The Austrian: A War Criminal's Story Page 16

  He was unusually quiet. In fact, he did not utter a word for a whole three or four minutes, while all of us were eagerly concentrated on each of his movements: clasping his hands in front of him, clearing his throat, lifting his piercing eyes and scanning the crowd, shuffling through his pages, as if deciding what to start with. At first it seemed strange to me, and I wondered how he wasn’t afraid to lose our interest. Was he uncomfortable? Was he trying to compose himself?

  But once he raised his heavy gaze to us, at all of us at once, I realized what effect this labored pause had. The silence was so perfect and undisturbed, like it is in a class of schoolchildren who did something wrong and were paid a visit by the feared headmaster himself. Yes, we feared him. No one dared to say a word or even breathe too loudly. There was nothing uncomfortable about him, and he knew perfectly well that he owned us, the whole big crowd of us, that he had us right there in the palm of his hand even before he started speaking.

  And then he finally addressed us, quietly and almost affectionately, and we unanimously let out a sigh of relief. We weren’t afraid anymore, we were striving to hear his every word, because how wonderful those words were! What beautiful things he was saying to us! He called us his children. He called us the children of the greatest nation in the world. He said that we deserved being great, respected and led towards the ultimate victory. He said that he’d restore order, which was so maliciously broken by our wicked enemies, or die if he failed. He would die for us, he said. And he didn’t even ask us to die for him in return. He didn’t ask us for anything for himself. He asked us for everything for our great Fatherland, which as one nation, under one Führer, we would lead to its shining glory.

  He was slowly raising his voice, and our eyes were shining brighter with the enthusiasm he so effortlessly instilled in us. And soon we couldn’t sit still anymore, and rose from our chairs, all together, as if led by some hypnotic power, which was making our hearts ache with love for him, our leader, who was screaming that he would crush our enemies only if we trusted in him and followed him. We were stretching our hands in salute every time he would stretch his towards us, as if wishing to get as close as possible to him, to try to touch his fingertips with ours in our inflamed imagination, and repeat after him, “Sieg Heil! Heil Victory!”

  By the end of his speech we were all in a state of some euphoric trance, some of us crying, some laughing uncontrollably in their unexplainable happiness, and some staring into space without blinking with a perplexed smile plastered on their flushed faces. It was a mad house, in which every single one of us were happy to be confined. We loved our mass madness, we bathed in it without shame, as long as he was with us.

  Lisl grabbed my hand with ice cold fingers and clenched them around mine. I looked at her, as she was staring at the podium with her wide eyes, tears flowing freely on her cheeks without her noticing. There was something very beautiful about her in that moment, but again, everything seemed beautiful to me for several more days afterwards, until my father roughly shook my shoulder at last, waking me up from my daydreaming, and demanded that I get back to work on a case or get fired by him personally.

  I never spoke of Hitler with him. Even though my father supported the nationalist movement as a whole, he proclaimed Hitler a fanatic, who was most likely not right in his head after hearing him speak on the radio for the first time. Me joining the SS also set him off and drew a longer and even thicker line between us than there had been before. But, even though I was his son, I was an independent person now, earning my own bread, living in my own place and making my own decisions. So I would shrug off all his contempt and go see Lisl.

  Lately she started looking at me with the same adoration as she would look at the pictures of the Führer, and it flattered me incredibly. And now that I joined the SS, she wouldn’t stop smiling at me and praising me with such sincere feeling, such certainty in my newly chosen path, that I started getting attached to her more and more. I loved how she was looking at me and catching my every word, how a beaming smile would brighten her face every time I’d compliment her or even say something insignificant jokingly. She needed so little from me, she seemed to be happy just to be by my side. I liked her because she adored me so selflessly, even more than she adored Hitler himself.

  _______________

  Nuremberg prison, February 1946

  “She adores you, look at that!” Albert laughed at the small animal at my feet.

