‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘That’s just one less mouth to feed.’

  I was shocked by his attitude, but there was little I could do. Like it or not, Schlegel was senior to me and I was a newcomer. I had no right to contradict him. And so I began the process of moral compromise: I made the first excuse for doing nothing, turning a blind eye, justifying the unjustifiable.

  Deeper into the ghetto we went. It had been in existence for a little over four months and the overcrowding was almost indescribable. The official allocation of space was 1.4 square metres per adult Jew – nothing for children.

  ‘Would you like to see inside one of their houses?’ Schlegel asked. He stopped the car. We got out and he led us up to one of the wooden buildings. Almost without breaking stride, he kicked the door open and in we went, our boots clattering like hammers on the floorboards. The house had two rooms both packed tight with old folk, women and children. They cowered away, crowding themselves together in the corners of the rooms so that we were left on our own in the middle. Some looked terrified at our arrival. Others seemed too sick, starved or exhausted to care. A few stared at us with silent but unconcealed hatred. One or two muttered under their breath in a language I took to be Russian and I saw von Toll struggling to disguise his shock at what he’d heard.

  The smell of filthy, unwashed humanity was overpowering. ‘My God,’ I said, disgusted by the spectacle. ‘They live like rats in a sewer.’

  Schlegel gave a casual shrug. ‘Ach, this is nothing. Half of them are out at work. In the evening they will be crammed together much more closely. How else do you think they keep warm?’

  The house was no warmer than the cathedral had been, which is to say, perishing cold. There was a crude heating-stove in one of the rooms, but nothing to put in it and no electrical power anywhere in the ghetto. So Schlegel’s question wasn’t rhetorical: all the Jews had to prevent them from freezing was the heat of their own bodies, and they made precious little of that.

  They were given one meal a day, consisting of a thin gruel of 5 grams of buckwheat cooked in 30 centilitres of water, plus 150 grams of buckwheat bread. There were only two kitchens in the ghetto, so the inmates had to distribute their gruel to all the inhabitants in 50-litre containers, dragged on wooden sledges. The men who supervised this process were the elite of the ghetto, and on the rare occasions when there was anything left over at the end of the day, they were allowed to consume it. Workers were given extra rations – a little bit more of the same diet – at their places of work. Some of the Jews also tried to barter for food, but this was both illegal and futile. A diamond watch, smuggled into the ghetto in the lining of a coat, would be exchanged for a single small loaf of black bread. It seemed like a poor exchange. But then, a loaf might keep a man alive for an extra day, and one cannot eat diamonds.

  Thus far, all the Jews we had seen were of a type to gratify the most rabid Party propagandists. The old men in particular seemed hunched, hook-nosed, heavily bearded and shifty-eyed, with skullcaps on their heads and prayer shawls round their shoulders. But then we passed through an entrance in a second fence, which enclosed a tiny fraction of the ghetto as a whole. Above the entrance was a sign that read, ‘Sonderghetto’ – ‘Special Ghetto’. Within, the people looked quite different from the rest: much more like normal Europeans. Though their clothes were dirty there were some, at least, who wore suits, coat and dresses of much better quality.

  ‘Who are these people?’ I asked.

  ‘Listen,’ said Schlegel.

  It took me a second, but then I realized that all around me I could hear German being spoken.

  ‘This is what they call the Hamburg ghetto,’ Schlegel said. ‘We’ve put all the Reich Jews here. When the first lot arrived there were still dead Russian Jews everywhere, so the new ones had to clear up the mess in order to have somewhere to sleep.’ He gave me a hard, confrontational look, like a drunk in a bar, looking for a fight. ‘You look shocked, Heuser. Believe me, when you’ve spent a few months in this shithole, a few thousand dead Jews here or there will seem like nothing at all.’

  We drove back to our base in silence. When we arrived, I thanked Schlegel for giving us such an educational tour. He went back to the SD office while von Toll and I walked on to mine. On the way we passed a lavatory. ‘Please excuse me, First Lieutenant,’ said von Toll stopping by the door and reaching for the handle, ‘but I think I’m going to be sick.’

