THE ACCOUNTANT'S APARTMENT

Behind the headlines of World War II occurred countless tales of courage and sacrifice. They remain untold even though they often told a truer story of what the war was really like.

 

THE ARRIVAL

 

     The train always sounded a shrill whistle a few minutes before grinding to a halt at the prisoner’s gate.  Obersturmbannführer Martin Werner stepped from his quarters into the morning sun and squinted into the distance.  Guards were pulling the heavy iron doors open and he could see people helping each other descend from the boxcars.  He watched them stagger into lines, exhausted from standing throughout the long journey.  Some fell to the pavement, their legs unable to give support and the guards pounded them with rifle butts as a warning of what was to come. 

Methodically they were separated into rows of men and women.  Later the aged and invalid would be placed in yet another line.  Some of the women cradled children in their arms, pulling them close to their breasts with an open apprehension.  It was always the same, he thought.  Each train brought the same people wearing the same expressions and finally meeting the same fate.  He had come to think of them as generations; each train a new and different one.  He wondered which generation would be the last, which would be the final survivors?

     Glancing to his right he saw the new accountant standing at a distance and motioned for him to advance.

     The young Leutnant, Hans Kappel, walked to his side, erect and proper, offering the required salute.  The commandant returned a disinterested gesture. raising his hand to the level of his shoulder.   

     “It’s a morbid thing, don’t you think?,” he asked as a greeting.  “Just the sound of the whistle and we’re all out here to watch the spectacle.  Something like the Roman coliseum, I imagine; a huge human drama we can’t resist watching.”

     “Yes Commandant,” he agreed, surprised that the man should have described the scene as ‘morbid.’  “but there’s so many of them,” he added.

     The commander keep his vigilance on the scene while saying, “This is your first train.  These are Jews from Hungary.  There will be more.  Have you settled in?”

     “Yes Commandant, thank you.”

“Good,” said the man and the accountant spent a moment to examine him.  He was one of those men who graced with age; greying temples and a slender, well kempt body.  Broad shouldered and with muscles flexing in his jaw, the commandant was a stereotype of an SS officer.  Hans marveled at how the man’s boots glistened against the sun and compared them to the dull gloss of his own.  

“When this has finished, we must talk,” said the Commandant, “Come.”

The accountant followed him to the gate where SS guards were sorting through various forms at small tables where the new arrivals would pass.  He noted the signs along the perimeter of the camp, “Extreme Danger, High Voltage Electrical Wires.”  Watching the registration process, it was obvious that the camp commander was making sure everyone was in place and ready to begin the selection and separation.  He walked slowly between the lines of Jews, seeming to examine them with a special interest.  Abruptly he turned and returned to the tables with a nod that served as the order to begin.  Seeing the first man pushed toward the table, he returned to the accountant’s side.

“We best leave before it gets too noisy.”  The accountant watched the lines being formed and the question was clear upon his face.  “When they take the children away,” added the Commandant.  “That’s when it gets noisy.  Let’s go to your quarters.  Do you have coffee?”

When Kappel replied no, the Commandant spoke closely to a guard’s ear and was answered with a salute.

Hans found the suggestion that they talk disturbing.  He couldn’t imagine what reason the Commandant would have to speak privately with him.  Since learning that he would be assigned to Dachau, he wondered what he had done to be so punished.  His prior assignment had been in the procurement department and with an office environment not unlike he had known in civilian life.  By simply witnessing the events of the morning, he knew that this assignment would be starkly different.  Perhaps, he thought, the senior officer wanted to speak of some offense even though he could not imagine what it was.

They climbed the narrow stairway to his apartment, separated from all other habitations in the far end of the building.  Stepping inside, the Commandant glanced around as if taking inventory before sitting in a chair at the kitchen table.  The kitchen seemed highly functional and the young accountant appeared to be a neat, orderly sort.  Moving to the window, he looked down over the parade ground and thought the view was satisfactory.    

     Commandant Werner moved to the adjoining room, his hands folded behind his back and noted the corner desk and the bed with the sheets and spread painfully tight, military style.  The two other doors opened to a bathroom and an extra room with a bed that reminded him that the apartment was intended for more than one officer.  “This will do fine,” he announced at last, “and you already have a desk.”

The accountant kept an erect, stiff posture, responding only, “Yes sir, in the other room with a fine collection of books.  It’s all quite comfortable.”

“Sit down,” came the order and the accountant quickly obeyed, settling across the table from the Commandant.  “You were in Munich,” he said as a statement of fact.

“Yes sir, the quartermaster’s division.  I worked in procurement.”

Commandant Werner smiled wryly.  “This must be somewhat of a culture shock for you, coming from the luxurious offices in Munich to a place like this.”

Hans did not permit his expression to change.  It was always best to appear to be the emotionless symbol of complete loyalty.

“I serve wherever I am needed, Commandant.”

Werner chuckled aloud with the response.  “You should be in the diplomatic corps, young man.  You must be absolutely miserable.  I was when I first came here.  Come to think of it, I suppose I still am.”

Hans permitted a faint smile to touch his lips.  “I’ve decided to consider it a challenge, sir,” he answered.

“A challenge,” Commandant Werner repeated.  “A challenge tests your determination and endurance.  What you will have here tests your humanity and sanity.  In the end, you will lose one or the other, perhaps both.”  He paused for a long, almost dramatic moment before saying, “Your family also lives in Munich.  That must have been very convenient.  You could live at home instead of in some sweaty barracks.”

 “Yes, my parents live there, in the Lehel district.”

“Very nice,” the senior officer nodded.  “Nice, well ordered homes like dominoes standing in a row.  And Munich’s only a half hour from Dachau, I imagine you thought about commuting.”

Hans nodded quickly.  “At first yes, but when I was assigned this apartment it was apparent I would be living in the camp.”

Werner seemed to ignore the response and stared toward the window where specks of dust floating through the rays of sunlight.

“And I noticed that your father is an accountant also,” he said almost absently.

“Yes sir, he worked in Sendling for many years.”

The Commandant examined turned his eyes to the young man for a long moment before adding, “I had the files of several accountants but I decided to ask for you.  Are you curious as to why?”

     “Yes sir.”

     The man sighed deeply before answering.  “It was two words, really.  Your ex-supervisor, Rottenfuher Hermann Bauer, noted “very discreet” in his recommendation.  I admired that.  It’s a quality for which I have a special respect and perhaps a special need.  So I sent for this young accountant, Leutnant Hans Kappel.”

     “Thank you, sir,” responded Kappel. 

Werner smiled wryly.  “You don’t mean that.  Dachau is Satan’s rectum and you know it.”  He leaned back in his chair and pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket.  Hans immediately stood to search for an ashtray but found only a saucer that he placed on the table.

“So,” he continued, “if Bauer believed you were very discreet, it means he had a secret entrusted to you.  What was it?”

Hans stammered for a moment.  The question unnerved him.  “Forgive me, sir, but I can’t answer that question.”

The senior officer tightened his jaw as he always did when he was annoyed.  “You worked in procurement.  Was Bauer stealing form the Reich or was it something far more boring like he was married and had another woman?”

“Again, sir,” repeated Hans, “I’m not at liberty to say.”

Commandant Werner pointed to the insignia on his shoulder.  “Do you realize that I am an officer, a superior officer?  Do you understand the consequences if you do not obey my order?”  The Commandant lifted his voice until it reached a near shout at the end of the question.

“Yes sir,” answered Hans, suddenly standing and placing himself at attention before the older man.  “With all due respect, sir, Rottenfuher Bauer is also an officer.”

Not liking the image of having the young man tower over him, Werner stood and pushed the chair noisily across the room.  “Shall I call for the guards now, Hans Kappel?  Shall I have them lock you away until you’ve decided to answer my question?”

Hans lifted his chin proudly and fixed his eyes directly head.  “If you feel you must, sir.”

Werner stared into the young man’s eyes with a fierce intensity.  His words came slow and measured. “You are willing to be locked away before you’ll tell me what I want to know?”

“Yes sir, I am,” Hans replied with a heavy, defiant tone.

Suddenly Commandant Martin Werner laughed boisterously and clutched Han’s face within his hands exclaiming, “You are perfect!  Perfect!  Exactly what I wanted!  Sit down, sit down!”

The young officer was hesitant and felt the fear slowly subsiding but the overwhelming confusion remained.  He settled onto his chair and watched his visitor retrieve the chair from across the room but remained standing.

  “Honor,” said the older man, “it’s a disappearing quality these days, someone who would suffer the consequences but never violate their word.  In this day and age when everyone is busy betraying everyone else, you are a treasure!  And what’s more, you haven’t even asked why you don’t have an apartment at the other end of the building with the other officers!”

Werner had a way of keeping a listener off guard by continually changing the subject without warning.  “So tell me did you ever do any accounting for a business that was going bankrupt?  Just answer yes or no without the boring sir or mentioning my rank, please,” continued the Commandant.

     “Yes.”

     “What were the things you needed to do?  If a company was going bankrupt, what steps did you take?”

     Hans thought for a moment.  “It depends.  If the owners wanted to sell out before closing completely, I made the accounting as attractive as possible.  If they wanted to close, I tried to reduce the inventory and increase the debts to justify everything.”

Commandant Werner nodded his approval.  “Excellent,” he agreed and carefully examined the young man before him as he drew heavily and long from the cigarette.  “My father is a judge,” he said suddenly, “in Braunschweig.  I have a feeling he’s dead just like my beautiful city is dead.  Do you know Braunscheig?

“No sir, I never visited there.”

The Commandant sighed deeply as if enjoying the memory.  “It has a wall surrounding it like any respectable Medieval city.  Those interested in history say it was constructed in the ninth century.  We have a great palace where the Duke of Braunscheig lives.  As a child I thought I lived in the most beautiful place in the world. From what I have been able to learn, Braunscheig is now in rubble.  The building where my father had his court is gone.  The house where I was born and grew up is a smoldering heap of ashes.  My mother died long ago and even her grave is now a crater left from a British bomb.”

The man forced a thin smile and lifted his hands in a gesture of despair.  “Such is war, right?  But my father was a wise man just as judges are supposed to be.  He taught me never to lie but if there was an irresistible need to do so, never lie to your lawyer or your accountant.”

Kappel smiled with appreciation and it was obvious that he was captivated by the narration of his superior officer.

“And you must not lie to me,” he continued.  “Do you understand?”

“Certainly,” replied Kappel.

“So tell me, Leutnant Hans Kappel, if I tell you a secret that darkens my soul, will it be kept as sacred as the one you hold for Rottenfuher Bauer?”

Hans nodded slowly, “Of course,” he replied.

“Good!” exclaimed the man, “because I don’t want to lie to my accountant.  But if my accountant betrays me, can you imagine what would happen?”

Hans smiled nervously.  “You would probably have me shot.”

“No,” countered Werner, “I would not have you shot.  I would do it myself.”  With the comment the man walked to the window to look down to the lines now moving slowly as each prisoner was registered at the tables. 

“When I entered the Gestapo,” he began, “this camp detained Socialists and Communists.  That didn’t seem so bad.  We had heard much about how they destroyed the economy in the days when there was much hunger and no jobs.  Then people who weren’t confident about us winning the war were arrested.   Expressing a doubt was a danger to the national morale, we were told.  That didn’t seem so bad either, except I had some problems trying to see pessimism as a crime.  And then it came to this; all that down there.”   He turned away as if pained by the sight returned to the table where he sagged wearily onto a chair and crossed his legs.

“Today it’s those people down there trying to survive.  Soon it will be us.  The Americans are in Rome and they have taken part of France.  The Russians are moving down on us like a pack of wolves.  They want revenge for what we did at Kharkov.  Surely an accountant can calculate the odds of us winning this war.”

“No sir,” said Hans nervously.  “I’m afraid I can’t.”

Commandant Werner smiled wryly. “This is the situation, Hans Kappel.  One day in the not too distant future American or Russian tanks are going to break down that gate.  They’ll break down the gates of all the camps like this one.  They’ll see everything that has been done and they’ll want to know who was in charge.  I won’t be here then.  I will be leaving in a few months and when the battles come closer to here, I suggest you do the same.  But before all that happens, we have much to do, you and me.”

Kappel wore a face of fierce compliance.  “Whatever is needed, sir,” he answered proudly.

“I don’t want that stiff, honor-or-death military mentality, either,” said Werner sternly.  “Yes, we’re talking about life and death but it’s yours and mine.  We must speak from our hearts and good, honest logic, not the mimicry of Himmler’s drum beating.  Can you do that?”

“Yes sir,” replied Hans.

Werner turned his back to his accountant and paced about the room as if calculating the words to follow.

“We are not talking the language of traitors, Hans.  And I will call you Hans in private.”

“Yes sir.”

“We are not conspiring to betray our country.  We will be insuring that we are not the ones held responsible for the thousands who entered those gates and will not walk out of here.  When this camp is taken by the enemy, can you imagine their reactions?”

Hans frowned and shook his head.  “No.  No, I can’t.”

“The British and Americans are purists.  There is right and wrong and nothing done for the dreams of madmen.  When what was done here is discovered, someone will be called on to pay the penalty.  Our job is to make sure it’s not you and me.”

 Hans was astonished at all he had heard.  “You’re speaking as if we’re going to lose,” he opined.

“Good Lord man, are you blind or just hopelessly naive?  You’re listening to Reich Broadcasting I suppose, right?  All is going well and the Faderland is moving forward and soon the b*****d invaders will be going home defeated!  All the while they are bombing our cities into scrap heaps and pushing us back on all fronts.  Am I speaking like we will lose, Leutnant Kappel?  No, I am certain we have already lost.”

Hans Kappel shook his head with confusion.  “I’m not doubting you, sir, but may I ask how you know?”

“I would need to confess to another of my crimes, Hans,” said the Commandant.  “Do I dare?”

Hans tightened his face into a stony resolve.  “I have given my word, Commandant.”

“So you have,” said the older man.  “My sister questioned the news coming out of Berlin.  ‘Propaganda is more devastating than any cannon,’ that’s what she told me.  So I bought her a radio; a cheap Volksempfänger, one of those produced by the government.  And on the knob was a tag.  It read, ‘Think about this: listening to foreign broadcasts is a crime against the national security of our people. It is a Führer order punishable by prison and hard labor.’  But my sister is a stubborn woman and hard to frighten.  She listened to the BBC and when it told of the bombing of the cities, she heard from friends and family that had lost everything.  It was true.  Our cities had been bombed just as the BBC had said.  It was not difficult to learn who was telling the truth."

Hans darted his eyes around the room as if seeking a solution in a corner.  “What can we do?” he asked anxiously.

Commandant Werner fixed an icy stare upon the young man.  “There comes that moment when you know you cannot save your nation.  That is when it becomes prudent to save yourself.  Don’t you agree?”

Hans nodded slowly.  “Yes, but where can we go?”

“Nowhere,” said Werner.  “We will hide ourselves on paper.”

“On paper?”

Werner threw his leg over the chair and settled across from the young accountant, leaning forward to give his words emphasis. 

“You will keep special books here.  We have four other accountants here who have orders to destroy all records if it becomes necessary.  But. . . .”

Werner’s comments were interrupted by a knocking at the door and he placed a finger to his lips and went to open it.

“Ah, the coffee!” he announced and pointed for the guard to place it on the table.  “Get some cups and milk if you have any,” he called to Hans.

He watched with intense interest as the guard saluted and exited, gently closing the door behind him.  Werner moved quickly to the window and waited until he could see the man leaving the building.  He returned to the table where Hans had already placed cups, spoons and a container of milk.  They filled their cups and Werner lit another cigarette before speaking with a lowered voice.

   “You will keep special books here.  Yours will show a lower population, less deaths, better food and care and that the crematorium was never used.  Yours will be the records that will be found and my name will be there as one of the Commandants of Dachau but it will be for a short time and I will have much less, or no responsibility for everything that has happened here. 

“It’s a plan against every order we’ve had here, and they would probably have me shot if they knew what I was saying.  They executed the Commandant of the camp at Buchenwald so I see no reason why I would be different.  Or you can work with me and we can walk out of this place with very little on our conscience and a much longer future.”

 Werner sipped of the coffee and searched for a signal from the young man’s expressions. “I will give you every latitude.  Whatever you need I will see to it that you get it.  You will work here in private.  I will have couriers bring you the daily population reports.  You can eat with the men or have meals brought here, whichever you want.  Or you can take one of the Jew women down there and have her clean this place and cook for you.  Bed her if you want to.”

Han’s mouth was agape with bewilderment.  “Bed her? In this camp with the Rassenchande?” he gasped.

“The Rassenchande?” the Commandant chuckled, “what a stupid law that is!  A German should not crawl between the legs of a Jew woman?  They are women, Leutnant and they are made the same as any other!  If we could turn the calendar back twelve years, you might marry one of them.”

“But people are being charged with having relations with Jews, sir,” said Hans.

“And marched through the streets with signs around their neck telling what they’ve done.  Oh yes, a couple of men were hanged, I remember that.  But no one is paying much attention about such things now, I’m afraid.  They’re more concerned with their lives than their sex lives.”

Hans flashed a smile and added, “So it’s common here for one to have a Jew woman in their apartment?”

Werner shrugged slightly and lifted his eyebrows with question.  “You are new, aren’t you?  The first women arrived on this morning’s train.  We’ve never had women prisoners here before.  And will the guards make the most out of having women in the camp?  I’ve already received orders from Reichfuhrer Himmler to set up a brothel here and to select women from the trains once we’ve finished building it.”

Hans did not speak but his expression betrayed his astonishment.

“They already have brothels at Auschwitz, Monowitz, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen . . .” added Werner as an answer to his expression, “so the Rassenchande really won’t apply, will it?  It only shows how confused everything has become.  Don’t have sex with a Jewess but open a brothel, no?”

Hans blinked several times as he always did when some thought was not being accepted by his brain.  “I suppose not,” he lied.  “But I’m really very confused,” Hans confessed. “You asked me to be honest, sir.”

Werner nodded as he blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.  “Do,” he responded, “what is it?”

“Forgive me sir,” he began, “I can’t help but think that all this is some kind of a test.  Maybe it’s to see if my loyalties are really to the Fuhrer.  I’ve never seen an officer of your rank speak so openly about things so sensitive and dangerous. It makes me want to be careful of what I say and do.  I don’t know how to answer your questions without putting myself at risk.”

Werner smiled widely with appreciation.  “That is honesty!  It’s also very good thinking.  I salute you!  You don’t trust me and God knows you shouldn’t.  But I’ve arranged for you to have this apartment far from everyone else so that we could communicate without the whole world knowing.  You will learn to trust me and then we’ll need to get to work.  We can’t really predict how much time we have.”

“But there’s more, sir,” Hans interjected suddenly. “Also, you speak of the things that have happened in the camp; about deaths and poor food and things that would make us fear the Americans or Russians and I really don’t know what that’s all about.  I’m certainly in favor of protecting ourselves if there’s a need to, but I don’t know anything about the need.  I saw those people getting off the train and yes, some were in bad condition but you didn’t send them here. You didn’t put them on the train.  I don’t understand how anyone could hold you responsible for that.”

Werner’s mouth was agape and his eyes widened with astonishment.  “Good Lord, you don’t know, do you?”

The young man’s face was masked in doubt.  “I don’t know what, sir?”

