It was as though the whole grotesque business were a gigantic experiment, conducted by a mad, all-powerful psychiatrist who sought to establish just what terrible sins once-decent men might be capable of if correctly manipulated. ‘We have established that you can bring yourself to kill people who look and sound alien. Very well then, what if they look and sound just like you? What if they come from the same cities, even the same neighbourhoods – how will you manage then?’

  The only way to cope was to clamp my heart, deafen my ears and stare blankly ahead of me so that I could barely distinguish between a small boy or an elderly woman, or a man of my own age and size. They were all just faceless, shapeless targets, and I an automaton. I shot, I grabbed, I shot, I pushed, I shot again and again. Then I reloaded, put the vodka bottle to my mouth and swallowed as much of the raw, caustic spirit as I could manage before I started to choke and went back to add more bodies to that overflowing pit. That night, when I closed my eyes to sleep, all the bodies came back to haunt me in nightmares that grew ever more extreme.

  Now I started to consider the cost of it all in other terms than the purely financial. For every death, a bottle of vodka was drunk, a dream endured, a memo written. The great game of ‘let’s pretend this is normal’ continued with a structural reorganization of the KdS. This, we were all informed, would now be modelled on that of the Reich Security Main Office itself. That meant creating five separate departments. Personnel and finance were Departments I and II, respectively. The SD were Department III, the Gestapo Department IV and the Criminal Police Department V.

  I was appointed the Director of Department IV, making me the chief of the Gestapo in Minsk and all its surrounding areas. The department had four subdivisions, including one dealing with sabotage, economic crimes and intelligence about partisan activities, which was commanded by Burkhardt, and another for Jewish and Polish affairs, commanded by Lütkenhus. That meant that although both men had the same rank as me, I was in practice their immediate superior. So Lütkenhus was no longer my competitor, but my subordinate. It was all very gratifying, as far as it went. But they still didn’t make me a captain.

  Just to add to my frustration, there was even a vacancy at that rank, for Stark was told to pack his bag at once and make his way to Paris, where he would be seconded to the SD for just three weeks. Thereafter he would be transferred to a permanent new post in the administrative department of the local SS in Munich. This was his punishment for killing the Steiners, and somewhere within the bowels of the Main Office a bureaucrat was congratulating himself on its elegance. Given Stark’s closeness to Heydrich, he had to be handled with care, and a nice vacation among the whores of Paris, before a cushy posting in the Bavarian capital, could hardly be described as the severest of censures. In reality, though, Stark was being buried as deeply and safely as possible, left to rot in the back of a dusty office and given meaningless tasks so unimportant that even his absolute ignorance and stupidity could do no damage. I wondered, should I advise someone at the Munich Kripo to keep a discreet eye on SS-Captain Franz Stark? He had many characteristics of a psychopathic killer and he’d developed a taste for blood in Minsk. I doubted he would be able to go too long without wanting to try again.

  I never made that call to Munich. I had other more important things to deal with. Lütkenhus was sent off to the Reichsbahn offices to negotiate with Reichardt and his people. He did a very good job of it, a fact that might once have concerned me. Now, though, I was his superior and could afford to be far more relaxed. His success reflected well on me, and it was my name on the correspondence that was sent confirming the new transport arrangements Lütkenhus had managed to agree. So as far as the personnel files were concerned, it was therefore I who sorted out the problem. My letter summarized the situation very neatly, I thought, and to the great advantage of the KdS.

  Under the subject heading: ‘Agreement of the transport of Jews from the Reich’, reference: ‘Meeting with SS-First Lieutenant Lütkenhus 22.5.42’, I wrote:

  Following today’s meeting between Reichsbahn Superintendent Reichardt and SS-First Lieutenant Lütkenhus, I will briefly summarize the results of the negotiations as follows:

  1. The train originally expected on the Saturday before Whitsun will be held at Koidanov and will only be sent on to Minsk in the early hours of Tuesday morning: the exact time to be confirmed with me later.

  2. As the appropriate state authority, the Reichsbahn office here in Minsk will ensure that the departure times of future transports are adjusted correspondingly.

  3. Until the timetable is adjusted, transports of Jews will be held at Koidanov at weekends, so that they arrive in Minsk on any day except for Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

  4. The Reichsbahn will ensure that transports will arrive in Minsk on a track that allows our trucks to get as close to them as possible.

  With my special thanks for your consideration and understanding in this matter,

  Dr Georg Heuser

  The letter was sent on the morning of Saturday 23 May: the train’s official arrival date. As I sent the messenger on his way to the Reichsbahn office I knew that Strauch would be happy when he returned from leave: the men would get their weekend off, plus a Whitsun holiday on Monday; and the train would arrive when we wanted it, on Tuesday. For my own part, I had planned an agreeable series of weekend activities, which revolved around a party Gauleiter Kube and his wife Anita held at an estate in Loshytsa to the south of the city. A number of the girls from the office were there, all taking the chance to put on summer dresses for the first time this year. Some even changed into swimming costumes, for there was a small lake just in front of the main house, but although some of the men stripped off and dived in, the water was still icy cold this early in the season and none of the girls could quite summon up the courage to join them. A band from the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police battalion provided musical accompaniment and there was an impressive open-air luncheon, served by members of the Kubes’ domestic staff, all of whom were local White Russians.

