I tried to get Baum to explain what kind of pits he meant and describe what had happened there, but words failed him. He struggled, he stammered, but nothing came out. I don’t think that alcohol was the problem. It was more that he was still in a state of shock. Eventually he reached into his uniform jacket and with some difficulty pulled out a tatty envelope, grimy with drink stains and oily fingerprints.

  Baum’s hands were shaking like a man with the palsy, so it took him a while to remove the half-dozen black-and-white photographs the envelope contained and hand them over to me. At first it was hard to make sense of the images: men cradling guns while behind them twenty or more women undressed in the open air; two men at the edge of one of the holes he’d described, pointing guns at a shapeless white object; the bottom of another hole, as big and deep as a quarry, half-filled with people standing in front of uniformed men with guns; dead bodies lying in rows along a shallow, grassy slope; more bodies; and more again.

  ‘What exactly is happening here?’ I asked.

  Baum shrugged helplessly. All he could say was: ‘That is what we do.’

  *

  Poor Baum. He’d dreamed of the easy life in Paris, but there was no resemblance whatever between life in our western territories and those in the east. We may have conquered Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and France, but that didn’t prevent us from seeing them as cultured, civilized nations, whose people were really little different from ourselves. The east was different, a vast, barren landscape in which there were no boundaries to behaviour and all conventional standards of legality and morality had been cast aside as a matter of basic principle: a land whose inhabitants were officially considered to be less than human.

  Even so, there was still a need for proper administration. The security, law and order and political control of the Minsk area had initially been Arthur Nebe’s responsibility, but he and his men had moved on to Smolensk, some 300 km to the east. Ehrlinger had then been ordered to take over from Nebe in Minsk and establish a permanent Criminal Police, Gestapo and SD intelligence presence. This was formally titled the Office of the Commander of the Security Police and SD. We, however, always referred to it by the abbreviation KdS.

  The region around Minsk, which we called White Russia, was quite unlike Germany in terms of its Jewish population. At home, Jews constituted a very small percentage of the people as a whole. Berlin, for example, had a much greater Jewish presence than many other German cities, yet they only numbered about sixty thousand, out of some four million Berliners. In the shtetls, the small towns and villages that surrounded Minsk, however, as much as half the total population was Jewish. And in Minsk itself there were tens of thousands of Jews, who had been confined to a small ghetto immediately after our forces had occupied the city.

  Their numbers had been somewhat reduced by various executions during the late summer and early autumn, but then came orders from Berlin: Minsk was to take a further twenty-five thousand so-called ‘Reich Jews’ currently living in the cities of Hamburg, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Berlin, Bremen, Vienna and Brno. Seven trains, each containing roughly a thousand Reich Jews, reached Minsk before winter set in. Of these, only the final transport from Vienna was still due when I arrived in the city.

  In order to make room for these newcomers almost twelve thousand of the Russian Jews already in the ghetto had been liquidated in the first weeks of November. I wasn’t present in the city for either of these massacres, so I had no sense of what the killing of so many people actually entailed. They were just more casualty figures: more of those endless numbers that the Russian campaign seemed to generate.

  The realization of what was really happening only dawned on me very slowly, over a period of weeks and months, like a great red sun that rose within me, centimetre by centimetre, until it flooded my entire being with its bloody radiance. And what was true for me was true for us all. For it was only in those last months of 1941 and early ’42 that what people now call the Holocaust gradually emerged from countless more or less random acts of violence to become something very different: a coherent programme of extermination, planned with extraordinary precision and detail.

  In those last days of November, however, I still believed that I’d come to Minsk to bring law, not slaughter, to its people. Filled by the conviction that I’d been granted the privilege of seeing an empire being built before my eyes, I decided to keep a war diary. It was intended as an objective, almost academic account of my experiences and observations. Very swiftly, however, it took on a rather different role as a sort of release-valve for the intense emotions stirred up by the incomprehensible universe into which I soon found myself flung. I’d work on it late into the night, writing in an abbreviated shorthand of my own devising that I’d first used to take notes in university law lectures and that only I could possibly decode.

