Page 50 of The Little Liar
Fannie nudged up to a man in a yellow raincoat and grabbed his shoulders. With her last ounce of strategy, she pushed up a fetching smile, and the man smiled back. He yanked off his raincoat, draped it about her, and kept his arm around her neck. They walked that way through the intersection, beneath the impatient gaze of SS guards. Fannie’s heart was pounding so hard, she swore the soldiers could hear it.
Head down. Take a step. Take a step.
Moments later, the SS fired guns in the air and continued marching their prisoners north to the border. The refugees,heading west, disappeared into the blinding white. Fannie felt her knees buckle. The man holding the raincoat grabbed her chin and turned it his way, repeating a single Hungarian word.
“Lelegzik.”
Breathe.
And that, for Fannie, was the end of the war.
Udo removed his boots.
He tossed them into the fireplace, which was already burning his uniform, hat, and overcoat. For the first time in years, he was dressed without the slightest symbol of authority. Just a flannel shirt, black pants, work shoes, and a wool coat he had taken from a local farmer who delivered food to the camp.
It was January 27, 1945. In the previous days, explosions could be heard around Auschwitz. The Russian Army was at their doorstep, and orders had come to evacuate the surviving prisoners back to Germany, but only those strong enough to make the walk. The others—the weak, sick, or elderly—were to be left behind. There wasn’t even time to kill them.
Udo watched the flames swallow his uniform. Had he been the type of man to face me, he would have known it was over. The Wolf was finished. The Reich had been crushed. But faithfully convinced that his was a superior race, Udo focused only on the next steps of this war, which meant destroying all evidence of his evil.
He had already torn down the gas chambers and crematoriums and murdered all the Jews assigned there, so they couldnever testify about it. Warehouses full of stolen goods were burned. Records were destroyed. Piece by piece, Udo was covering his tracks.
But all this took time, and he did not know how much time he had left. HisKommandanthad already fled. The coward. Udo stayed to finish the job. Now, with the prisoners evacuated and his guards either marching with them or battling the Russians, it was time to preserve himself. Get back to the Wolf. Live to fight another day.
His plan for escape was simple. He had already paid a Polish laborer for his papers and thus had a new identity, Josef Walcaz. He would walk out of the camp in these civilian clothes, blend into the nearby town, and take a prearranged car to the German border. Once there, his contacts would welcome him back home.
What Udo did not know was at that very moment, the Russian Army, dressed in white coats that nearly blended with the snow, was rapidly approaching the Auschwitz gates. Their horse soldiers and jeeps would soon burst through. Udo might have avoided them had he left twenty minutes sooner. But he used those twenty minutes finding bullets for his luger and contemplating whether to take it with him. If the enemy found this gun on him, it could be damning. On the other hand, could he dare flee without protection?
Holding his pistol, his mind raced back and forth. For some reason, he remembered the night in Salonika when he fired a shot and heard a thump in the crawl space and discovered the hiding Greek boy named Nico, who helped Udo mastermind his successful deportation of nearly fifty thousand Jews.
What a time that was. Such power. Such control. Udo felt a wave of pride in what he’d accomplished forDeutschland über alles, and he took it as a sign that he should keep his gun with him. He loaded the bullets, tucked the luger in his belt, then pulled on the farmer’s coat and yanked a cap over his head. With his officer’s uniform still burning in the fireplace, he headed out the door.
***
To visualize what happened next, try to think of a triangle’s three vertexes.
The first vertex was the Russian troops, heading up the hill to liberate the camp.
The second vertex was Udo Graf, in his civilian disguise, walking toward them.
The third vertex was a barbed wire fence, behind which stood a line of feeble Auschwitz survivors, leaning on crutches or draped in threadbare blankets, still wearing the filthy striped uniforms that hung off their skinny bones. As the Russians approached, these prisoners, too weak to speak, merely stared in curious confusion, the way a deer across the river stares at an approaching human.
Udo spotted the troops and took a deep breath. He looked at his feet. Running was now out of the question. He could only continue walking, hands in his pockets, as if none of this was his business.You are a farmer. You’re passing by. You made a delivery.People often practice their lies when facing a confrontation. Udo kept repeating his.A farmer. Cabbage and potatoes. Keep walking.
The first horse soldiers trotted past him. Udo fought a grin. A jeep passed by as well.
They are too stupid to notice you. Keep to your plan.
Another jeep. A third. The ruse was working.
And then, a voice.
“Stop him! Somebody stop him!”
It was hoarse and strained and came from behind the barbed wire. It sounded like the yowl of a wounded animal.
“Stop him! He’s a killer!Stop him!”
Udo glanced sideways and saw a single male prisoner pushing through the others, jumping, waving, pointing through the fence and screaming. Udo knew immediately who it was.