  31

  On the following morning I woke at 04.00. The final trainload of Vienna Jews had arrived overnight and unloading was due to begin at 05.00. By that time they had been in transit for four days and nights, but the conditions in which they were transported were not quite as insufferable as they would later become. The Reichsbahn had set aside redundant Czech and Austrian rolling stock for the resettlement of Reich Jews, all of whom had to pay for their tickets. They travelled in third-class passenger carriages. There was no heating or water supply on the trains, but at least there were seats for half the transportees and compartment floors and corridors for the rest. There was a large kitchen wagon and the Jews were even allowed to write postcards and letters, which were collected at the various stops along the way and posted to their families and friends at home. Just as I’d done my best to paint the happiest possible picture for Biene in my letter to her, so the writers of these communications strove to reassure those they had left behind with the upbeat descriptions of the journey as a great adventure, making light of any discomforts on the way. In this, of course, they were doing us a great favour, perpetuating the myth that the process of ‘resettlement’ was really what it purported to be, rather than something else entirely. Why else would the Jews have kept buying their tickets and getting on their trains in all the weeks, months and years that followed?

  This particular consignment of Viennese Jews had been guarded on their journey by a detachment from a Police Reserve Battalion: former uniformed police officers, now too old for active front-line duty, who served as guards and sentries, thereby releasing younger, fitter men for the front line. They travelled in a second-class compartment at the back of the train. There were also five goods wagons, containing the baggage. I now understood why I’d seen such a giant pile of cases, for each adult Jew had a baggage allowance of 50 kg. This generous quantity served two purposes. First, it provided yet more reassurance to the Jews that they were true settlers, who would be allowed to start a new life in Ostland. But far more significantly, the baggage was an attempt to make the destruction of the Jews a self-financing programme. The transportees naturally packed their most precious possessions, including valuables such as gold, silver, jewels, clothes, food, wine and, of course, their money. In theory, all of it was supposed to be returned to the Reich. The cash, precious metals and jewels were earmarked for the Reichsbank’s vaults, while the clothes and foodstuffs would be redistributed to the people. Theory and practice, however, turned out to be very different things.

  I reached the goods depot at approximately 04.30 and conferred with my colleague SS-First Lieutenant Kurt Burkhardt, who was in charge of Jewish affairs. He’d already received a report from the officer in charge of the guard. Eight Jews had been shot while trying to escape at various points on the journey. The officer was more concerned, however, that his men had been given nothing to eat since reaching Bialystok, many hours earlier, except for bread and margarine. They were also worried that they would now be called to join in a mass execution of the Jews. The officer claimed that they had undertaken such tasks in Poland and morale had suffered considerably as a result.

  I suppose there was some excuse for my inability – or was it wilful refusal? – to acknowledge the truth of what Frank Baum was showing me in his vile photographs. But here was yet more evidence, as if everything I’d heard and seen the previous day were not proof enough of what had been happening to Jews in the Eastern Territories. Yet I still couldn’t bring myself to face that truth, and was as relieved as that Police Battalion officer when Burkhardt told him that we would supply sausages for his men’s return journey and gave a solemn assurance that these Jews were not about to be shot, but were on the contrary being taken to a special ghetto, set aside for their use. The officer and his men were then escorted to a nearby barracks where they were given food and a place to rest before their journey back home that evening.

  At precisely 05.00 the unloading of the Jews began. The officer in charge of this phase of the operation was SS-Captain Stark. He too had come here to Minsk as part of Sonderkommando 1b, though even then I hesitated to call him a comrade. Stark was a crude, ignorant bully, who did not look on our work as a necessary, sometimes burdensome duty, but as a welcome opportunity to indulge the most sadistic aspects of his personality. This was evident from the moment the first Jews emerged from the train, still expecting to be given the opportunity to start a new life. The men were dressed in their best suits and winter coats and almost all wore hats. The women, too, were smartly dressed – many in furs – and the mothers could be heard giving words of encouragement to their children, telling them to stand up straight and be of good cheer. There was a pathetic eagerness in their smiles, a determination to make the best of things and even, it seemed to me, a belief that they might be treated a little better in Minsk than they had been in Vienna. I even heard one woman tell her children: ‘I am sure they’ll send a bus to take us all to our new homes.’

