'So that when we leave this job we can be sure that we gave it our best shot.'
'Pride in the job, huh? I can understand that.' 'So,' said Silverman. 'We're going to look into your story. Comb it through for nits.'
'That still won't make me a louse.'
'You were SS,' said Silverman. 'I'm a Jew. And you'll always be a louse in my book, Gunther.'
CHAPTER NINE: GERMANY, 1954
It was easy to forget that we were in Germany. There was a US flag in the main hall, and the kitchens – which were seemingly always in action – served plain home cooking on the understanding that home was six thousand kilometres to the west. Most of the voices we heard were American, too: loud, manly voices that told you to do something, or not to do something – in English. And we did it quickly too, or we received a prod from a night stick or a kick up the backside. Nobody complained. Nobody would have listened, except perhaps Father Morgenweiss. The guards were MPs, deliberately selected for their enormous size. It was hard to see how Germany could ever have expected to win a war against this more obvious- looking master race. They walked the landings and corridors of Landsberg Prison like gunfighters from the OK Corral, or maybe boxers entering the ring. With each other they had an easy way about them: they were all big, well-brushed smiles and booming laughs, shouting jokes and baseball scores. For us, the inmates, however, there were only stone faces and belligerent attitudes. Fuck you, they seemed to say; you may have your own federal government but we're the real masters in this pariah country.
I had a cell for two to myself. It wasn't because I was special or because I hadn't yet been charged with anything but because WCPN1 was half empty. Every week, it seemed, someone else was released. But immediately after the war Landsberg had been full of prisoners. The Amis had even incarcerated Jewish displaced persons there, from the concentration camps of nearby Kaufering, alongside prominent Nazis and war criminals; but forcing those same ragged, threadbare Jews to wear SS uniforms had, perhaps, demonstrated a want of sensitivity on the part of the Americans that almost bordered on the comic. Not that the Amis were capable of seeing the funny side of anything very much.
The Jewish DPs were long gone from Landsberg now, to Israel, Great Britain and America, but the gallows were still there, and from time to time the guards tested it just to make sure everything was working smoothly. They were thoughtful like that. No one really believed the German Federal Government was planning to bring back the death penalty; then again, no one really believed the Amis gave a damn what the Federal Government thought about anything. They certainly didn't give a damn about scaring the prisoners, because at the same time that they tested the gallows they rehearsed the whole ghastly procedure of an execution with a volunteer prisoner taking the place of a condemned man. These monthly rehearsals took place on a Friday, because it was an old Landsberg tradition that Friday was a hanging day. A team of eight MPs solemnly marched the condemned man into the central courtyard and up the steps to the roof where the gallows was, and there they slipped a hood over the man's head and a noose around his neck; the prison director even read out a death sentence while the rest of them stood at attention and pretended – probably wished – it was the real thing. Or so I was told. It might reasonably be asked why anyone, least of all a German officer, would volunteer for such a duty; but as with everything else in Germany, the Amis got exactly what they wanted by offering the volunteer extra cigarettes, chocolate, and a glass of schnapps. And it was always the same prisoner who volunteered to step onto the gallows: Waldemar Klingelhofer. Perhaps the Amis were unwise to do this, given that he'd already tried to open a vein in his wrist with a large safety pin; then again it's no good looking for a whole flock when you've only got one sheep.
It wasn't guilt about killing Jews that made Klingelhofer try to kill himself and volunteer for a practice execution; it was his guilt over the betrayal of another SS officer, Erich Naumann. Naumann had written a letter to Klingelhofer instructing him what to tell his interrogators and reminding him that there were no reports for the activities of Task Force B, which he himself had commanded after Nebe; but this advice also revealed the true depth of Naumann's own criminality in Minsk and Smolensk. Klingelhofer, who was deeply conflicted about the collapse of the German Reich, handed Naumann's letter to the Amis, who produced it at the Einsatzgruppen Trial in 1948 and used it as prima facie evidence against him. The letter helped convict Naumann and send him to the gallows in June 1951.
The consequence of all this was that none of the other prisoners spoke to Klingelhofer. No one except me. And probably no one would have spoken to me either but for the fact that I was the only one currently being interrogated by the Americans. This made some of my former comrades very nervous indeed, and one day two of them followed me out of the common room where we ate, played cards and listened to the radio, and into the courtyard.
'Captain Gunther. We would like a word with you, please.'
Ernst Biberstein and Walter Haensch were both senior SS officers and, regarding themselves not as criminals but as POWs, persisted in the use of military ranks. Biberstein, a Standartenfuhrer, equivalent to a full colonel, did most of the talking while the younger Haensch – only a lieutenant-colonel – did most of the agreeing.
'It's several years since I myself was interrogated by the Amis,' said Biberstein. 'I think it must be almost seven years ago, now. No doubt these things are different from the way they used to be. We live in rather more hopeful, even enlightened circumstances than we did back then.'
'The Americans no longer seem to be driven by the same sense of moral superiority and desire for retribution,' added Haensch, redundantly.
'Nevertheless,' continued Biberstein, 'it's important to be careful what one tells them. During an interrogation they sometimes have an easy-going way about them and can appear to be one's friends when in fact they're anything but that. I'm not sure if you ever met our late lamented comrade Otto Ohlendorf, but for a long time he made himself very useful to the Amis, volunteering information without restraint in the misguided expectation that he might curry favour with them and, as a result, secure his freedom. Too late, however, he realised his mistake and, having given evidence against General Kaltenbrunner at Nuremberg and effectively sent him to his death, he discovered that he had managed to talk his way onto the gallows.'
Biberstein had a thoughtful-looking face with a broad forehead and a sceptical cast to his mouth. There was something of the serious clown about him – an authority figure and white-faced straight man whose sour, rising diphthongs and way of speaking at someone instead of to them reminded me that before joining the SS and the SD, Biberstein had been a Lutheran minister in some northern peasant town where they didn't seem to mind that their pastor was a long-standing Nazi Party member. Probably they hadn't minded either that he led a murder commando in Russia before being promoted and asked to take charge of the Gestapo in southern Poland. A lot of Lutherans had seen Hitler as Luther's true heir. Maybe he was. I didn't think I'd have liked Luther any more than I ever liked Hitler. Or Biberstein.
'I wouldn't like you to make the same mistake as Otto,' said Biberstein. 'So I'd like to give you some advice. If you can't remember something then really you should just say so. No matter how feeble that might seem or how culpable it might make you look. When you're in any doubt at all, remind the Amis that this all happened almost fifteen years ago and that you really can't remember.'
'Speaking for myself,' said Haensch, 'I have always maintained that any prisoner has the right to silence. This is a legal principle known and respected throughout the civilised world. And especially in the United States of America. I myself was a lawyer in Hirschfelde prior to joining the RSHA, and you can take it from me that there is no court in the Western world that can force a man to give evidence against himself.'
'They managed to convict you, didn't they?' I said.
'I was convicted in error,' insisted the bespectacled Haensch who had a lawyer's slimy face to match his lawyer's slimy manner and even slimier patter. 'Heydrich did not order me to Russia until March 1942, by which time Task Force C had more or less completed its work. Quite simply there were no Jews left to kill. However, all of this is beside the point. As Biberstein says, this happened almost fifteen years ago. And one cannot be asked to remember things that happened then.'
He took off his glasses, cleaned them and added, exasperatedly, 'Besides, it was war. We were fighting for
