The Miernik Dossier (17 page)

In 1942 (date probable) Hanne Szemle Bentley and her child were arrested by the German authorities and sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The mother died there on 18th April, 1943. Ilona Bentley was liberated with other surviving inmates in 1945. She was at that time barely ten years old, and she was unaware of her own identity. She was not identified as Ilona Bentley, and therefore as a British subject, until February, 1946, when an examination of the files at Bergen-Belsen brought forth her British passport and that of her mother. In June, 1946, investigators succeeded in locating the child in a refugee centre in the British Zone of Occupation, and in establishing her identity through a comparison of the number tattooed on her forearm and the one entered by a German clerk on her British passport, which formed part of her file at Bergen-Belsen.

The child was given into the custody of her paternal grandparents on 15th July, 1946. The grandmother died the following year, and the grandfather in 1952. Ilona Bentley, as her grandfather’s only heir (her father’s brother died in action in Crete), inherited an estate valued at £175,000 after death duties. This included substantial amounts in Swiss franc accounts in the Union de Banques Suisses, Geneva.

During summer holidays, and after leaving school, Ilona Bentley travelled extensively in Europe, and in 1956 visited Hungary as a tourist. The Hungarian rebellion took place during her visit. On
³
0th October, 1966, she arrived at the Austro-Hungarian frontier in the company of a young Kárdos, whom she attempted to smuggle into Austria. Kárdos was arrested and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of subversion and murder arising out of his activities in the Budapest uprising. Ilona Bentley attempted to persuade the British Embassy at Budapest to intervene in behalf of Kárdos, whom she described as her fiancé. No intervention was possible. Ilona Bentley, in an interview with an officer of the embassy, claimed to be pregnant by Kárdos; if this was true, she never bore the child.

Ilona Bentley has a certain reputation for sexual looseness. Throughout her adolescence she created disciplinary problems at a variety of schools, and she was sent home on one occasion for misbehaviour with a boy from a neighbouring town. (According to the records of the psychiatrist who interviewed her after her release from Bergen-Belsen, she claimed to have been sexually abused by adult inmates of the camp.)

On coming of age, Ilona Bentley took up residence in Geneva, Switzerland, where she enrolled as a student at the university. At this time she relieved the solicitors who had been appointed as her guardians under her grandfather’s will of their responsibility for management of her affairs. The Swiss police, who have exercised their ordinary controls over Miss Bentley as a foreign resident, have noted no activity on her part that they construe as harmful to Swiss interests. Our own enquiries have yielded nothing of political interest. Miss Bentley was taught Russian by her grandfather.

53.  L
ETTER FROM
I
LONA
B
ENTLEY TO AN ACCOMMODATION ADDRESS USED BY
S
OVIET INTELLIGENCE IN
P
ARIS (TRANSLATION FROM
F
RENCH).

Rome, 25 June

Darling Marie-Dominique,

By the time you receive this I shall have taken wing for the Nile! A wonderful two days in Naples, marred only by your failure to join me as you had half promised to do. I waited for you (leaving a darling young man sulking alone) at the station on the night you said you might come, but alas, the train contained nothing but strangers. I did so want to tell you all my news (and I have such a lot of it!) in person. Perhaps you’ll get in touch with me before the thirtieth at the address I gave you.

Everything went perfectly. I astonished my little friend by popping into his room no more than five minutes after he had arrived. He is still annoyed with me—but not
that
annoyed! We had quite a lovely time together—I mean
all of us
at dinner that evening and in a long walk round this noisy city. (It’s awfully friendly of the natives to fondle one as they do—if I had magic skin that photographed all that touched it I should be quite covered with fine Italian hand-prints!)

I suppose you will not be surprised to know that M.’s sister has joined the party. They collected her in Vienna. I was not so much surprised to see her as to see what she looks like. She is quite beautiful in a placid way—blond hair, cornflower eyes, nice figure—
but
a rather mean mouth. She certainly does not resemble her brother. I’m sending you a roll of snaps to keep for me. If you’re curious you can have them developed.