  Each train was required to nominate a leader to act as its representative with the Reich authorities. The Viennese had chosen a once-prominent lawyer, Dr Friedman, a distinguished-looking gentleman with a fur-trimmed coat, a grey homburg hat, gold pince-nez and a neat silver beard. He stepped forward to greet Captain Stark, who was standing on the platform holding a leather horsewhip, which he tapped against the side of his leg. Friedman held his hand out to Stark and in a rich, mellifluous voice, which I could just imagine him using to mesmerize the judges and jurors in a courtroom, began to introduce himself. But no sooner had he begun to say: ‘Good day, my name is …’ than Stark shouted: ‘Shut your filthy Jew mouth!’ in a crude, lower-class Bavarian accent that presented a sorry contrast to Friedman’s impeccable diction. The latter struggled to compose himself and I could see the shocked, appalled looks on the faces of the other transportees as Stark stepped forward and used his whip to flick the hat off Friedman’s head so that it fell to the ground.

  Stark stamped on the hat repeatedly until it was filthy, crumpled and devoid of all shape. Then he turned back to Friedman and shouted in his face: ‘Always remove your hat in the presence of a German officer! Never speak unless you are spoken to! Do you understand me, Jew?’

  Friedman was clearly determined to maintain some vestige of dignity. He straightened himself, pulled back his shoulders and calmly replied: ‘Yes.’

  Without the slightest warning, Stark struck Friedman with his whip, a hard blow to the side of the old man’s face that made him stagger backwards, trip over his heels and fall to the ground. Stark stood motionless watching the old man as he rubbed his face, across which a savage red welt was forming, and then struggled back to his feet.

  When Friedman was finally able to stand up opposite him again, Stark repeated: ‘Yes what?’

  An absolute silence fell across the goods depot. In the distance I could hear the whistle of a passing train. The breeze sent a few scraps of papers scurrying across the platform. But seconds passed without any further noise before Friedman finally managed to force out the words: ‘Yes, sir.’

  I was very disturbed to see this kind of behaviour. I still retained the belief that no German officer should act with such callous contempt for the dignity of others, whatever their status. But I must surely have known that I was being unrealistic. I’d seen the ghetto. I knew what awaited the Jews. Stark’s behaviour was all of a piece with that.

  Certainly it had an effect on the new arrivals from Vienna. They were cowed and silent as Stark and his men ordered them to place all their hand baggage on waiting trucks, then form into a column, five abreast. If any dawdled, Stark lashed out at them with his whip: women, old people and children alike. When all one thousand were standing in line, Stark announced that they were now to be marched to the ghetto. If any of them even tried to escape, one hundred of their Jew brethren would be shot. With that, they were herded away, through the city. Only the most elderly or infirm were loaded on trucks and driven to their destination.

  Burkhardt later told me that the Vienna Jews had all been taken to an old, red-painted schoolhouse that housed all new arrivals in the ghetto, until places could be found for them in other buildings. Several hundred men, women and children from the previous transport, which had come in from Hamburg and Bremen on the 19th, were still in the school-house, there being nowhere for them to go. ‘It’s not my problem,’ he said when I asked him whether this situation could be tolerated. ‘Stark has been given the task of keeping order in the ghetto. Let him sort it out.’

  32

  The Vienna Jews were installed in the ghetto. They were starved. They were frozen. They were worked till they dropped. The old, the weak and the sick began to die, a few more every day. Others fell victim to the combination of instant summary justice and sheer sadism by which the tiny number of armed guards kept the tens of thousands of ghetto-dwellers in order. But there were as yet no concerted actions taken against them and much of my time was occupied with conventional police and counter-espionage work. All the while, though, the subplots of our terrible drama kept spreading beneath the surface of our lives, like the roots and tendrils of weeds and brambles that only see the open air when the springtime comes again.