  I was walking around the courtyard together with Speer, Hitler’s favorite architect, who wouldn’t even have been here now if his benefactor hadn’t decided to put him in charge of bringing forced labor to work on factories in the Reich. Speer was a typical artist, and it was visible how uncomfortable he was feeling amongst us, the military men. God only knows why Hitler even came up with the idea of dragging this man into his affairs.

  Speer was one of the first to speak to me here, in Nuremberg, and began by thanking me for going against the Führer’s orders to destroy a priceless collection of art that he had been collecting for the future Führer’s museum and that needed to be destroyed according to the Nero decree. According to Hitler’s logic, quite obviously plagued with some mental disease by the end of the war, it was better to destroy the priceless art than to hand it to the ‘unworthy Bolshevik pigs.’ I respectfully disagreed, and sent a group of SS men, loyal to me only, to guard the mine where the collection was hidden, and to keep away Hitler’s SS men, who wanted to blow it all up. Together with miners my SS men were able to hand the treasure safely to the American troops.

  Not that I became best friends with Albert, but, both being doubting and emotional men, we enjoyed each other’s company during walks and meal breaks, when we could talk quietly about the court, the future and everything else that was troubling us. Today was no exception, only an unexpected visitor decided to enter our company. A grey, painfully skinny cat, who probably smelled food from the prison canteen, by some miracle had climbed inside the courtyard using the trees surrounding the wall, approached me and Speer, and, without further ceremony, rubbed her head on my leg. I crouched next to her and rubbed the soft, dirty fur on her head. For some reason I was certain that it was a female; she was far too small.

  “How did you get here, kitty?”

  The cat immediately put her front paws on my knees, hesitated for less than a few seconds, and invited herself on my lap. She didn’t stop there, however; sensing the warmth of my body through the tightly closed jacket, the cat started nudging me with her nose until I unbuttoned the first three buttons and put her inside.

  “Kaltenbrunner! What are you doing?” one of the guards called out to me, watching me with amusement.

  “Nothing.” I grinned with a corner of my mouth apologetically. “She’s cold. I’ll just keep her warm before we go inside.”

  “Alright. Just don’t forget to let her out. You can’t keep pets in your cell, you know.”

  “I know.” I pressed the small emaciated body against mine under my jacket, feeling the cat’s content purring through my hands. She kept her head out, scrutinizing me with her green eyes and clawing the shirt around my neck in satisfaction.

  “No, she positively adores you, look at that!” Speer laughed again, rubbing the cat between her ears. “I wonder how she survived, the poor creature. It’s a miracle no one ate her yet! I don’t remember seeing any cats or dogs since April 1945.”

  “Yes. This one is definitely a survivor.”

  “She so resolutely went to you though!” Albert said as we resumed our walk.

  “I don’t know why. Animals love me for some reason.”

  “I never imagined you to be a cat person, to be honest.”

  “You’re not the first person who has told me that.”

  No, the first person who told me that was Annalise. She worked as my secretary from the first day I took up the RSHA office, and sometimes drove home with me to sort the papers from the office for me to work on in the evening, and to pick up the ones that
I had prepared for her to look through for the next day. A few weeks had passed since her last visit to my home, and I had completely forgotten about the new occupant of my house, who, as soon as I opened the door with my key, jumped right on my shoulder from the small redwood table near the door, on which I always kept my mail and which had she made into her watch post.

  “When did you get a cat?” Annalise outstretched her hand to pet the animal while I was desperately trying to get its claws out of my military overcoat.

  “It’s not mine,” I grumbled embarrassingly, at last pulling the cat off my neck and putting it on the floor.

  “You could’ve fooled me. It looks like she knows you.”

  “Sarcasm is my thing, Frau Friedmann.”

  “Do you have a monopoly on using it?”

  I squinted my eyes at yet another witty remark from her, and she immediately repaid me with the same. I laughed and held my hand out for her overcoat.

  “So what’s with the cat? And what’s her name by the way?” Annalise asked, as soon as we sat by my desk. She sat across from me, and my cat immediately occupied my lap.