The older man sighed deeply; a sound of resignation.  “In the morning I will send a man here to take you on a tour of this place.  I want you to see everything, the Political Records Office and the Camp Identification Department.  You need to visit the Camp Interrogation Department and we even have an Escape Department.  I want you to see our hospital and laboratories.  Someone at each place will explain what they do and then I want you to see what happens to a prisoner once they step down from the train.  You’ll need to see the dormitories and learn about the work details.  Some workers get to the point they are no longer of use.  They get ill or injured or just too weak to do their part.  I want you to see what happens to them.  Once you have done all that, we’ll talk again.”

Hans listened carefully and thought it was odd that he should agree with the order.  He recognized that he would need to know what he was being asked to do and strangely appreciated the opportunity to know more about his new assignment.

“Yes sir,” was all he replied.

 “I saw your eyes down there when they were forming the lines.  You’re not very good and concealing what’s inside.  You don’t need to confess to me but you do need to keep that feeling alive.  Don’t let this place suck the empathy out of you.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Kappel timidly.  

“I will send you new insignias,” added Werner.  “You will be a Sturmhauptfuhrer.  You must have a rank high enough to do what must be done.  Also, I want you to be in charge of the reception process when the trains come.”

     Hans shook his head with confusion, “But to move from a Untersturmfuhrer, sir.  That’s unheard of, no one jumps three ranks in one promotion!”

“Everyone’s too busy with other things to notice such a small matter,” advised Werner.  “No one here knows you yet so they won’t be suspicious.”

The following day was Friday and Hans was prepared and almost anxious as he waited.  He had gone to bed late the night before because he had been removing his old insignias and sewing on the new ones that Commandant Werner had sent.  He wore his new rank and could not deny that he enjoyed it.  He was no longer a junior officer and would need to adjust to his new authority.  His late retreat to his bed had also because he polished his boots to imitate the Commandant’s.

When the knock came to the door a portly Sergeant saluted sharply and introduced himself.  With a few questions, Hans learned that the man had served at Dachau for seven years and was probably the most knowledgeable about its procedures and history. The Commandant had obviously given an agenda of their tour since they visited first the offices where an energetic activity was everywhere and those in charge politely introduced themselves. 

Two things were very apparent to Hans.  All the offices were a great distance from his apartment where he would be working and no one had asked him what his assignment would be at the camp.  He thought that if a stranger had been presented to him, he would be curious about their post.

“No one asked me about what I’ll be doing here,” he told the Sergeant.  “Is that normal?”

“The Commandant ordered that only you would have questions and none were to be asked of you,” advised the Sergeant.

  Hans gained a new respect for his superior.  The order had a glaring touch of wisdom, protecting him from the probing interests of others before he was prepared to give the best answers. 

  Following the examination of the administration of the camp and all its related departments, the Sergeant led Hans through the spaces between the network of barracks and it started to lightly rain. 

The barrack was a long, gaunt structure painfully basic in its conception.  He examined the sleeping arrangement of the prisoners with a sense of shock he did not dare reveal to the Sergeant.  The prisoners slept on hard boards in tiered bunks and the doors had been left open to release the stench from the building.

“It’s one of the ways we can see when a man’s getting too weak,” the Sergeant was saying before Hans realized that he was so engrossed in his surroundings that he hadn’t been listening.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“The prisoners, sir.  For example, if we have a man on the top level who changes places with someone on the second level, we know it’s because he can’t make the climb.  He’s getting weak.  The weakest are usually on the bottom.”

Hans nodded that he understood when he heard the Sergeant chuckling lightly.

“Excuse me, sir,” the man said with a face marked with embarrassment, “but a few months ago we had a Sergeant who helped in making the selections, you know?  So one day he was just feeling lazy and went to one of the barracks and decided to send everyone sleeping on the lowest level to Barrack X.  Well sir, it was true most of them were too weak to be of much use but there was this one man who slept on the lowest level because he was the strongest of them all and wasn’t going to let anyone take his place!  There wasn’t anyone crying over him, I can tell you!”

Hans was openly disinterested.  He could find no cause for mirth in all that surrounded him.

“What do they eat?” he asked abruptly.

The Sergeant sensed that he had been rebuked and became somber and efficient.

“Coffee sir, or tea in the morning.  We give them some bread with it.  There’s cabbage or turnip soup at midday and more bread and coffee at night.  The ones working in the kitchen or hospital eat better, of course.”  The man pointed toward the bunks, adding, “There are two dormitory rooms in each section of the barrack.  Each has fifteen beds with three levels for a total of 45 sleeping areas but that was years ago.  Now we’re at double capacity.”

Hans moved his eyes over the interior of the structure and asked, “You have three hundred and sixty men in this area?” he asked.

“Yes sir,” the Sergeant said and Hans sensed the answer had come with a hint of pride.

“How long do they survive?” he inquired.  “With these conditions, how long do they last?”

The Sergeant lifted his hands in a gesture of uncertainty.  “Some last a long time, sir.  Others not so long.  It’s hard to tell.  Some can’t endure it at all and they run out there and jump on the electric fence.” 

Hans entered the room extending from the barrack where a row of toilets were located.  Circular wash stands centered the room and he thought it was more accommodating than he had expected.

“Soap?” he questioned.

“No sir, none,” the man answered.  “But from what the train guards tell me, this is much better than what they have at Auschwitz-Birkenau.”

“Yes,” said Hans, “so tell me about this Barrack X.”

It did not appear as a barrack at all and Hans thought it would have made a marvelous stable.  Sloped roof and formed of red brick, a stately chimney rose from its back side as if crowning an expansive fireplace within. 

To approach, they had walked over the foot bridge where the Wurm River rushed noisily beneath them.  In spite of the misty rain, a single bird protested from a tree and the scene appeared impressively tranquil.  A row of tall poplar trees kept the building from sight but when it came into view, it did not appear oppressive at all.

Entering the building, two prisoners in striped uniforms snapped to attention.  The Sergeant gruffly ordered them back to work and took Hans to an open area where several doors could be seen and spoke as if narrating a tourist’s visit.

“They go in here first,” he began, “to undress and wait.  Their clothes then go to this room,” he continued, opening a door to a moderate sized room void of furniture.  “All the clothes are deloused here.  Remember most of them come here directly from the trains and never get uniforms but after four, five days standing in the train car with no toilets, you can see why we need to disinfect everything.  The pants and underwear are usually filled with piss and s**t; excuse my language, sir.

“Then they get a bar of soap and go in here,” he explained and opened the door to another room empty and giving a hollow sound to his voice. Above the door was painted, ‘Brausbad’ that would inform the prisoners that they were going to take a shower.  Hans could imagine how marvelous it must sound to prisoners to wash away the filth of the long, humiliating journey.

“When they’re inside, the door’s closed,” the Sergeant dramatized his narration by closing the door and snapping the lock shut.  “Then an ambulance comes up the road behind us and they drop in the ZB.  That’s what we call the Zyklon B.”

Hans had decided at this point not to ask more questions.  He didn’t want to appear completely uninformed to the Sergeant as he truly was and yet, he recalled from his days in procurement seeing Zyklon B listed on requisitions.  It has been identified as a gas and the realization then came upon him as a numbing awareness.

“The inmates assigned to this building then empty the room and put the bodies in here,” the Sergeant explained as he pulled open the next door and Hans felt the impulse to put his hand over his mouth with a bolt of horror.  He struggled to maintain his pose as a calloused officer of the SS and yet the scene defied his every sensibility.

Bodies were stacked in layers, legs and arms limply poised as if in some ghastly montage.  Mouths were open in the final gasp for air and eyes were fixed on their final sight of tiled room where the hope of a shower was known.

Hans was startled as the Sergeant slammed the metal door closed and walked with resounding steps over the concrete floor.  A few paces more and the prisoners were again rigid at attention.  Before them were the gaping openings of five ovens surrounded with walls of fire bricks. 

“They pull the bodies out of the room with long thongs,” explained the Sergeant as he motioned to one of the prisoners to show the thongs to Hans, “and they lift them on the trays that slide into the ovens.  After that they open those lower doors and shovel out the ashes.”

“Fine,” snapped Hans, wanting to exit the building as soon as possible,  “The rain seems to be picking up.”  

As they walked back toward the main buildings, the Sergeant continued his commentaries.

“The one in charge of the ovens is a Czech.  He thinks he’s clever but I know he’s got gold hidden somewhere around the building.  He’s always sifting through the ashes because some of the men coming on the trains hide rings and other things up their a*s.  I guess they have dreams about escape and think they’ll sell them.”

“Probably,” responded Hans, now reducing his comments to single words to conceal his mounting repugnance.

Nearing the barracks, groups of men from the morning’s train marched by them to the vicious shouts of the guards.  Their faces were worn and marked with hopelessness without experiencing what was yet before them.  For a reason he did not know, Hans heard the halt command and paused to see what would follow. 

“You can go back to your duties, Sergeant,” he said stiffly and the man replied “yes sir” and gave a salute before jogging away in the dull drizzle of the morning.

The prisoners had been told to disrobe and they stood there with their bodies bright with moisture.  An inmate moved among them, his arms laden with striped uniforms that the men tried to pull over their stiff, unwilling legs.  Each movement was urged by the threats and prods of the guards.

At last, the men were herded into the barrack and the door closed.  As the guards walked away, they spied him watching and paused to offer their salute.

The rest of the day and the day that followed, Hans was in his apartment.  No train arrived, the Commandant did not return and he had no assignment.  Surprisingly, it was past eleven on the night of the second day that the camp commander appeared at his door.  He carried a bottle of wine and Hans automatically brought a glass to the table.

“Two,” said Werner, “I never drink alone.”

Werner had loosened the cork before arriving and poured the wine, pushing one glass toward Hans.  It seemed uncomfortable to have his superior officer serve him but he accepted it with a comment of gratitude.

“To the end,” said Werner, lifting his glass as a toast.

Hans returned to gesture asking, “The end of what, sir?”

“Maybe this,” said the Commandant with a wave of his hand over the scene, “or maybe the end of everything.  I’d welcome either one.”

They sipped of the wine and shared a long moment of awkward silence before Werner added, “Do you know what children are saying as a prayer at bedtime?  Dear God, make me mute so I don’t get sent to Dachau.  Everyone’s so afraid of saying the wrong thing or being overheard and misunderstood.  Dachau is another word for hell and it’s feared even more.”

Hans had no response.  There was nothing to be said.  He detected the pain in Werner’s voice and knew there was more to come.

     “So,” said the Commandant, “were you sufficiently stunned by our efficiency and ability to make life so meaningless?”

Hans felt more secure now.  He was no longer the meek young man unaware of his surroundings or his place within them.

“I think appalled would be a better word,” he replied.

Werner lifted his glass again in recognition of the accountant’s new sense of awareness.

“Ah, now we are a kindred soul, right?  We look at the victims and know all the while that we are equally condemned.  But in the end we’re forced to admit that we do not run a hostel here, my young friend.  We are in the business to experiment and exterminate.  Our doctors in the laboratory tell us that one Jew dying in a test can save tens of thousands of men in the battlefield.  Berlin tells us that every Jew dying behind our fences brings us one step closer to a pure Aryan race.  We are doing such noble work we should be proud.  Don’t you feel proud, my young accountant?”

Hans fixed a stern gaze on the man’s face.  “If the enemy tanks broke down the gates today and put me to the wall to be shot, after what I’ve seen, I know I would deserve it.”

Werner reached forth in an unexpected move and grasped Han’s shoulder.  “As far as our enemies will know, the gas chamber and ovens were never used.  On paper people will die from diseases and not a shot into the nape of the neck.  We have trenches filled with corpses and they will never have names because it all happened with the earlier Commandants in a time before records were kept.  The official records of Dachau will be created in this room by you and if we are ever taken to trial, there will be no evidence against us.

“As I said, when trains arrive, I want you to manage the registrations.  Those records will come directly here. You can’t interfere with the doctors, Hans.  They’re not to be trusted.  They’ll report you as a sympathizer and there’ll be consequences.  Let them take the old and lame away to be shot.  God knows they’ll die easier than the rest will live.”

Hans nodded his agreement.  “It has to be planned well,” he observed.

Werner shifted his weight in the chair across from Hans and leaned on his elbows.  “Listen to me,” he commanded, “as the front gets closer to us, more and more Jews are being transported out of the camps near to the front.  They’re coming to places like this.  The extermination process is beyond your imagination.  All the central camps are overcrowded and more are on their way.  We can’t hide the fact that those people are dying.  They’ll send more and more prisoners but not enough food or supplies and in a couple of months those people down there will be like skeletons.  If there was something I could do about it, believe me I would.  But as things deteriorate, so do our leaders and the goal is to eliminate as many Jews as possible.”

Hans leaned far back in his chair with a deep sigh of resignation.  “We knew nothing of this,” he said solemnly, “even in the office where I was assigned.  I was in the National Material Controls Office with all the materials from every government expense and still we didn’t know.  I’m sure no one in my family knows.  Oh, of course everyone knew the Jews were being relocated but gassing them and crematoriums, no, no one knows of that.”

“They will,” answered the Commandant, “and then everyone will pay the consequences whether they knew or not.  So what is our goal, Hans?  To survive.  You and me.  To arrange the records so that none of the blame comes to our doorstep.  In a place like this survival is the only rule.  Those people down there, even if they lose their parents, spouse, children, they will celebrate if they one day walk out of here.  In the end, it’s everyone for themselves.”                        As they spoke a solitary scream came across the scene below and filtered into the room.  Soon many others followed and an anguished clamor was frightfully clear.  The Commandant stood and moved to the window where he pulled back the curtain.  He watched in silence for a long moment and returned to the table.

“They do that sometimes,” he said solemnly, “especially when they first get here.  Some break and run out of the barracks as if there was somewhere to go.  “It was a woman.  Now we have women guards so I don’t think she’ll be shot.” 

“I hope not,” said Hans.

“You will need more furniture,” Werner observed with another glance about the apartment.  “This is a bit too austere for my tastes.  I’ll have some sent tomorrow.”

“Thank you, sir,” offered Hans.

The Commandant held the glass of wine against the light and inspected it carefully. 

“It will not be easy to make the best out of the worst of us, Hans,” he advised.  “You called this a challenge but what you witness here will go down in history as did the Black Hole of Calcutta and the crucifixions of Rome.  We are not made like the others, my friend.  The officers get together each night and drink wine and play cards.  They see no association to the brutality and suffering around them and their own existence.  Are we weaker than them or stronger?  I’m not quite sure.  I only know I want to wake up and walk with my father to his court.  My mind keeps telling me this is too monstrous to be real.

“Everywhere I turn I am met with conflict.  Am I a humanist or a traitor?  Am I compassionate or a coward?  Should I keep meeting trains or put my pistol to my head?  I will need some distraction to survive, Hans, and I suspect you will, too.  This will be an enormous undertaking and I want to do it as your fellow survivor, not as your commanding officer.”

Hans would later remember that as the moment he first  trusted Martin Werner as a man sharing his frustration and guilt.  He reached forth to grasp the man’s hand and they made the commitment to simply survive.

In the apartment he started to form the accounting programs that would serve the goals shared with the  Commandant.  It was easy to conclude that a prisoner who died could be simply removed from the records as if he had never existed; had never arrived at Dachau.  Surely there would be other records to show that the man had been placed in a boxcar bound for the camp but Hans knew there was nothing he could do about that.  A hundred things could have happened.  The man could have died in the boxcar and his body discarded beside the railroad tracks.  He might have escaped or was killed by a guard.  The fact that so many would appear on the departure records and so few on the arrivals posed a problem but it was one other people would need to solve.

Another problem would be that the Red Cross had made visits to the camp and their records would also oppose some of those he was creating.  Usually, however, the camp commanders permitted the Red Cross inspectors to see only the most positive parts of the camp so perhaps there would be no significant conflict after all.  When he mentioned this point to Werner, the Commandant later sent a packet to him with a note, “Maybe this will help �" or maybe not.”

It was August of 1944 and the packet contained a report from exactly six years earlier, August 1938.  J. C. Favez, the Swiss Divisional Commander of the International Red Cross had visited the camp. 

"There are over 6,000 prisoners in the camp,” the report stated.  “ . . . well illuminated and well-ventilated barracks. Every barracks contained a modern and quite clean water closet, in addition to wash basins.

“Work in the summer from 7 to 11 A.M., and from 1 to 6 P.M., in the winter from 8 to 11 A.M. and from 1 to 5 P.M. No work on Saturday afternoon and Sunday.

“Rations: The meals were prepared in roomy, very clean kitchens. It is simple, but different every day of
the week, plentiful and of sufficient quality.

“Every inmate is permitted to receive 15 Marks per week from his relatives, to improve his care.

“The tone of the officers is correct. The inmates are
permitted to write to their families, and are permitted to send, of course alternatively, one letter and one card per week.

“The discipline is however very strict. The guards and soldiers do not hesitate to use their weapons in the event of attempted escape.

“Solitary confinement takes place in roomy, well illuminated cells.

“The bastinade can also be inflicted as an extraordinary punishment. This punishment is supposed to be used in the most extremely unusual cases only.  It is apparently quite painful and is much feared.

“When a soldier-guard strikes an inmate, he is severely punished, and expelled from the SS.  The treatment of the prisoners is of course very strict, but cannot not be
characterized as inhumane.

“The sick in particular are treated with kindness, understanding, and proper professionalism."

He could only shake his head with disbelief while reading the report.  He could only imagine how the camp commandant had manipulated the inspection.  He lifted his eyes to the books on shelves beside his desk and finally located a dictionary.  The bastinade was exactly what he suspected, a beating with a rod, especially on the soles of the feet.

Certainly the report, regardless of its age, should be included in the records that would be found if ever the camp was surrendered to foreigners.  It would be solid evidence that prisoners once received decent treatment and care.  It would not, however, explain much if bodies were found in Barrack X.  Every idea he had to make a positive presentation within the surviving reports was countered with an undeniable negative. The more he analyzed the methods he might use to reach the Commandant’s goal, the more he realized how impossible it was.  It was then that the idea came to him that brought a broad smile and he quickly sent a note to Commandant Werner asking for a meeting.

     It was night when he heard footsteps on the stairs and he opened the door and gave his greeting. 

     “Did you get the furniture?” asked the Commandant as his hello.

     “Yes, thank you,” said Hans.

     “Good.  Do you have any beer?”

     Hans shook his head with a heavy sigh.  “No, I’m afraid not.”

     “Wine?  Wine would do.”

     “No sir, I have only water.”

Werner wrinkled his nose with repugnance.  “Never mind but I must send you some wine; if only for my visits.”

“Yes sir.”

The Commandant settled back in his chair and crossed his legs, his boots glistening against the light.  “In private, let’s not use all the sirs.  So, what have you to tell me?”

Hans responded eagerly, almost with excitement.  “I was looking at these transport forms, the ones listing the names of the arriving prisoners.  Look here, in the corner of the page is a number.”

“Of course,” said Werner with a frown.  “The numbers are the sequence of the trains coming here.  Surely you know that.”

“Yes,” agreed Hans, “but it’s these numbers that will save us.  All I need is to know the first numbers from the time Dachau opened until now and some blank forms with the same numbers on them.”

Werner deepened his frown.  “I don’t understand,” he confessed.

Hans sat at the table and thumbed quickly through other forms until retrieving one and showing it to the Commandant.

“Prisoner status forms are made daily.  Each one has a number.  I’ll need these forms, too, starting with the number of the first report back when this place opened.

“Don’t you see?” asked Hans, leaning closer to the man and putting an emphasis on his words.  “I will remake all the records.  People arriving last week arrived last year before you were assigned here.  People who died yesterday died a year ago, all on paper.  Everything will match as far as numbers go, but the dates will be altered to show that the worst things that happened here happened long before your time.”