She and all the rest except M. are sailing today. There was some delay with the ship, an awful old tub that smells of machine oil and greasy shish kebab. M. and I fly down this afternoon from Rome. He is positively quaking—afraid of airplanes, I suspect. Afraid of the unknown, too. He is a timid chap. On the way from Naples in the car he held on for dear life, saying, “Here you are a little less frightening, darling—you fit right in with the Italians, who drive as madly as you do!”

He has been awfully sweet to me. In Rome we could not use our day and two nights to relax—we had to see the sights. Most methodical he is. I know a great deal more about the Forum, the Pantheon, the dates on which the city walls were built, the relationship between Berini and the Barberii pope than I ever expected to know. Marvelous food!
Awful
wine! M. runs around talking
Latin
to everyone. It’s most amusing, but they seem to understand him. At the Vatican, of course, he was a great hit with the chaps in petticoats.

The plan is this: we will all meet on the thirtieth in Cairo and then continue on by car. I’ve no idea how long the trip will take but it should be thrilling, so I don’t care really about the time element. I do hope you’ll ask your friends there to look me up. It’s so much more fun to see a strange city with one who knows it. And giving my news to someone you love will be almost as good as giving it to you.

Ever with love,

Annelise

54.  F
ROM OUR DEBRIEFING OF
Z
OFIA
M
IERNIK (TRANSCRIBED SIX MONTHS AFTER THE EVENTS DESCRIBED IN THIS FILE).

You must understand that I was uncomfortable from the beginning. First of all, I had hardly ever seen any foreigners except for German soldiers when I was a child and the occasional Russian later on. Here I was, out of Poland for the first time in my life, and surrounded by a lot of my brother’s friends who spoke languages I had only used in school. I did not always understand exactly what they were saying—the talk went back and forth so quickly, they were all so clever and sardonic. My friends in Warsaw were artists, serious people who suffered all the time and talked only of themselves and their painting and sculpture—which, incidentally, no one would ever be able to see because it was decadent. I am not a melancholy person and I used to long for gaiety.

Now I had more gaiety than I knew what to do with. I found all of them charming. Paul I liked at once. He seemed so kind and so free of envy and sadness—exactly as I had always imagined an American to be. Of course he did a generous thing for me at the very beginning, so I was grateful to him. Nigel was another matter. As things went on I realized that he was nothing like as cold and sarcastic as he seemed at first. As for Prince Kalash, I ask you to imagine the impression he made upon me, this enormously tall, absolutely black man with the manners of a king. He frightened and fascinated me.

I did not like Ilona at all, at the start or afterward. I liked her less when I saw the state Tadeusz was in when we got to Cairo. All his life my brother had been a morose person. He was easy to hurt. Ilona had hurt him badly.
He
thought she had made him happy, but she is not the sort to make anyone happy for very long. When first I saw her I realized the sort of girl she was. I am no puritan. I have nothing against sex. But there should be, if not actually love, then some feeling between people. Ilona was in-capable of feeling. Her aim in life was only sensation. Nigel was already her lover. Nigel was my brother’s friend. She used them against each other to increase her own pleasure. She would have used Paul as well but he was too strong for her.

Back to Cairo. Ilona and Tadeusz met us when we drove up to the hotel. They had been together for five days. My brother, following along behind her, had been transformed into a lapdog. He cringed with love for her. The change in him was nauseating. From a man with a brilliant mind and the very best instincts he had changed into a character out of a pornographic novel. His eyes never left her.
Her
eyes never touched him—except in amusement. When Nigel got out of the car, Ilona embraced him, pushing her whole body against his, and kissed him passionately. With her tongue. On the steps of the hotel, surrounded by strangers and servants. Tadeusz actually staggered at the sight. I looked at Tadeusz, looked at Ilona—and
knew
what the situation was. It was a shock. Perhaps it seems comical, but I had always assumed that my brother was a virgin. He has always been more like a priest than anything else. In fact, that’s what he wanted to be when he was a boy and I don’t think he ever entirely got over the idea. He was super-religious. To get mixed up with someone as carnal as Ilona must have torn him apart. His suffering was pathetic.

