39

  Within a matter of weeks the first transports would be arriving from the Reich. Now we needed to find somewhere reasonably close to Minsk where the people in them could be processed. It had to be easily accessible, yet sufficiently far from any prying ears and eyes that our activities could be carried out with appropriate discretion. Heydrich might have described the extermination of European Jewry as though it were a great and noble enterprise, but it was impossible not to notice that it was conducted as much as possible away from potential witnesses, very much like the kind of criminal enterprises we policemen had once been used to investigating. Not that one voiced this observation out loud, of course, nor even allowed one’s mind to dwell too much upon it. The key to remaining mentally intact was to consider what one had to do as a series of technical problems to be solved. One at all costs avoided any consideration of what they actually involved in human terms. And when reality became inescapable, well, that was what the vodka was for.

  Strauch found the site he was looking for on an estate covering several square kilometres near a village called Maly Trostinets. The Stalinists had run it as a collective farm, but since our arrival it had housed a small-scale concentration camp, where a few hundred inmates worked the land, as well as operating a sawmill, joinery, locksmith’s workshop and various other light-industrial activities. When the weather was agreeable Trostinets was used as a recreation area where the men and women of the Lenin House could go to spend a few hours in the country. There were stables for the use of KdS officers and their guests, and some of the estate’s old farm buildings had been converted into storehouses for all the possessions seized from Jews arriving in Minsk. The women greatly enjoyed being taken there to pick out new clothes, cosmetics and other knick-knacks for themselves. They’d spend hours picking and choosing, just as if they were on a shopping expedition to the KaDeWe, and then on Monday mornings they’d bring their new trophies in for inspection by the other females. This seemed to do wonders for the women’s morale, and since they could not gain access to the storehouse without an officer’s authorization, the men could exact a service for their cooperation that made them happy, too.

  About three kilometres to the east of the camp there was a small wood that the locals called Blagovshchina. It was very quiet and peaceful and the slender trunks of the tall pines grew so close together that one could easily reach out one’s hands and touch a tree on either side. Strauch, Lütkenhus and I drove out there one morning soon after Heydrich’s visit. The sun was out and the hint of springtime warmth in the air was enough to have begun to melt the snow beneath our feet and on the branches of the trees. For a few moments as we made our way into the woods from the track where our car was parked I could even picture myself coming here with Biene, strolling hand-in-hand, imagining we were the only two people in the world as we stopped to kiss in the dappled shade beneath the feathery pines.

  My reverie was broken by Strauch. ‘There,’ he said, pointing to a glimpse of bright sunlight up ahead. ‘That looks like a clearing.’ He picked up speed so that Lütkenhus and I had to scurry after him to catch up.

  Sure enough we soon emerged into an open space roughly a hundred metres in diameter. ‘What do you think?’ Strauch said, with a beaming smile that indicated he felt personally responsible for the existence of this bright, welcoming glade. I’d never seen him so cheerful.

  Lütkenhus looked around pensively then said: ‘There certainly seems to be enough space for a good number of pits, with room around them to establish a cordon of armed guards. We would need to cut a path up from the track, but once that is accomplished, I agree, Lieutenant-Colonel: this is an ideal location.’

  ‘Do you have any objection, Heuser?’ Strauch asked.

  It took me a second or two to reply. As I looked at the peaceful, unspoilt woodland around me, my mind was filled with a picture of the obscene violation we would soon visit upon it, and a feeling of nausea almost as intense as that I’d felt beside the death-pits of Koidanov surged within me.

  ‘Heuser! I asked if you had any objection,’ Strauch repeated.

  I swallowed hard. ‘None at all. I concur entirely with Lütkenhus.’

  Strauss pursed his lips and gave a nod of deep satisfaction. ‘Excellent … excellent … Then it is decided. We will kill them here.’

  Once the site of the executions had been established Strauch ordered Lütkenhus to put together an agreed protocol for processing the transports, so that every man would know exactly what was required of him. As a first step the three of us, along with Burkhardt, whose experience as the previous officer in charge of Jewish Affairs was felt to be useful, met at the Lenin House to discuss the key issues affecting the efficiency and smooth running of the operation. Lütkenhus began the meeting by describing the basics of the operation, using a map spread out on the table between us.