  “She doesn’t have a name. I told you, she’s not mine. She’s just… renting the place for a while.”

  “Renting?” Annalise smiled as the cat stood on her back paws and, without a care in the world, rubbed her face under my chin. “It looks to me she lives here full time, as a rightful owner. And I better watch myself and not come too close to you or she’ll scratch my eyes out. She’s a very jealous girl.”

  “What makes you think so?” I asked in genuine surprise.

  “Just look how she’s marking her territory.” Annalise traced her hand under her chin, imitating what my cat was doing to my face. “She’s spreading her scent on you, so no other female will come close.”

  I quickly grabbed the cat and put her on the floor. “Stop doing that! Bad cat! Bad!”

  My beautiful secretary burst out laughing. “Still, where did you get her from?”

  “Nowhere. She just… was sitting by the front door one day when I came back from work. I poured her some milk and thought that she would leave. Then it started snowing heavily. It was after midnight when I remembered that I didn’t take the bowl back from the porch. I opened the door and she was still sitting there, almost all snowed in. So I picked her up and brought her inside for the night. And then the next morning I fed her and let her out when I was leaving. But when I came back she was there again, on the same exact spot, waiting for me. I invited her in for the night again and… It was snowing almost every day, I couldn’t leave her outside! She would freeze to death.”

  “It’s April, Herr Gruppenführer. It hasn’t been snowing for a month.”

  I looked up at her, and saw her cover her mouth with her hand in order to conceal her giggling.

  “Alright, I guess I have a cat, Frau Friedmann!” I grumbled again, not able to hide a smile myself.

  “I just… never thought of you as a cat person,” she said in between suppressed chuckles.

  “You know what? I’m not a cat person! I’m a feared man! I’m the Chief of the RSHA! I’m the Chief of the Gestapo!” My speech was ruined by the cat jumping back onto my lap and then on my shoulder, comfortably positioning herself around my neck.

  Annalise burst out laughing even harder. “She’s afraid of you, alright.”

  Trying to put together the remains of my long lost dignity, I lowered my eyes and asked quietly, “Please, don’t tell anyone in the office.”

  “I won’t, Herr Gruppenführer,” she replied, observing me with an amused expression on her face.

  Chapter 11

  Munich, April 1932

  “Heil Hitler, Gruppenführer!” I saluted Sepp Dietrich and stood at attention, while he was observing me with an amused expression on his face.

  “So I see they trained you well, huh?” he inquired, as he got up from a massive mahogany table and walked around me, examining me with a look that the farmers in Reid had when examining a new horse they were about to purchase. “Such an improvement from the first time I saw you. Saluting much better, standing much taller… good, good. Very good. I’ve always said, training and discipline is the key.”

  I didn’t reply anything and kept looking straight ahead, as I was prescribed. He was right, they did train us well, our commanders, both physically and ideologically, and they weren’t satisfied until all of us walked, talked and looked immaculate and acted like a single organism, so that when we dressed in our uniforms and marched around the practice ground, it was impossible to distinguish one from another.

  They inspected our uniform and personal weapons every single morning prior to the drill, and with the pedantic meticulousness fixed one’s belt if it was half an inch higher or lower than it was supposed the be. They checked our faces to make sure we were clean shaved, they checked our hands to make sure they were clean and groomed, they even checked our hair and were sending us to the barber every two weeks to keep the trim at the desired length.

  They made us fight each other, ferociously and with all force, all the while repeating how true comradeship was formed through the fight, but at the same time stressing that it was only our own blood brethren we were to recognize as equals.

  “You ought to recognize and respect only ones of the same blood as you are. Only your brothers of the Aryan race are equal to you. Have no mercy for the ones below you, since they aren’t your equals. They are sub-humans, and don’t deserve your mercy. Killing the one standing below you on the steps of evolution shouldn’t bring any shame or remorse, no more than if you were to squash an insect or vermin that poisons and threatens your existence. There is no shame in it, only glory. Your Fatherland will forever praise your name before others for such a deed.”

