The Austrian: A War Criminal's Story Read online

  And then a sudden dream, unnerving and unexpected, would tear through the bleak reality and pool my eyes with tears. Right after I would wake up and see the mold-eaten, dirt brown ceiling instead a bright blue sky and blinding, snow bright Alps, where she was with me. And then the already unwelcomed, frantic desire to live just to see it all once again, with her, would break the frozen layers of oblivion I was deliberately wrapping my heart and mind into day after day, numbing myself to the point of not feeling anything at all, to the point of being dead inside, while still going through the motions that all these people wanted me to go through, and make me clench a pillow with my fists and scream into it from all the pain that dream, damned to hell, would inflict.

  I had one of those dreams several nights ago again, and I couldn’t even bring myself to stop crying when my guard, who couldn’t stand my hardly contained sobbing anymore, opened the door to my cell and asked me in a quiet, sympathetic voice if I needed something. I guess I sounded really nerve-wrenching that night, if even my guards started to feel sorry for me. They didn’t start teasing me at least, and I was extremely grateful for that, but they still informed Dr. Gilbert. I waved off his concerns, but he still told agent Foster about me during his next visit, as if expressing concern for my mental state. He wasn’t concerned in the slightest, unlike the American, who asked me about what happened as soon as we stepped into the courtyard.

  “I’m fine,” I reassured him with a smile, which, judging by his look, seemed too pained. “Just missing home and family, that’s all.”

  I was grateful that he didn’t ask which family I was referring to. On the other hand, my manic obsession, with which I always questioned him about Annalise and our son, allowed him to make his guess.

  “Are you getting enough food?” He changed the subject, looking me up and down from the side of his eye.

  “Yes.”

  “How much do you weigh?”

  “I’m not sure.” I shrugged.

  “How much did you weigh prior to your arrest?”

  “About 220 pounds.”

  “You don’t look a pound heavier than 180 now,” he noticed.

  I shrugged again. My weight at this point didn’t concern me, and I wondered why it concerned the American.

  “I don’t want you to starve yourself to death,” agent Foster said, as if reading my mind. “I’ve heard a lot about the hunger strike you caused in the camp, after the Austrian government put you there for belonging to the then-illegal SS. I hope you’re not thinking of causing one now.”

  I smiled fondly at the memory of the events, which took place more than ten years ago.

  “I’m not, agent, I promise. A hunger strike.” I chuckled. “Back then I had something to fight and live for… Now… Nothing’s left.”

  He stopped suddenly and looked me in the eye.

  “You aren’t thinking of killing yourself again, I hope?”

  “And how would I do that?” I laughed and shook my head sadly. “We aren’t allowed to have anything sharp, anything we can strangle ourselves with, not even shoe laces in our cells. They give us our ties only prior to leading us to the court room, and we are forced to sleep on our backs only, with both hands on top of the blanket and with the cell door window open, so that the MP can constantly see what we are doing. The only option is to drown myself in the toilet, but it’s far too humiliating and unsanitary. I will just have to wait until they hang me in a more civilized way.”

  The American gave me another disapproving look, and I felt a pinch of conscience because I was ruining the meeting with him, a meeting that I was looking forward to for so long. I apologized and added, without sarcasm this time, “I don’t eat on some days because I simply can’t. It’s a protective mechanism of coping with things, I guess, or whatever the psychiatrists are calling it. I’m not doing it on purpose, really. I just can’t force myself to.”

  “Have you always had this problem?” I was glad that he sounded more like a doctor now, and not an offended friend, and that we could resume our walk and I didn’t have to feel embarrassed under his accusing stare. “The lack of appetite in a stressful situation, I mean?”

  “Sometimes. Mostly, I was helping myself in a different way.”

  “Smoking yourself dizzy and drinking yourself into oblivion?”

  “How do you, Americans, say? Bingo?” I smiled.

  “Bingo it is.” The OSS agent couldn’t conceal his smile either. “When did you start drinking? Regularly, that is?”