Werner’s eyes brightened with recognition.  “And all you need are forms,” said the Commandant absently.  “What a simple solution, Hans.  And when they find the records, I doubt that they will confirm the information with the prisoners.  As far as they will know, they confiscated the official documents of Dachau.  But there will be ten years of records, Hans, thousands of names and dates.  That’s an tremendous task.”

“I can do it,” Hans replied firmly.

“I’ll go personally to Munich and have the forms done by a private printer,” Werner told him. “I’m certain I can have them to you within forty-eight hours.”  

Hans nodded his approval, adding, “I will need the 1933 and 1934 records first.  The first year will stay the same as it is except I can add some of the arrivals from the following year, just to make space for some of the 1935 prisoners to be moved up to 1934.  I’ll do that year after year until we can have entire years moved forward one or two years.”

Werner suddenly slapped his leg with delight.  “It’s all perfect.  In the end, you will have all the records here and can destroy all the originals if the Americans or Russians reach the camp.  We won’t have to depend on the accountants at the other end of the building.  We’ll have complete control of all the information.  Hans, you’re a genius!”

In the days that followed, SS guards and Jew workers delivered filing cabinets filled with documents to the apartment.  Hans marveled at the precision demanded by the SS as they used the national census to identify and separate citizens into categories depending on their percentage of Jewish blood.  If three or four of a person’s grandparents were Jewish, the person was automatically classified as a Jew.  Even if the person was protestant or Catholic, they were nonetheless considered to be a Jew.

If a citizen had two Jewish grandparents, they were a Misching or a halfbreed of the first grade.  If only one grandparent was Jewish, the person was a Mischling Second Class.  Anyone not having any Jewish grandparents was known as “German blooded.” 

A person attending a synagogue was also considered a Jew by the SS even if they had pure German blood.   A person married to a Jew was considered to be a Jew.

It seemed so systematic and basic to Hans, and yet somehow horribly unfair.  The person that married a Jew could hardly know they would be considered a Jew years later.  Perhaps they never shared the religious or communal concepts but loved them as a person.  But even if they had shared such viewpoints, to his mind, the selection of what a person chose to believe should not become a death sentence.  But all such opinions needed to be suppressed and entertained only in thought and feeling, for he also lived under the threat of the regime.

The records from the early days of Dachau were not difficult to transform since there were not the great population as known to the camps in 1944.  Even the 1938 Red Cross inspection had reported only 6,000 inmates. Slave workmen in striped suits brought the files from 1935 and 1936 and Hans found that he could review and rearrange their dates easily and quickly.  As he scrutinized all the records and continued to explore the camp, he came upon a new problem.

“I can alter the dates as I told you,” he explained to Commandant Werner, “but we are going to have a bigger problem.”

Werner nodded sharply saying only, “Go ahead.”

“When I visited the hospital,” said Hans, “and the laboratory as well, one of the assistants there explained to me the experiments going on.  We can move the dates around and make it appear that whatever abuses happened here was long before our time but the experiments.  I don’t have those records and we can be certain that they’re dated and precise.”

“I will take care of it,” said Werner suddenly.  “Give me a day or two.”

“May I ask how?” Hans started only to be inter-rupted.

“We have some of Europe’s worst criminals here.  I need to find a forger.”

Three days later the Commandant brought memos and letters to be stored with the false entries of the accountant.  Each contained his protests to the high command about the treatment of the Jews and there were responses chastising him for his compassion to an inferior race.  Each had been expertly forged and Hans could only imagine what favors had been given for such work.  What was evident, however, was that if a conquering army came to the camp, Commandant Martin Werner would not be held responsible for any of the conditions found there.

As new files arrived, each representing months of prisoner records, Hans worked feverishly into the night altering dates of arrival, deaths and transfers.  As the records entered the 1940s, the numbers grew at staggering rates and he felt overwhelmed with the task.  Still, he could not ask for assistance since his work would be forever held as a secret between him and the Commandant.

     On the following morning, the first train arrived that Hans was to supervise the registration process.  Many of the detainees came in open coal cars, exposed to the sun and heat.  They had the most difficulty in disembarking since there was no door and they had to climb over the side of the car.  Some could not do it and burly guards stood on the rungs and pulled them over and dropped them to the earth.

There were more women this time and uniformed matrons watched over them with the same fierce authority as their male counterparts.  They were put into a precisely straight row and some were crying from the pain in their joints.  One girl was rubbing her shoulder when the matron slapped her and ordered her to remain at attention.

Toward the end of the train Hans saw guards hurrying toward a man sitting in the door of a boxcar.  They had shouted to him to get down and get into the line but he hadn’t moved.  As the guards neared, their voices were louder and more menacing.

“Wait!” shouted Hans and as the guards turned with salutes, he told them to return to the others, that he would take care of the situation.

The man gazed at him as he approached and Hans saw no fear in his eyes.  He was tempted to smile as was accustomed with a greeting but he forced his face to freeze into the solid mass of authority.

“Where is this train from?” asked Hans.

“Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Auschwitz . . . .”

Hans leaned past the man to peer inside the car. Instinctively he put his hand over his nose; the stench was unbearable.  Near the opposite door were the twisted bodies of what he believed were seven persons.  Two metal buckets were pushed into the far corner.

“How many people were in here?” he asked.

The man lifted eyes protruding from his gaunt face.  “I heard them say one hundred twelve,” he answered.

Covering his mouth and nose again, Hans took another survey of the interior of the car.  “That can’t be right. How could that many fit in here?” he inquired.

Painfully, the man leaned against the opened door and his voice came with an almost melancholy tone.  “We enter and when they want more to get in, we are told to raise our hands in the air.  Without our arms at our sides there is more room.  Finally, we are pressed together and can’t lower our arms and we rest on each other.  Some die and they can’t fall.  Many of the bodies were taken out at the last stop.  Your heart turns very cold and you are happy that some have died so that you have more room.”

Hans had permitted his face to soften.  He no longer cared if he appeared sympathetic.  No one else was near.

“How long were you in here?” he asked.

“Three, four days,” the man replied.

Hans nodded.  “So why didn’t you get down when the guards ordered you to?”

The gaunt figure of a man moved his eyes over the German officer before him.  “My legs won’t move.  I can’t make them move.  This is not my first time on the camp trains.  It’s my last.”

“If you don’t move, you know what will happen,” warned Hans.

Surprisingly, the man gave a faint, crooked smile.  “I know,” he said.  “They sent me here to die.  I think I will accommodate them.”

Hans took a step back and wanted to salute.  Courage and defiance are good bedfellows and should be recognized.  But all he did was nod knowingly and walk away.

He moved back toward the registration tables and realized that all was ready, they were only waiting for him to give his approval.  With his nod the prisoners were moved forward to give their name and other required data.

His heart was not in the business at hand.  The elderly, sick and lame were taken into a separate line and marched into the dense forests and Martin Werner had told him that on a clear day with the wind coming in the right direction, one could hear the distant sound of the machine guns.

Unlike his first train, these prisoners arrived with men in their striped pants and shirt, the women in the dull grey formless smock.  Each had an identification number printed on their clothing and an inverted triangle that told of the reason for their arrest.  He could see six green triangles from where he stood and knew that they were criminals serving a sentence.  A few red triangles identified political prisoners and though he could not see any at that moment, he knew a pink triangle marked a homosexual.  Gypsies wore a black triangle as did Jehovah’s Witnesses and nonconformists.  Jews were identified by two yellow triangles placed to form the Star of David.

As he watched the guards take their census, determining who had not survived the journey and listing those that remained, his eyes bolted toward the bark of a pistol.  He saw a guard returning from the distant boxcar and knew what had passed.

Frowning toward the sight, he was bewildered that none of the prisoners had been startled by the sound; none turned to see what had happened.  He wondered what they had endured to make them so calloused and indifferent.  They were so unlike the people that had arrived on his first train.  The others had been taken from their homes and brought directly to the camp, these had the camp experience at other locations and came to Dachau only expecting the worse.

When the line containing the younger, stronger men was ordered to move forward, he followed them out of curiosity.  They entered a stone building where the guards told them to undress and hang their old uniforms on pegs driven into the walls.  They passed before other prisoners having sharp razors and shears to remove all their body hair.  A guard passed by and they obediently held forth their arms to display the tattoo with their identification number.  Once all had been completed, they were sprayed with disinfectant and marched under sprays of water.  Emerging from that, they were given a striped jacket, striped pants, wooden shoes and a striped cap to wear at Dachau.  They were then  marched away and Hans felt he had seen enough and did not follow.

Stepping from the building, he saw the matrons lining up the women prisoners and waited for them to march by.  The women wore scarfs over their heads, their hair cut by orders of Berlin.  When Hans later asked about it, Werner sent him a policy order and asked him to file it with the other ‘important papers.’

“SS Obergruppen fuhrer Pohl, Chief of the SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt has ordered that the hair of  concentration camp prisoners is to be put to use,” the document said.  “Hair is to be made into industrial felt or spun into yarn. Woman's hair is to be used in the manufacture of hair-yarn socks for 'U'-boat crews and hair-felt foot-wear for the Reichs-railway.

     “It is therefore ordered that the hair of female prisoners be disinfected and stored. Men's hair can only be put to use if it is longer than 20 mm. SS Obergruppen fuhrer Pohl therefore agrees for an initial trial period to the growing of the prisoners hair to a length of 20 mm before it is cut. Long hair could facilitate escape and to avoid this the camp commandants may have a middle parting shaved in the prisoners' hair as a distinguishing mark, if they think it is necessary.

     “It is planned to planned to set up a hair processing workshop in one of the concentration camps. Further details as to the delivery of the accumulated hair will follow.
The total monthly amount of male and female hair is to be reported to this office on the 5th of every month beginning from September 5, 1942.”

     He watched the women move wearily away and wondered how they had the strength to do all they were asked to do.  The weakening of rations served at the other camps and then the long train ride and now new and different commands.  He thought they were extraordinary.

 

TRAIN 609

 

     He wished the experience of registration when trains arrived would become routine and without emotion but that never happened.  He would wear his mask of disinterest and pretend to be as ruthless as other SS officers but it was done with great torment.  Seeing people stand in line, not knowing they were living their final moments gnawed at him and forced him to constantly look away.

     The people had unloaded from Train 609 with the guards shouting “Out! Out!” while holding back the snarling dogs trained to snip at the heels of stragglers.  As always the lines were formed and the doctors in white lab coats moved among them, separating those unacceptable for work or suited to their experiments.  In the distance a truck with several prisoners was groaning toward the boxcars to remove the dead.

     He usually returned to his labor in the apartment but on that morning noted a Leutnant and Sergeant moving among the line of women, pulling some by the arm into a separate group.  Among them was a young woman capturing Han’s attention. The scarf usually made it more difficult to determine if a woman was attractive but her beauty could not be denied by any attempt to conceal it.  Her face was angelic and even the drab smock could not disguise the rises and hollows of her body.  Her uniform read I18984 and Hans moved to the registration table and took the ledger from the guard’s hands.  His finger moved down the numbers until he encountered the one he had memorized and read, “Rachel Bermann, Jewess, transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau.”

     One of the laboratory workers came with a form for him to sign indicating which prisoners had been selected and for what reasons.  Once done, the form needed to be given to the registration desk and by the time it was finished, Hans turned to see that the group of women had vanished.  Looking about, he saw the Leutnant entering the building where prisoners were given the final processing.

     He started to leave when the guard at the registration table said, “We only have three more, Sturmhauptfuhrer.  If you would care to wait, we could finish everything now without you needing to return and sign the documents, sir.”

He waited impatiently as the final three men were sent into the line of approved workers.  Once done the guard needed to count and record the totals before passing it to Hans for an approval signature and as was now the procedure, the documents would be taken to the apartment to be protected from the other accountants.

His steps were wide and hasty as he moved to the stone building.  Pushing open the door he found the line of women standing naked, their smocks hanging limply from pegs.  The group the Leutnant had selected huddled in a corner as if waiting for all the others to finish. 

Upon seeing his entrance, the Leutnant snapped to attention and joined the Sergeant in presenting a stiff salute.  Hans returned it and gazed about with an expression of concern.

     “Find me,” he ordered, pretending to thumb through the registration forms, “Rachel Bermann.”

“Yes sir,” said the Leutnant giving a nod to the Sergeant to comply and he moved to the center of the room calling the woman’s name loudly.  Slowly, with a peculiar grace Hans found captivating, she stepped forward and the Sergeant led her in front of Hans.  She kept her eyes lowered and her hands at her sides at attention.  Hans observed that even the natural instinct to cover her breasts or pubic area had been lost to the rigid training of the camp.  She finally lifted her eyes and fixed them forward, arms locked over the ribs that pressed against her skin.  He saw that her legs were thin but her hip bones did not protrude as with most of the other women. She was thin, but not emaciated as were the women in the line awaiting to be shaved. 

 “Give her a dress to put on,” Hans ordered.

“Yes sir,” responded the Sergeant and moved away hurriedly.

“What is that group?” he asked of the Leutnant.

The Leutnant glanced toward the women where Rachel had stood.  “The brothel building is has been finished, Sturmhauptfuhrer.  We’re selecting the women.”

As Hans was listening, Rachel received a folded dress and obeyed the Sergeant’s order to pull it over her head.  Once it had covered her frame, she returned to the stiff stance of attention.

“Wait here,” he said and moved toward the line of women standing before the matrons.  Upon seeing his approach, all stood at attention and the matrons saluted.

“Proceed,” he told them and suddenly everything was a blur of activity.  The women stood with fixed expressions, somehow ignoring that they were undressed in the presence of a man.  He watched them moved about as they obeyed the matron’s orders.  They were put under cold showers and then marched into an adjoining room where other women prisoners waited to shave away their hair.  They lifted their arms for hair to be removed and then stood rigidly as the razor moved over their pubic area. They were not given towels and their bodies glistened with beads of water when more prisoners come with mops dipped in a green slime that was moved over their frames.  When one of the women sucked in a breath reacting to the sting of the disinfectant, one of the matrons slapped her viciously and issued a stern warning.

He didn’t know why he wanted to see the humiliation of the process but somehow felt it was to justify his indignation about it all. 

He had not noticed a nurse standing among the matrons who, for some reason he didn’t know, observed the women with an intense interest.  She was plump with flushed cheeks and upon seeing him, left her clip board on a table and approached with a salute.  She wore the uniform of the brown nurses that differed from the Red Cross nurses often found in military hospitals.

“May I be of some assistance, sir?” she asked.

Returning her salute, he kept his eyes on the movement of the women and said, “I’ve never come here before.  I wanted to know the process.”

“Mostly cleaning, sir,” she informed him.  “They come here covered in urine and many have defecated on themselves.  There’s always the problem of lice, of course.  It’s mostly just cleaning them up so they don’t infect the barracks.”

     Exiting from the final room of the process, the women moved before the matrons and stood at attention.  Their skin was pale and their eyes seemed especially large beneath their shaven heads.

“It’s easier with these,” continued the nurse.  “They come from other camps and know what to expect.  The ones coming her for the first time are crying and moaning because we cut their hair.  That’s the last thing a woman wants to happen, sir.  You can do just about anything but when you cut their hair, that’s when they start learning where they are and what they can expect.”

He did not respond.  The woman spoke of the new arrivals as if they were objects and he realized she had been desensitized as much as the prisoners.  He wondered if she was so calloused as a defense mechanism to her secret values or did she really view the women before her as less than human?

“Women need more things than men, don’t they?” he asked. 

The nurse smiled and shrugged.  “Not really, sir” she told him. “If you’re thinking about menstruating, most of them no longer have periods.  We’ve done some studies on that and we think it’s stress and the change in diet or maybe just because it’s discouraged.  We’re hard on women who menstruate and make them clean up after themselves.”

Hans frowned deeply and abruptly turned his attention to the woman.  “How can you discourage something that’s natural to a woman?” he asked.

The woman widened her smile.  “We want them to remember only that they are here to work, sir.  They’re not here to be women except if they get selected like those over there,” she nodded toward the group selected for the brothel. 

“So the more attractive ones go to the brothel,” he surmised.

“Many of your brother officers have women in their homes, sir,” said the nurse.  “The ones selected usually still have good breasts.  These,” she told him, nodding toward the bald, naked women before them, “most of them have lost their breasts.  They have those withered little sacks and are never chosen.”

Hans stood for a moment examining the hollow cheeked faces before him.  Bare, shaven, humiliated past the point of endurance, they stared past him believing that he was as uncaring and brutal as the rest.

“Thank you, nurse,” he said and returned to the trio awaiting him. As he neared Rachel, he pushed the registration documents under his arm and ordered, “Follow me.”

“She hasn’t been cleaned or sanitized, sir,” offered the Leutnant.  “It would just take a minute.”

Hans examined her for a moment and she did not respond but remained statue still her hands at her sides forming tiny fists.  “It will be taken care of,” he said.

Exiting the building, Rachel followed behind, her hands trembling so violently she locked her fingers to control them.  What had she done?  At Auschwitz, when an officer called a person out of the ranks, it almost always meant death.

She followed him through past the large gate where they had entered from the train and waited at attention as he ordered a guard to open another gate.  They were entering the SS camp where living quarters and some administrative offices were located.  They came to a two story stone building where he opened the door.  She followed him up the narrow stairway and waited at attention as he turned a key in the lock.  The entrance opened into a kitchen and she wanted to look about but dared not.  He moved toward another room and when she started to follow as ordered, he told her to stay where she was.  He returned within seconds without the papers he had been holding and said only, “Come.”

She was led into a hall with a door at the end.  He opened it and she could see a bathroom with blue tiled walls.  He pulled back the shower curtain and faced her.

She had a short outcropping of brown hair and Hans told her, “There’s shampoo on the shelf.  “Shower and put that dress back on.”

“Yes sir,” she answered and waited as he exited the room and motioned for her to enter.  She was confused by all that was happening and started to pull off her dress but didn’t know if she should close the bathroom door.  Nothing was to be done without permission and she did not want to be punished.  She lifted the garment over her breasts and heard the door being closed.

One of the rules of the camp was that all orders were to be obeyed with excessive speed so Hans called through the door,  “Don’t hurry.  Take your time and make sure you’re thoroughly clean.”

A faint “Yes sir,” came from within.

He returned to the kitchen and before he could make coffee, he heard whistles blowing below.  He went to the window to watch the roll call; hundreds of women standing in ruler straight lines as it started to rain.  As if planned as an additional exercise in cruelty, the matrons merely stood in small knots gossiping or walked about giving intimidating glares into the faces of the women standing  rigid as statues. 

From his elevated view, he could see women falling.  Most that fell would be dead.  The point of endurance had been passed and they collapsed against others who dared not move from the impact.  These were the strong ones, he knew.  They had survived time at Auschwitz and that was something to state with pride.  The new arrivals at Dachau survived an average of six weeks and the tough ones could last as long as three months.  These women had exceeded that and survived the death train.

Helping the matrons were women given better food and conditions in return for their cooperation and assistance.  They were known in the camp as Kapos and while they, too, were prisoners, the others feared them as much or more than the SS.  He could see Kapos standing in front of the group and while he was certain they were hated by all, he could only imagine what fear or sense of survival led them to accept the role of traitor and Judas goat.  It was these who beat the women for the crime of menstruating and men Kapos sometimes entered the block to commit their rapes.

A half hour had passed and still the women stood in the rain.  What purpose did it have? he wondered.  More had fallen and toward the rear of the ranks where they could not be seen as well, some offered support to others.

