Silverman stood up and took off his jacket. “Mind if I open a window?” he said.
The politeness was instinctive and he started to open it anyway. Not that I could ever have jumped out; the window was barred, just like the one in my cell. Silverman stood there looking out with his arms folded thoughtfully, and for a moment I remembered a newspaper photograph of Hitler, in a similar attitude, on a visit to Landsberg after he’d become Reich Chancellor. After a moment or two he said,
“Did you ever meet a man called Otto Ohlendorf? He was a Gruppenführer—a general—in the Reich Main Security Office.” Silverman came back to the table and sat down.
“Yes. I met him a couple of times. He was head of Department Three, I think. Domestic Intelligence.”
“And what was your impression of him?”
“Intense. A dedicated Nazi.”
“He was also head of an SS task group that operated in the southern Ukraine and the Crimea,” said Silverman. “That same task group murdered ninety thousand people before Ohlendorf returned to his desk in Berlin. As you say, he was a dedicated Nazi. But when the British captured him, in 1945, he sang like a canary. For them and for us. Actually, we couldn’t shut him up. No one could figure it. There was no duress, no deal, no offer of immunity. It seems he just wanted to talk about it. Maybe you should think about doing that. Get it off your chest, as he did. Ohlendorf sat in that very chair you’re sitting in now and talked his damn head off for forty-two days in succession. He was very matter-of-fact about it, too. You might even say normal. He didn’t cry or offer an apology, but I guess there must have been something in his soul that just bothered him.”
“Some of the guys here quite liked him,” said Earp. “Up until the moment when we hanged him.”
I shook my head. “With all due respect, you’re not selling this idea of unburdening myself very well if the only reward is the one in heaven. And I thought Americans were supposed to be good salesmen.”
“Ohlendorf was one of Heydrich’s protégés, too,” said Silverman.
“Meaning you think I was?”
“You said yourself it was Heydrich who brought you back to Kripo in 1938. I don’t know what else that makes you, Gunther.”
“He needed a proper homicide detective. Not some Nazi with an anti-Semitic ax to grind. When I came back to Kripo, I had the unusual idea that I might actually be able to stop someone from murdering young girls.”
“But afterward—”
“You mean after I solved the case?”
“—you continued working for Kripo. At General Heydrich’s request.”
“I really didn’t have much choice in the matter. Heydrich was a hard man to disappoint.”
“But what did he want from you?”
“Heydrich was a cold murdering bastard, but he was also a pragmatist. Sometimes he preferred honesty to unswerving loyalty. For one or two people such as myself, it wasn’t so important that they stick to the official party line as that they should do a good job. Especially if those people, like me, had no interest in climbing the SS ladder.”
“Oddly enough, that’s exactly how Otto Ohlendorf described his own relationship with Heydrich,” said Earp. “Jost, too. Heinz Jost? You remember him? He was the man Heydrich appointed to take over from your friend Walter Stahlecker in charge of Task Group A, when he was killed by Estonian partisans.”
“Walter Stahlecker wasn’t ever my friend. Whatever gave you that idea?”
“He was your business partner’s brother, wasn’t he? When you and he were running a private investigation business in Berlin in 1937.”
“Since when has one brother been responsible for another’s actions? Bruno Stahlecker couldn’t have been more different from his brother Walter. He wasn’t even a Nazi.”
“But you met Walter Stahlecker, surely.”
“He came to Bruno’s funeral. In 1938.”
“On any other occasions?”
“Probably. I don’t remember when, exactly.”
“Do you think it was before or after he organized the murder of two hundred and fifty thousand Jews?”
“Well, it wasn’t afterward. And by the way, he was Franz Stahlecker, never Walter. Bruno never called him Walter. But to come back to Heinz Jost for a moment. The man who took over Task Group A when Franz Stahlecker was killed. Would this be the same Heinz Jost who was sentenced to life imprisonment and then paroled from this place a couple of years ago? Is that the man to whom you’re referring?”
“We just prosecute them,” said Silverman. “It’s up to the U.S. high commissioner for Germany who’s released and when.”
“And then last month,” I said. “I hear it was Willy Siebert’s turn to walk out of here. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t he Otto Ohlendorf’s deputy? When those ninety thousand Jews got killed? Ninety thousand, and you people just let him walk out of here. It sounds to me that McCloy wants his head examined.”
“James Conant is high commissioner now,” said Earp.
“Either way, it beats me why you boys bother,” I said. “Less than ten years served for ninety thousand murders? It hardly seems worth it. My math isn’t great, but I think that works out to about a day of time served for every twenty-five murders. I killed some people during the war, it’s true. But by the tally handed down to the likes of Jost and Siebert and that other fellow—Erwin Schulz, in January—hell, I should have been paroled the same day I was arrested.”
“That gives us a number to aim at, anyway,” murmured Earp.
“To say nothing of the SS men who are still here,” I said, ignoring him. “You can’t seriously believe that I deserve to be in the same prison as the likes of Martin Sandberger and Walter Blume.”
“Let’s talk about that,” said Silverman. “Let’s talk about Walter Blume. Now, him you must know, because like you he was a policeman and worked for your old boss, Arthur Nebe, in Task Group B. Blume was in charge of a special unit, a Sonderkommando, under Nebe’s orders, before Nebe was relieved by Erich Naumann in November 1941.”
“I met him.”
“No doubt you and he have had a lot to reminisce about since you came here and were able to renew your acquaintance.”
“I’ve seen him, of course. Since I’ve been in here. But we haven’t spoken. Nor are we likely to.”
“And why’s that?”
“I thought it was free association. Do I have to explain who I choose to speak to and who I don’t?”
“There’s nothing free in here,” said Earp. “Come on, Gunther. Do you think you’re better than Blume? Is that it?”
“You seem to know a lot of the answers already,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“I don’t understand,” said Earp. “Why would you speak to a man like Waldemar Klingelhöfer in here and not Blume? Klingelhöfer was also in Task Group B. One’s just as bad as the other, surely.”
“All in all,” said Silverman, “it must seem like old times for you, Gunther. Meeting all your old pals. Adolf Ott, Eugen Steimle, Blume, Klingelhöfer.”
“Come on,” insisted Earp. “Why speak to him and none of the others?”
“Is it because none of the other prisoners will speak to him because he betrayed a fellow SS officer?” asked Silverman. “Or because he appears to regret what he did as head of the Moscow killing commando?”
“Before taking charge of that commando,” said Earp, “your friend Klingelhöfer did what you claim to have done. He headed up an antipartisan hunt. In Minsk, wasn’t it? Where you were?”
“Was that just shooting Jews, the same as Klingelhöfer?”
“Maybe you’ll let me answer one of your questions at a time,” I said.
“There’s no rush,” said Silverman. “We’ve got plenty of time. Take it from the beginning, why don’t you? You say you were ordered to join a Reserve Police Battalion, number three one six, in the summer of 1941, as part of Operation Barbarossa.”