  I contemplated his question for a moment, even though I had the precise answer to it. “I started drinking at my university, but that was mostly social drinking. I stopped as soon as I started working with my father in his office in Linz. I started really drinking after I entered the SS. And got married. That happened about the same time, and one had a lot to do with the other, to be truthful.”

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  “My marriage or the SS?”

  “Let’s start with the SS. How did you get into all that to begin with? You had nothing to do with the military, as far as I remember.”

  “It is… one of the interesting coincidences which are dotted throughout my whole life and led me right up to this very day, agent,” I started, chuckling softly. “You see, I was always so lucky with those people and events just happening absolutely out of my control, but only now I understand that I was as lucky as a cow that has struck herself with her own horn. If only one of those things didn’t happen, if only I missed one appointment by one day, if I didn’t board a certain train one day, I might have not been here with you, agent Foster. I might have been one of the refugees heading on my way to America… or one of the prisoners of war, at the worst. But as I’ve already said, I’ve been extremely lucky. Sepp Dietrich invited me to join the SS, personally. Who else can say such a thing?”

  “Joseph ‘Sepp’ Dietrich? Obergruppenführer SS? The one who basically started it?”

  “Yes. Him.” I looked up at the mournful sky the color of lead, at the dirty snow under my feet and inhaled a full chest of humid, frosty air, recalling the day in my memory. “I had nothing to do with the military prior to meeting him, you’re right about that. The only reason why I happened to be at that NSDAP meeting in the first place was because I became a member of the Nazi Party right after the 1929 market crash. I know that it hit you hard in the States, but don’t forget that by the Versailles Treaty we were obliged to pay retribution to all the allies, and it was your American loan that kept us somewhat afloat. And then you demanded we pay it back immediately. Do you know what we were saying during that year? When the United States sneezed, the rest of the Europe almost died of influenza. We were using money stacks to fuel our stoves, because it was cheaper than buying coal. The inflation was so high that the price of bread was millions of schillings in Austria and Reichsmarks in the Weimar Republic. I only joined the NSDAP because they had something certain to suggest to the people, and because they wanted to unite Austria and Germany again. They promised work, food and unification, and that sounded perfect at that time. And don’t you go thinking that they were saying anything about exterminating Jews back then. Hitler never hid his anti-Semitism, however he was cunning enough to keep his mouth shut until 1935, when he openly announced the Nuremberg laws. The Nazi Party didn’t suggest anything criminal in 1929, believe me.”

  “I very well believe you, doctor. I doubt all those people would follow them so easily if they did.”

  “You’re right. They wouldn’t. Many still doubt the truth about the concentration camps. Did you hear what some of the civilians think of the films you showed them?”

  “That they were staged in Hollywood?”

  “Exactly.” I shook my head together with him. “It’s hard to take in that the leaders they believed in so blindly did something so atrocious. However, I’m distracting myself. I’m sorry, agent Foster, it became a sort of habit – to defend myself against everything that is being hurled at me, even though I am tr
ying to come to terms with admitting my guilt at least to myself. But this time I’m being truthful, I joined the Party because they had only noble goals back then. And as a member of the Party, I had to attend at least the major meetings, and especially when the big Nazi leaders from Berlin and Munich were present. So I went there that day, with a couple of my comrades, and we happened to sit in the second row. He noticed me after the meeting, Sepp Dietrich, and motioned me to come over. I knew of him of course, and turned around like an idiot, thinking that he was calling someone else, because there couldn’t be a chance in the world that such a celebrated officer would want to talk to me. But then he smiled and pointed at me, and said, “You, yes, you! Come up here, I want to talk to you.” I came up to him and saluted him, very awkwardly… He looked so imposing in his uniform, with all the regalia, that I stood there in awe of him. He had a very strong presence around him, I can’t even explain it. He offered me his hand and I shook it, not really believing that it was happening. He had his SS soldiers around him, and I felt extremely uncomfortable and out of place.