He wondered how it would all be viewed in the years after it had all passed into history books.  The survivors, the matrons, the Kapos, the indifferent ones doing nothing to harm or help; how would they explain themselves and their role in the scheme of all this?  Would there be a day when explanations would be needed?  He wondered.

Where did the idea begin that Jews were inferior? He asked himself.  His father was a very wise man and told him that it wasn’t about race at all.  The superior race idea was a hoax stolen from philosophers and schemers.  The truth, his father had said, was that Germany had suffered a long and devastating depression.  Hunger and joblessness was the character of the nation and the While everyone suffered, the Jews continued their comfortable lives as business owners and investors.  By eliminating the Jews, the Reich could confiscate everything they owned and dedicate it all to constructing a new economy and an old corruption. 

His father was probably right, he knew.  After the disaster of World War 1, prices in Germany increased at an alarming rate.  In seven years after the end of the war, an item that cost one Mark in 1914 then cost fifteen Marks.  It was called the Weimar inflation and when it ended in 1925, the Mark was valued at one-trillionth of what it was in 1914.  Somehow, however, the Jews seemed to be able to continue their lifestyle and maintain their exclusive community that appeared to separate itself from others.

It was all academic now, he thought.  It mattered little if the Jews controlled the nation’s economy or not.  Even if they had, he knew, they did not deserve the scene happening below his window.

As he watched, he heard the light knock and the frail voice asking, “May I enter, sir?”

She stepped into the kitchen with the stiff, official form that found her standing at attention as if awaiting inspection.  Indeed, he did inspect her.  She was more lovely than he had imagined.  Her hair was slightly longer than his and being damp, ringlets clung to her cheeks.  The frock fell from her shoulders and he thought there must have been a competition about who could design a more unflattering garment.  It had a collar and buttons moving down the front.  Rachel had a narrow piece of cloth she used as a belt and it helped to accentuate the rise of her breasts.  He moved his eyes over her with awe.

“It must have been nice to take a shower,” he observed.

“Yes sir,” she responded with flat tones, “thank you.”

 “Your underwear,” he said impulsively as the thought occurred to him.  “Are you wearing underwear?”

“Yes sir,” she responded quickly.

“Aren’t they dirty?” he asked.

“I washed them, sir.  I’m sorry sir, I should have asked.” 

He could see the concern on her face.  She had taken an action without consent and it violated the rules she had learned to live by.

He did not excuse her act but continued his questions.  “And are they drying?”

“I’m wearing them, sir,” she answered.

“You’re wearing them wet?”

“Yes sir.”

“Why?” he asked.

“To not offend you, sir, by having them hanging for you to see.”

He shook his head with disbelief and muttered, “Go take them off and hang them to dry.”

“Yes sir,” she replied and moved quickly away.

Within seconds she returned to resume her position of obedience and he moved to the window to see the women still standing in the rain.  It had now been more than an hour.

“Can you make coffee?” he asked.

“Yes sir,” was her reply and he thought even the tone of her voice was special and pleasant to the ear.

“Hunt for the coffee pot and the coffee.  If you find it on your own you’ll remember where it is,” and he pulled a chair from the table, removed his jacket and settled to watch her search with an expression of apprehension.

She opened cabinets and found the tin of coffee first.  Her eyes darted toward him for the first time and it was obvious she was nervous she would take too long and displease him.  When she found the percolator, she quickly filled it with water and soon the scent of the brew was filling the room.

“Two cups,” he told her and again she probed through the cabinets.  “Do you drink coffee, Rachel?”

“Yes sir,” she told him and quickly added, “I used to.”

Placing the cups on the table, she heard him say, “Cream, spoons, saucers,” and the process was repeated until she trembled again when he told her to sit.

“What do you use in your coffee?” he asked.

Her lip quivered as she forced an answer, “Whatever there is, sir.”

“We have cream and sugar,” he told her.  “What would you like?”

At last she lifted her eyes to his and he saw the fear darkening them as she replied, “When I was a child, sir, I liked cream and sugar.”

He said nothing but pushed the container of cream and the sugar bowl across the table to her.  He watched with interest as she poured a small amount of cream and saw her hand shaking violently as she tried to retrieve the sugar.  He reached over the table and took the spoon from her hand and deposited some into her cup.

“One or two?” he asked.

She was near the point of panic and he could hear the quaking of her voice as she replied, “One, thank you, sir.”

It would have to be a game, she knew.  It would be one of the cruel, torturous games the SS loved so much to play.  In the end he would put his Luger to the back of her head and it would be over but why the shower and coffee and the imitation of kindness?  She did not know but was terrified of the answer.

Hans prepared his coffee and sipped lightly before smiling.  “Very good.”

“Thank you, sir,” she replied.

“Drink,” he told her, recognizing her fear of doing anything without permission.  “Tomorrow I will send for more underwear for you.”

“Thank you, sir,” she repeated.

“This is where you will live,” he began. “Can you cook?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tonight you will sleep on the sofa,” he said, “and tomorrow I will have a bed delivered.  That room,” he said with a pointing finger, “will be your bedroom.  You will eat the same food I eat and you will eat at this table with me.  I’m afraid we will need to use the same bathroom since there’s only one.  My name is Hans Kappel and I work here in the apartment so we will have much time together.  Are there any questions?”

There was a long pause before she fixed her eyes on his and replied, “I have no questions, sir.”

“Are you married?” he asked.

“No sir.”

“A boyfriend?”

“No sir.”

He was pleased with the reply but sought ways to force more words out of her than the strict prohibitions of Auschwitz permitted.

“Why not?” he persisted. 

“I don’t know, sir.”

He was growing weary of offering conversation only to have two word responses.  He understood her reluctance to speak but knew that somehow he would need to gain her confidence.

“Tell me about yourself,” said Hans.  “Tell me about you and your family.”  Rachel seemed hesitant and glanced about nervously as if searching for a way to respond. “Do you have a problem telling me?” he asked.

Her hand moved involuntarily to her mouth and she trembled violently.  Tears mounted in her eyes and she looked around as if seeking a route of escape.  “Yes sir.  I’m afraid to,” she confessed softly at last.

“Why?”

“Please, sir,,” she moaned with a quaking voice.  “Please.”

“Please what, Rachel?” he asked.

“I’m afraid I’ll say something to offend you, sir,” she told him with a quaking voice. 

“Listen to me!” he said abruptly and she sniffed away her tears, swallowed hard with fear and sat at attention.  “Do you see that door?”

“Yes sir,” she replied.

“When that door is closed and we are here, this is our world.  It is not the world of the camp and the rules and the trains and all the fear.  It’s our world and we will drink coffee and eat meals and speak to each other.  Is that understood?”

She nodded as tears yet formed rivulets on her cheeks. “Yes sir,” she replied and Hans knew that she was afraid to give any other answer.

She was told to prepare dinner later that evening and the order came without details of what to prepare.  “Choose something you know how to cook,” Hans had said.

 She was terrified to ask questions and he retreated to his desk in the other room.  It was a moment of stark realization and she couldn’t accept it without a sense of trauma.  She opened the ice box and her mouth fell agape with the sight of so much food. She had lived on bread and watery soup for so long that she couldn’t comprehend the contents before her.  She moved her eyes over hefty links of Bratwurst and Bockwurst resting beside a large wedge of Cambozola cheese.   A glass pitcher of milk was there and large portions of meat were wrapped in fine cloth and positioned on the bulky square of ice that kept everything cold and fresh.

How was she to know what to prepare?  Did she dare touch anything so precious as the provisions before her?  Her eyes were wide with astonishment that it should all be within her reach and yet, surely there would be the punishment of death if she moved anything from its place.

Glancing about the room she spied the stout loaf of black bread and felt the pain gnawing at her stomach.  She had not eaten in four days and only the coffee with its sugar gave her strength. 

Rachel fell to her knees in front of the opened ice box and glanced nervously about before moving her fingers over the food in front of her.  There were fruits and a round, rose-colored ham that she now knew only in her memories.  This was not the faint recollections of days when she at a table with a family conversing, all was real, rich and fragrant before her. Unwillingly the tears flooded her eyes and coursed her cheeks.  Uncontrolled sobs racked her frame as she examined the butter and strudel poised on metal racks.  A sense of awe gripped her and she felt everything slipping away into a dull darkness.  Her body turned slightly as she lost consciousness and the rain punishing the window was the last thing she saw.

When she opened her eyes, he was there sitting on the bed beside her.  She felt a pillow under her head and it brought marvelous memories to her that she dared not entertain.  He was smiling and she thought that strange.  She moved her hand over the cloth beneath her and realized she was on a bed.  It was a mattress and a pillow, not the thin layer of straw she was accustomed to. 

“I’m so sorry, sir,” she muttered. 

“Hush,” he whispered.  “I was a complete idiot.  It didn’t even occur to me how hungry you must be and I’m the one who should be asking forgiveness.”

“Please, sir,” she said desperately, “I’ll prepare your meal.”

As she attempted to rise, she felt his hand on her shoulder pressing her back upon the pillow. 

“You’re in no condition to do anything,” he told her.  “I’ll have food brought to us but you can’t eat much.  You have to begin slowly with small portions or you’ll be sick.”

She felt a tear moving toward her ear and she moaned, “I can work, sir.  Please, I can work!”

Her eyes were misted with pain and fear, searching his face for a sign of approval.

“You’re dehydrated and weak from hunger.  You collapsed, you fainted.  If that had happened down there in the yard do you know what would become of you?”

“Yes sir,” she lamented, “I’m sorry!  It won’t happen again!  I can work, please!”

He cradled her face in his hands and smiled gently.  “You need to sleep and when the food comes, I’ll wake you.  I’m working at the desk in the corner and will be near.  If you need to go to the bathroom, you know where it is.”

Her eyes had softened and the fear was dissolving into confusion.  His palms against her cheek felt strangely secure and reminiscent of times when touches and words held meanings.  He seemed so genuine and yet she must keep her guard and not let his gentleness and consideration make her unwary. 

When she awoke, he was holding her upright and pulling pillows behind her.  She felt her head resting on his shoulder and the bolt of fear encompassed her.  It was prohibited to have physical contact with a guard! His hand was on her back and holding her in a sitting posture. She was pressed against him but his touch suggested nothing of intimacy.  She could only close her eyes in a growing bewilderment.

Her thoughts drifted back to the large room where they had undressed and the SS officer had looked them over with expressions of a lustful approval.  The matron had taken them to the corner of the room and put them at attention.

“You have been selected,” she told them, “to serve in the camp brothel.  You should be honored.  You will work only two hours a day and you will be given special meals and drink.  You will be expected to serve six to eight men in those two hours and their time with you will be regulated.” 

The oldest of the matrons had then paused in front of her and grinned maliciously.  “I suspect the SS officers will keep you to themselves,” she said.  It was shortly after that this SS officer had appeared and called her to him.

Now she was in an apartment with him and it was clear that he must have some plan for her.  For now, however, he had not disrobed her in her sleep and the realization had come as a reprieve.   The only thing she knew to do was to yield to his touch and whatever it introduced.  He was lowering her back onto a mound of pillows and when she opened her eyes, he smiled warmly.

“The food’s here,” he told her.  “I’ll bring your plate in a moment.”

“Sir!” she gasped, “Please, no!  I can serve the food!  I can!  I really can!”

He did not dismiss his smile but only nodded.  “If it will make you feel better, we’ll compromise.  We’ll eat at the table.”

His arm was strong as he guided her to the edge of the bed and helped her to her feet.  He gazed into her face as if to be certain she was not too feeble to move.  His arm moved around her waist and he guided her to the kitchen. Rachel forced her focus on simply moving with ease and confidence.  She must not let him know the weakness she felt throughout her body.  He must not come to believe she was too weak to work.

He lowered her onto a chair and she looked up to him and for the first time he had known, she smiled slightly.  She resolved in that moment to do whatever she was told without fear or hesitation.  She had already displayed a frailty by fainting and now there could be no more crying or confusion.  Anything could be seen as weakness and must be controlled.  If he chose to be interested in her welfare, she would yield with immediate compliance.  He would sleep with her that night, she knew, but even that would be better than what the matron had described if she had been sent to the camp brothel.  She thought that three years earlier, when she was living with her parents, the thought of eating and sleeping with a strange man would have been horrifying and now it seemed a salvation from what would have happened without his intervention.

“It is entopf,” he advised, placing the steaming bowl in front of her.  “The vegetables will be good for you and they made it with chicken.  That’s much better than beef or pork because you don’t need heavy meats right now.”

She stared at him with complete bewilderment.  “All this is for me, sir?” she asked.  “All this?”

“Of course,” he told her with a warm smile.

She had problems controlling the spoon and gazed at the large portion of black bread that he pushed toward her. 

“Eat,” he told her and she tore away part of the bread and dipped it into the broth of the entopf, greedily shoving it into her mouth.  She huddled over the bowl as if protecting it from others.  Finally she lifted the bowl to drink the last of the broth and she ran the back of her hand over her mouth before licking away the droplets of flavor.

It was only then she noticed the goblet of wine beside her napkin and she placed her hands in her lap, waiting for him to tell her to drink.  He did not speak but only nodded toward the wine and she eagerly tasted the rich, soothing liquid moving over her tongue.

“Each day you will eat a little more,” he told her.  “It is dangerous to eat too much after going long without food.”

Looking up from his bowl, he saw her across from him with her hands over her face while her shoulders moved with each agonizing sob.

“What is it?” he asked, “tell me.”

With jerky breaths she lowered her hands and looked at him with her face contorted with her suffering.  Already she had violated her vow to control her feelings and be a stoic recipient of his will.

“There was so much food, sir,” she said.

He smiled slightly as he asked, “And that made you cry?”

She timidly returned his smile and said, “Yes sir.”

Hans thought she had never been more beautiful than in that moment when her eyes explored his and he started to feel the depth of her despair.

He seemed to want to know so much and Rachel had no way to inform him.  How could he possibly know that the broth with vegetables and chicken would keep her alive another week?  He could never understand or perhaps even care how many times she had closed her eyes wondering if she would awake in the morning.  There was no way to explain that on some nights she hoped she would not awake.

“Now tell me about you and your family,” he said suddenly and her heart jolted with an intense alarm.

“Yes sir,” she replied.  “My family lived in Innsbruck and I was a student.  They were taken to another camp, I don’t know where.”     

Hans nodded his approval before continuing, “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

“No sir,” replied Rachel, “it was only my parents and me.”

“And what did you study?” he asked.

“Literature, sir,” she replied.  “I wanted to be an author.”

His face reflected his approval.  “Excellent,” he said.  “An excellent choice, I think.”

He seemed to examine her for a long moment before asking, “Your other dress had a yellow triangle with a red one under it.  A Jewess and a political prisoner, right?  Why was that?”    

So that was it, she reasoned.  He wanted to know more about the group; but why all the subterfuge?  He could have beaten or tortured her and learned the same thing without the pretense of kindness.  But was it possible? she thought.  As far as she knew, everyone in the group had been captured together.  The gestapo had broken down the door of the basement flat where they wrote and published their protest pamphlets.  Simply a tightly knitted group of idealists opposing the direction the new government was taking but considered dangerous by the Reich.  Was it possible that some had escaped or others had taken up the cause and now this officer of the gestapo was probing for more information?   

Rachel then was convinced she was living the final moments of her life.  The SS officer across from her was luring her into a moment of vulnerability, perhaps thinking she had the information he needed.  There was no escape now.  If she spoke freely he would expect to learn something she did not know and if she continued to respond with only the permitted responses of yes sir and no sir, he would soon become angry and kill her anyway. 

It had to come to this moment sooner or later, she knew.  She had seen it too often.  Either the work and lack of food would kill or there would be a moment like this when one was confronted with their doom and had no choice but to accept it.

“Do you have problems telling me?” asked Hans.

She could not control the trembling of her lip and her eyes were closed with resignation.  “Yes sir,” she answered with an unsteady voice.

“You have permission to speak,” he was saying firmly.  “You have my permission to say whatever you wish when we are alone together.  Is that clear?”

She seemed more disturbed by gaining permission than by being restricted by fear and Hans was growing frustrated as she answered again, “Yes sir.  I think if I tell you, maybe you will stop being kind to me, sir,” she said and Hans noted the tremble of her hand about the cup.  “Please forgive me, it was not my intent to offend you, sir.”

“You can tell me,” he assured her.  “You have nothing to fear.”  When she seemed intensely nervous with a trembling lip, he added, “Go ahead.”

She took a deep breath with eyes tightly closed.  She would tell him all she knew and if he believed she was concealing more details, she would accept her fate.  She  raised her eyes to the ceiling before saying, “I lived in Innsbruck. My father was a dealer of books.  My mother stayed at home and cooked and cleaned as most women do.  I was a student at the University of Innsbruck, sir.  I belonged . . . . “ she said in a faltering voice and then her lip trembled uncontrolled.

“What is the problem?” he asked, “Go on, tell me.”

“Please don’t be angry, please,” she moaned, “I belonged to a youth organization.  I was captured at the central headquarters of the group and because of that, my family was sent away to the camps.  I don’t know what happened to them and I was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.” 

Hans felt the pang of compassion rising in his chest and knew it was not the moment for it to be made obvious.  “I have heard that it is a very brutal place, Auschwitz,” he offered.

“Yes sir,” she responded.

“So this group,” said Hans, “was a resistance group?”

She nodded slowly and lowered her eyes, “That’s what we were charged with, sir.”

Hans was curious and wasn’t aware that Rachel was interpreting his questions as an interrogation.

“What kind of resistance?” he asked.  “Sabotage?”

“No sir,” she responded.  “We printed pamphlets.”

Hans shook his head with disbelief.  “Our great guarantee of the freedom of expression!”

Rachel dared not reply.  To agree with him would be reason for yet another charge.  She continued to tremble with fear and try to answer his questions in the most believable form.

He lifted his cup and fixed his eyes on hers.   “How did you survive?” he asked, “at Auschwitz, I mean.”

Her voice drifted into stone cold tones as she continued,  “I think it was luck, sir,” she said, “I was selected to be sent to the chamber but it was too busy and I was returned to my barrack.  Two days later the guards told us to get on the train and I came here.”

She saw that he was listening intently as if sincerely interested and determined that perhaps talking would be her salvation.  It might indicate to him that she was obedient and really sharing all she knew.  She had wanted to say she survived by the will of God but feared it would only remind him that she was, after all, a Jew.

Hans smiled slightly.  “The train to Auschwitz, the time there in the camp, the train here; you’re a courageous and strong woman, Rachel.”

“Thank you, sir,” she responded, “but I don’t feel strong. 

Whatever happened to my family, it was my fault.  I must live with that.”

Hans reached for her hand and stood, lifting her from her chair.  He led her to a window looking out over the scene below where the women still stood in the rain, their number now visibly depleted.  He pushed back the curtains and spoke with a mournful voice.

“Look at that, Rachel.  I must live with that!  I was sent here like you.  I’m an accountant!  A simple every day accountant!  My mind is wounded by these things I see and I know the sights will never go away.  But is all that down there my fault?  Tell me, is it my fault?”

Her hand trembled within his and her eyes widened as she muttered, “No sir, it’s not your fault.”

If she was being lured into a fatal error, the officer was an excellent actor, she thought.  But yes, there was that hint that he was probing for a weak moment.  If she was to agree with him about the inhumane nature of the camp, she would be guilty of nonconformity and being a critic creating sentiments against the Reich.  She would need to be very cautious and always alert as to not give him that moment of weakness to exploit.

