“So we kept the secret because there was no one to whom we could usefully reveal it.
“But then Krausser came to the shtetl.”
“I have pieced these things together. Many of them are guesses but I shall relate them as if I know them to be fact; the outcome we know.
“At first Krausser refused to listen to my brother’s pleas for a hearing. He had heard Jewish pleading before, he was not interested. But Maxim did get the ear of an amused junior officer, a Waffen SS Hauptmann.
“Maxim implored this Hauptmann to persuade Krausser to spare the village. In return for the lives of the Jews, my brother offered to tell the Nazis where to find the gold we had buried for the Admiral.
“I have said my brother acted as if he assumed the gold was still where we had hidden it. Perhaps he did not believe that any more than I did; perhaps he only wanted to make the Germans believe it.
“Now I am on uncertain ground. I cannot describe the sequence of events, only the possibilities.
“It is likely, to me, that this Hauptmann was unimpressed by my brother’s wild story. But perhaps he repeated it at the evening mess, and perhaps his fellow young Hitlerites agreed that there was probably nothing to it-a desperate lie by a cowardly Jew trying to save his skin-but if there were any truth at all in Maxim’s story, it was possible they would find themselves in serious trouble for failure to report it.
“A hypothesis. A report goes to the Oberst-Krausser. Krausser feels there is probably nothing to it, but it cannot hurt to listen to the Jew-the story sounds entertaining.
“I know from Zalmanson that my brother was granted an audience with Krausser that night. I do not know what was said; one can guess.
“My brother is earnest, compelling. Perhaps he begins by demanding the lives of all surviving Russian Jews in return for leading the Germans to the gold. Krausser replies caustically that even if this fantasy has truth in it, the gold is hidden a thousand miles beyond German lines in the deep heart of the Soviet Union. What good is this to the Third Reich?
“But Maxim is adamant-persuasive. Krausser hears him out. Finally Krausser probes: an offer. If what Maxim says proves to be true, the villagers will indeed be spared. His promise, on his word as a German officer.
“Not the villagers, Maxim insists. Consider the value of this hoard. Billions of Reichsmarks. Billions. All the Jews who are still alive must be spared.
“The village, Krausser says. Only the village. Gold is not that important. Important but not that important.
“Now Maxim sees that there is no hope of gaining a wider reprieve. The shtetl, only the shtetl. Yet Maxim knows about German honor. He insists that he be given a guarantee of safety for the villagers from a higher, more responsible official than Krausser. He picks a name out of the air, a name he has heard-General von Bock’s name because von Bock is known, even to his enemies, to be an honorable old-fashioned soldier.
“A guarantee in writing, personally signed by von Bock. Only then will he reveal the location of the gold.
“Now it goes through Krausser’s mind that he could torture this Jew and make him talk. But he is impressed by Maxim. Maxim is a very big man, powerful. His eyes are calm and level. He has lived with torture half his life-the torture from within. He will not break easily. It would take a long time and the results are never guaranteed: men under torture have willed themselves to die. In any case it would take time and these SS do not have a great deal of time. The Nazis are always in a hurry. There are other villages: Jews to kill.
“My brother gains a temporary reprieve. In the morning the villagers queue up for registration. The twelve hundred and seven men, women and children are stripped of their valuables and ordered to wear Star of David armbands at all times-and then they are released to go home.
“Krausser allows an appropriate interval to pass and then in due course a written guarantee over General von Bock’s signature is presented to my brother by Herr Krausser. Two or three army command orders, bearing von Bock’s signature, are shown to my brother so that he may be sure the signature is genuine.
“Krausser speaks with feigned anger, talking very fast, insisting that my brother realize that the reprieve remains only temporary until it is ascertained whether his story is true. Until that time the shtetl remains in jeopardy, and only if the gold is found will the Jews be spared. In the meantime the village must consider itself collectively under arrest and subject to the strictures of Nazi martial law.
“Actually what has transpired in the interval, one must assume, is a series of communications between Krausser and General von Geyr, between Krausser and other officers, and between Krausser’s superiors and Berlin.* Krausser was not an educated man-I doubt he had any Russian history, I doubt he knew whether there ever had been a Czarist treasury, let alone what happened to it. Confirming those details of Maxim’s account which could be proved must have taken some part of this time.
“Now everything the Germans learn tends to support the authenticity of Maxim’s story. In time, as we know, an expedition was sent to look for the gold. But in the meantime.…
“The village had been spared, it appeared. The Spandaus had been dismounted from their tripods. The main body of Krausser’s force had moved on to some other slaughtering ground. According to Zalmanson, a platoon of Waffen SS under the combined command of an SS Leutnant and some sort of Gestapo official was left to maintain German order in the shtetl.
“Krausser himself would reappear from time to time-at intervals of four or five days-to meet with his Leutnant and, two or three times, in private with Maxim. Maxim never told anyone what was said in these conferences. The villagers knew he had saved them somehow, but no one was able to persuade him to explain it-not even Zalmanson.
“Rather than indicating relief and triumph, my brother became morose and despondent and would not speak to anyone except in grunts. He withdrew completely into himself.
“Late in September the fall rains came, and then an early winter.”
“I never saw this von Bock document. Zalmanson did not see it either. Certain things he said were what led me to believe it must have been produced by Krausser. Besides, I knew my brother’s thinking-his way of thinking. I’m sure there must have been such a written guarantee. Zalmanson said that my brother had intimated that von Bock had personally decided to spare the shtetl. Maxim wouldn’t have made that up.*
“I have good reason to suspect, however, that to whatever extent this letter existed, it must have been a forgery.
“On October fourth, late in the day, Krausser’s battalion returned to the shtetl. They came in motorized sleds, the big ones that carried thirty men each. I can remember the grating roar of those machines crossing the valleys of the Ukraine a year later.
“Krausser did not arrive with the force. The SS men posted themselves in the town and said nothing-not a single word-to the inhabitants. No questions were answered. There were several incidents, Jews being knocked down in the snow and trampled, that sort of thing. After dark the Germans became steadily more belligerent, although they still did not speak to the people except to bark obscenities or arrogant orders at them.
“You must recall the mentalities of these necrophiles. This village had been denied them for weeks-they singled it out for special hatred. During the night several Jews were murdered by the SS swine. The corpses were left in the streets, mutilated horribly. Zalmanson told me of the naked severed arms of a small boy lying shriveled in the slush, and an old man’s head impaled on a staff before the old synagogue.