Leow then relayed this sickening lie to the woman who, after a slight hesitation, pointed to a teenage boy, a young girl and an old man.
“My friends! Come here. Come here! Frau, Frau! Call your family across and give them the good news!” He then spoke again to Loew. “Tell her this, tell her to call her family and that they are now free to go.”
Leow spoke to the woman, who then called her family across. Korsak had to fight every impulse in his body to prevent shouting out, but he knew he had to get back to the fortress. Unarmed, his death here would be futile. If only he had a weapon!
Once the family were together Dirlewanger strode across to the other women. “Clappy, clappy! Da, da! Or Bangy, bangy!” He once more pointed to the children.
Sickeningly, the women clapped louder.
“Good. Very good!” smiled Dirlewanger as he strutted back to the woman and her family. Then he addressed everyone assembled, like some crazed choreographer in the seventh circle of hell. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls…” The last word was uttered with an inhuman roll of the eyes heavenward. “Please be upstanding for today’s matinee. Let the show begin!”
Korsak looked on unbelievingly as the old man was instructed to undo the buttons on his daughter’s blouse, a gun held to his grandson’s head…
What followed was to scar Dimitri Korsak for the rest of his life. His life was now split in two. The life he had before what he was about to witness and his life after. He was about to become two different men.
The first was born in Germany as Wilhelm Stenner, with a love for the German people. Even after his political differences with the Nazis over their shift to the right, their cuddling up to big business, their betrayal of socialism and the murder of Gregor Strasser, even after all of that he still had some fond memory, some residual warmth for notions of the innate goodness of the German people and, in particular, the moral fibre of the German fighting man.
That would end this afternoon. Any fondness for his former countrymen was about to be eviscerated. He had never seen greater evil, nor could he even have imagined it. As he considered how he could make his way back through the German lines and into the fortress, where he could make sure the world got to know about the horrors he had witnessed, he realised that he was so shocked that he could not even remember how he had got there. So populated and polluted was his memory of what he had just seen, the sickening horror and sadism. The bloodlust, the joy◦— indeed, joy was the only word for it◦— of these troops as they spat and trampled on every accepted norm known to man. These men weren’t subhuman, they were sub-animal. The vision of hell on earth burned in his mind.
The look on Dirlewanger’s face as he had ordered the woman’s father, then son, then daughter, to touch her breasts, all the time making the husband watch. This all accompanied by the unholy cheering and clapping from howling, crying, screaming women…
“Make him hard! Make him hard!” Dirlewanger had shrieked at the mother. “Come on boy, get it up. You are the son of a whore. Now treat her like a whore!”
Korsak shut his eyes and tried to block out what had happened next, but the husband’s face kept coming back to him, the tears and shame of the grandfather… and then the butchery, the pack of wolves descending on the other women. The slaughter, the raping… the laughing….
“For every boy you kill, take a girl!” screamed Dirlewanger.
From his vantage point Korsak could only watch in horror as Dirlewanger’s own lust was sated upon a young girl, maybe 9 or 10 years old. Her screams of terror were sounds Korsak would never forget. He wasn’t Wilhelm Stenner anymore, he was now and forever Dimitri Korsak and the screams of the innocent deserved to be avenged.
Leow now dragged a teenage girl up the slope and stopped no more than ten metres from where Korsak lay in hiding. Had Korsak still had his pistol, he would have used it. As it was, he resolved to batter this man’s brains from his evil skull. As Korsak felt for a rock to use for a weapon Leow threw himself on top of the girl. Just as the tawdry proceedings were reaching their climax, a procession of vehicles roared into the quarry. There were shouts of command. Leow immediately got to his feet, buttoned his fly, and sprinted down the hill. The sobbing girl was left behind, curled up in the foetal position. Unable to help, Korsak left her to sob for the moment and peered over the lip of the quarry.
A number of bodyguards had leapt from the vehicles and formed a cordon. They were no sooner in position than they were followed by two senior SS officers. The first was in his thirties. Tall and well-built, with aquiline features, he wore an immaculately tailored uniform.
As the second stepped out of his Mercedes staff car Korsak gasped in disbelief. The identity of the man with the Asiatic features, small round glasses and toothbrush moustache was unmistakeable. The man was Heinrich Himmler.
“Reichsführer! This is indeed an honour!” gasped Dirlewanger, rushing up to his master. “We had not expected your visit so soon.”
“I do not see why that would be the case,” replied Himmler. “I informed you by telegram that I would like to see you shoot a hundred bolshevists in order that I could observe the actual liquidation. You appear to have begun your work already.”
“We have over two hundred still waiting. Jews and Bolshevists,” countered Dirlewanger.
The command was quickly reorganised and a further group of men and women were brought forward and lined up on the lip of the pit. As the firing squad raised rifles, Himmler stopped the proceedings. His gaze had fallen upon a handsome young man who was about to go to his doom.
“I notice that this young man is blonde and blue-eyed. These are the hallmarks of the true Teuton. Surely he does not belong in this group?” said Himmler. “This cannot be right. Where is the interpreter?”
Leow stepped forward.
“Ask him if he is a Jew,” said Himmler peremptorily.
Leow quickly translated the short question and received a reply.
“He says he is, Reichsführer,” said Leow.
“Both parents?” asked Himmler.
“Yes, Reichsführer,” came the reply.
“Does he have any antecedents who are not Jewish?”
Leow translated the question which again elicited a negative reply.
“No, Reichsführer, none at all.”
Himmler theatrically stamped his foot. “Then I cannot help him.” He gave the signal to continue to Dirlewanger, who in turn nodded to Leow.
“Fire!” came the call. The squad fired and the victims tumbled into the pit.
Despite the horror of the scene unfolding before him, Korsak couldn’t help noticing that Himmler◦— who had ostensibly come to watch◦— stared at the ground. He shuffled nervously. Then there came a second volley. Again Himmler promptly averted his eyes. Glancing up, he saw that two women still writhed. “Don’t torture these women!” he shouted. “Get on with it, shoot quickly!”
Seizing his opportunity, one of the SS officers directly addressed Himmler.
“Reichsführer, can you kindly note how deeply shaken some of the men of the firing squad are? Some of these men are finished for the rest of their lives!” the SS man beseeched him. “What kind of followers are we creating by doing these things? Either neurotics or brutes!”
Dirlewanger moved forward. “I order you to be silent, Becker! How dare you address the Reichsführer? You will answer to me later.”
But Himmler raised his arm. Acting on impulse, he ordered the command to gather around and began to make an impromptu speech.