Holocaust (3 page)

As he chatted with her, I studied the dark paneled walls of his office. Diplomas. Certificates. Photographs
of wife and children, including one of a young bridal couple. It makes no difference to me, but I remember my parents saying that Dr. Weiss was a Jew, but a very fine one.

The physician, learning that we had two small children at home, suggested a maid a few days a week, and Marta—without shame—told him we could not afford one. He replied that she need not be the perfect Berlin housewife, scrubbing and cleaning all day, although moderate exercise was good for her.

As we were about to leave, he halted me at the door to his waiting room, and remarked that he had once had patients named Dorf. Was I possibly related? I acknowledged that my father had indeed been his patient when I was a small boy, some twelve years ago.

Dr. Weiss seemed touched. He remembered my parents well. Mrs. Weiss used to buy bread and cake from the bakery of Klaus Dorf. How happy he was to see me again! Why hadn’t I mentioned it at the start?

Marta lifted her chin, and with that peculiar North German pride of hers, remarked that her husband, Erik Dorf, lawyer, did not like to ask special favors—of anyone. She didn’t say it cruelly, or to put the doctor in his place. She was merely setting the record straight.

In any event, Dr. Weiss was certainly not offended and he chatted on—how he had cured me of chicken pox when I was six, how he had seen my mother through a severe bout of pneumonia. And how, he asked, were they now? I told him my father was dead, that he had lost the store during the depression, and that my mother was living with relatives in Munich.

He was moved by this, I could see, and said how sad it was that so many good people were hurt during those years. Suddenly he said, “And those wonderful, crusty stollen. On Thursdays?”

I could not help smiling. “Wednesdays. I used to deliver them.”

He seemed almost reluctant to let us leave, as if the memories of my parents’ humble bakery, my youthful services as delivery boy, were pleasing recollections. Marta made a point of saying how far I’d come—a
lawyer, paying my way through the university. The doctor agreed. Then we departed through the waiting room. I noticed that his patients seemed, for the most part, poor people.

Later, we sat in a small park and I read the help-wanted advertisements, as I had done for a long time. Night watchman. Warehouseman. Clerk. Hardly anything for a bright young attorney, especially with two young children and a wife to support. Marta has talked of taking a job, but I won’t hear of it. We have no grandparents or other relatives to look after the children, and quite frankly, she isn’t trained for anything. Her old fashioned parents in Bremen thought it improper for women to go to work. She was raised to marry, bear children, cook and go to church.

I remarked that I might have trouble paying the doctor bills, and she responded that if Dr. Weiss was so happy to see me again, and even recalled my father’s stollen, he’d certainly trust me until I found work. Marta is ever the optimist, the planner, the one who looks ahead and sees things getting better.

I’m not that way. Ever since I saw my father lose his business, his store, his self-confidence, and finally his life, I have tended to hide my native moroseness beneath a false cheerful facade. My appearance helps—slender, tall, fair. Marta and I make an attractive couple—she petite and blond, with excellent bearing and graceful hands.

Although it was an extravagance, what with our bills mounting, I bought vanilla ice cream cones for us, and we strolled through the small park. Marta, gently at first, then a bit more firmly, began to lecture me. I am too shy, too self-effacing. I don’t brag to people that I graduated in the top tenth of my law-school class. Why?

How can I explain to her that in my shame over my father’s failure, I find it hard to brag, to thrust myself forward?

She tossed her half-finished cone into a trash bin, and looked annoyed. “You reject my suggestions all the time,” she said. “Erik, please …”

I knew what she wanted, what she wants. I have told her a dozen times I do not want to be a policeman. An uncle of hers has a connection with General Reinhard Heydrich, who is rumored to be one of the most powerful of all the rising new political leaders—heading up the Gestapo, SS and other security services. Marta has never hesitated to say that she thinks I should at least talk to this powerful man. Thousands of young Germans, university men, would give ten years of their life for such a chance. But I am not even a party member. Nor is Marta. We are rather nonpolitical people. Oh, we see every day how things are improving—more jobs, the currency stabilized, factories running. But politics are beyond me.