  I’d not opened those diaries in more than forty years before I began work on this memoir, but when I read the opening pages I thought: ‘You poor boy. You have no idea what you are about to experience. No idea at all.’

  29

  I wrote to Biene in the final week of November 1941. It was just one of countless millions of letters sent by men at war to the women they’d left at home, but it said a lot, I think, about my state of mind at the time – not just in what I wrote, but in what I chose to exclude as well.

  My darling Biene,

  I’m writing this looking at your picture – the one we took that day by the Wannsee – thinking how beautiful you are and wishing you were here. When I lie alone in bed at night I ache for the feel of your body next to mine, the scent of your hair, the smile on your face and the sound of your voice. I am proud to be doing my duty for the Fatherland now and am determined to carry out my orders to the very maximum of my abilities, but I long for the day when the war is won and we can be together again.

  You wouldn’t believe the place where I am based now. We all thought Alex was a huge building, but I swear this one makes it look like a small, provincial police station. It’s called the Lenin House, and although the Ivans did their best to destroy the whole of Minsk before we took it in July, this one building remained untouched. It was the headquarters of the local Communist Party and no Bolshie dared be the one who so much as scratched the bright white paint on that! The Lenin House looms over the rest of the city like a giant’s castle over a peasant village. So far I cannot seem to take more than two steps past the front door without becoming hopelessly lost. I expect I’ll soon become familiar enough with it, though.

  I have made one good friend here in Minsk. His name is Eberhard von Toll and he is working in the same unit as me. By military rank von Toll is only a common conscript, yet he can claim to be a genuine aristocrat. His father is the Baron von Toll – very grand! – and the family have lived for centuries in Estonia. But when Ribbentrop signed the pact with Stalin in ’39 and the Baltic Germans were repatriated back to the Reich, the family lost all their land. So von Toll was working as a farm manager in east Prussia when he was called up. Since he can speak Russian, Estonian and a little Latvian as well as German, he was assigned to work as an interpreter, and now he’s my right-hand man. He’s even been trying to pick up a few words of Yiddish so that he can help me communicate with all the Jews who live here.

  Von Toll is a very decent fellow with a handsome Nordic appearance. He is devoted to his wife Karin, who is another member of the Estonian–German aristocracy. He proudly showed me her picture, so I showed him my one of you, and we both agreed that we were very lucky men. Although his family have been cruelly and unjustly stripped of all their possessions, von Toll does not have the slightest bitterness and he carries himself with a natural confidence and self-assurance that I can only envy. When we are not on duty we talk as one man to another, rather than as an officer and an enlisted man – we in the SS are always told to think of one another as comrades, no matter what our ranks – and I always look forward to our conversations.

  Tomorrow von Toll and I are both being given a tour of Minsk by another comrade, Rudolf Schlegel, who has been here almost from the moment the city was captured, so he knows his way around. Schlegel is a few months younger than me, but has the SS rank of captain, making him senior to me. On the other hand, I possess a police rank and he does not, so we treat one another as equals. Schlegel had an academic interest in anthropology before the war, and has informed views on the social, biological and facial characteristics of lesser races, which I’m sure will be of great interest when we visit the Jewish ghetto.

  All this talk of comrades has just reminded me – I met Frank Baum a few weeks ago in Riga. We toasted one another – several times! – the way soldiers do and got a little bit drunk. This is what happens when we do not have the civilizing company of women! Frank was in fine form and remembered you very fondly. He asked me to send you his very best wishes.

  And I, of course, send all my love and longing to you, my darling.