  Anita Kube was an attractive, gregarious blonde some twenty-five years younger than her short, bald husband. We’d been introduced at a cocktail party a few weeks earlier when she was delighted to discover that we were exactly the same age. ‘From now on I shall think of you as my twin!’ she’d exclaimed. Then she laid her hand with its long scarlet fingernails on my arm and said: ‘It is such a relief to have someone else young to talk to. All the people my husband brings back to the residence are so ancient. I know we shall be the greatest friends!’

  We bumped into one another again at Loshytsa and I congratulated her on the hard work and discipline of her servants. ‘Thank you, Dr Heuser,’ she replied, evidently delighted by this compliment. ‘As I always say, twelve Russian swine are cheaper than one good German maid.’

  She laughed at her own witticism and it seemed rude not to join in. Neither of us could know just what a high price would later be paid for Anita Kube’s cut-price employment policy.

  The following morning I was woken before dawn to be told that the Reichsbahn office at Koidanov had just released the transport that had been held there since Friday night. The train consisted of goods wagons – or ‘cattle-trucks’ as people refer to them now – rather than old passenger coaches. Owing to the rudimentary nature of the wagons and the length of time spent in the siding at Koidanov, the Jews were in a considerably worse condition than usual. We dealt with them, however, in the usual way.

  41

  Goethe University, Frankfurt, West Germany: 11 December 1962

  There had been two significant mentors in Paula Siebert’s life as a lawyer. One was Max Kraus, who had given her both the opportunity to begin her career and the support to make the best of that opportunity. The other was Professor Albrecht Mauritz of Frankfurt’s Goethe University, who had taken her under his wing when she was the lone female law student amidst an army of men. ‘I spent six months in a concentration camp because I refused to distinguish between students on the grounds of religion or race,’ he’d told her. ‘Why should I now discriminate on the grounds of sex?’

  Whenever the pressure of her situation had become too much for her she had gone to him and he had sat her down in one of the old armchairs in his book-lined study, poured coffee for them both and listened to her troubles. She had valued him all the more because his kindness had not been unconditional. ‘Please understand, Fräulein Siebert, that I do not devote my valuable time to your company, however delightful it may be, out of sentimentality. I do it because I think you are an exceptional student who has the potential to become an equally exceptional lawyer. You will therefore repay me best by proving me right.’

  Ever since, whenever she had felt herself flagging, or been tempted to cut a corner or do less work than she knew a particular task really required, Paula had only to think of Mauritz’s shrewd eyes looking at her through the smoke from the pipe without which, he always claimed, he couldn’t think clearly, and she would knuckle down with her determination fully restored.

  Now, though, the thought of him was not enough. In the months since her conversation with Kraus, that morning at the cafeteria, she had been unable to rid herself of the growing fear that the trial was going to go horribly wrong. All lawyers doubt the outcome of long and complex proceedings, all the more so when there are multiple charges and defendants involved. But in this instance Paula felt that she had good reason to be concerned. Heuser and Geis had become disconcertingly effective at creating doubt, undermining evidence and weakening the prosecution. And the court had seemed happy to let them do it. Stark, for example, had been treated with near contempt, as though he were nothing but a crude thug who required neither respect nor special consideration. But Heuser was a man who knew how to play the legal game. She could see that the judges, and even to an extent the prosecution team, saw him as a man like them, who understood the finer points of the law and deserved to be granted a degree of respect. She couldn’t believe that he would entirely get away with his crimes: he’d admitted too much guilt for that. But she could see him escaping with a greatly reduced number of convictions and punishments that were little more than a slap on the wrist. And she needed someone to whom she could pour out her worries: someone who would understand her and the law alike.

  So here she was again, back in the same armchair with coffee from the same cups, watching the professor tamp down the tobacco in the same old pipe. She’d been delighted by the genuine pleasure with which Mauritz had greeted her, but was now struck by the slight but undeniable shift that had taken place in the balance of their relationship. When she had first come to this room, she was a girl of nineteen, and he an academic of international renown, still in the prime of his professional life as he entered his early sixties. Now, a dozen years later, she was a grown woman and he an elderly gentleman of seventy-four, his back a little bent and his movements betraying the caution of a man who cannot quite trust his body to obey his instructions any more. His mind, however, was as bright as ever and his gaze had lost none of its disconcertingly direct perception.

  ‘So, you said you wanted to talk to me about this Heuser war-crimes trial. My congratulations, by the way, in getting them to court at all. I cannot imagine that it was an easy case to build. Now, how can I help?’

  ‘The same way as you always did in the past, by listening to my woes.’

  Mauritz smiled. ‘Ah, my dear Doctor, you have a splendid legal mind, but you are still a woman. You think that talking in itself is a solution. As a mere man, I prefer actually to solve things.’

  Had another man said those words, Paula would have been infuriated. But Mauritz had earned the right to patronize her a little.