I have told her that my father may have even been a Socialist at one time. The Nazis would surely find out. What then?

But this time, in the park, she was adamant. She said I would hurt her poor heart, that I owed it to the children, that perhaps what was wrong with me was that I was not more wholeheartedly in step with the new Germany. I reminded her that for the past few years I have slaved over law books, worked part-time in an insurance firm, barely managed to keep my health and my sanity, and hence have small time for politicians, or parades, or rallies.

In the end she won. I agreed to ask her uncle to make an appointment for me with Heydrich. After all, I love and respect Marta, and perhaps she is sharper than I am in realizing that the new government offers new opportunities.

And so we put our arms around each other’s backs, and like young lovers, walked down the tree-lined street. At a kiosk I glanced at the posters—Hitler in knight’s armor, warnings not to buy from Jews, exhortations to all to work harder. Maybe he’s right.

Today, September 20, I was ushered into Reinhard Heydrich’s office for an interview.

He is a tall, handsome, impressive man. No man is
better suited to wear the black uniform of the SS. He holds several posts—chief of the Gestapo, chief of the Security Service. He reports directly to Reichsführer Himmler, the head of the SS, the “army within an army,” that loyal legion of men sworn to uphold Nazi doctrine, racial purity, the security of Germany.

As Heydrich read my
curriculum vitae
, I studied him. He was a wonderful athlete, I’ve heard (he still is a superb physical specimen), and an accomplished violinist. In fact, a violin rested on a stand nearby. A Mozart cantata was open. I know a little about him—former naval officer, organizer for the party, a brilliant theoretician, a man with a deep belief in the need for security and order, and the limitless power of a police force.

His manner was polite. I saw nothing in him to explain the street rumors I’ve heard (from left-wing types who attended law school with me) that in the party he is known as “the evil young god of death.” How wrong people can be! I saw a refined, intelligent man, thirty-one years old.

Abruptly, he looked up and asked me what made me think I was suited for work in the SS special branches he commanded, such as the Security Service or the Gestapo.

To be candid, I did not know what to say, so I took the easiest way out. I told him the truth. “Sir, I need a job,” I said.

This amused him. At once he revealed the kind of insightful man he is—seeing through people clearly, aware of motives, prescient, a born psychologist. He replied that I had given him a frank and refreshing answer. All sorts of frauds and fakes came to him for jobs, and here was I, a bright young lawyer, making no long speeches about my love of Fatherland and Führer, but merely after a job.

Was he taunting me? No, he was sincere. Still, there was something mocking in his metallic blue eyes, and when he turned back my way, it was as if I were looking at a different person. The two sides of his face—
a handsome face—seemed disparate, mismatched. Was he enjoying some kind of inner joke, some cynical laughter, at my expense? I’m not certain.

Heydrich talked about the party, the new government, the end of the corrupt and inefficient parliament. He told me that police power, properly used, is the true power of the state. I suppose I should have argued. I learned other notions in law school. What about courts? The legal process? Human rights? But I was too awed by him to respond.

“Given modern technical knowledge, and the patriotism of the German people,” he said, “there are no limits to what we can do, no enemies who can overcome us.”

I must have looked confused, for he laughed, and asked me if I really knew the distinctions between the SS, the SD, the Gestapo, the RSHA. When I confessed I did not, he laughed out loud and slapped the table. “Splendid, Dorf. We have trouble keeping them apart ourselves sometimes. No matter. They all report to me, and of course to our beloved Reichsführer, Herr Himmler.”

He then asked me how I felt about Jews, and I answered that I had never given them much thought. Again, he turned the hard, crooked side of his face toward me. Quickly, I added that I certainly agreed that they had an influence far out of proportion to their numbers in such fields as journalism, commerce, banking and the professions, and that perhaps this was bad for Germany and for the Jews themselves.

Heydrich nodded. He then launched on a major thesis of his—an expansion on the Führer’s own words in
Mein Kampf
. Some of it was hard to follow, but it seemed to boil down to the fact that just as Bolshevism, to succeed in Russia, needed a
class
enemy, so the Nazi movement, to succeed in Germany, needs a
racial
enemy. Hence the Jews.