Q. We’d like to know a little more about the boat trip. Did anything happen that you thought was important?

A. No, nothing. It was a dreadful trip from the viewpoint of the food and the surroundings. A dirty ship, awful food. Kalash was sick most of the time. He complained about the bunk, which of course was too short for him. I believe he had to sleep on the floor. Nigel kept to himself a great deal. He was very moody, even short-tempered. When we got to Cairo I understood why. Paul and I were together a lot—most of the time. I played the guitar he had given me. He told me about his home in America. He comes from the mountains. Also, he wrote me a poem every night. He writes lovely poetry, but only when he has been drinking. It’s odd how sad his poems can be, when on the surface he is such a happy person.

Q. Was it on the ship that you and he . . . ?

A. That’s not really your affair, is it? The answer is no. Everything happened much later. On the ship I knew what would happen eventually. We were young and together. From the start there was feeling between us. The details belong to Paul and to me.

Q. Of course they do. Our interest is not salacious. We are trying to understand the relationships, that’s all. Now, can we talk about Cairo? What happened there?

A. Not a great deal. There was the situation with Ilona. Nigel and Tadeusz began at that time to feel like friends again, I think. They realized neither of them was to blame. Ilona loved every minute of it. I make her sound cruel. It’s not that. She is amoral. What others feel does not affect her. I stopped detesting her when I learned about her past. How could she be a whole person after Belsen? But whatever the reasons, she is what she is, and she causes great, great pain. Things went on more or less as before—it was a holiday. It started out as a holiday. We had jolly times.

We went to the museum and saw the mummies. We found restaurants—life for these people takes place mainly in restaurants. We swam in the hotel pool. We drank big glasses of alcohol, various kinds of gin drinks. Except for Kalash, who is a strict Moslem. He drank lemonade.

We stayed only two days. On the first morning, Kalash and Nigel went off together somewhere in the car. Ilona left the hotel before any of us were awake and did not come back for breakfast. Nigel and Tadeusz were in a state. Where could she be? Nigel asked Kalash at breakfast if he had spent the night with Ilona. He made it into a joke, but it was no joke. Kalash said no, he had not seen her since the night before. When she came back she had a beautiful amber necklace she said she had bought in a bazaar. She tried it on for us; it was a necklace for a queen. She told a very amusing story about her bargaining with the Egyptian who sold her the necklace. She mimicked him, she mimicked herself. All the time I knew she was lying. I had seen the very same necklace in a shop in the hotel. Later I went by and asked if they still had it. “Ah, miss! Your dark-haired friend, the beautiful girl, bought it last night!” Why tell such a story? Paul too went off by himself and was gone for a long time. Everyone scattered, it was noticeable.

Tadeusz and I were left by ourselves. I bought a bathing costume and sat by the pool in the sun. Tadeusz sat with me, writing in his diary. He kept watching the door for Ilona. For once he had no brotherly advice to give me. He asked me a few questions about Paul. When I said I liked him Tadeusz beamed. He
loved
Paul Christopher. He kept telling me what a kind and honest boy Paul was. The others he liked—he was loyal to his friends. Paul he loved. A man can love a man, you know. Their friendships, when they are deep as Tadeusz’s and Paul’s seemed to be, are almost love affairs. They forgive each other and trust each other much more easily than they can do with any woman. A great romantic, Tadeusz. He was born into the wrong age. He was the ugly knight, Paul the beautiful knight. The ugly always think they owe something to the beautiful. Hence Ilona. And Paul.

Q. You never found out where everyone went?

A. I never asked.

Q. And the next day you left in the car? That was July second.

A. The next day we left in the car. We started down the Nile. After we had driven out to the Pyramids and the Sphinx. We all had our pictures taken on a camel in front of the pyramids. All except Tadeusz, of course.

Q. Why not Tadeusz?

A. He always hated being photographed. It amounted to a psychosis. He believed himself to be the ugliest man alive. Even now I have no picture of him. Once he told me, “If you have no photograph of me, you’ll remember my actions instead of my face. I don’t want you to be reminded each time you look at a photograph what a poor piece of work God made of me.”