He did not want to release her hand and led her back to the table.  Even there she did not sit without his permission but stood in the posture of attention as required by camp guards.

“What are we going to do, Rachel?” he asked, returning to his chair and gazing at her.  “How can I make you realize that you don’t need to stand at attention.  You don’t need to call me sir.  You don’t need to be afraid.  I am no different from any friend you knew back in Innsbruck.”

She closed her eyes and forced the words to press from her lips as she openly shuddered with fear.  This had to be the moment.  She would make her declaration and accept whatever followed.

“I am afraid that all of this is a trick, sir.  I am afraid that if I speak too much I will say too much and then I will be killed.” 

He nodded with a sigh of understanding.  “I should have been more thoughtful,” he confessed.  “How could you possibly think anything else?  I have never killed anyone, Rachel, and I never will, much less you.” Hans shrugged slightly and chuckled.  “But how can you even believe that?  You see me as part of them and I see you as someone worth saving.” 

     Her eyes finally moved to meet his and they widened with doubt and fear.  “Please do not be offended sir, but when you took me from the others, I expected to be killed.”

     He appeared astonished and replied, “Why would you think such a thing?”

     Her lip trembled slightly and her eyes misted.  “Because that’s how it’s done.  You are taken away from the rest and you are shot in the back of the head.”

His features softened and he issued a deep sigh.  “Say Hans,” he told her.  “Just that, the name Hans, nothing more.”

She paused for a long moment, her face filled with the message of her confusion.  “Hans,” she whispered.

“Again.”

“Hans.”

“Again.”

“Hans.”

“That is my name and I am not the Sturmbannführer that will shoot you in the back of the head.  I am the man who will protect you and do everything possible to make sure no harm comes to you.   Maybe when you learn that it’s true, you’ll also learn to trust me.”

She did not answer but only nodded as a tear coursed down her cheek.  “Yes sir,” she muttered.

Hans leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs.  He watched her eyes fix again to some imaginary point in front of her as she had been trained to do in Aschwitz. 

“If we had met ten years ago,” he said softly, “we would have been children playing in a park in my Munich or your Innsbruck.  We wouldn’t know a difference between your blood and mine.  We would have had good times and been good friends. 

“It’s only the times that have changed, Rachel.  We haven’t. I am sitting here with a woman and you are with a man.  We did not choose to be who we are beyond that. 

“You are suspicious about why I am being kind to you.  It is because I am a kind person.  My mother taught me to be.  And I won’t lie to you so I will tell you now; I wanted you here with me because you are a beautiful woman.  I saw your face and thought this is a woman I want to know.  That is the man in me and I won’t apologize, but neither will I turn away from you because you’re a Jew.

“Nothing will happen to you here that you do not want to happen.  You are not here to work but to share work with me.  And you are here because I wanted to protect you.”

He stood then and walked to the kitchen window to look over the roof of the adjoining building.  “So now I have humiliated myself enough and if you can’t begin to trust me after that, I think we will have a very difficult time ahead.”

Rachel lifted her eyes and Hans thought they were larger and deeper than before.  “We’re taught that we are only permitted to answer, sir.  We cannot say anything more.”

“I didn’t make that rule, did you?” he asked.

“No sir.”

“Then it’s not our rule, is it?”

“No sir.”

Hans watched her and noted slight differences now.  She was at rigid attention, yes, but at times her eyes drifted toward his face and her face revealed an emotion or interest.

“Sit down,” he told her and she obeyed immediately, her hands folded primly in her lap.

“Tell me what you will prepare for breakfast in the morning and do it without using a single sir,” he instructed.

“You won’t punish me for not saying ‘sir?” she asked hesitantly.

“You will not be punished,” he assured her, “you have my word.”

She had reached a moment of crisis again.  If he was luring her into committing an offense, she would have to agree to her own destruction by obeying.  She trembled with the thought but suddenly realized that she was now too weary to care.  If this was the moment for her to die, so be it.

“I saw eggs,” she began, “in the ice box, I saw eggs.  There is sausage and I can make potato cakes.  There is bread and I will have coffee ready when you awake.”

She desperately wanted to add the sir and to omit it was almost too much to ask of her.  She had seen women beaten severely for not saying sir loudly enough and now she was asked to duplicate the offense.

“Very good,” he praised.  “That sounds much better to me.  Now ask me a question.”

He wondered if she could ever respond without fear accentuating her expression and voice.

“What question, sir?”

He frowned deeply with the sound of ‘sir’ and her hand darted to her mouth and eyes widened in terror.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she lamented frantically.  He stood to move to her side and comfort her, to dispel her fears but she slid to the floor on her knees and held an arm over her face in anticipation of the blows.

“Stand,” he told her and reached for her hands.  He pulled her upward until she was closer than temptation would allow.  Now her eyes were fixed on his and she seemed to understand that he was not going to punish her.  Her hands remained enclosed in his and her breaths were heavy and broken.

His hand moved over her cheek and he spoke softly, more gently than any sound she had heard in years.  “I will never hurt you, Rachel.  Please believe that.  I will never hurt you.”

She could not dismiss the quaking of her limbs but kept her eyes focused on his.  “I will try, I promise.  I will try to say things the way you want.”

With that, Hans knew it would be a very long and difficult process.  She would try to say what he wanted.  His wish was for her to speak her mind and feelings freely, not to mimic something he wanted to hear.  He concluded that Rachel had not been trained, she had been damaged and it would take much to heal her.

“In this apartment,” he said, “you are in no danger.  You are free to say whatever you wish.  As long as you are here, I will give you only one order. You must give me an opportunity to know you and for you to know me. Do you like Brahms or Bratwurst?  How do you wear your hair when it’s long?  Have you read Hemmingway or Donne?  I want to know if you snore or drink Bock Beer? I want to know when you don’t feel well or if you’re bored.  That’s all I ask.  I just want to know you and hope that one day you will want to know more about me.  Is that agreed?”

     “Yes sir,” she replied

.

THE COMMANDANT’S RADIO

 

     It was not easy.  The first days having Rachel in the apartment brought frustration and doubt.  She constantly asked permission causing him to wonder if she would ever learn, ever adapt, no matter how well he treated her.

     If the experience was perplexing to Hans, Rachel found it maddening.  She had survived Auschwitz by unwavering obedience and immediate responses to every order received. Now this young officer was asking her to abruptly abandon all she had learned and accept his word that she is no longer in danger of beatings or death.

     As much as she had resolved to remain always alert and ready for whatever traps he might prepare for her, there were moments when she wanted to yield and accept his promises as truth.  One such moment stood out from the rest.  It was that first day when she was certain that she had been brought to the apartment to be cleverly interrogated and then eliminated.  His gentleness in caring for her after she had fainted and then giving her food and comforting words was beginning to weaken her will.  If he could be believed it would offer a hope she had long since discarded by it was nothing less than stupidity to believe an SS officer could be trusted.  But when it grew dark and the perimeter lights were turned on around the camp, he led her to a room with a large bed, saying he hoped she would sleep well.  When she had entered and he closed the door behind her, she sat on the bed and cried with gratitude before folding her hands and rocking gently back and forth muttering “sheg'molayikh,” imagining all the while that a rabbi was offering the traditional prayer for deliverance from danger.

     “May I use the bathroom, sir?” was a common question that defied everything Hans had tried to instill in her.  Not only would he give permission but would repeat that she never needed to ask.  She knew where the bathroom was and had every right to use it.  On one of the first occasions she not only asked if she could use the bathroom but also sought permission to use the toilet paper.

     Jolting to attention was another habit he was unable to cure.  If he stood from the table she felt compelled to leap to her feet and stand with her tiny fists clenched at her side.

     “Rachel,” he would say, “I am standing to get another beer.  You do not need to stand when I do.  We are not connected.”

     “I’ll bring you a beer,” she said sharply, forcing herself not to end the phrase with sir.  “I can bring it!”

     He slumped into his chair and watched as she rushed to the ice box and retrieved the Lowenbrau and delivered it open to pour into his glass.  She would ask if he wanted anything else and always he would ask her to return to her place at the table.

     There were times when errands were to be run and she carried with her a letter with his signature saying that she was conducting his affairs.  The letter always had to be shown to the guard at the gate leading out of the SS section of the camp and twice she had been stopped and presented it for scrutiny.  Once it was a guard standing beside a supply truck and the second time it was a Kapo who told her to stand at attention as he moved behind her and reached around to massage her breasts.

     “You’re used to this, aren’t you?” he hummed in her ear as slowly his other hand moved over her stomach and between her legs.  He moved against her for a moment and then slapped her buttocks with a laugh and told her to move on.

     Hans was working at his desk when she returned.  He heard the door close and her rushing into the bathroom.  She had not asked permission and he was pleased but when he heard the shower running and knew it was her second of the day, he became concerned. 

     “Rachel!” he called at the bathroom door and she answered with a faint response.  “Why are you taking another shower?”

     “I’m dirty,” she replied and the tone of her voice told him there was much unsaid.

     “Come here,” he commanded and he heard the chatter of the water fade into silence as the door opened.  Rachel stood within the bathroom, her flesh covered with beads of water.  Droplets moved over her cheeks and between her ample breasts as she stood at attention and stared into his face.

     “Tell me what happened,” he ordered.  “Tell me now!”

     “A Kapo stopped me and I showed him the letter,” she said.  “He read it and walked behind me.  He held me and put his hands all over me.  I didn’t like it.  I felt dirty.”

      Hans moved quickly to his desk and lifted the receiver of the telephone.  With sharp, compelling authority he told the person answering that he wanted to speak to Commandant Werner.

     “I need your permission to do something, sir,” Rachel heard him saying.  “I want all the men Kapos in front of my building in the morning.  Is that possible?  Thank you.  Thank you very much.  Yes, we need to talk.  Tomorrow will be fine.  Yes, I have wine.”

     Shortly after dawn Hans descended the stairway to find the Kapos in rigid lines awaiting his arrival.  There were more of them than he had imagined.  Two guards accompanied them and gave salutes in unison.  Rachel was at the kitchen window with his binoculars and watched as he started to walk before each Kapo, examining his face with a fierce scrutiny.  After passing each man, he would glance toward the window because Rachel had been told when he was in front of the Kapo that had molested her, she was to close the curtains.

     He was midway through the second row when the curtains closed.  The man in front of him stared forward with narrowed eyes.  He had a square jaw that combined with his eyes to create a permanent, menacing look.

     “Follow me,” said Hans and quickly entered the building and ascended the stairs with noisy steps.  Opening the door to the kitchen, Rachel was there, her back pressed against the sink.

     “This is him?” asked Hans.  “I want you to be certain.”

     Rachel did not reply but only nodded with an expression blending fear with anger.

     “Do you remember this woman?” asked Hans of the man.

     “Yes sir,” he replied, at attention with his cap in his hand. 

     Hans turned to Rachel again.  “Give me your letter,” he said and Rachel retrieved her permission letter from her apron pocket.

     “Didn’t she show you this letter?” Hans asked, holding the letter in front of the man’s eyes.

     “Yes sir,” said the man.

     “And you put your hands on her,” Hans charged.  “If you lie to me, I’ll have you shot.”

     “Yes sir,” the man confessed.  “I touched her.  I’m sorry, sir.”

     With that Hans closed the door and walked past the man down the stairs.  Leaving the building the man followed him to the guards in waiting and heard Hans say, “Send him to a work detail.  He is never to be a Kapo again.”

     The guards responded gruffly, “Jawohl!” and removed the armband from the man and led him away.  Hans watched and knew he had just given a condemnation of   death.  The man had worn the triangle badge of a criminal and with this punishment would lose his privileges of extra food, cigarettes, alcohol and an often abusive power over the other inmates.  To put an ex-Kapo into the population of other prisoners was to make him vulnerable to their vengeance. 

     When the rest of the Kapos had dispersed to return to their duties, he went back to the apartment where Rachel still stood with the binoculars on the counter beside her.  His anger had not subsided and flushed his cheeks.  He paused for a moment and finally fixed his eyes on her face.

     “No one will harm you,” he told her firmly.  “Do you understand now?  No one will harm you, Rachel.”

     Her eyes turned toward the scene below, the man being pushed in the distance by the guards.  “They’ll shoot him?” she asked with her face aghast. 

     “No,” said Hans.  “He’s not a Kapo now.  He’s just one of the prisoners and won’t bother you again.”

     When Hans went to his desk to continue with the massive task of rearranging more than ten years of prisoner records, Rachel remained in her place, staring past the window with a mind filled with questions.  She had known only abuse from SS officers and now one was protecting her and promising her survival from the madness about her.  She could not understand his motives but knew there must be many.

     Around six-thirty that evening, Hans called Rachel to his desk and told her she would have to go to her room and stay there until he came for her.  The camp commander was coming and she could not be present during their conversation.  She was to make no noise or go to the bathroom.  Once again she answered, “Yes sir.”

     Obersturmbannführer Werner arrived as the horizon was dimming and before the camp lights had been activated.  He knocked twice and then opened the door before Hans could respond.  In one hand he carried a bottle of red wine and in the other was a paper bag that had the outline of a square object within.

     “I know you said you had wine,” said the Commandant, suddenly realizing that Hans was saluting and giving an absurd imitation of a raised hand in return, “but you didn’t say it was good wine.  This is a Bordeaux one of my friends confiscated from the front.  They tell me it’s excellent.  Not old, but excellent.”

     Later they sat at the table and Werner posed a host of questions about what progress Hans was making in their project.  He seemed pleased with the answers and asked about a projected date when all would be finished.  When Hans could not give an honest reply, the Commandant seemed to accept it and offered a toast to continued progress.

     “Tell me,” he said as he was lighting a cigarette, “why did you want to see all the Kapos?  That upset some of the other officers but I told them I had ordered it.”

     Hans felt trapped.  His mind raced but stopped on the conclusion that the truth would serve him best.

     “I have a Jewess here with me, sir,” he said.  “She keeps the apartment clean, cooks and runs errands.  I gave her a letter to serve as a pass when she goes out of the apartment and on one errand a Kapo stopped her and sexually molested her.”

     Werner lifted his eyebrows and nodded appreciatively.  “So you were looking for him. . .”

     “Yes sir.”

     “Did you find him?”

     “Yes sir.”

     “Good!  Did you shoot him?”

     Hans sighed deeply and replied, “No, sir.”

     “Damn man, why not?” the Commandant said with open astonishment.

     They were comfortable in that moment.  Both had removed their jackets and sat with crossed legs, chatting and planning as if they were spending leisure hours at a hotel lounge.  Hans felt secure and answered with confidence.

     “One of my goals, Commandant,” he began, “is to get out of this war alive and without killing anyone.”

     “A noble goal that is!” agreed Werner and reached to retrieve the bag resting on the floor at his side.  “I’ve brought this for you.  It might help you appreciate some of the things I’ve told you.”

     He placed on the table a square piece of wooden box and opened the lid to reveal a series of coils and wires with two knobs and some switches. 

     “They found it in one of the shops months ago,” said Werner.  “One of the Jew electricians had made it.  He was listening to London and taking the news back to the barracks.  That was his mistake.  He should have kept it all to himself.  When rumors started spreading everywhere about the Americans, British and Russians advancing, the guards knew there had to be a radio somewhere.”

     Werner glanced about and spied a wall socket.  Plugging the apparatus in, he waited a moment until a soft static was heard. 

     “The BBC is on this side, to the right,” he said, turning a knob over numbers smiling widely when a man’s voice became audible over static.  “It works quite well, really,” he added, “do you understand English?”

     “No sir,” said Hans sadly. 

     Werner flicked a switch and there was silence.  “We send hours of propaganda into England each day,” he opined.  “They send nothing in German.  Their bombs do their talking.  I wanted you to hear for yourself but if you don’t speak English, all we have is a wooden box with wires.”

     He sipped of the wine and then frowned with a new thought.  “Your woman,” he said, “this Jewess.  Does she speak English?  Many of the Jews learned it.”

     Hans had never thought about it but asked if he should inquire.

     “She’s here?” asked Werner, “Bring her so I can see your taste in women.”

     When Hans led her from the bedroom, Rachel assumed her position of attention and trembled with the realization that the man before her was the camp commander.

     “Excellent, Hans!” he exclaimed.  “Quite lovely!”

     Hans moved to Werner’s side and spoke with gentle tones. “Rachel, do you speak any languages beside German?” he asked.

     “Yes sir,” she replied.

     “Do you speak English?” he asked.

     “English, French and some Italian, sir,” Rachel answered.

      Werner applauded softly and moved the switch of the radio and waited again for it to produce sound.  “Tell us what he is saying,” he commanded of her.

     “Yes sir,” she replied quickly, “the man is saying that the citizens no longer need to turn out the lights of their homes at night.  A spokesman for the military has said that the Luftwaffe . . .”

     Rachel paused with eyes widened with fear.  What would be the consequence of revealing negative news to the camp commander?  She trembled with the thought.

     “Continue!” snapped Werner.

     “ The Luftwaffe has lost so many planes that there is no longer the danger of night bombings as in the past.”

     Werner slammed his hand against the table and Rachel jolted visibly but regained her composure quickly.

     “Do you see?” he asked of Hans.  “This is what I have been telling you!”  He glanced toward Rachel and said gruffly, “continue.”

     “Yes sir,” she repeated, “Rocket attacks continue at various points across Britain,” she recited.  “One struck an elementary school outside London and registered six dead.  The mayor of Warsaw has asked for aid from the American and British armies.  Polish partisans are conducting their private war against the Nazi forces.”

     “Enough,” said Werner abruptly and switched off the radio and waved his hand in a motion telling Rachel that she was dismissed.  She lowered her eyes again as was customary, and retreated to her bedroom with her heart beating a rhythm of panic.

     “They have taken Paris,” Werner said grimly.  “They’re now in Belgium and have taken Brussels.  Finland has stopped fighting Russia and is demanding that our armies leave immediately.  The Russians are in Bulgaria and the Americans now control Luxembourg and their paratroopers are falling like rain over Holland.  Some of that information is old, coming from my friends on the front and it might be worse now.

     “And what does the news from Berlin tell us?  Himmler has ordered that if any German soldier deserts, his entire family is to be murdered.”

     Hans frowned deeply and felt the chilling effect of the Commandant’s words.  “Do we have any idea about how long we have?” he asked.

     Werner chuckled with the question.  “If you want to believe Berlin, we have a thousand years, remember?  If you want to believe my friends who are less loyal and more logical, we have until spring.”

“That soon!” gasped Hans.  “I have nine more years of records to complete!  There’s hundreds of thousands of cards!”

Werner reached to refill his glass and nodded knowingly.  “I wanted to talk to you about that.  We can speed up your work by eliminating all the cards of people killed in the camp.  List the typhus deaths and whatever natural causes but destroy the cards of all the others.  That’ll reduce the workload significantly, I think.”

“Yes,” agreed Hans, “I think you’re right.”

“I would get you some additional help but the rumors would race throughout the camp,” said the Commandant. “But perhaps if we put some extra typewriters in a room downstairs, below here, it might look like we are simply updating records.”

Hans smiled widely with the thought.  “They could copy everything except the date.  I type in the date up here and yes, we could move ahead at triple the speed!”

“It would have to be women from the camp.  We couldn’t use anyone else without raising questions,” said Werner.  “Put out the order tomorrow to find women who can type and make your selection.”

Hans nodded his agreement and leaned back in his chair, sipping from the glass.  “Maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds,” he said solemnly.  “The news on the radio, I mean.  They are coming with their bombings but I remember not long ago that they lost ninety-four planes and seven hundred men in one of their attacks.”

