surely buy several more tickets, if only to conceal for as long as possible his final destination.
And then… the customs barrier. I presume that Moravec had a fake passport, but I don’t know what nationality it was. And, in fact, he might not have had a fake passport, because he’d been in London on a mission conducted with the agreement of the British authorities. Before London, he’d spent a few days in the Baltic countries, where I believe he went to see his local counterparts. So he didn’t need a false identity, and perhaps hadn’t prepared one.
Perhaps, after all, his passport being in order, the customs officer—having conscientiously examined it, during those special seconds in a life when time seems to stop—had simply given it back to him.
Anyway, he made it through.
When, at last, he got off the train and stood upon his native soil, free from danger, he surrendered himself to an immense wave of relief.
Much later, he would say that this was the last pleasant feeling he would experience for a long time.
51
Austria is the Reich’s first acquisition. The next day, the country becomes a German province and 150,000 Austrian Jews suddenly find themselves at Hitler’s mercy.
In 1938, no one is really thinking about exterminating them. The idea is to encourage them to emigrate.
In order to organize this emigration of Austrian Jews, a young SS sublieutenant, appointed by the SD, is sent to Vienna. He quickly gets to grips with the situation and he’s full of ideas. The one he’s most proud of—if we trust what he would later say at his trial, twenty-two years later—is the idea of the conveyor belt: in order to be allowed to emigrate, the Jews must put together a thick dossier made up of many different documents. Once the dossier is complete, they report to the Jewish Emigration Office, where they place their documents on a conveyor belt. The real aim of this process is to strip them of all their possessions as quickly as possible, so that they do not leave the country before having legally transferred everything they own. At the end of the conveyor belt, they retrieve their passport from a basket.
Fifty thousand Austrian Jews will thus escape Hitler’s trap before it closes on them. In a way, this solution suits everyone at the time: the Jews can think themselves lucky to get out in one piece, while the Nazis get their hands on a great deal of loot. Heydrich, in Berlin, considers the operation a success. And for some time yet, the emigration of all the Reich’s Jews is seen as a realistic solution, the best response to the “Jewish question.”
As for the young lieutenant who does such a good job with the Jews, Heydrich will make a note of his name: Adolf Eichmann.
52
It’s while he’s in Vienna that Eichmann invents the method that will form the basis of all the Nazis’ politics of extermination and deportation. This involves seeking the victims’ active cooperation. The Jews are always invited to make themselves known to the authorities, and in the vast majority of cases—whether for emigrating in 1938 or for being sent to Treblinka or Auschwitz in 1943—this is exactly what they do. Without this, the Nazis would have had to deal with insurmountable demographic problems, and no policy of mass extermination would really have been possible. There would still undoubtedly have been countless crimes, but everything suggests that we would not be talking about genocide.
Neither Heydrich nor Eichmann can suspect that 1938 is paving the way for 1943, even if—with characteristic intuition—the former immediately sees in the latter a talented bureaucrat, whom he can turn into a valuable assistant. And although the eyes of Nazi Germany begin now to turn toward Prague, Heydrich and Eichmann have no idea what roles they will play in that city.
53
There are signs, though. For years, Heydrich has been ordering numerous studies of the Jewish question from his heads of department. And this is the kind of response he’s been getting:
It would be advisable to deprive the Jews of their means of survival—and not only in the economic sphere. There should be no future for them in Germany. Only the old generation should be allowed to die here in peace—not the young ones. Hence the incitement to emigrate. As for the means, street-fighting anti-Semitism should be rejected. You don’t kill rats with a revolver, but with poison and gas.
Metaphor? Fantasy? The subconscious rising to the surface? In any case, you feel that this department head already has an idea in the back of his mind. The report dates from May 1934. The man is a visionary!
54
In the heart of old Bohemia, east of Prague, on the Olomouc road, is a little town: Kutna Hora is on Unesco’s World Heritage List, and has picturesque alleys, a beautiful Gothic cathedral, and above all a magnificent ossuary—a genuine local curiosity where the white vaults and ribs of the sepulchral architecture are constructed out of human skulls.
In 1237, unsuspected by the town’s inhabitants, Kutna Hora carries within it the virus of history, which is about to begin one of its long, cruel, and ironic chapters. This chapter will last seven hundred years.
Wenceslaus I, the son of Premysl Ottokar I, part of the glorious founding dynasty of the Premyslids, rules over the lands of Bohemia and Moravia. The sovereign has married a German princess, Kunigunde, the daughter of Philip of Swabia, king of Germany and a Ghibelline—in other words, part of the fearsome house of Hohenstaufen. So, in the quarrel between the Guelphs (allies of the pope) and the Ghibellines (allies of the emperor), Wenceslaus chose the side of the Germanic Holy Roman Empire. From this point on, the split-tailed lion decorates the royal armories, replacing the old eagle in flames. Dungeons proliferate, and the spirit of chivalry reigns.
Soon, Prague will have its Old New Synagogue.
Kutna Hora is still nothing but a village—not one of the biggest towns in Europe.
This could be like a scene from a medieval Western. As night falls, a Falstaffian tavern welcomes the inhabitants of Kutna Hora as well as a few rare travelers. The regulars drinks and joke with the waitresses, pinching their asses, while the travelers eat in silence, exhausted, and the thieves watch and get ready for their night’s work, hardly touching their drinks. Outside it’s raining, and you can hear a few whinnies from the stable next door. An old white-bearded man appears at the door. His clothes are soaked, his leggings mud-stained, water streams from his cloth hat. Everyone in Kutna Hora knows him—he’s an old madman from the mountains—and no one pays much attention to him. He orders drink, then food, then more drink. He demands a pig be killed for him. Laughter explodes from the nearby tables. The landlord, mistrustful, asks if he has enough money to pay. At this a look of triumph flashes in the old man’s eyes: he puts a small, cheap leather purse on the table, and undoes the laces. He takes out a little grayish stone and, pretending to be casual, gives it to the landlord to inspect. The landlord frowns, takes the stone between his fingers, and holds it up to the light coming from the torches on the wall. Stunned, suddenly impressed, he takes a step backwards. He has recognized the metal. It’s a silver nugget.