  ‘I’ll discuss the logistical requirements facing us in terms of men, ammunition, rations and so forth in a moment,’ he said. ‘But with your permission, Lieutenant-Colonel, I would like to begin by considering the fundamental process that we must undertake.’

  There was an indifferent shrug of assent from Strauch, and Lütkenhus continued: ‘The transports will arrive at the goods depot here. Let us assume for the sake of argument that all one thousand individuals on board have survived the journey and then that we select approximately forty to work either here or at Maly Trostinets. That leaves us with nine hundred and sixty to dispose of.’

  ‘Do you expect me to be impressed by your grasp of mathematics?’ sneered Strauch. It was becoming clearer by the day that Bach-Zelewski had been right: he really could be a deeply unpleasant man when the mood took him.

  I could see that Lütkenhus was angered by the boss’s sarcasm. He took a sip of water to calm himself, then went on: ‘Once the Jews have been unloaded, they will hand over all their baggage to us, ostensibly for safe-keeping, followed by their money, jewellery, watches and any other valuables. This will also be the point at which we select those individuals who are best suited to work, either because of their physical strength or any special skills they may have.

  ‘The remainder will now be loaded on to trucks and driven to Blagovshchina, which is approximately eighteen kilometres from the goods depot. At the far end of their journey they will be unloaded, stripped of their clothes, inspected for gold teeth and fillings and then led to the pit for liquidation and disposal. My two most important considerations are first, to establish the smooth and efficient operation of the entire procedure, and second, to ensure that the Jews do not have the motivation, the means or the weight of numbers to put up any meaningful resistance at any one of these stages.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Strauch, meaning it this time. ‘Continue.’

  Lütkenhus leaned over the map and tapped his finger on the Blagovshchina woods: ‘The point of maximum risk is here at the pit. From the moment they are unloaded from the trucks, the Jews will be able to hear the sound of the guns at the pit, even if it is somewhat muffled by the trees. It will be obvious to them that they are about to be shot. Since they are going to die anyway, they have nothing to lose by attempting some form of resistance. Of course, they cannot succeed. We are all fully armed and they have no weapons at all. Nevertheless, if there were enough of them they might cause considerable disruption and even a few casualties before they were put down. It is therefore crucial that the number of live Jews at the processing site at any one time is kept to an absolute minimum.’

  The flaw in his position was obvious. ‘But if there is not a concentration at the site,’ I observed, ‘it follows that …’

  Lütkenhus interrupted me. ‘Yes, there must be a concentration somewhere else. And clearly that will be at the goods depot, especially at the start of the day. I had, of course, already deduced that that is where trouble is most likely to occur.’

  He flashed a smug little smile in my direction, as if to say: ‘You walked into that.’

  ‘Not if the Jews still think they are going to live,’ said Strauch, ignoring the game being played by Lütkenhus and me. ‘The key is to keep their spirits up and to maintain their belief that this really is a matter of resettlement.’

  ‘Then we must treat them well,’ I said, wanting to reestablish my position. ‘There is nothing to gain from being abusive. We don’t want any of the Stark style of control.’

  Burkhardt didn’t like that. ‘Stark is a good man. His methods may not be to your taste, Heuser, but he gets results.’

  ‘Not the result we desire here,’ I said.

  The room fell silent for a second as we three junior officers waited to see whose side Strauch would take.

  ‘Heuser is right,’ he declared, ‘even if he does sound worryingly like that gutless bureaucrat Kube. We need to keep our visitors sweet. I want them to be told all about the farms we have waiting for them and the houses where they will live. Get something written up, Lütkenhus, then have it distributed among the most persuasive, believable men we have – the real charmers. The Jews think they know how to sell goods to us Gentiles. Well, let us sell this imaginary new world to them.’