     Werner held his glass in one hand and fingered a cigarette in the other.  “And they sent seven hundred ninety-five planes.  Seven hundred and one reached the target and bombed Nuremburg, Hans.  Now they are returning even stronger.  If we shoot down ninety planes, they can build ninety more.  We can’t.  They’ve bombed our factories day and night.  And so we can shoot them down and more will come until our cities are only memories.”

     He emptied his glass and forced a smile.  “Listen to London tell about the bombings.  Your Jewess can help you and I have no one.  The radio is of no use to me.  I only hope you don’t hear that your precious Munich is a new target.”

     Hans responded to the Commandant’s lifted glass and filled it with wine.  “We did have bombs,” he said solemnly,  “last Fall, September or October.  I saw some of it.”

     “There will be more,” predicted the Commandant.  “There will be more.”

     It was past midnight when the Commandant left and Hans called for Rachel and they sat at the table listening to reports from London.  She translated as best she could since some of the reporters spoke rapidly and she had not used English in a long while.  Reports told of massive bomb raids on Germany’s principal cities, striking industrial and transportation centers.  The British seemed willing to reveal their losses as well, something the Reich’s news reports failed to do.  The reports referred to American strikes and gave evidence that the alliance warring against Germany was, indeed, making dangerous progress. The realization brought home the importance of finishing the project of manipulating camp records.

     To accelerate his progress, he now enlisted the assistance of Rachel and he found that she grasped the concept of what they were doing but never asked why.  Hans was busy typing the data from the original to the duplicate card and Rachel was peeling away the prisoner’s photo and pasting it onto the replacement card.

     The new prisoner identification cards Werner had printed in Munich looked impressively real when completed.  Hans had finished the years 1934 and 1935 and was eager to begin the following bulk of cards because each completed year was a step toward nearing the final goal.

     One afternoon he saw Rachel gazing with a nostalgic glint toward a card in her hand.  “What is it?” he asked, “Is there a problem?”

     “No sir,” she said softly and lifted the card for him to see the photo.  “I went to school with her,” she said.

     “A friend?” he asked.

     “No, not really,” she replied, “but I remember her.  We were in a literature class together.”

     “There will probably be more, Rachel,” he said.  “You’ll probably find more people you knew.”

     “Yes sir,” she responded sadly, “probably.” 

     They returned to their labors but Hans could not help but think of how painful it must be to find a face from the past resurrected in an archive that probably was more of an obituary than a register.  There would be memories and the lingering questions that people should ask without being forced by the cruelties of circumstance..  Wouldn’t the sight of a familiar face on one of the cards tell of how fragile we are and how easily we can lose ourselves to the will of others? What mysterious force decided who’s photo would be on the card and who would be viewing it and remembering them from better days? Was it fate or destiny or that it just wasn’t important to whatever power was thought to be supreme?  How many prayers had risen out of Dachau from God’s favorite people? he wondered.  He had yet to see an answer.

     Working together had served to ease the formalities Rachel had continued to display.  Now she would go to the bathroom without asking and return to sit on the floor and resume her tasks.  Sometimes she would have a question about one of the cards and would not add a sir to the end of it.  Once she had laughed aloud at the dinner table when he told a story about his youth and then she had grown suddenly grim and covered her mouth with surprise.

     “I didn’t know I could still do that,” she explained and Hans thought it was an incredibly sad thing to say.

     Sometimes he would find her in the kitchen staring out of the window and down into the parade ground where prisoners were in lines waiting for roll or milling around in their labors.  He would join her and agree that they appeared like industrious ants all working for a cause they did not share.  Dachau had been constructed to accommodate eight thousand prisoners and now there were more than thirty thousand as mostly Russians, Poles and Czechs arrived with alarming regularity.

     One evening they sat on the floor beside the desk where he worked with her throughout the day.  Rachel liked to sit on the thick carpet covering the  hardwood floor and on this evening he plugged in the radio and they sat together as she softly translated.  The reports were always the same.  Widespread bombings and troop advancements followed by some phrases she could not translate but the Commandant said were coded messages for those committing espionage throughout their controlled area. 

     Once the reports had finished she withdrew the plug from the socket and her face passed closely to his.  She settled back onto the carpet and neatly wound the wire into place and put the radio into a desk drawer.  He gazed at her and she smiled slightly upon realizing his attention.  She was gaining weight and her legs were taking form again.  Her cheeks were tinted and her eyes held a new depth that no longer spoke of sadness.

     “I want to know what you think and feel,” he told her as he leaned against the desk and folded his hands behind his head.  “In this moment, what is in your mind and heart?”

     She looked away for a long moment as if gathering her thoughts and then returned her attention to him and gave a hint of a smile.  It was a very important moment.

     All the moments of her confinement had been designed to tear away every remnant of her femininity.  Her hair had been shaven away and she had been humiliated in front of countless men.  She had lived in filth and given scant amounts of food until her body lost the form defining womanhood.  Now there was a man speaking gently of seeing her as she hoped to be and it was joyous!  It was terrifying and ecstatic. 

     “I am very grateful to you, sir,” she said.  “I feel that every minute of every day.  In my mind I know I would probably be dead or want to die if you had not brought me here.”

     He looked at her intensely and she did not remove her eyes from his.  “If this was another time and another place,” he told her, “I would stop you on the street and tell you how beautiful you are.  I would ask you to have coffee with me so I might know you better.  Tell me the truth.  What would have been your answer?”

     She giggled lightly and he loved the sound of it.  “My mind would shout no!  My father would put the rod to me if I would do such a thing without permission.  But my heart would say yes, I would like that very much.”

     He felt the glow of her answer move over him and watched how she looked away with embarrassment.  “But we are not in different times, are we?” he asked bitterly.

     “No, we’re not,” agreed Rachel.

     Most of the apartments throughout the SS camp had darkened windows after ten p.m. and so each evening they flicked off the lights and listened to the radio by the rotating light of the perimeter searchlights and the moon.

     “Commandant Werner says that one day, not too far away, the Americans or Russians will come and their tanks will break through the gate.  That’s why we’re copying all the cards, so that we  won’t be held responsible for all that’s happened here.”

     “You’re not responsible,” she replied, “not for any of it.”

     She was prone, resting on her side and the moonlight touched her in delicate hues.  Her hip rose to exactly the right level and her breasts boasted against her dress.  Resting on one elbow, her face cradled against her palm, he thought she was more beautiful than all her yesterdays.

     “I will soon buy some civilian clothes or go to Munich and bring some from my home,” he told her and she did not respond even though a question touched her face.  “We will listen carefully to the radio each night and before the tanks arrive here, I will wear my clothes and I will bring a nice dress for you and we will leave here.  But, of course,” he added, “if you want to go with me.”

     He could not read her face and it disturbed him.  “If you want me to, I’ll go,” she replied.

     “Rachel,” he said, reaching forth and grasping her hand, “if that happens, you’ll be free.  You’ll be free to do only what you want to do.  It won’t be important what I want.  Do you understand that?”

     He saw a different expression that lingered until her mind moved back onto her face.  “But the tanks are not at the gate now, are they?” she asked and he knew her question had no answer.

     “You evade all my questions,” he complained.  “You hide behind yes sirs and no sirs or give me answers with double meanings.”

     “I’m sorry,” she softly replied, “I don’t mean to.”

     “Do you want me to kiss you?” he asked.  “How will you answer that?”

     “Sir,” she moaned gently with widening eyes, “please.  I don’t know how to answer that.”

     He smiled slightly.  “If you answer yes, I will kiss you and be happy.  If you answer no, I will not kiss you but I promise I won’t be angry.”

     Never had he seen her eyes so large and wondrous.  Her mouth was slightly agape as she seemed to study his face.

     “I am a Jew, sir,” she said, “a Jew prisoner under your command.  I would never do anything to offend you.  I have no control if you kiss me or not.  That’s why I said the tanks are not at the gate, sir.  How could you ever know if my answers come from my feelings or obedience?  You can’t until they’re at the gate.  That’s the moment when we can believe each other and it will be the moment for truth.”

      He had not released her hand and whispered, “Come here.”

     She pushed herself from the floor and followed the guiding touch of his hand until she was seated beside him, leaning back against the desk, her body pressed against his.

     “I don’t want to kiss you because I can, Rachel.  I want to kiss you because you want me to,” he said.  “But you’re right, of course.  I don’t suppose I can ask for more than you can give.”

     “I’m sorry,” she said suddenly, her face fixed in the pose of fear, “I didn’t mean to offend you.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry!”   

     “Stop!” he snapped harshly.  “My God, look what they’ve done to us!  We can’t even talk like a man and woman!  A kiss becomes an inquisition!  If you said no, would I take you down to the parade ground and shoot you in the nape of the neck?  If you said yes would it be a ransom to stay alive another week or month or more?  I couldn’t believe your kiss any more than you could believe mine!”

     He slumped back against the desk and looked away from her toward the sweep of the searchlight.  The dull silence closed in around them like quicksand and she feared he would stand and stalk away to his bed.

     “May I speak, sir?” she asked gently.

     “Speak,” he said with a sigh of resignation.

     “I can’t ask you to understand, sir,” she began.  “We come to places like this with our makeup and long hair and clothes in colors that suit our complexion.  We come with fingernails and rouge and instincts that make us happy that we’re women.  Men look at us and we pretend not to notice or be interested.  We play this elaborate game just like men and women have done since the beginning of time.

     “Then, one day, we’re put into cattle cars in a slow moving train.  From that day on, we are no longer women.  Our hair is cut away and our jewelry taken from us.  We’re marched naked and given so little food that our bodies shrink into shadows of what they were.  We’re worked and cursed and beaten.  We watch other women die around us and know we’re not living, we’re only waiting.  Now it’s another game, the game of life and death.  The dead woman, does she have any bread in her pockets?  Once carrots fell from the back of the supply truck, you need to watch! 

     “All the sensitivity, being delicate and fragile with social graces and speaking with glances and smiles is torn out of you.  You’re no longer a woman.  You’re an imitation of a human that knows death better than you ever knew life. 

     “I never, never want to offend you, sir.  I am totally aware that I owe you my life.  You have protected and defended me and I’ll be grateful the rest of my life.  In my heart I want to answer your questions as a woman but I have to find that part of me again, sir.  I’m still that creature with the shaven head that learned that I have no right to feel anything and I’m so sorry!  I truly am sorry, sir!”

     As she began to sob, he pulled her next to him and her head rested on his chest.  He could feel the thrusts of her chest as she gasped before surrendering to a more violent remorse.

     “What a hopeless fool I am,” he lamented softly.  “I wanted to know everything happening inside you and to you, there is nothing left there.  And you must see me as this damned uniform, the same as every other man you’ve seen wearing it!  How could you think differently?  Now I will tell you something, alright?”

     “Yes sir,” she sniffed.

     “Stop sniffling and listen,” he told her.

     Rachel nodded and wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand.

     “My father is a judge in Munich,” he began softly.  “There was a group of men the gestapo accused of some offense I don’t remember.  My father set them free because there wasn’t enough evidence to convict them.   After that my father was suspected of sympathizing with enemies of the Reich.  My whole family was under investigation and to take some of the suspicion off of them, when I graduated from university, I joined the Wehrmacht.  Certainly a sympathizer would never permit his son to join the German military.  But the chief officer of the gestapo wasn’t convinced and so he had me transferred into the gestapo ‘to keep an eye on me.’  That’s why I’m wearing this uniform, Rachel.  So am I so different from you?  Don’t you think I hate all this every bit as much as you do?”

     She lifted her eyes to meet his and he thought they were exceptionally large, deeply sensitive and lovely.

     “I want you to know about me,” he said, taking her hand again and feeling her fingers respond with a slight pressure of acceptance.

     “I am not married,” he said.  “I have no girlfriend.  I had one but she went home after graduation.  No, I had two.  There was another before her.  My family’s Catholic.  I suppose that makes me one, too.  I have a brother who works at a newspaper in Munich.  He operates the presses. I like to travel, mostly to go to a few places I know to ski.  I like music, the kind of music that’s forbidden now; like jazz.  I like to dance and sing and just be at home on cold nights with the fireplace.  I like to make plans and know that they’re possible.” 

     He paused then and there was a long silence between them.  “Now it’s your turn,” he said.

     “I have never had a boyfriend,” she said gently.  “My parents said that studies came first. My father had a book store and I learned to love books.  I suppose that’s why I wanted to be a writer.  I don’t have any brothers or sisters.  My mother was famous for her pies and was my best friend.”

     There was silence again until he prodded, “And what things do you like?”

     “I like movies,” she said with a faint giggle.  “I like ice cream and the beach.  My father used to take me fishing and we would sit for hours not saying a word, watching corks bob up and down on the waves.  I liked that very much.  I like music, too.  I don’t think I’m a very good dancer but I like to dance.  I like quiet things, like right now.”

     He thought that was a marvelous thing for her to say and he released her hand and put his arm about her shoulders, pulling her closer to him.  She yielded willingly and he sensed none of the tenseness she had always shown before.  She leaned against him he felt her head rest slightly upon his shoulder.

     “You never need to feel grateful that I’ve saved you,” he whispered near her ear.  “I’m saving you for me.”

     The words touched her ears and stirred something within her that she had not felt since long ago.  It was the hint of something that once came naturally but now struggled to emerge from the dark places within her.  It was the teasing sense of hope and the stirring of those feelings that reminded her that she was, after all, a woman.

     Rachel knew that she was now assigned to her world and whatever it brought into her life.  The goal was to survive and she lived with the constant doubt and fear of what that might encompass.  Living in the apartment was, she knew appreciatively, far better than being sent to the brothel.  If this man called Hans forced himself upon her, she would be used by one man, not hundreds.

     Often she would be alone in her room with the thoughts racing through her mind only to hear guns being fired just beyond the courtyard.  There was an execution wall below, she knew, and it was a constant reminder that her fears and humiliations were infinitely better than death.

 

THE WOMEN

 

     The matrons were happy to comply and find eighteen women with clerical skills and from them Hans would select six.   They were led into a downstairs room and entered six at a time as Hans watched them copy written material.  He evaluated them by their speed and accuracy and finally chose the final six. 

     It was impossible to tell if they were grateful to be chosen and to be freed from the hard labor they had known before.  Their faces were frozen into emotionless images that simply accepted whatever they were obliged to do and he was oddly disturbed by it. 

     He sent Rachel to bring the first stack of cards they had completed and she entered the room with a smile.

     “Hello,” she offered and only two of the women responded.  “Do you have some cards ready?” she asked.

     A woman with an especially gaunt face stood from her chair and passed by each typewriter, gathering the completed cards.

     “Do you live here?” asked a woman with a pinched face suggesting that it had never known a smile.

     “Yes,” replied Rachel.  “I was sent here.”

     The woman’s eyes ran over Rachel’s frame.  “It looks like you eat well,” she stated.

     Rachel only nodded and forced a half smile.  “I will try to bring something for all of you,” she offered.

     “That would be wonderful!” gasped the youngest of the women with her eyes sparking with hope.

     “I’ll believe it when it happens,” the first woman said with open disdain.

     Rachel only continued to smile and replied, “I’ll do my best.”

     Hans eagerly reviewed the cards and compared them to the originals to seek errors.  Of more than two hundred cards, he returned only twelve to redo because of mistakes in copying data.  The Commandant was correct, this was going to give them a huge advantage over Hans doing all the typing.

      After Rachel had made several visits to the downstairs typing room, the women started to feel confident that they could work and speak without consequences.  They had not spoken with Rachel but examined her with open curiosity each time she came.  On the third visit, she brought pieces of cheese and a half loaf of bread.  In spite of her concern and generosity, she remained a constant subject of the women’s conversations.

     “The accountant’s w***e,” said the plump woman wearing woolen stockings with a collection of holes. The others called her Rebecca and she would hiss her appraisal of Rachel as, “always with a smile and a full stomach.”

     Katia was the gaunt one with hollowed cheeks.  She  frowned with the comment and glanced away from the noisy chatter of her typewriter.  She could converse while her fingers continued their work as if having minds of their own.

     “And if she does live here,” she said coldly, “does that mean she has a choice?”

     “Harummp,” snarled Rebecca, “she looks like she’s suffering, no?  What happened to Sven, the Czech who was a Kapo?  She didn’t like him so now he’s working in the quarry!”

     “That’s where he should be,” chimed one of the other women, “he was an animal.”

     Rebecca paused from her work and frowned deeply, her face twisted into the pose of disgust.  “There’s other women living with gestapo officers,” she began, “but they’re not like this one.  I heard that the camp commander sometimes comes here at night.  You can imagine what for, no?”

     “All I know,” said Katia defiantly, “is that I’m eating bread and good cheese and she didn’t have to bring it.”

     “You’d defend your executioner, Katia!” snapped Rebecca.  “It’s one thing to be forced to be with them but another to be part of them!  This Rachel woman wears smiles and bounces down the stairs like a little girl!  She’s happy to be sleeping with them!”

     Suddenly, from the doorway came the voice, cold and forceful.  “I sleep with no one,” said Rachel.  “I didn’t choose to be here, I was selected just like you were chosen to type cards.  Yes, I eat better than if I was in the barracks and I’m grateful for that but the bread and cheese you’re eating came from my portions.  Now please, the Sturmhauptfuhrer wants all the cards you have finished.”

     Gathering the cards, Rachel turned abruptly and walked away saying nothing more but her free hand was folded into a tight fist that advertised her anger.

     “I’ll be with a work crew by tomorrow,” said Rebecca bitterly.  “You wait and see.”

     The rest of the women did not respond.  It was prudent now to worker harder and faster and they could only hope they would not share the punishment that would most surely fall on their frightened companion.

     The comments tormented Rachel and her mood altered from anger to sadness.  She had lived in the barracks for many months and suffered as much as anyone.  But never did she judge the women around her.  The young girl having sex with the kapo behind the barracks at night would return with extra pieces of bread and Rachel had only felt sorry for her but found no treason in her actions.  Survival was a cruel master, she knew, and in that recognized how unfair the woman’s comments had been.

     What Rachel did not know was that the harsh opinions were not limited to the typing room.  Within the barracks some women whispered of the pretty woman living with the gestapo officer.  They agreed that her pleasant countenance was evidence of her willingness to sleep with the enemy.

     There were already rumors flowing through the barracks that the Germans were retreating and that Berlin was in danger of falling to the Russians and Americans.

     “What will she do then?” some of the woman asked bitterly,  “when she has no one to protect her?”

     The reproduction of the cards was moving along splendidly and the Commandant Werner was more than pleased.  He viewed the boxes of finished cards and rubbed his hands excitedly.

     “It looks like you’re moving along very well,” he praised.  “I’m impressed.”

     Hans flashed a wide smile.  “I think you’ll be even more pleased when you see what I’ve done.”

     “Tell me,” said Werner.

     Hans opened one of the boxes to show the vast number of registries.  “In the beginning, I reduced the number of cards showing those who were sent to the chamber,” he explained.  “But then it occurred to me, why should we show that anyone went there?  I went back and took out all the cards of those who were gassed and reworked them.  Now, if the records are reviewed later, it will indicate that the gas chamber is here �" yes, there is a gas chamber in Dachau �" but it was never used.”

     Werner issued a tight grin but frowned as well.  “But the Jews,” he said.  “They’ll tell of people going there.”

     “What can they say?” asked Hans.  “No one went there and came back except the workers at the furnaces and how many of them are there?  Four, five, six?  They’ll be lost in the crowd if the camp is taken over.  It’s like anything else, Commandant, papers speak.”