  I was lucky enough to have my own office. This enabled me to conduct professional interviews and even low-level interrogations, and it also meant that I could have private conversations. Early one evening, when our work for the day was done, I poured a glass of brandy for von Toll and another for myself. He told me that he’d just heard a very interesting rumour. Apparently, Stark wasn’t a true German. He’d been born in America, most likely to an American father. I asked von Toll how he’d come by this information and he replied that it was one benefit of being an enlisted man, rather than an officer. ‘As my grandmother used to say, all the best gossip comes from the servants’ quarters.’

  We talked about this and that and then von Toll said: ‘You know, my family can trace their German roots back for centuries, but being here makes me feel like a foreigner …’ He gave me one of his characteristically wry half-smiles before he added: ‘Even more of a foreigner than Stark. I’ve not grown up in the same country as you. No one’s told me all the reasons why I should hate the Jews. Now I find myself unable to do so. And I cannot understand why they must be treated so much worse than I would treat any farm animal – even one destined for the slaughterhouse.’

  ‘What has hating the Jews got to do with it?’ I replied. ‘I don’t hate them.’

  ‘Really?’ said von Toll, sounding genuinely puzzled.

  ‘Absolutely. I don’t have feelings about them one way or another.’

  ‘Well surely you must know some.’

  ‘Actually, I don’t. There were some Jewish shopkeepers my mother used to go to in the old days, but there weren’t any Jewish boys in my year at school – none that I knew, anyway. And by the time I got to university, they’d all left. They weren’t allowed to go there any more.’

  ‘But if you have nothing against them, how can you stand there and do nothing when you see them treated the way they are here?’

  That simple question was the one that tormented all of us who were posted to Minsk and still possessed any shred of conscience or decency. It ate away at us, a nagging voice in the back of all our minds. Yet von Toll was the only one who dared ask it out loud, for there was surely only one answer: one couldn’t ‘just stand there’. But none of us could face that truth, and so I gave von Toll the answer, or rather the excuse that I told myself, too, as we all have ever since: ‘Because everyone who is treating the Jews in that way is acting under orders, and it is not my place, or theirs, to question those orders. My sworn duty, like yours, is to obey whatever orders are given to me on the Führer’s behalf.’

  ‘No matter what those orders might be?’ von Toll asked.

  ‘Well, yes … surely the whole point about an order is that it is not a request to be questioned or debated. It has to be obeyed.’

  ‘But surely the way we are treating the Jews is different. This is absolutely a matter of right and wrong.’

  There are times when it helps to have been trained as a lawyer. It enables one to pretend that there is something a little primitive, unsophisticated even, about thinking in terms of good and evil. ‘Perhaps, but we aren’t the ones making those moral decisions. We are simply servants of the Reich – the agents, as it were, acting for those people, so the moral responsibility is theirs, not ours.’

  Von Toll said nothing, but I could see that he wasn’t convinced by my sophistry. I poured him some more brandy. The bottle had come from the baggage seized from the Vienna transport. It occurred to me that if we treated the Jews any better we wouldn’t be drinking this cognac, but I thought it best not to point that out.

  Ah yes, the baggage: now there was another institutional falsehood. I’d been looking into the subject of the possessions and valuables seized from the Jews. SS regulations were absolutely clear that the unauthorized taking of so much as a pfennig in cash or a single item of property constituted looting, for which the penalty was death. In practice, however, matters appeared to be much more ambiguous. All perishable foodstuffs, including alcohol, were consumed by SS personnel in Minsk, on the basis that it would be impractical to transport them elsewhere. That was reasonable enough. The money, meanwhile, was taken to the finance department of the KdS, where it was sorted into different currencies: not just Reichsmarks, but also Russian roubles, French and Swiss francs, British Sterling, US dollars, Spanish and even Mexican pesos. From there it was shipped to Riga and then on to Berlin, but just as a gang works on a hierarchical basis, with money flowing from all the petty criminals and hooligans on the street up towards the boss at the top, with each layer taking a little cut on the way, so there were many deductions from the appropriated money on its journey from Minsk, or anywhere else where Jewish transports were processed, all the way to the Reich Finance Ministry.