Page 115 of Hell to Pay
Frau Lindemann said, “You know, this shop is really very well supplied. It’s warmer in here than anywhere else in Fürth, too. Why exactly is that?”
Joe said in English, “Maybe we should come back later.”
“No,” I said in the same language. “Please stay. I’ll deal with this.” I asked Frau Lindemann, “Do you not want this bread, then? If so, we’ll put it back. It’s almost the last loaf, though, and I won’t bake this variety again until Saturday. The wheat always goes the fastest.”
She thinned her own lips at me but didn’t speak, merely grabbed the loaf from Frau Adelberg’s hand and tossed her coins down on the counter.Mostimpolite.
Frau Adelberg picked up the money, her cheeks flushed, and I became angrier still. “Is there some problem in particular that you’d like to address with me?” I asked, keeping my tone icily polite. “The bakery is warm because our ovens are working for hours each morning—it’s not so pleasant in the summer, I can assure you!—and Frau Adelberg doesn’t deserve your abuse. She’s done nothing more than house a baker who spends some time with an American. If she didn’t house me, I couldn’t work here, and if I didn’t work here, you wouldn’t have bread, so here we are. I’m sure you’ve recognized my American friend, for you’ve seen him before. Hisname is Staff Sergeant Joe Stark, and, yes, he’s working on the trial. But they’re not trying all of Germany over there, you know. They’re trying twenty-two specific men who appear to have done terrible things. If they can’t be proven to have done those things, they’ll be acquitted. Isn’t that how justice should work?”
I’d never been so forceful, and Frau Lindemann didn’t seem to know how to answer me. Her mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out of it. Frau Braun, though, said in a poisonously sweet tone, “And how do you come by so much wheat flour, Fräulein, when no other bakery has it? How do you find fuel oil for your baking when others do not? You must be very clever.” She had a smug little smile on her lips now that was doing nothing for my temper.
I said, “I sold a valuable heirloom, that’s how. It gave me pain to let it go, especially as all my family are dead—it was passed down many generations—but it would have given me more pain not to help Frau Adelberg, as she’s been so kind to me.” I’d never offered Frau Adelberg any specific details about the brooch, or what I’d received for it. How could I trust her not to mention that I had hundreds of American dollars and a priceless necklace and earrings wrapped up and sealed in tins under my floorboards? She seemed blissfully unaware—or wasn’t letting herself be aware—that the flour and fuel shortages had only become more dire since I’d taken over supplying us, and that I must be getting supplies by nefarious means.
“A valuable heirloom,” Frau Braun said. She looked at me, then, deliberately, at Joe. “I suppose that’s one word for it.”
I said coldly, summoning as much of my father’shauteuras I could manage, “I resent your implication. Perhaps I’m wrong, however. Perhaps you’re really angry about something else.”
“Of course I’m also angry about the trial,” she said, flushing. “Every German should be angry.”
Joe had been speaking in a low voice to the officer throughout. Interpreting, most likely. This must be the captain with whom he worked, then. How embarrassing for him to find me in the midst of such a quarrel! I regretted asking him to stay, but did that make me stop? Of course not. I asked Frau Braun, “Don’t you read the papers, then? Haven’t you read of the things they’ve already discovered?”
“How can one trust them?” she said. “Lampshades made of human skin? Is one really to believe such fairy stories? And how they love to show that pile of bodies being bulldozed! That must be their favorite photo, we’ve seen it so often. How many of our sons and husbands lie in similar mass graves in Russia?”
The captain said something to Joe, and Joe said firmly, “A moment, please.” In German.
The women turned and stared at him, but they waited for him to continue. In Germany, particularly Nazi Germany, women deferred to men, even if the men were American. Well, unless the woman was a princess, possibly.
Joe said, “The captain would like me to speak to you.” His face was pale, with two patches of red on his cheeks. Had he looked that way when I’d first come out here? He hadn’t smiled at me, had he? Unfortunately, I’d been too wrapped up in the quarrel to notice. He went on, “We’ve just come from taking a deposition from a prisoner. That means a sworn statement under oath. Would you like to know what he said?”
Frau Lindemann said, “We’re sure to read it in the newspapers. The war is over. We’ve lost, and now we starve. What’s the point in all this? How is it helping anyone?”