  ‘I believe that postcards have proved very effective elsewhere,’ I said. ‘New arrivals are encouraged to write to their loved ones at home about their safe arrival. This gives them something enjoyable to do and reassures the people they write to. Thus they are less alarmed when the time for their resettlement comes.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ agreed Strauch.

  ‘And I think we should give them receipts,’ I added.

  ‘Receipts for what?’ asked Strauch. ‘Our bullets?’

  Lütkenhus and Burkhardt both laughed a little too loudly at that. But this time it was I who was a move ahead. ‘No, for their luggage,’ I said. ‘We should tag their bags and give them a receipt.’

  ‘What on earth is the point of giving a man a receipt for his baggage when he’ll soon be too dead to collect it?’ asked Burkhardt derisively. If he was expecting any appreciation for his remark, he was immediately disappointed. Strauch had seen my point at once. He gave an exaggerated sigh, rolled his eyes to the ceiling and answered: ‘Because, you thick-head, a man with a receipt is a man who thinks he’ll live long enough to see his possessions again.’

  ‘That’s really very clever, Heuser,’ said Lütkenhus, much like a tennis player applauding his opponent’s good shot: acknowledging my merit as an adversary, while retaining his determination to beat me.

  In the wake of the meeting, Lütkenhus was ordered to write up the final plan, which therefore bore his imprimatur, but I came away feeling that my contribution had been noted and that a detail as small as the issuing of receipts could have a disproportionately beneficial effect. We had just conducted a meeting that might have taken place in any company or government department. The office politics were just the same. One’s contributions were noted, approved of, or dismissed, and one’s career took a tiny step forward or back. That was the only way to approach it, and the corporate analogy was about to be taken a step further with another staple of working life: a massive interdepartmental row.

  40

  At the beginning of May we received Reichsbahn Timetable No. 40, listing the seventeen weekly transports of around a thousand ‘settlers’ at a time that would arrive in Minsk between 16 May and 5 September. There was just one problem: every single one of the transports was planned to reach us on a Saturday. Strauch was furious. He started stamping up and down the floor, his face puce with rage, the veins bulging on his forehead as he yelled: ‘I’m not going to have my lads spending every weekend from now to the end of the summer shooting filthy fucking Jews!’

  He stopped dead in the middle of the office, pointed at Lütkenhus and shouted: ‘You! You’re in charge of Jewish matters. Call up those shitheads down at the Reichsbahn office, arrange a meeting and tell them they can take their shitting trains and shove them up their arse!’

  Lütkenhus rang the Reichsbahn’s area manager, a man called Reichardt, who made it very clear that he wasn’t going to let the SS interfere with the nice new timetable. Not without a fight. He told Lütkenhus that his schedule was very busy. The first day he had free for a meeting was 22 May – the Friday after the first transport was due in and a day before the second. Reichardt obviously thought he could bounce us into taking the first two trainloads, but he didn’t know Strauch. He was straight on to Berlin, telling them that he absolutely would not accept delivery of the 16 May transport. Then he told Lütkenhus to make it clear to Reichardt and his people that we were not going to open any trains on any weekend, ever. ‘The Jews can sit in a siding and rot, for all I care. They can drown in their own shit. But they’re not getting off those trains.’

  Lütkenhus had a look of absolute horror on his face. I could see he was trying to work out how he could possibly convey Strauch’s feelings on the matter without making an enemy of every single train official in Minsk. I couldn’t help but smile. Strauch saw me. ‘Don’t you sit there simpering like a schoolgirl,’ he said. ‘I’m off on my annual leave. I won’t be here on 22nd May, and as of now I’m making you my deputy in my absence, with particular responsibility for transport matters. So that means you’re the one who has to make sure this shit-storm gets sorted out. And if it doesn’t, you’ll be the one standing up in front of the men, telling them why all their damn weekends have been cancelled.’

  So then it was Lütkenhus’s turn to smile.