  I love you so much,

  Georg

  Ah, the lies we tell to the ones we love … But how could I tell her the truth about poor Baum? Even if I’d tried, the censors would have cut it out. And how could I reveal what I really felt about my SS officer comrades? It was absolutely true that we were supposed to see one another as members of the same Aryan brotherhood, but I was still motivated by ambition above all else, and we were all competitive young men fighting for status within a vast organization. The fact that Schlegel had a captain’s rank – and greatly increased salary – burned my guts, and the feelings would only get even worse as the months and even years went by. My frustrated desire for promotion would eat away at me like a running sore throughout my time in Minsk.

  As for the truth of what my work there would entail – well, I’d no more idea of that than Biene did. Not when I wrote that first letter. But the next few days would begin the process of opening my eyes.

  The following morning, as we were walking from the Lenin House to his car, Schlegel gave us a little lecture, almost as if we were his pupils, rather than his comrades. ‘Minsk is an unusual place,’ he began. ‘The local White Russians don’t hate the Jews. That’s totally unlike the Latvians or Lithuanians. Putting a bullet in the back of a Jew’s head is a pleasure to them, which is why so many of them are happy to do it on our behalf. The Ukrainians are just the same, but not the White Russians. Not only do they not appear to feel any hostility towards the Jews, they do everything they can to help them. I suspect this has something to do with Bolshevism. For some reason a great many natives here really believe in Stalin – Jews and non-Jews alike – and that common loyalty overrides any racial divide. My point is, Heuser, that the Jews and the partisans here are working hand-in-glove. Our enemies are united against us.’

  I couldn’t quite believe what I’d just heard: the casual, matter-of-fact way that the shooting of Jews was discussed, as if we were a gang of murderers comparing notes on how to carry out our crimes. I still hadn’t quite understood that that was precisely what we were. On that disturbing note, we began our tour of inspection.

  A vast area behind the Lenin House was just a featureless plain, dotted with occasional scraps of old buildings, through which ran roads going nowhere, passing nothing. It was hard to believe that anyone had lived here in centuries, yet it had been a thriving area of the city just a few months ago. Elsewhere, we had been busy since June, using Soviet prisoners-of-war as forced labour to clear the streets and rebuild those structures that were not beyond repair. But Schlegel’s car still drove down roads lined on either side by great piles of rubble, wooden beams and twisted, buckled steel girders. A large open space, known as Freedom Square, had once been one of the finest sights in the city, but was now just another wasteland, with a gibbet in the centre from which, Schlegel proudly told us, partisans were regularly hanged.

  A little further on we came to one of the buildings that were large enough and sufficiently well-preserved to act as local headquarters for our various military and civilian agencies. Along one entire wall was a gigantic pile of personal luggage, well over two metres high and extending several metres from the side of the building. It seemed to cover every stratum of society, from the fine steamer trunks of the wealthy to leather and cardboard suitcases, large wicker hampers and simple canvas sacks at the bottom of the scale.

  ‘That’s Jew baggage,’ said Schlegel. ‘Came in on a recent transport and we haven’t had time yet to go through it all.’

  We drove on and stopped outside what must once have been a very beautiful church, with two fine bell-towers either side of a fine classical facade. It was looking a little tatty now. The white stucco with which it had been covered had fallen off in patches and what remained was smoke-stained and pockmarked with bullet holes. By the standards of the rest of Minsk, however, it was remarkably well preserved.

  ‘This is the Catholic Cathedral of the Virgin Mary,’ said Schlegel. ‘It is now holding regular services as any other cathedral would. But I’ll give you five guesses as to what it was when we arrived here in July.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What would the Bolshies do with a cathedral? Was it some sort of shrine to heroes of the revolution, perhaps?’

  ‘A good guess, but wrong. Come inside and try again.’

  We got out of the warm, snug car and into the freezing air – only November, and already the temperature there was as cold as any I’d ever known, a grim portent of the winter to come. Inside, the cathedral wasn’t much warmer and the walls were stripped of all decoration. There were no statues anywhere: no plaques or paintings, no stained glass in the windows, just grubby, peeling paintwork that was a reddish-brown colour up to head height and a dirty white from there to the ceiling. The floorboards were rough and quite bare of any covering. The pews had all been removed and the altar was little more than a folding table with a simple wrought-iron cross placed upon it.