     Werner nodded appreciatively.  “And if you don’t have that step of separating, it all moves even faster.”

     “Exactly,” said Hans.

     Later, as they shared the wine Werner had brought, the Commander asked, “What do you hear on the radio?”

     “Bombings,” replied Hans.  “Everywhere, bombings.  Dresden, Chemnitz and Leipzig, everywhere.”

     “This is not a war,” Werner lamented, “it is slaughter.  The engineer of the train tells of them burning bodies in Dresden; mounds of bodies.”  He sipped of his wine and stared past the kitchen window.  “In war you attack strategic places; factories, docks, warehouses, forts �" but this is insanity.  Homes blown apart while people sleep.  It’s an insane program to kill, only to kill.  To kill anyone, it doesn’t matter who, just to kill someone.”

     “Do you ever think about it?” asked Hans.  “What we have done here?  I want to question it but we’re even afraid to be honest these days.”

     Werner suddenly turned his eyes to Hans with a steel hard glare.  “We are conspirators, you and I.  If we can’t speak to each other without fear, then we are lost.”

     “Alright,” said Hans, lifting his head with a new resolve, “In Munich, years ago, I knew Jewish people.  They were in school with me.  They worked hard and harmed no one.  I look down into the courtyard every day and remember them and wonder what happened to them.  So what is this we are doing?  We talk about the bombings being atrocities more than attacks but how can we call those people down there our enemies?  If innocent civilians are dying from the bombs, what were those Jews?  I knew them as innocents and civilians.”

     For a long moment Werner examined the young man and was deeply satisfied that, at last, they were speaking openly and with confidence in each other.

     “You’re a humanist, Hans,” he finally said.  “My father wasn’t like you.  He was a realist.  Remember, I told you he was a judge.  A judge needs to be a realist, I suppose.  But he didn’t oppose the Jews until the economy failed.  When the Mark had absolutely no value and businesses were failing everywhere.  It was then he started to dislike the Jews.”

     Hans gave a frown of confusion but his interest was apparent as he leaned forward slightly, as if not wanting to miss a word.

     “We didn’t have many Jews.  My father told me that the great census, intended to identify the Jews in Germany, showed that less than one percent of all Germans were Jews.  But that one percent, Hans.  That one percent moved in like locust and bought the companies at discounted prices that were shameful.  And Jews from Austria, Hungary, Poland, all joined in to buy up everything they could get their hands on. Germans who worked all their lives to build a company sold it for a fraction of its worth just to survive.  And before long, that one percent and all the foreign Jews owned everything. 

     “You couldn’t protest because the Jews owned the newspapers that formed opinions.  If you went to the movies, the Jews owned the theater.  Even the Reich was paying rent to the Jews for some of their installations.  You had to really hunt in Berlin to find a bank that Jews didn’t own.  There were little girls in prostitutions standing in front of the hotels and nightclubs in Berlin.  And who owned the hotels?  Who owned the nightclubs?  The Jews exploited the poverty of Germany to get rich and they were  hatred of many, many people, Hans.

     “Maybe it wasn’t those same Jews you see in the courtyard but Hitler and his people decided to eliminate them all and whether we like it or not, many people applauded.  They were happy to put the signs, ‘This is a Jew business’ on a window because they remembered when it was a business owned by a friend.  So when they were identified and rounded up and shipped to places like this, the people looked away and saw and said nothing.  Soon the businesses were in German hands again and the economy soared but we decided to use the new prosperity to make tanks and planes.  Maybe because Hitler knew that someday they would have to answer for what was done to the Jews.

     “War is never a simple thing.  The problem with the Jews can’t be seen through a one-way mirror.  Humans are like ants.  The more industrious a nation is, the more it goes to war.  The slow and lazy nations enjoy peace.  I think I’ll go to a place in Latin America or Africa when all this is over.  But you, dear Hans, you won’t know what to do.  I think you are smitten with your beautiful Jewess and that’s why you want to defend them all.  Will you take her with you when you leave here?  It’s nothing to me so tell the truth.”

     Hans smiled slightly.  “I’d like to,” he confessed.

     “Don’t worry,” mused Werner, “I suspect there’ll be a lot of pairing with Jews after this is over.  Soul cleansing if nothing else.”

     “If any of them will have us,” Hans added bitterly. 

     “Well,” sighed Werner, lifting his glass dramatically, “to you and the Jewess.  May you have babies and bungalows and learn to never look back.  But for the time being, we need to make sure that nothing implicates us personally in all of this.”

     Hans nodded his agreement.  “We’re on schedule, I think,” he advised.  “We’re already in the heavy population years and they’re turning out good production daily.  The slow part is changing the photos from one card to another but Rachel’s helping with that.”

     “Keep me informed,” said Werner as he licked the last drop of wine from the glass, stood and slapped his cap against his leg.  “If anything important comes over the radio, call for me,” he said before leaving.

     Rachel had stood at the door for a long while.  She held it slightly open to hear the conversation, hoping to learn something more about the advance of the Americans and Russians toward the camp.  Instead, she had heard Hans’ confession that he wanted to take her with him when he left the place.  Her eyes had widened with alarm as the words caused her mouth to fall in wonder.  He had spoken with the tone of sincerity and she questioned how the man with complete authority should feel subjected to her feelings?  He had been mysteriously gracious with her since bringing her to the apartment.  He had not forced himself on her in spite of his power to do so.  He had treated her with a respect frighteningly different from what she had known while living in the barracks of Auschwitz.  His kindness and consideration were overwhelming but confusing and had always brought the fear that one day he would grow tired of the charade and punish her for prompting it.

     Now, in the private conversation she had overheard, the man had spoken as if the treatment was symbolic of his feelings and she was tormented with the thought.  To even entertain the idea of willingly accepting his affection would justify all the accusations from the women in the typing room.  No matter what he had said, there was the chasm of circumstance between them.  He was an officer in the gestapo and she had long since lost the luxury of feeling anything except fear.

     She quietly closed the door and leaned against the wall of the room, her heart throbbing and her breath labored.  How could such a thing happen?  Even as she tried to understand the implications of his confession, she had to admit that at times his attentions had been appealing.

     It was something she had often considered.  Hans was a member of the most despised element of the Nazi regime and she was a Jew.  Politics alone had divided them into polarized portions of society.  But they were both also Germans and the thought somehow comforted her.  But what would she do if one day he confessed to her all that he had said to the Commandant?  She was in no position to reject him without severe consequence and she would be forever an offense to her own people if she accepted.  The thought was so tormenting that she pushed it out of her mind and fell upon the bed to watch the search lights move across the walls.

     It happened sooner than she imagined.  The following evening Hans retrieved the radio and placed it on a small table beside the sofa.  With a few nudges of the dial came the voice with the clipped tones of English.

     Usually she pulled a chair to one side of the radio and recited her translation as quickly as she could.  This night, however, he patted the place beside him on the sofa and she settled nervously, pulling her skirt downward and pressing her knees together.

     She no longer referred to the British, Russians or Americans but said only “they.”  “They have used fire bombs on Frankfort.  The city is burning.  Prime Minister Churchill has visited President Roosevelt in the United States.  They are saying that France is completely liberated now and people are celebrating in Paris.”

     “But where are they?” asked Hans as he leaned back against the cushions of the sofa and sighed deeply.  “How long do we have to wait?”

     “They didn’t say anything about Germany, sir,” she told him, “only about the attack on Frankfort.”

     His worries marked his face but he turned to examine her expression with open interest.

     “Do you know how exquisite you are?” he asked.

     “No, sir,” Rachel responded nervously.

     His hand moved upward to cradle her chin and her eyes widened with fear.  He held her face within his grasp and leaned forward to kiss her lips for a long moment. 

     She did not know how to respond.  Her thoughts raced and she concluded that to have tight, hard lips would signal a rejection that might anger him.  She softened her lips and felt the gentleness of his kiss with an odd curiosity.

     “Thank you,” he said when he had finished.  “I hope I didn’t offend you.”

     “No, sir,” she replied but her voice trembled.

     Their eyes locked for a long moment before he put his arm around her and pulled her close to him on the sofa. 

     “We will listen some more,” he told her.  “Maybe we will learn what we need to know.”

     As was his assignment, Hans continued to monitor the arrival of the trains and each day wondered where they were supposed to put more prisoners.  The barracks were overflowing and the conditions horrendous and yet the trains continued to come.

     “It’s a good sign,” Commandant Werner told him in low, secretive tones.  “They’re sending all the prisoners from the camps close to the front.  The more they send, the closer the British and Americans are.  I don’t think it will be long.”

     It was later when Werner was walking with Hans from the registry of the new prisoners that he confided, “I received a call from Obersturmbannführer Bremmer.  He asked about you.”

     Hans tightened his lips with anger.  “He hates me,” he told Werner.  “He hates me and my family.”

     “I told him you were one of my best officers,” said Werner.

     Hans paused in the shadow of a building and shook his head mournfully.  “He’s the reason I’m here,” he told Werner.  “He thinks we are all sympathizers in my family.  My father’s a judge, remember?  He found some men innocent and Bremmer disagreed.  He called us enemies of the Reich.  I joined the army to prove that he wasn’t right and to make him stop investigating my father.  He’s the one that had me transferred into the gestapo thinking he would catch me conspiring with the enemy or something.”

     Werner glanced toward a cluster of passing clouds and sighed deeply.  “He’s visiting soon,” he said solemnly.  “He told me he would be visiting.”

     The thought brought a silence between them and Hans felt his chest filling with dread.  They went to the typing room where the women jumped to their feet and stood at attention.  Werner fingered through some of the completed cards and smiled with satisfaction.

     “1942?” he asked with open pleasure.  “You’re moving right along, aren’t you?” he asked.

     They returned to the walkway in front of the building where Werner turned to shield his face from the sun.

     “No news?” he asked.  “You’re listening to the radio, aren’t you?”

     “Everything’s about air strikes and mostly the eastern front.  The British talk a lot about what’s happening in France.  They’re calling it, liberated.”

     The Commandant smiled wryly.  “I suppose it is, Hans,” he said grimly.  “Everything’s a matter of perspective in the end.”

     A few days later, Rachel was washing the breakfast dishes when the knock came to the door.  She wiped her hands on her apron and sighed with resignation.  The women in the typing room now brought completed cards to the apartment when they grew too many to manage and consumed their working space.  When possible, Rachel sent bread, cheese or extra portions of meat and now feared that they would deliver the cards more often, to the point    of annoyance, only to receive additional food.

     She wore a frown when she opened the door and was poised to issue a word of caution when she spied Obersturmbannführer Bremmer standing before her.  By instinct she forced her small frame erect with hands straight at her sides.

     “Leutnant Hans Kappel,” he said with hard, harsh tones as he pushed past her, “where is he?”

     “At the registry for the train, sir,” said Rachel.

     She knew to keep her eyes directly forward but the short, balding man stood before her as if daring her eyes to meet his.

     “How nice and clean you are,” he mused.  “You are the Leutnant’s comfort woman, are you not?”

     The question demanded an answer and left no chance for Rachel to defend herself and say she had never slept with Hans.

     “I was assigned to live here, yes sir,” she replied.

     “Get out of my sight!” snapped the man with open disgust and Rachel rushed to the living room and closed the door behind her.  Her heart pounded with fear as she listened at the door, hoping the man would not follow her.

     A half hour later Hans entered the apartment and found Bremmer sitting at the table smoking a cigarette.  He automatically saluted with the required, “Heil Hitler!” and closed the door behind him.  His eyes moved quickly over the room, an act that Bremmer was quick to notice.

     “If you’re looking for you Jewess w***e,” he said, “she’s in the other room.”

     Hans hung his cap on a hook in the wall and gave a stern glare in the man’s direction.

     “She cleans house for me,” he said, “nothing more.”

     Bremmer crossed his legs and put on a curious frown.  “Tell me, Hans,” he said slowly, “how does a young man like you come to a camp like Dachau where there is no combat or danger and get promoted from Leutnant to Untersturmfuhrer?”

      Hans recalled that he had felt a profound fear of the man in the past and now was surprised that he was calm and ready to be defiant if necessary.  The sight of him brought a strange rage to his chest and he would have preferred to strangle him than to answer.

     “Fortunately for me, Obersturmbannführer, service to our nation is not limited to combat.  Good commanders recognize it on all fronts.”

     Bremmer deepened his frown with the response, the sudden change of expression advertised his displeasure.

     “Good commanders also recognize when there’s something out of order.    I find myself asking why you have this apartment so far away from other officers?  And promotions coming to someone with a clerical job.  When I asked around about you, no one seemed to know who you are, only that you come down from your exclusive apartment and Jew mistress to check in the train arrivals.  You are an accountant and none of the other accountants know you.  All that makes me suspicious, Hans Kappel.”

     “Suspicious of what, Obersturmbannführer Brenner?” asked Hans.  “There were several apartments available when I came and I like privacy.  I always have.  I chose this one because I’m not interested in card games, drinking beer and the stupid jokes.  I don’t know what’s suspicious about that.

     “The other accountants are slow and aren’t diligent.  I prefer to bring the arrival documents here and prepare them accurately.  I have permission of the camp commander to do that because he’s as interested as I am about efficiency.  He doesn’t think my working here is suspicious.

     “As far as my promotions, you’ll need to talk to him about that.”

     Brenner’s face reddened with the rebuke.  “You don’t have much respect for my superior rank, do you?  Do you think you can talk to me like one of the Kapos or something?  You will address me as sir and answer only what I ask!  You have the same arrogance of your father!  He coddles the Jew lovers and you keep one in your apartment!”

     His anger caused his chin to tremble as his eyes glared with fury.  Quickly, he turned and stared toward the door where Rachel had exited. 

     “Call the Jew b***h!” he commanded.

     Hans did not respond but kept his eyes fixed upon Brenner’s face. 

     “Are you deaf?” shouted Brenner, “bring her here, now!”

     When Hans refused to comply, the man stormed to the door and pushed it open.  Hans followed, terrified that Brenner would find all the documents and discover the project Hans shared with the Commandant.  When entering, however, he found the room cleaned of all records and the typewriter and paste used to fix the photos on documents missing.  He frowned and turned his eyes to Rachel who stood at attention in the corner.  Obviously, she had understood what they were doing all the while and had said nothing.  She had hidden all signs of their work and he could not have admired her more. 

     Brenner examined the room with a quick sweep of his eyes.  He stalked about as if in search of something and went to the adjoining room where Rachel slept and gave it a brief scrutiny.  It suddenly occurred to Hans that it would be a complete disaster if one of the women from the typing room below appeared with more documents.  He had to get Brenner out of the apartment as soon as possible.

     As Brenner neared the corner, he suddenly reached forth and grasped Rachel by the hair, pulling her to the center of the room. 

     “You are this man’s w***e, right?” he asked fiercely.

     “No, sir,” she replied with a trembling voice.

     “Don’t lie to me!” he shouted. 

     “I’m not, sir,” she said in a tone of protest.  “I clean, nothing more!”

     With his teeth clenched with anger, Brenner pulled forth his Luger and pressed it against Rachel’s temple.

     “Do you know what happens to Jews who lie to me?” he said with biting, vicious emphasis.

     It was in that moment Hans stepped forward and grasped Brenner’s wrist, twisting it and forcing him to drop the weapon.  With his free hand he pushed Rachel behind him.  Moving his face next to Brenner’s, his jaw muscles hardened with rage, he stepped between the man and Rachel and abandoned all fear of consequence.

     “You pathetic little imitation of a man!” he snarled.  “You want to shoot someone, shoot me!  You’ve made a career out of terrorizing my family and hiding behind your rank!  Without it you’re nothing!  Take off that uniform and you’d be a sniveling little coward!

     “I told you this woman is not sleeping with me and she isn’t!  You came into my home once and made your sadistic accusations but you’re not going to do it again!  Not here!”

     Brenner’s eyes darted about as if wishing someone was there to be witness or to give assistance.

     “You’re the ignorant a*s, Kappel!” he snarled.  “Do you know what you’ve done?  You’ve assaulted a superior officer and I’m going to have you put away and you’ll be no better than your Jewess w***e!  You think I’ve terrorized your family?  Why? Because they’re Jew lovers!  Aren’t you proving it right now?”

     He stepped back nervously, as if expecting Hans to attack as he stooped to retrieve his weapon.  Slowly, he pushed it back into its holster.  Cautiously, he stepped back through the opened door and put his hand on the door to exit the apartment.

     Once Brenner was outside, Hans could hear him calling for the gestapo guards and he sighed deeply, knowing that he had indeed sealed his fate.  Without thinking, he pulled Rachel within his arm and pressed her against his side.  Her eyes were wide with fear but her expression was one of astonishment.  She grasped his arm instinctively, never before having been so familiar.

     Hans knew that in Brenner’s state, if he was arrested, the man would return to kill Rachel.  His mind raced with the thought and suddenly he said, “Call Commandant Werner!”

     Rachel ran into the adjoining room where the telephone rested on the desk.  Hans had an official directory on the wall and her finger coursed down the list only to discover that the Commandant’s number was first.  Nervously she dialed the three-digit number.

     “I need to speak with Commandant Werner, please,” she said.

     “Who’s calling?” the aide to the Commandant asked.

     “His wife,” lied Rachel.

     When Werner answered, Rachel permitted the words to pour over her tongue, explaining what had happened and that Hans was being arrested.  Without answering, Werner merely hung up the phone and she was desperate, wanting to know if he had ended the call through disinterest or because he wanted to rush to the scene.

     Hans had been put in the rear of Brenner’s car and the chauffeur waited with the motor running as the man stood staring toward the upstairs window of the apartment.  Gestapo guards stood near the car, making certain that Hans would not exit.  Brenner’s hand clutched the grip of his pistol and a faint smile touched his lips as he moved toward the entrance of the building.

     “Obersturmbannführer Brenner!” came Werner’s voice at that moment and the man paused to watch the Commandant approach.  As Brenner waited for the Commandant to arrive, he saw the door to the typing room open and a woman snap to attention, her hands filled with documents.  Behind her the women jumped to attention in front of their typewriters and he frowned deeply with the sight.

     “What is this you’re doing here?” asked Brenner as Werner reached his side.  The Commandant viewed the women in the typing room calmly and put his hand on the man’s shoulder, turning him away from the sight.

     “They are assistants to the only accountant I have in this camp worth anything,” said Werner, “and what is he doing in your car?”

     “He is under arrest!” snapped Brenner, “for assaulting a superior officer!”

     Werner turned to the gestapo guards beside the car and said sharply, “Stand down!  Bring Sturmhauptfuhrer Kappel here!!”

     “I said he is under arrest!” Brenner protested.

     Werner did not reply but waited as Hans walked toward him. 

     “Did you assault this man?” asked the Commandant.

     “No, sir,” replied Hans.

     Brenner’s face reddened again.  “He’s lying!  Up there, in the apartment with his Jew w***e, he attacked me!”

     “Do you have any bruises, Obersturmbannführer Brenner?  I don’t see you bleeding anywhere,” observed the Commandant.

     Brenner knotted his hands in fists and darted his eyes from Hans to Werner.  “Who are you going to believe?  This Jew lover or someone with the same rank as you?”

     Werner smiled wryly.  “We have believed those with the highest ranks far too long, Brenner.  And look where it has gotten us.  Our cities are in ashes and we’re retreating on all fronts.  Don’t talk to me about rank!”

     Brenner’s mouth fell with surprise.  “You’re no better than him!” he charged.  “You’re into something here together, aren’t you?  Him and his Jew loving family and you spreading propaganda against the Reich!  Tomorrow there will be a report about all this at headquarters!”