  ‘All right, then,’ she replied. ‘I’ll give you a problem to solve, or at the very least to dissect.’

  ‘Much better! I’m all ears.’

  ‘Well, the problem is this. We have eleven defendants, ten of them relatively insignificant, but one who matters a great deal. That’s Heuser, of course. And I am concerned that the court is letting him get away with crimes that we all know he has committed.’

  ‘Hmm … do you think that this is a political matter? We all know that there are still plenty of judges out there who remain, if not supporters of the Nazi cause, then sympathetic to those who acted on its behalf.’

  ‘I don’t think so. The supervising judge is Randenbrock, the director of the district court. We’ve not heard anything to suggest that he’s biased in that way at all. It’s more a case of, I don’t know … being unduly sensitive to the legal niceties. If there’s any flaw in the evidence at all, Randenbrock makes it obvious that he won’t even ask the jury to reach a verdict.’

  Mauritz raised a quizzical eyebrow and gave another one of those thoughtful hums that Paula knew were his way of suggesting that she had just walked head first into a very large hole.

  ‘Give me an example,’ he said.

  She thought for a moment and then said: ‘Thirty Jews were killed on the very last day before the Russians recaptured Minsk. Heuser was the last officer left in the KdS. We have witnesses who say that he was given orders to kill the Jews. We also know that when the Russians arrived they found thirty dead Jews. There’d actually been thirty-one in the cellar, but one escaped. He dug a hole in the floor and got out through the sewer beneath the building.’

  ‘Is he still alive?’

  ‘I don’t know … Not that I’m aware of.’

  ‘So he’s not a witness in the case?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you have no witnesses who actually saw Heuser, or men acting under his orders, carrying out the killing.’

  ‘No, but …’

  Mauritz interrupted her. ‘Were there still other German forces in the city, who might have killed the Jews?’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘But nothing. There is no proof that it was Heuser, rather than some other man, who carried out the execution. Case dismissed. Next …’

  Paula took a deep breath, restraining the overwhelming temptation to argue the point. Mauritz expected his students, past or present to be able to keep their cool under pressure. If one line of attack failed, there was no point wasting time on complaints. You just had to find another way forward.

  She thought fast, flicking through the charges in her mind until she came to the strongest of the ones that Randenbrock had kicked out. ‘All right … Heuser’s also accused of killing a Jew on the Maly Trostinets estate – that was the place outside Minsk where they carried out most of the mass executions, but there was also a small camp there, with Jewish and Russian prisoners. And this time there are two witnesses. One is the former SS captain who ran the camp and the other is Kaul, another one of the defendants. The captain remembers Heuser coming to the camp, brandishing a handful of letters, written by one of the inmates, that his men had intercepted. Smuggling letters from the camp was strictly forbidden, on pain of death.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mauritz. ‘I know.’

  Paula felt herself blushing: ‘Of course, I’m sorry, I did not mean …’

  ‘It’s quite all right. Continue with your story.’

  ‘Well, Heuser insisted on having all the Jews who worked on the camp rounded up and then had the man he suspected of sending the letters shot. So that’s one piece of testimony. Meanwhile Kaul says he remembers going down to Trostinets on a day off – it’s unbelievable, but the countryside around the estate was also a recreation area for the SS. Anyway, Kaul says he bumped into Heuser twice on this particular day. On the first occasion he was walking along a path with a single Jew, who was in his custody. Then Kaul met Heuser again a little later and asked him what had happened to the Jew and Heuser put up two fingers, like a little boy pretending to fire a gun and said: “Bang! And it was over.”’

  ‘I see,’ said Mauritz. ‘So both these witnesses are describing the events of the same day, from two different perspectives.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So what was the date?’

  ‘Well, we don’t have a precise date. For these more or less random incidents it’s almost impossible to pin them down to a particular day. But the period during which both the captain and Kaul were in Minsk ran from July 1942 until April 1943, so it had to be in that time frame.’

  ‘Very well, so you don’t have a date. How about a name? Was the victim – or victims – identified?’

  ‘No, but that’s impossible …’

  ‘Of course … And I assume that there are no former prisoners from the camp who can testify to this event.’

  ‘They were all killed.’

  ‘And you can’t produce the victim’s body, because how could one possibly find just one set of remains among so many? And there’s no murder weapon, no bullet, no forensic evidence at all.’

  ‘Of course not.’ Paula found herself becoming increasingly indignant. Mauritz was treating her like a lazy student who hadn’t done enough work. ‘Look, we did our very best to gather every single scrap of evidence available. Just getting two witnesses, both former SS officers, to testify was a miracle. You have no idea how hard it was to do that.’

  ‘Please, don’t take offence … I wasn’t casting aspersions on you or your colleagues. I’ve already congratulated you on putting together any case at all in these exceedingly difficult circumstances. All I am doing is asking you to consider this as if it were any other homicide.’

  ‘But it isn’t!’

  ‘Why not? When all is said and done, one man has killed another. I’m perfectly willing to believe that Heuser either shot a man, or ordered him to be shot. But equally, were I Heuser’s lawyer I’d have been appalled if Randenbrock hadn’t slung the charge out.’