“Did he decide how many would have been killed? From each transport?”
“No. Each individual camp administration and its Kommandant in charge were responsible for that.”
“But he had something to do with deaths.”
“He only told the camp administration how much food his office was ready to supply the inmates with and gave them the quota as to how much ought to have been produced at the factories, attached as satellites to most camps. Based on his information, the camp administration decided how many people they could keep and how many would have to die.”
“Did he purposely make the rations so small?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think, he only gave each camp administration numbers. For the next quarter, we can supply you with this much bread and this much margarine. Each commandant decided for himself, how many people he could keep alive with that.”
“Could he sign the orders for people’s extermination?”
“No. Not him. He was an accountant.”
“He couldn’t put people in the camps on his own initiative, could he?”
“No. That was the RSHA that issued such protective custody orders.”
“But they were related. The two branches, that is.”
“Yes. One wouldn’t function properly without the other.”
Outside the window, the snow shimmered softly. In the fireplace, the wood crackled from time to time, issuing sparks that died almost at once behind the screen and up the chimney.
Chimneys… Tadek told her a lot about them and about people going up them as well.
Morris did his research and had the correct information. The two branches were closely connected. Closer than he could have imagined.
Gerlinde shifted in the chair, faces of those RSHA men who sat exactly where she sat now suddenly alive in her memory. It appeared as though it happened only yesterday. They sat right here and drank their cognac and smoked Vati’s cigars and laughed at the inside jokes told in undertones and followed by chuckles. If she closed her eyes, Gerlinde could see it all clearly before her. The tall door, with a gilded handle, opened just a crack and her stealing a glance in passing. Vati’s voice, a bit louder than usual due to the cognac and less strained due to the same thing: “Maus! Come here, Maus; don’t be shy. Say hello to Gruppenführer—”
How many of them passed through these doors? How many held her hand in theirs and shook it with all the seriousness of adults indulging a comrade’s favorite child? “Herrgott, Gerlinde! How much you have grown! You’re not married yet, are you?”
When she was little, they’d sit her on their lap and turn their head away from her when exhaling gray ringlets of cigarette smoke. In the past couple of years, they stood up whenever she entered, bowed at her a bit theatrically, kissed the back of her palm and offered her cognac – she was never too sure whether in jest or not.
Morris stirred in the chair where Vati used to sit. Gerlinde looked at him.
“My father was never an anti-Semite, you know. My mother was but he wasn’t.”
“No?”
“No. That is, he never taught us to hate Jews. I know you probably don’t believe me.”
“I believe you. Many of them didn’t care one way or the other about Jews. They just didn’t mind when those Jews died.”
“Yes. Precisely,” she agreed surprisingly easily. “He never taught us to hate Jews but there were plenty of others who did and he did nothing to counter that common opinion.”
“I suppose, it would be stupid of him.”
“Yes. I think so, too. I think…” She looked away, suddenly ashamed of a new thought that had just entered her mind. “I think I would have reported him myself if he’d said something of that sort, just a year ago. Just twelve months ago, I would have reported him.”
Despite the steel-like certainty in her voice, Morris doubted she’d actually do such a thing. Just like he doubted that she would give him Neumann, had he indeed risked to resurface. But just like with Tadek, he said nothing at all. Perhaps, just like with Tadek, he secretly wished to be mistaken.
Inside the youth center, the heat was always on, unlike in the rest of frostbitten Berlin. Visiting such Amis-installed centers wasn’t mandatory but encouraged by the school administration and Gerlinde compliantly lined up for her hot chocolate and snacks, along with Tadek. Next to them, former BDM and Hitlerjugend members shuffled and murmured and observed the Amis with mistrustful yet curious eyes. Uniformed men bared their white teeth in wide grins whenever any such youth gathered enough courage to practice their English on them and mumble an uncertain, “how do you do, Sir?”
Such attempts at civility were invariably met with chocolate bars, gum, and cigarettes that instantly disappeared into the youths’ patched-up pockets. Unlike the Soviets across town, who preferred to beat the love of communism into the population with rifle butts and fists, the Amis conditioned their new charges much like Professor Pavlov and his dogs. Democracy – good. Totalitarian regimes – bad. Amis – chocolate. National Socialism – jail.
“The simplicity insults any educated person’s intelligence but one has to give it to them, it’s easy to follow and it does work,” Gerlinde noted to Tadek, her face pulling to a sly smirk.
“It appears so. Social Democrats just won the elections in the American zone. Take a guess who reported it.” Now Tadek was grinning too.
“Not Margot?”
“The very same. I’m actually rather surprised you missed the newest issue of Der Tagesspiegel. You, Berliners, finally have your first post-war newspaper that doesn’t spew Goebbels’s propaganda right and left and you treat it so scornfully.”
Gerlinde made a painful face. “The preparations for the exams take up all my time. I’ll read it as soon as we get home, I promise. Speaking of elections though, why haven’t we had any elections here yet? I know we don’t technically belong to the actual American Zone but we do live in the American sector of Berlin. It ought to count for something.”
“Why