  ‘Look,’ said Schlegel, pointing to what must once have been a small side chapel. I stared into the gloomy recess and tried to make sense of what looked like a workbench, with a vice clamped to its side and next to that some sort of manually operated lathe. ‘Got it yet?’ he asked. ‘Take a smell, why don’t you?’

  I sniffed and detected not the usual cathedral scents of candles and incense but something totally improbable: motor oil and exhaust fumes. ‘This place smells like a garage,’ I said.

  Schlegel clapped. ‘Correct! That’s exactly what it was. The Bolsheviks stripped every single religious symbol from the place and made it the city’s main motor-repair centre. Come over here, I’ll show you, they smashed through one of the walls to make an entrance for cars and trucks.’

  I was quite speechless. I’d never come across anything like it. ‘They really are savages!’ snapped von Toll, bitterly. Doubtless he could imagine similar indignities being inflicted on his old family home.

  ‘Quite so,’ agreed Schlegel. ‘Still, it’s gradually being restored to its intended purpose now. It gives us a chance to show the locals that we’re more civilized than the brutes they’ve had to put up with for the past twenty years. It wouldn’t be difficult!’

  We continued with our drive, entering a residential area. Most of the Russian population lived in houses that reminded me strongly of the hut in Friedrichsfelde where Ogorzow killed Gerda Ditter. These single-storey structures, some made of brick but the great majority wooden, lined streets that were often little more than dirt tracks. ‘It’s so primitive,’ I said, as we passed along yet another poverty-stricken street.

  Schlegel grinned. ‘Ha! This is luxurious compared to what’s next.’

  We drove a little further and then came to a barbed-wire fence, stretching away on either side of the road ahead of us. There was an opening in the fence, across which a simple wooden barrier had been placed, guarded by a pair of SS men. Beyond it the street seemed no different to the ones we had just driven down, except that it was incomparably more crowded with people.

  ‘Welcome to the ghetto,’ said Schlegel.

  30

  The Minsk ghetto occupied about twenty blocks, most of them subdivided by narrow winding alleys. The fence in front of us ran right around it. The main thoroughfare cut through the ghetto from one side to the other, with a gate guarded by SS men at either end. Every ghetto building had a number, and all Jews were obliged to wear a white badge on their chest, clearly showing the number of their building. They also had to wear their yellow badges – some in the shape of Stars of David, but most just plain, roughly cut circles – on both the front and back of their clothes, so that coming or going, they could always be seen to be Jews.

  Here and there I could see groups of our people, both Wehrmacht and SS, standing around. Some were laughingly mocking passing Jews, telling them what filthy Yids they were, lashing out at them with boots or sticks, or knocking the skullcaps off their heads. Another group had set up a race. Four very small Jewish men were crawling along the road. Each was carrying a much larger Jew on his back and there were loud shouts of encouragement and even the odd kick up the backside to make them go as quickly as possible towards the finishing line. Of course I found it all distasteful – I have never been anti-Semitic, either then or now – but in truth this was little different to the kind of Jew-baiting that SA stormtroopers had been indulging in for years on the streets of Berlin, and many other German cities besides. We had all become numb to it over time.

  Elsewhere the shouts were angrier. We passed one young soldier – he could not have reached his twentieth birthday – waving his rifle at a group of Jewish women, ordering them to move. They didn’t seem to understand what he was saying and I could hear him becoming more frustrated, a note of anger and even anxiety entering his voice. We drove past without stopping and turned into another block. We were halfway down it when the sound of shots echoed down the street, followed by the wail of a woman crying out in anguish. Now I was much more concerned. It was one thing to mock Jews, quite another to shoot them out of hand in broad daylight. Schlegel, however, didn’t appear to have noticed. I tapped him on the shoulder and said: ‘We need to turn back.’