschwitz convinced me that man was unworthy of modern medicine.”
“Could have been worse. You might have been a lawyer. They say you’re never more than six feet from a lawyer.”
“So now I do something different. Now I protect people, my people, in a less prophylactic way.”
“Would it make any difference now if I said I’m sorry?”
“Good God.” The woman next to me laughed and then covered her mouth. “That’s a surprise. I’m sorry but you’re the first German I’ve met since the war who ever said sorry. Everyone else says, ‘We didn’t know about the camps’ or ‘I was only obeying orders’ or ‘Terrible things happened to the Germans, too.’ But no one ever thinks to apologize. Why is that, do you think?”
“An apology seems hardly adequate under the circumstances. Maybe that’s why we don’t say it more often.” I reached for my cigarettes and then remembered I’d given them to Arthur Meissner.
“I wish that was true. But I’m not sure it is.”
“Give us time. By the way, is there another reason we’re here? Or was it just George Averoff and a classical history lesson?”
“Now I’m very glad you mentioned that. As you will have noticed, the stadium is open at one end, like a giant horseshoe. Anyone in one of those office buildings to the north might have a fine view of what was happening on the track, or indeed of the two of us sitting here now. Don’t you agree?”
“Sure. And having seen Greek television I couldn’t blame anyone if they were watching us with greater interest.” I stood up for a moment and stared over the parapet; at the top, the stadium must have been twenty-five meters above ground level. “It’s