     “You do that,” Werner advised, calm and confident, “and I will have a dozen witnesses to tell how you came into the camp disoriented and started to rave and make wild accusations against everyone.  The pressure of your position has been too much for you.  So we’ll wait for our superiors to call us in for interrogations and we’ll all tell the same story; except you of course.”

     “You’re traitors!” Brenner stormed, “all of you!  You’re traitors to the fatherland!”

     Werner put Brenner’s arm in a firm grip and led him to his car.  Opening the door, he leaned closely to the man’s ear and whispered.  “Don’t come back, you’re not welcome here.”

     When Hans and Werner watched the car move slowly through the gate and onto the road to Dachau, the Commandant muttered, “We need to get things done in a hurry now.  He’s not the kind to give up easily.”

     Rachel had her back pressed against the kitchen cabinet as she heard footsteps mounting the stairs.  She said a quick prayer that it would be Hans and not the raging gestapo officer who had pressed the pistol to her head.  Her eyes were closed when the door opened and when there was a moment of silence, she opened them to see Hans standing before her.  Her eyes examined his face.  This was the man she had known as her enemy and who moments before had tempted death to protect her.

     When he gathered her into his arms, she did not resist.  This time her body did not grow rigid with fear but was supple and pressed against his.  She felt his hands on each side of her face, forcing her to look into his eyes.

     “No one will harm you,” he whispered, “never.  I promise.”

     Her words came without thought but were driven by the frantic need to know.  “I can trust you?  I can say what I want and do what I want and you will not punish me?”

     “Rachel,” he offered gently, “don’t you know that I love you?”

     She tried to speak but the words refused to pass her lips.  At last she forced them with a broken voice.  “I didn’t know you could love a Jew,” she said.

     “I love a woman,” he replied.  “You were born in Germany of Jewish parents.  That makes you a German like me.  I won’t waste my time thinking about what blood flows in our veins.  I see a beautiful woman who has captured my heart and I want to be with her as long as I live.”

     “Can we do this?” she asked in awe.  “Everyone will hate us.  My people will hate us and yours will too.”

     Hans took a step back away from her and gestured to his body.  “Here I am, Rachel.  What do you see?”

     As her thoughts moved into her face, Rachel replied softly, “I see a man who risked his life for me; a man who treated me marvelously when he had the authority to do as he pleased with me.  I see a man to whom I owe my life.

     “I have been afraid so long, I don’t know if I will recognize love.  Forgive me for being honest with you.  I don’t know what I feel because the only feeling I’ve known for the past three years has been fear.  Please try to understand that.  But I know that if I cannot love you, I will never love anyone.”

     He held for this hand and she placed hers within it.  He led her to the sofa where he settled onto the cushions and pulled her within the circle of his arm.

     “We must listen to the radio every day,” he told her.  “We must pray that the Americans or British are close. 

     “Tomorrow I will go to the clothing room; the room where they put all the clothing from the prisoners.  I will find dresses your size, shoes, a purse, everything.  Then I will take a staff car to Munich every day so that the gate guard gets accustomed to seeing me come and go.  When the time is right, you will dress in the clothes I bring and hide in the car and I will take you to my mother in Munich.  She will take care of you until all this is over.”

     “You can’t!” protested Rachel.  “It’s too great a risk.  You can come with me and we’ll hide somewhere until the end of the war.  It won’t be that long.”

     Hans brushed her hair from her eyes and kissed her forehead.  “I must be here until the last moment.  If I’m not, it will raise a lot of suspicion and they’ll go to my home and search and find you, don’t you see?  My mother is a wonderful person who never saw the difference between people.  My father is the same.  That’s why Brenner hates them.  You’ll be safe there.”

     Rachel pressed her cheek against his chest, whispering, “I don’t want to go without you.”

     “You must,” he said firmly, “and one day we’ll remember this and laugh about it all.  We’ll try to tell our children about these times and they won’t believe us.  But for now we must be very careful and work hard on the register cards.”

     “The cards!” she gasped.  “I threw them in the closet and they must be completely out of order.  I didn’t know what else to do.”

     He put his finger against her lips.  “You did marvelously.  I was very proud of you.”

     The rest of the day they sorted through the thousands of cards and returned them to their sequenced order.  The day had been wasted in terms of productivity but the women in the typing room were busy and delivered a tall stack of completed cards.

     That evening Rachel pulled her legs beneath her on the sofa and once again felt his arm move around her.  She listened intently to the BBC report and translated as best she could. 

     “Many soldiers are deserting,” she told Hans.  “The bombing is concentrated now on Berlin, Dresden, Chemnitz and Leipzig.  They’re naming all the cities they say have been liberated.  Brussels, Antwerp, Boulogne, Calais, Athens, Belgrade and, oh, my God!  Aachen!  They have liberated Aachen!  They’re in Germany!”

     Hans fell back upon the sofa and sighed with resignation.  “Aachen is only 500 kilometers,” he said.  “I don’t think we have much time.”

     Their apprehension was mixed with excitement.  They had a plan while the thousands of prisoners within the camp could only wait and hope to survive the remaining days before being liberated.  By then Rachel would be safe in Munich and Hans would one day put on his civilian clothes and drive out of the camp toward his own freedom.

     The circles of the search lights moved across the walls when Hans announced that it was time to get some sleep.  Rachel agreed, feeling weary from the stress of the day.  This time, however, she did not move to her room but followed Hans to his bed. 

     When the darkness surrounded them and she felt her flesh against his, she whispered, “Promise me to be careful.  I don’t want to be pregnant in a time like this.”

 

THE FINAL DAYS

 

     They worked feverishly.  Commandant Werner agreed with Han’s suggestion and six more women were found from the pool of prisoners to work at night copying the registration cards.  By the week before Christmas, there remained only a few months of records to adjust.  The goal would be met before the arrival of the Americans.  According to the radio reports, the Americans were moving on the front that would one day reach Dachau and Hans was confident they would arrive before the British.

     Rachel continued her translations each night and Commandant Werner passed on the information gained from the train engineers that Himmler had ordered the crematoriums and gas chambers at Auschwitz to be dismantled and destroyed with explosives.

     “Two weeks,” said Werner, putting his hand on Han’s shoulder.  “Two weeks and I will leave.  I’ll try to blend in with the civilians and pray no one recognizes me.  I suggest you do the same.”

     Hans nodded his agreement.  “I had planned pretty much the same thing,” he said, “but it’s been an honor working with you, sir.  I want you to know that.  You are truly an exceptional man for the times forced on us.”

     “1950,” said Werner, “if all goes well with both of us, let’s plan to meet at the Octoberfest in 1950.”

     “I’d like that very much,” said Hans before suddenly blurting, “I want to borrow the staff car for a few days.”

     Werner gave him a curious look, asking, “Why?”

     “I’m going to get Rachel out of here,” he confided.  “I’m going to take her to Munich.”

     Werner nodded thoughtfully.  “When?”

     “I don’t know.  I need to make a few trips for the gate guard to be accustomed to me coming and going.  Then I’ll hide her in the back and pray he doesn’t check.”

     “Take the car,” said Werner, “but tell me what day you plan to take her.  I’ll be at the gate to distract the guard.”

     Hans felt his appreciation mounting in his chest.  He had shared so much with the Commandant and now it was coming to that conclusion that would spell their very survival.

     “Thank you, sir,” was all he could think to say.

     By February of 1945, Hans had a suitcase filled with clothing for Rachel.  Commandant Werner had brought a thin, balding man in the striped uniform of a prisoner to the apartment and told him that Rachel would need documents. 

     “He made the letters for us, remember?” asked Werner.  “He’s one of the best forgers in Europe.”

     “I’ll need a camera, sir,” said the man.  “I’ll need photos of her.”

     “We’ll take care of that,” said Werner. 

     Taking Hans to one side, Werner spoke softly.  “You can’t take the chance of being stopped with her in the car without documents.  What if Brenner sends someone to search your parent’s house?  Don’t underestimate him, Hans, he’s dangerous.  We need to have everything covered.”

     Four days later the documents were delivered and Hans was astonished at their quality.  If he had been inspecting the documents of another person with these papers, he would have permitted them to pass.

     He had taken six trips to Munich and had spoken with his parents about having Rachel in the house.  He had felt a slight concern about confessing that he loved a Jewish woman but his mother was delighted and his father only offered his congratulations.  It was now time and he returned to the apartment to speak with Rachel.

     “Tomorrow, late in the afternoon, when it’s a little dark, we’re going to Munich,” he told her.

     “I’m frightened,” she confessed and watched as he sat at the kitchen table and pulled her onto his lap.

     “My mother’s expecting you.  You’ll like her.  She’ll tell you a lot of stories about me but just remember that she’s a mother and her son can do no wrong.  But I want to be honest with you, always.  I have always hated the socialist movement, Rachel.  I was never a Nazi.  All this was forced on me.

     “I was in Munich in ’42 when the first bombing came.  It was something you never forget.  Buildings and homes you had known all your life were piles of rubble.  And Hitler was in Munich on that night.  He was down there in his protected bunker that even had a movie theater while the rest of us were watching the explosions and waiting for a bomb to end everything.

     “I was a member of the White Rose in school, Rachel.  I went to the University of Munich and what we didn’t wasn’t much but it was against the new socialist laws.  We printed pamphlets and passed them around the campus.  They were protest writings.  We protested the enslavement of the Jews.  We protested the new regulations that changed what we were taught.  We protested a lot of things and I guess I was lucky.  My father freed some defendants that the gestapo wanted convicted and I had to leave the White Rose and enter the military.  Later, everyone in the organization was captured and executed.  I came very close to being one of them.

     “This is all insanity, my love.  We’ve got one chance to put all this behind us and we have to take it.  Do you understand?”

     Rachel tightened her hand over his and said only, “Yes.”

     They had prepared everything the night before and waited for a moment when no one was watching for Rachel to slip into the rear seat of the car.  Hans knew the chances of being discovered hiding a Jewish woman were great and remembered a habit from his days as a rebellious student.  He had rummaged through drawers to find his small Walther PPK pistol.  The following morning he would shove it into his sock as an addition to the Luger all gestapo officers wore.

     As promised, Werner was at the gate holding a clipboard and talking to the guard with much animation.  He appeared to be questioning something the gate guards had done and when Hans moved the car to the guard house, Werner only glanced in his direction and told the guard, “Open the gate and hurry.”

     Obeying quickly, the gate was opened and in the rear view mirror, Hans could see the guard returning to Werner to continue the discussion.

     The road was black and the night was moonless.  Within minutes they were entering Dachau and passing onto the main road to Munich. 

     “Is everything alright?” asked Rachel from her place prone on the floor behind him.

     “So far,” he replied.

     Forty minutes later they were entering Munich where many of the homes had placed black material over their windows in fear of more bombings.  At one intersection Hans passed a group of soldiers standing before a café and he wondered if they were patrons or persecuting someone within.

     There was little traffic and he moved quickly through the maze of streets toward his parent’s home.  Everything would have to be done quickly.  He did not want to linger too long.  He had parked the staff car in front of the house on several previous nights to make neighbors accustomed to seeing it but still he wanted to leave Rachel and return quickly to the camp.

     At last, he braked in front of the house and spent a brief moment after extinguishing the headlights to survey the scene.  Satisfied that it was safe, he stepped from the car and moved to the other side of the car, opening the rear door.  His eyes darted about in search of anything unusual but knew there would have to be a risk.

     “Come, hurry,” he said and with his arm about her waist, rushed Rachel into the house. 

     As planned, all the interior lights had been turned off.  No one needed to see a strange woman entering.  Once the door was closed, Herr Kappel turned them on and his wife sighed with pleasure.

     “She’s beautiful, Hans,” she exclaimed, “don’t worry, she’ll be safe with us.”  Immediately, she placed Rachel within her arm and guided her toward the bedrooms.  Rachel looked over her shoulder as she left, her eyes filled with the message of desperation.

     He felt relieved that Rachel was in the house but knew the danger had not ended.  He drove through the streets with the awareness that life would not be the same in the apartment without Rachel.  Perhaps the camp would be captured soon, he thought with a sense of hope.  Perhaps it would be captured and he could resume the life he had known before the lunacy of the war had come upon Germany.

     As he turned onto the main street that connected with the road to Dachau, he saw the red lights and gestapo officers ahead, blocking the street.  His heart quickened and he slowly braked to the barrier.  A junior officer approached and offered the heil greeting.

     “What is this?” asked Hans, “are you looking for someone?”

     “Yes,” came Brenner’s voice from the darkness.  Hans saw the man approach with a crooked smile, softly applauding as he moved forward.  “Very clever, Kappel,” he said.  “Unfortunately for you, not all our soldiers are Jew lovers and traitors.  You forgot that the tower guards have binoculars.  You and your commandant had this all planned very neatly but you were stupid enough to think I would leave the camp and not have someone watching everything for me?” 

     Turning to the other men, Brenner ordered them to open the rear door of the car.  Stepping forward, he saw that it was empty.

     “Take his weapon and put him in the back,” he ordered and the men stepped forward to ask Hans to exit the car and enter the rear seat.  A sergeant pulled the Luger from its holster.  Brenner then entered the passenger side and told a guard to drive.  “We’ll go to your father’s home and see what we find there,” he smirked.

     “Do you really think I’d put my family in danger?” asked Hans. 

     Brenner withdrew his Luger and ordered the driver to move away from the barrier.  The car slid forward quietly into the dark street and Brenner turned in the seat, pointing the weapon at Hans.

     “I would be delighted to exterminate your parents, Kappel.  It would bring me great pleasure.  But first I would put a shot through your little w***e’s head.”

     “She’s not in my parent’s home,” said Hans.  “I know you’d kill them and that’s why I didn’t take her there.  The Commandant, he’s from a farm family between here and Dachau.  I took her there.”

     Brenner thought for a long moment.  “If you’re lying to me, I’ll put a bullet between your eyes.  No one would think anything of it.  They’d think you were killed by some of the resistence rabble around the city.”

     “I’m not lying,” said Hans, “I’m trying to save my parents.”

     Brenner spent a moment pondering the words before telling the driver to go onto the road to Dachau.  He ordered Hans to tell them where to turn and they settled into a heavy silence. 

     After twenty minutes, Hans started to lean forward as if to peer out the windows in search of an exit road.  As he did, he pulled the Walther from his sock. 

     “There,” he said, pointing to the right where a thin, double-rutted dirt road moved into the trees.  The driver turned into the road and the twin circles of the headlights moved across a thick stand of trees.

     “Here,” said Hans, “there’s a path over there that leads to the back of the farm.”

     “I don’t see anything,” said Brenner just before hearing the crack of the pistol and watching the driver slump forward.  Before he could react, he felt the Walther pressed against his head.

     “Give me your gun,” said Hans, “now!”

     “They’ll hunt you down like a dog!” snarled Brenner.  “I’ll find you and watch you hanged for this!”

     Hans opened the rear door and stepped out of the car.  Pulling the handle of the front door, he ordered Brenner to step out and pushed him to the other side of the car.

     “Open the door and pull him out,” he ordered and Brenner obeyed without comment, pulling the dead driver out and onto the red dirt. 

     “Do you really think you’ll get away with this?” asked Brenner.  “All this for some Jew woman?  Your entire future for a Jewess?  You’re a madman, Kappel!”

     Hans reached forward and grabbed Brenner’s lapel, pulling him close and putting the pistol to his head.

     “You put your pistol to her head, like this,” he said in tones cold and calculating.  “That was your mistake.  Do I think I can get away with this?  Like you said, they’ll think it was the work of the resistance.”

     Brenner’s eyes widened. “Now wait, Kappel,” he stammered.  “We can make some kind of an agreement, right?  I won’t look for her, okay?  I’ll forget all about this, I promise!”

     In the deep silence of the forest, the crack of the pistol echoed across the fields and meadows beyond the trees.  Hans entered the car and hoped the driver’s side was not too bloodied.

     In the weeks that followed, Hans visited his parents regularly and delighted to see Rachel content and returning to a life without constant fear.  They would sit side by side at dinner and he was happy to see her smile frequently.

     Hans confided only to his father about what had happened with Brenner.  He felt his father needed to know that the threat hanging over the family had finally ended.

     Without Rachel to translate, Hans and the Commandant had to rely on information from the train engineers about the advance of the British and Americans.  After chatting with one of the engineers for more than an hour, Martin Werner packed a suitcase and left on the train that steamed away from the camp.  Several boxcars were left behind, filled with the corpses of the prisoners that had died during the long journey.  It was April 17, 1945.  The constant arrival of trains had severely over populated the camp.  It had been constructed to house 5,000 prisoners and now there were more than 30,000.

     It was spring.  To the prisoners, spring was always a nostalgic but confusing time.  The earth was alive and beautiful, clear skies where birds chattered moved above them and yet, they were bound to the life of starvation and abuse.  The contrast of horror surrounded by the wonder of the new season could not be explained or justified.

     On April 29, 1945, the Americans arrived at the camp.  Sporadic gunfire followed but he watched as the towers were soon under the control of the Americans.  He could see some of the Americans examining the boxcars where the bodies of the prisoners remained.

     Hans wore a broad smile as he watched from the kitchen window as the officer that had taken Werner’s place marched forward under a white flag.  American soldiers moved through the gates and lined the guards in rows, relieving them of all weapons.  In the distance he could hear the cheers and cries of the prisoners and soon the sound became deafening.

     The SS guards were marched across the courtyard and out of his sight when he heard steps on the stairs.  When the door opened and an American soldier stood before him, his rifle pointed in his direction, Hans started to explain that all the records of the camp could be found in the apartment.

     Two other soldiers entered and pushed him toward the door, shouting words he could not understand.  Moving down the stairs with his hands raised in surrender, they continued to push him toward the downstairs door.  As he passed the downstairs room, he could see the row of silent typewriters.

     Stepping into the sunlight, he saw the new camp commander being led to a place besides the administration building and a soldier put one shot into his head.  It was then he knew what the next moments would bring.

     He was led to a wall where dozens of other soldiers and officers stood.  Before them was a machine gun with an American soldier manning it.  Hans thought that he looked like a child.  His face bore than fresh glint of youth and yet, with his finger on the trigger of the stout weapon, he was as dangerous as any enemy could be.

     Hans lifted his eyes to the drifting clouds.  He imagined what it would have been like to lie in tall grass with Rachel and watch such clouds.  The rattle of the machine gun came to his ears just as he felt the impact against his chest.  Hans slumped against the wall and felt his legs surrender beneath him.  His life was easing out of him in a crimson pool and he smiled.  Rachel was not there to see it and that had made it all worthwhile.

 

HISTORIC NOTE

 

     According to 1^st Lieutenant Howard Buechner in his book, Dachau: The Hour of the Avenger : An Eyewitness Account, 520 German soldiers were killed in what has become known as the Dachau Massacre.  SS soldiers were lined up against a wall and machine gunned by American infantrymen infuriated by the sights encountered inside of Dachau.

     Prisoner registration documents were found and were generally confusing.  To this day historians debate   whether or not the gas chamber at Dachau was ever used.  None of the existing camp records indicated that an extermination program existed at the camp.  Upon visiting the Dachau Concentration Camp Museum today, one is told that the gas chamber was never used.  Even the Holocaust Encyclopedia states, “There is no credible evidence that the gas chamber in Barrack X was used to murder human beings.”

            The prisoner register records were so confusing that the encyclopedia adds, “It is unlikely that the total number of victims who died in Dachau will ever be known.”