Fifty thousand Austrian Jews will thus escape Hitler’s trap before it closes on them. In a way, this solution suits everyone at the time: the Jews can think themselves lucky to get out in one piece, while the Nazis get their hands on a great deal of loot. Heydrich, in Berlin, considers the operation a success. And for some time yet, the emigration of all the Reich’s Jews is seen as a realistic solution, the best response to the “Jewish question.”
As for the young lieutenant who does such a good job with the Jews, Heydrich will make a note of his name: Adolf Eichmann.
52
It’s while he’s in Vienna that Eichmann invents the method that will form the basis of all the Nazis’ politics of extermination and deportation. This involves seeking the victims’ active cooperation. The Jews are always invited to make themselves known to the authorities, and in the vast majority of cases—whether for emigrating in 1938 or for being sent to Treblinka or Auschwitz in 1943—this is exactly what they do. Without this, the Nazis would have had to deal with insurmountable demographic problems, and no policy of mass extermination would really have been possible. There would still undoubtedly have been countless crimes, but everything suggests that we would not be talking about genocide.
Neither Heydrich nor Eichmann can suspect that 1938 is paving the way for 1943, even if—with characteristic intuition—the former immediately sees in the latter a talented bureaucrat, whom he can turn into a valuable assistant. And although the eyes of Nazi Germany begin now to turn toward Prague, Heydrich and Eichmann have no idea what roles they will play in that city.
53
There are signs, though. For years, Heydrich has been ordering numerous studies of the Jewish question from his heads of department. And this is the kind of response he’s been getting:
It would be advisable to deprive the Jews of their means of survival—and not only in the economic sphere. There should be no future for them in Germany. Only the old generation should be allowed to die here in peace—not the young ones. Hence the incitement to emigrate. As for the means, street-fighting anti-Semitism should be rejected. You don’t kill rats with a revolver, but with poison and gas.
Metaphor? Fantasy? The subconscious rising to the surface? In any case, you feel that this department head already has an idea in the back of his mind. The report dates from May 1934. The man is a visionary!
54
In the heart of old Bohemia, east of Prague, on the Olomouc road, is a little town: Kutná Hora is on Unesco’s World Heritage List, and has picturesque alleys, a beautiful Gothic cathedral, and above all a magnificent ossuary—a genuine local curiosity where the white vaults and ribs of the sepulchral architecture are constructed out of human skulls.
In 1237, unsuspected by the town’s inhabitants, Kutná Hora carries within it the virus of history, which is about to begin one of its long, cruel, and ironic chapters. This chapter will last seven hundred years.
Wenceslaus I, the son of Premysl Ottokar I, part of the glorious founding dynasty of the Premyslids, rules over the lands of Bohemia and Moravia. The sovereign has married a German princess, Kunigunde, the daughter of Philip of Swabia, king of Germany and a Ghibelline—in other words, part of the fearsome house of Hohenstaufen. So, in the quarrel between the Guelphs (allies of the pope) and the Ghibellines (allies of the emperor), Wenceslaus chose the side of the Germanic Holy Roman Empire. From this point on, the split-tailed lion decorates the royal armories, replacing the old eagle in flames. Dungeons proliferate, and the spirit of chivalry reigns.
Soon, Prague will have its Old New Synagogue.
Kutná Hora is still nothing but a village—not one of the biggest towns in Europe.
This could be like a scene from a medieval Western. As night falls, a Falstaffian tavern welcomes the inhabitants of Kutná Hora as well as a few rare travelers. The regulars drinks and joke with the waitresses, pinching their asses, while the travelers eat in silence, exhausted, and the thieves watch and get ready for their night’s work, hardly touching their drinks. Outside it’s raining, and you can hear a few whinnies from the stable next door. An old white-bearded man appears at the door. His clothes are soaked, his leggings mud-stained, water streams from his cloth hat. Everyone in Kutná Hora knows him—he’s an old madman from the mountains—and no one pays much attention to him. He orders drink, then food, then more drink. He demands a pig be killed for him. Laughter explodes from the nearby tables. The landlord, mistrustful, asks if he has enough money to pay. At this a look of triumph flashes in the old man’s eyes: he puts a small, cheap leather purse on the table, and undoes the laces. He takes out a little grayish stone and, pretending to be casual, gives it to the landlord to inspect. The landlord frowns, takes the stone between his fingers, and holds it up to the light coming from the torches on the wall. Stunned, suddenly impressed, he takes a step backwards. He has recognized the metal. It’s a silver nugget.
55
Premysl Ottokar II, son of Wenceslaus I, carries (like his grandfather) the name of his ancestor Premysl the Plowman—who, in times immemorial, was taken for a husband by Queen Libuse, the legendary foundress of Prague. More than anyone else, except perhaps his grandfather, Premysl Ottokar II felt himself to be the guardian of his kingdom’s greatness. And no one could say he wasn’t worthy in this respect. From the beginning of his reign, Bohemia produced—thanks to its silver deposits—an average annual revenue of 100,000 silver marks, making it one of the richest regions of thirteenth-century Europe: five times richer than Bavaria, for example.
But the man nicknamed “the King of Iron and Gold” (which hardly does justice to the metal that made his fortune) is, like all kings, not content to make do with what he’s got. He knows that the kingdom’s prosperity depends on its silver mines, and wishes to speed up their exploitation. All these sleeping deposits, still untouched, keep him awake at night. He needs more manpower. And the Czechs are peasants, not miners.
Ottokar contemplates Prague, his town. From the heights of his castle, he sees all the markets around the immense Judith Bridge. (This is one of the first bridges built from stone rather than wood, located on the site of the future Charles Bridge.) Little colored dots bustle around goods of all kinds: fabrics, meat, fruit and vegetables, jewels and finely worked metals. All these merchants, Ottokar knows, are German. The Czechs are a people of the land, not of the city, and as he thinks this the king feels perhaps a tinge of regret, if not contempt. Ottokar also knows that it is towns that are responsible for a kingdom’s prestige, and that a nobility worthy of its name does not remain on its lands but forms a court—as the French call it—around the king. But when Ottokar thinks of this great concept of chivalry, he thinks not of France but of the Teutonic Knights, at whose side he fought in Prussia during the Crusade of 1255. Hadn’t he himself founded Königsberg at the point of his sword? Ottokar turns to Germany because the German courts are, in his eyes, incarnations of nobility and modernity. To bring these qualities to his kingdom, he has decided to begin a vast policy of German immigration to Bohemia, justified by the need for mineworkers. Hundreds of thousands of German colonists will be encouraged to come and settle in his beautiful country. By favoring them, by giving them lands and financial privileges, Ottokar hopes at the same time to find allies who will weaken the position of the greedy and threatening local nobility—the Ryzmburks, the Viteks, the Falkenstejns—for whom he feels only distrust and disdain. History will show, with the rise in power of the German aristocracy in Prague, Jihlava, Kutná Hora, and eventually throughout Bohemia and Moravia, that the strategy worked perfectly, even if Ottokar won’t live long enough to benefit from it.