“Yes, sir.”
“Are you the Captain Gunther who telephoned to question my orders to shoot those Jews on the road to Minsk this morning?”
“Yes, sir. That was me. You must be Colonel Blume.”
“What the devil do you mean by questioning an order?” he shouted. “You’re an SS officer, pledged to the Führer. That order was issued to ensure security in the rear for our combat forces. Those Jews set their houses on fire after having been ordered to make them available as billets for our troops. I can’t think of a better reason for a reprisal action than the burning of those houses.”
“I didn’t see any burning houses in that area, sir. And Sturmbannführer Weis was under the impression that those old women were being shot only because they were Jews.”
“And if they were? The Jews of Soviet Russia are the intellectual bearers of the Bolshevik ideology, which makes them our natural enemy. No matter how old they are. Killing Jews is an act of war. Even they seem to understand that, if you don’t. I repeat: Those orders must be carried out for the safety of all army areas. If every soldier only carried out an order after having considered the niceties of whether or not it agreed with his own conscience, then pretty soon there would be no discipline and no army. Are you mad? Are you a coward? Are you ill? Or perhaps you actually like the Jews?”
“I don’t care who or what they are,” I said. “I didn’t come to Russia to shoot old women.”
“Listen to yourself, Captain,” said Blume. “What kind of an officer are you? You’re supposed to set an example to your men. I’ve a good mind to take you to the ghetto just to see if this is some kind of an act—if you really are this squeamish about killing Jews.”
Mundt had started to laugh. “Blume,” he said.
“I can promise you this, Captain,” said Colonel Blume. “You won’t be a captain anymore if you can’t manage it. You’ll be the lowest private in the SS. Do you hear?”
“Blume,” said Mundt. “Look at these.” He handed Blume the papers of the NKVD I’d executed at Goloby. “Look.”
Blume glanced at the documents as Mundt opened them for him. Mundt said: “Sarra Kagan. Solomon Geller. Josef Zalmonowitz. Julius Polonski. These are all Jewish names. Vinokurova. Kieper.” He grinned some more, enjoying my growing discomfort. “I worked on the Jew desk in Hamburg, so I know something about these yid bastards. Joshua Pronicheva. Fanya Glekh. Aaron Levin. David Schepetovka. Saul Katz. Stefan Marx. Vladya Polichov. These are all yids he shot this morning. So much for your fucking scruples, Gunther. You picked a Jewish NKVD squad to execute. You just shot thirty kikes whether you like it or not.”
Blume opened another identification document at random. And then another. “Misha Blyatman. Hersh Gebelev. Moishe Ruditzer. Nahum Yoffe. Chaim Serebriansky. Zyama Rosenblatt.” He was laughing now, too. “You’re right. How do you like that? Israel Weinstein. Ivan Lifshitz. It sounds to me like you hit the jackpot, Gunther. So far you’ve managed to kill more Jews in this campaign than I have. Maybe I should recommend you for a decoration. Or at the very least a promotion.”
Mundt read out some more names just to rub it in. “You should feel proud of yourself.” Then he clapped me on the shoulder. “Come, now. Surely you can see the funny side of this.”
“And if you can’t, then that only makes it all the more funny,” said Blume.
“What’s funny?” said a voice.
We all looked around to see Arthur Nebe, the general in charge of Task Group B, standing in the doorway. Everyone came to attention, including me. As Nebe came into the office and walked up to the wall map, with hardly a look at me, Blume attempted an explanation:
“I’m afraid this officer was exhibiting a degree of scrupulousness with regard to the killing of Jews that turns out to have been somewhat misplaced, Herr General. It seems he already shot thirty NKVD this morning—apparently unaware that they were all Jews.”
“It was the nice distinction between the two we found amusing,” added Mundt.
“Not everyone is cut out for this kind of work,” murmured Nebe, still studying the map. “I heard that Paul Blobel’s in a Lublin hospital after a special action in the Ukraine. A complete nervous breakdown. And perhaps you don’t remember what was said by Reichsführer Himmler at Pretzsch. Any repugnance felt at killing Jews is a cause for congratulation, since it affirms that we are a civilized people. So I really don’t see what’s funny about any of this. In future, I’ll thank you to deal more sensitively with any man who expresses his inability to kill Jews. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Nebe touched a red square on the top right-hand corner of the map. “And this is—what?”
“Drozdy, sir,” said Blume. “Three kilometers north of here. we’ve established a rather primitive prisoner-of-war camp there on the banks of the Svislock River. All of them men. Jews and non-Jews.”
“How many in total?”
“About forty thousand.”
“Separated?”
“Yes, sir.” Blume joined Nebe in front of the map. “POWS in one half and Jews in the other.”
“And the ghetto?”
“South of the Drozdy camp in the northwest of the city. It’s the old Jewish quarter of Minsk.” He put his finger on the map. “Here. From the Svislock River, west on Nemiga Street, north along the edge of the Jewish cemetery, and back east toward the Svislock. This is the main street here, Republikanskaya, and where it meets Nemiga, that will be the main gate.”
“What kind of buildings are these?” asked Nebe.
“One- or two-story wooden houses behind cheap wooden fences. Even as we speak, sir, the whole ghetto is being surrounded with barbed wire and watchtowers.”
“Locked at night?”
“Of course.”
“I want monthly actions to reduce the number of Byelorussian Jews there in order to accommodate the Jews they’re sending us from Hamburg.”
“Yes, Herr General.”
“You can start reducing the numbers now in the Drozdy camp. Make the selection voluntary. Ask those with university degrees and professional qualifications to come forward. Deprive them all of food and water to encourage volunteers. Those Jews you can keep for now. The rest you can liquidate immediately.”
“Yes, Herr General.”
“Himmler is coming here in a couple of weeks’ time, so he’ll want to see that we’re making progress. Understand?”
“Yes, Herr General.”
Nebe turned and finally looked at me. “You. Captain Gunther. Come with me.”
I followed Nebe into the adjacent office, where four junior SS officers were reading files taken from an open filing cabinet.
“You lot,” said Nebe. “Fuck off. And close the door behind you. And tell those lazy bastards next door to get rid of that body before it starts stinking the place out in this heat.”
There were two desks in this office, overlooked by a set of French windows and a poor portrait of Stalin in a gray uniform with a red stripe down the side of his trouser leg, looking rather less Caucasian and more Oriental than was usual.
Nebe fetched a bottle of schnapps and glasses from one of the desk drawers and poured two large ones. He took his own drink without a word, like a man who was tired of seeing things straight, and poured himself another while I was still sniffing and tensing my liver.
7
I hadn’t seen Nebe in more than a year. He looked older and more worn than I remembered. His previously gray hair was now the same silver color as his War Merit Cross, while his eyes were as narrow as his pillbox slit of a mouth. Only his long nose and prominent ears seemed much the same.