Joe said, as if he hadn’t heard her, “Do you know what happenedbeforethe gas chambers? Do you know why theywere developed?” Nobody said anything, and he went on. “That’s what we found out today. Before the Final Solution—that’s what they called the extermination camps—Einsatzgruppen,task forces, were attached to every German unit fighting in Eastern Europe. When theWehrmachttook over a town, they required the Jewish elders to present all Jews for inspection the next day. When they turned up, theEinsatzgruppetook them to a pit, lined them up in front of it, and shot them. Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Men, women, children, babies in their mothers’ arms—they shot them all, one row at a time, and piled earth over their bodies to hide what they’d done. The man we interviewed told us with perfect coldness that he alone was responsible for the deaths of some 95,000 people, and that altogether, the program had produced over a million victims, shot and dumped in mass graves, their numbers and location set down in account books the same way a shopkeeper records his transactions. He’s sworn to this. He feels no shame, for as he says, he was obeying orders, as were his men.”
“But we never—” Frau Lindemann said. To her credit, she looked horrified.
“You never knew,” Joe said. “About this, or about the extermination camps. The high command took care to keep their worst actions secret, but there’ll be witnesses at the trial who did see it happen, even the mass executions at the pits. There were still those who took care to find out what was going on, even at risk to themselves, and are willing to bear witness.”
He paused, but nobody spoke, and he said, “We discovered something else, too. After some time, a new method of killing was developed. Instead of bringing everybody to the edge of the pits and shooting them there, the Reich provided trucks in which the women and children could be transported. The trucks had a mechanism—an ingenious mechanism, our prisoner called it—by which to fill their cargo areas with poison gas, so the victims arrived at the pits already dead. Ourprisoner made it clear that this wasn’t done to make it easier on the victims. No, the problem was that the soldiers suffered too much shooting women and children. Shooting pregnant women. Shooting grandmothers. Shooting a little girl clutching her doll.”
Frau Braun still looked angry, but Frau Lindemann said, “Oh, don’t. Please don’t.”
“It upsets you to hear it,” Joe said. “Of course it does. The German people aren’t monsters, any more than any of us is. Those soldiers’ sin was believing in absolute obedience to authority, but they believed in it because they were taught to from childhood. Hitler and Himmler were clever, and they were thorough: propaganda from cradle to grave. They lied to you. They lied to all of you, and they kept lying. And I have to believe, for my own soul’s sake, that the men in those death squads are suffering now for what they’ve done. Killing people isn’t easy, you know. I’m sure your husband will tell you the same. That’s the reason for the extermination camps and the gas chambers: that ordinary Germans, ordinary soldiers, couldn’t do things like that. So the Nazis looked for men who could, and they found them. The number of victims is in the millions, almost impossible to comprehend. Millions of Poles, of Russians, of Jews. Millions and millions, killed not for anything they’d done, but simply for who they were. That’s why we’re here. That’s what we’re trying to show you, and the rest of the world, too, so nobody has to go through again what you’re facing now: the knowledge that your government has made you complicit in atrocities like this. And, yes, I hope we do end up with laws for war. I hope the countries of the world can agree not to target civilians in bombing raids, not to shoot prisoners of war, not to wage wars of invasion on our neighbors for our own gain. I hope so, even though I’m not naïve enough to believe it will never happen. And, yes, there were reasons that Hitler found areceptive audience for his poison. Yes, the Allies made mistakes after the Great War. Shouldn’t we try, though, to understand that, so we can stop things like this from happening again?”
“Of course,” Frau Lindemann said stiffly. “Of course nobody wants war.” Frau Adelberg didn’t say anything. She was standing, frozen, behind the counter, her hand at her mouth.
“You see,” Joe said, “we’re not so different, even though we were on opposite sides. Most of the German soldiers who surrendered to us were a decent lot who thought they were doing the right thing fighting for their country, just as we did. This war was a tragedy all around, but I’m sure you’d agree that a man who can order the murder of women and children without a second thought shouldn’t walk free again. I don’t want him living next to me, and I can’t imagine you do, either. I wish I’d never had to meet him. And I’m sorry to share such terrible news, but it’s been a very long day.”
“If it’s true …” Frau Lindemann began, then faltered.
“He’ll be testifying,” Joe said. “You can hear it directly from him.” He looked exhausted, suddenly, beaten in a way I’d never seen.
Frau Braun said, “I’ll be patronizing another bakery from now on. And you,” she told me, “are not welcome in the hotel.” She was so angry, she was nearly shaking with it.
Frau Adelberg said, “Does Herr Weissmann agree with that?” The manager of the hotel, she meant.
“I’ll see that he does,” Frau Braun said.
“Does he want no more Americans there, either?” Frau Adelberg said. “No American money?”