  “He started asking me about myself, my name, how old I was, how I became to be a member of the Party, what I did for a living… He was very delighted to hear that I was a doctor of Law, and even more delighted when he learned that I finished my studies and got my doctorate in four years only. ‘You’re a very intelligent young man,’ he said. ‘We need people like you. How would you like to join the SS?’ I thought I was dreaming. Sepp Dietrich himself asking me to join his famous, elite SS! Do you know that it was next to impossible to get in it? Not only did a candidate have to prove his Aryan origin all the way back to 1750, but they must also have been over six feet tall, without any hereditary or any mental diseases in the family, in perfect physical health… even if you had one filling in your teeth, you wouldn’t pass the bar! Can you imagine?”

  “Did you have to pass the actual physical examination, or was his word enough for you to become a member?”

  “Oh yes, everyone had to pass it, there were no exceptions. He just recommended us, but we all had to undergo the same process.”

  “Wasn’t it… a little humiliating?” agent Foster asked, trying to hide a smile.

  “Humiliating?” I laughed. “Not any more humiliating than passing a regular physical examination for you in America. We didn’t consider it something out of order. Everybody had to go through the same thing.”

  “So you became a member of the SS just because Sepp Dietrich by pure coincidence noticed you?”

  “Believe it or not.” I laughed again. “Now do you see what I mean, when I say lucky like that cow in your proverb? I couldn’t decline his offer. After that day everything changed.”

  _______________

  The Weimar Republic - Austria, September 1931

  After that day everything changed. The day when I was issued my new uniform, ration card and was officially sworn in. There was something utterly exciting, frightening, holy and mysterious about the ritual itself, when we, the new members of the elite SS, thoroughly selected by the highest commanders themselves, were brought to the square in front of the Party functioning building, brightly lit by tens of torches, and were addressed by Reichsführer Himmler and Sepp Dietrich – our new masters. But it wasn’t them who we were to swear our ultimate loyalty to; it was the supreme leader of us all, who we feared and respected like some higher power, sent by God to make Germany rise like a Phoenix from the ashes of humiliation and despair – it was Adolf Hitler who we were to devote our lives to, and sacrifice them, if needed.

  Our regiment leader was calling our names by two, as only two of us were sworn in at the same time, unlike in the old days, when they would swear in the whole army battalion. There were very few of us, the chosen ones, and our leaders made sure we understood and appreciated the highest favor bestowed upon us. The SS was formed in 1925, and my number was only 13039. Only a little over thirteen thousand of us were admitted, and considered to be worthy of joining the black clad SS in the course of six years.

  A beaming smile of inward pride, which stemmed from a sense of belonging to the chosen ones, wouldn’t leave my face throughout Reichsführer’s speech. Back in Austria we had only heard of them, read of them, but they remained something as mythical as Atlantis to us – the elite regiment, submissive solely to Adolf Hitler. When my name was called, together with my new comrade, we stepped towards our regiment leader holding a folded flag with swastika on it, blood red in the fiery twilight of torches, the same heat of my newly experienced blind devotion reflected in his eyes. With reverence we touched the sacred flag and lifted our right hand and pronounced the oath, which bounded us with absolute and indisputable loyalty to our Führer, Adolf Hitler – the breaking of which would be punishable by death. We swore to protect and follow him even into death, and many of us did.

  “I vow to you, Adolf Hitler, as Führer of the German Reich, loyalty and bravery. I vow to you and to the leaders that you set for me, absolute allegiance until death. So help me God,” our voices finished in unison, glistening eyes peering into each other as if we were newly found family. Yes, after that day everything changed.

  Melita, my longtime friend, trustee and lover, who had vehemently refused to get married in the past few years so as not to bind herself to the kitchen, children and ‘tending to some bastard’s needs,’ as she was calling it, would meet me on rare occasions when I was not working in my father’s office or travelling to Germany for my new business there. She had graduated from her medical faculty and was working in the hospital in Linz as a psychiatrist, dreaming of the times when Germany and Austria would become one so she would be able to transfer there. She became a member of the Party even before me.