  That was an irritation. On the other hand, as Lütkenhus had just heard first-hand, I’d suddenly become Strauch’s appointed deputy. This was just the sort of opportunity I’d been craving. It also put me in charge of a number of officers who held a senior rank to me. Surely, I could expect a promotion to captain in order to regularize the situation. Wasn’t that the logical next step?

  Evidently not. I didn’t get my promotion: not then, or at any point in my time in Minsk. I was given more power, more responsibility and even the odd medal, but no promotion and none of the extra pay that would have come with it. At the time, the fact that my career had apparently stalled as absolutely as a frozen tank in the Russian winter ate away at me with every month that passed and every other colleague who received preferment – even von Toll rose up the ranks from enlisted man to master sergeant, for God’s sake. Looking back it seems an absolute irrelevance. But perhaps that was just another way in which I was trying to distract myself. And God only knows I was about to require distraction.

  On 11 May 1942 a trainload of Jews from Vienna, not previously listed on any timetable, arrived in Minsk with virtually no advance warning. Strauch was convinced it was the Reichsbahn’s way of firing a shot across his bows. ‘They seem to forget that these fucking trains belong to the SS,’ he ranted. ‘We’ve chartered them. We’re paying for them. We should be able to say when they arrive.’

  It had never before occurred to me that someone, somewhere, was sending out invoices for all the rolling-stock required for the Final Solution. But I asked around and quickly discovered that the Reichsbahn charged four pfennigs per Jew, per kilometre. If there were one thousand Jews on each train it therefore cost the SS forty Reichsmarks per kilometre to transport them. The distance between Vienna and Minsk was almost exactly 1,250 km, so that incoming train represented an expenditure of 50,000 Reichsmarks, which was roughly as much as the annual pay of all the officers in the KdS put together. And there were thousands of these trains, packed with Jews, criss-crossing Europe. My mind spun at the cost of the whole enterprise, and that was without taking into account all the men involved; plus our support staff and equipment; the ammunition we used, the trucks we drove and the food and drink we consumed. No wonder Himmler wanted us to seize all the Jews’ valuables and send them back to Berlin. How else could he fund their extermination?

  These musings were all very intriguing, but however much it had cost, the train was pulling into the sidings at Minsk. And that meant we had to deal with its cargo.

  Lütkenhus, thinking purely of his own advancement, was thrilled by the chance to put his great plan into effect. At Strauch’s suggestion, he’d recruited Schlegel, the reassuring teacher, to give the Jews their welcoming speech. He’d given Merbach an exact specification for precisely how many vehicles would be needed for every aspect of the operation, with how many drivers and guards. He’d liaised with me to organize men from both the police battalion and Latvian units to act as guards at the station and around the pit itself. I’d also ordered a squad of men under my command to take some of the Russian prisoners of war off the army’s hands and employ them as diggers to prepare the pit itself.

  We requisitioned some workers from Maly Trostinets to collect and sort through all the discarded clothes, and the usual dentists were present to remove the gold teeth. The food, water and vodka had been ordered. Each man in the shooting squad was issued with twenty-five rounds of ammunition, with more in boxes a short way from the pit, if needed.

  I arrived slightly late at the pit and collected the standard allowance of twenty-five rounds handed out to every man in the shooting squad. After that I took my place in the line and soon discovered that difficult as it was to steel oneself to kill Russian Jews, it was far, far harder to deal with those from the Reich. Goebbels could churn out endless propaganda films that showed Jews as hook-nosed vermin, less than fully human. But Goebbels never had to place the hot muzzle of his pistol on the golden-blonde hair of a girl’s neck, smell the burning of her skin beneath the metal and hear a voice that was just as German as his own crying out in pain. He never had to look into clear blue eyes and pretend that their owner had to be murdered because they belonged to an inferior race.

  One of the men I killed was an old boy who pleaded for mercy because he’d won the Iron Cross fighting for the Fatherland in the last war. I shot him just to shut him up, but it didn’t do any good. I still couldn’t rid my mind of the sound of his words, or the look of disbelief in his eyes – the incredulity that any fellow member of the human race could actually mean everything that had ever been said about the need to remove the Jew from Europe for ever.