I said, “But surely, they
are
an enemy.”

Heydrich had cleverly maneuvered me exactly into the position he wanted me to be in—indeed the attitude
which he hopes eventually all Germans of all ranks and stations and beliefs will accept. The Jews are not only a tool toward domination, they are in fact, and by all historical evidence,
enemies
.

Now he warmed to his subject. He quoted
Mein Kampf
, the involvement of Jews in every form of human corruption, their betrayal of Germany in the World War, their control of the banks and foreign capital, their dominance in Bolshevism.

My head was swimming, but I have always had the knack of looking interested, of agreeing with a nod, an interjection, a smile. He was enjoying his lecture, and I did not dare to interrupt. At one point I was tempted to ask how Jews could be both Bolsheviks and capitalists. But I prudently held my tongue.

“Mark me, Dorf,” he said. “We’ll solve a multitude of problems—political, social, economic, military and above all racial—by coming down hard on the Chosen People.”

I confessed this was new ground for me. But recalling Marta’s admonition, I said I had an open mind.

This pleased him. Even when I confessed I was not a party member, had not worn a uniform since my scouting days, he seemed indifferent, responding that any fool could wear a uniform, but he needed good minds, good organizers around him. He said that the party and the SS had their fill of hoodlums, hacks, eccentrics. He was trying to build an efficient organization. “Then am I to assume, sir, that I’m hired?”

He nodded in affirmation, and I felt a sudden thrill, as if I had crossed a barrier, climbed a mountain.

Then he told me I’d be inducted, sworn in as soon as the usual security check was run on me. A steely tone entered his voice. For a second I feared him. Then he laughed, and said, “I must assume you wouldn’t dare come in here unless you were lily-white.”

“I suspect I am, sir,” I said.

“Good. Go down to personnel and fill out the necessary forms.”

As I was leaving, he called me back. “You know,
Dorf, I stick my neck out with you. Hitler once said he wouldn’t rest until it was a disgrace for any German to be a lawyer.”

He saw me flinch, and added, “I’m teasing. Heil Hitler, Dorf.”

I found it very easy to respond. “Heil Hitler,” I said.

Yesterday evening, September 26, I put on the black uniform of the SS for the first time. Later that night I took the blood oath:

I have been given the rank of lieutenant, and assigned to a minor post in Heydrich’s headquarters. The truth is, I am much more than a glorified clerk, a low-level aide to Reinhard Tristan Eugene Heydrich. A great deal of my time is spent untangling the relationships between the Gestapo, the SD, the RSHA, and other branches of the SS. Heydrich mockingly tells me that he prefers keeping it muddled, as long as everyone knows he is the boss.

Marta helped me put on my black tunic, black breeches and black boots. I jammed my Luger into my leather holster and felt like an idiot. Marta brought the children from the bedroom to admire their father. Peter is now five, Laura three. Marta, who has always favored Peter, lifted him up. One look at the high-crowned black cap and he burst into tears!

I had a sudden strange concern. Have I done the right thing? Of course, no importance can be attached to a child bawling at the sight of his father in a new costume. Perfectly natural. But Marta was annoyed with him when he howled again and retreated. He and little Laura tearfully watched me, peeking from behind the door.

I said to Marta I hoped I would not have to wear the rig all the time. We aren’t at war. Why strut about eternally in jackboots?

“But you
must,”
she said. “People will respect you. The local merchants will know who you are. I’ll get the best cuts of meat, the best fruits and vegetables. If you have power, use it.”

I said nothing. It had never occurred to me that one of the benefits of wearing an SS uniform would be thicker veal chops, riper melons. But Marta has always been a farseeing woman. The weakness in her heart has never affected her sharpness nor her intelligence.

Once more I tried to reach for Peter to kiss him good night. But he ran from me. As I kissed Marta and left, for the induction ceremony at headquarters, I could not help but recall the scene in the
Iliad
where Hector puts on his burnished helmet with its plume. His wife, Andromache, holds up their son to admire him, and the child screams in terror. Screaming and frightened at the aspect of his own father.