  Melita was observing me, trying on my new uniform in front of the mirror in the small apartment I was renting, with her usual grin.

  “So handsome you are in it. Girls must be hanging off your neck all the time.”

  “German girls,” I smiled. “It’s illegal for me to wear it in Austria.”

  “Too bad.” She got up from the couch, came up to me and hugged me from behind, pressing her temple to my shoulder. “I’d love to see more young men like you walk around in uniforms.”

  “I’m sure you would!” I laughed kind-heartedly.

  It was very interesting, our relationship: we could be apart for several months and then meet in the street, go for a coffee and hardly an hour later roll around the sheets as if we were never apart. And then kiss each other on the cheek, wave goodbye and forget about the other’s existence until the next accidental meeting or a phone call. Sometimes I called Melita just to talk to her if something bothered me, and she would always listen attentively, no matter how busy she was, and help me out with advice. Or simply tell me to man up and to stop sounding like a Prussian girl from a boarding school. It was my favorite line, the one line that would always cheer me up, no matter what it was troubling me. I don’t know why it was exactly a Prussian girl Melita was referring to, but it worked like a charm every single time.

  She had her lovers and I had mine, and we talked about them without any jealousy, just as we would talk about politics. We were never in love, Melita and I, and yet we shared such indescribable intimacy, which I was so longing to find in other women, and failed to every time, until I met my Annalise. However, it is far too soon to talk of her. In 1931 she was only a small, eleven year old girl, probably with blond pigtails and her favorite doll in her arms, and, therefore, she would hardly produce the same impression on me as she did eight years later. In 1931 Melita was my solace. She lowered her hand to my holster, opened it and looked inside curiously.

  “You even have a gun.”

  “I do. Only you’re looking for it in the wrong place.” I gave her a dirty wink through the mirror, repositioning her hand where I wanted it to be.

  “God, I created a monster!” She giggled, and started undoing my belt. Melita loved my dirty ways. And my new uniform.

  An hour later I was n
eatly folding it and hiding it in a small suitcase, after changing back into my civil suit. Melita, still in bed, hardly covered with a sheet, was resting her pretty head on her hand and watching me lazily.

  “Going back to the office?”

  “No, I have… a meeting to attend.”

  “Maybe a date, not a meeting?”

  I squinted my eyes at her and burst out laughing. There was no point in lying to her. She knew me better than I knew myself. Besides, I was a terrible liar.

  “Alright, a date.”

  “You’re such a dog,” she said almost fondly.

  “It’s not that kind of a date. I don’t sleep with her.”

  “Oh?” Melita theatrically widened her eyes at me. “That’s the first one! Why not?”

  “We just talk mostly. She’s… not like that. We talk about politics all the time, we have common interests… And she helps me type out the documents for my cases, so I take her out from time to time. That’s all.”

  “I see. What’s her name?”

  “Elisabeth. Lisl.”

  “Is she a nice girl?”

  “Not as nice as you are.” I walked over to her, kissed her on the mouth, told her to lock the door with the spare key that she had, promised to call her on a weekend and went to meet Lisl.

  Lisl was a daughter of a well-to-do grocer, who I met last year through a common friend. She was a pretty girl, not a strikingly beautiful type, but with a fresh, open face, blond hair and always in good humor. She belonged to the Party as well, and was always talking about it and the Führer with adoration, particularly after I once invited her to take a trip with me to Munich, to one of his rallies. That was the first time when we both saw him and heard him speak, and that very day formed some bond between us that would keep us together despite all the odds.

  I had heard him speak many times before, but that was on the radio, and I never expected the impression he would produce on me, on every single person in the crowd, when he talked to us in person. Lisl and I were sitting in silence, waiting for him to take his place in front of the tribune of the big hall, filled to capacity so that some people were standing by the walls and at the entrance.