  They were training us to fight and kill, all the while looking strikingly handsome while doing so. And after we were done beating each other senseless, getting all tens out of tens at the shooting range, sweating profusely while doing pushups or pullups with a training partner sitting on our backs or hanging off our legs, we would shower, dress up neatly and finish our training day like we started it, impeccably dressed, motionless and awaiting further orders.

  “At ease, Truppführer Kaltenbrunner,” Dietrich finally said, satisfied with his inspection, as he slapped me on the back. “I want to give you a promotion, but you’ll have to work for it.”

  “I am ready and awaiting your orders, Gruppenführer.”

  “You’ve been a district speaker for the Party in Upper Austria for some time, correct?”

  “Jawohl, Gruppenführer.”

  “I’ve heard you’re doing quite well with it.”

  “I’m afraid, I am not the one to judge it, Gruppenführer.”

  “Why, no need to be so modest, Ernst.” Dietrich smiled, went to his table and picked up one of the neatly stacked documents. “I have a very impressive statistic here, showing the number of people joining the Party in your district. Very, very impressive, my boy. Are you writing your speeches yourself?”

  “Jawohl, Gruppenführer.”

  He nodded to himself several times with a light smile, sat at his tall chair and motioned for me to occupy the one across from him.

  “Please, do sit down, Ernst. I don’t like it when people are standing in front of me.” I knew firsthand that it wasn’t true, and that Sepp Dietrich loved staying in his chair for as long as half an hour, sometimes not paying any attention to his subordinate, waiting patiently to be dismissed and trying not to move at all, so as not to distract the general from reading a fresh report. However, he never made me do that, and that little piece of favoritism pleased me endlessly. “Since you’re a doctor of law, and a very intelligent and talented young man, I think that it would be simply irresponsible not to use your talents to the profit of the SS in Austria. And particularly in Austria, since the SS is still unfortunately considered illegal there, and therefore the members of our organization are faced with multiple difficulties while perform
ing their duty, unlike here, in Germany. It causes many obstacles on our way. I need you to start helping your fellow SS brothers, who find themselves in trouble with the law.”

  “It would be my pleasure, Gruppenführer,” I answered as soon as he paused, awaiting my reaction.

  “I understand that some of them won’t have the means of paying you, and that it might take time from your day-time job, so I’ll take care of your expenses, personally.”

  “It’s not necessary, Gruppenführer. It is my duty to help the Party and my SS brothers.”

  Dietrich smiled again, after looking at me for quite some time. “I have not been mistaken regarding you after all. Good. I officially appoint you as a legal consultant for the SS Abschnitt VIII in Upper Austria. Go back home now, and you’ll receive my further orders through an SS man. Heil Hitler.”

  Several months later, in September, I was promoted to SS-Sturmhauptführer. Sepp Dietrich kept his word.

  It was a whole new world for me, mysterious, grand and intimidating at times. Apart from our highest superiors, we were all very young men of almost the same age. Therefore, all the conspiracy apartments, where we secretly gathered to read Reich orders, and all the cover-ups and alibies, provided by our supporters, were an extremely interesting game to play, without realizing how all of us with our childish enthusiasm were manipulated by the only ones on top, old and calculated enough to use our eagerness to their advantage.

  The lucky ones, who at some point attracted those superiors’ attention, would do anything not to disappoint them and tripled their efforts in servicing their masters. We were their pets, their favorites, and with dog-like devotion looked up at the lazy hand of the master waiting for the odd praise or a command to fetch something. Yes, that’s exactly how it was. We were happy like a dog that curls up by his master’s feet and sleeps with one eye open, ready to rush at a moment’s notice to do whatever the master wants it to do, to then press its adoring body against the master’s leg, put its head meekly under his hand, hardly daring to rise pleading eyes in the hope of a pat. Did I do well? Are you happy, my master? Am I good enough for you? I’ll do whatever you want for your love. Then a groomed hand would finally condescend to rub the dog behind ear, and send it shivering with ecstasy. How young and clueless we all were!