She warily reached for the food, her hunger overcoming her pride. She greedily stuffed the bread into her mouth, almost choking in her rush to swallow the food. Langer said nothing, just opened his canteen and handed it across the table to her. Choking, she swallowed a gulp of water, helping to force the coarse bread down her throat.
Softly, he spoke, "Take it easy, eat slow." He leaned back away from the table, aware of her feelings of hate for all who wore a uniform. Knowing the fear and hatred that was boiling inside her, he gave her time to relax and take some of the edge off as she finished eating and took the last swig of water. She screwed the red cap back on to the canteen and sat back. The swelling around her eye took nothing away from the defiance and hate showing there.
In good German, her voice clear and strong, if a little shaky around the edges, she asked, "What now, hero? Should I take my clothes off so you can be paid for the food?"
Langer shook his head. "No, I'm not going to do anything to you." He lit up a smoke and noticed the gleam in her eye.
"Want one?" He passed the pack and some matches over to her. Lighting up she let the smoke drift up into her nostrils and inhaled deeply, then exhaled the smoke slowly.
"Are you a Jew?"
Her head jerked up straight, her back erect as that of a British sergeant major. "Yes! I'm a Jew."
He nodded his head. "I thought so; even though the headhunters said you were, you can't always believe those sons of bitches."
She looked at him carefully; was this some kind of trick? For him to speak out against his own kind like this.
"No, I'm not one of them in spite of the uniform. I'm a soldier, not a butcher; there's no love lost between me and the SS supermen, especially those of the Allegemeine, although I have to admit the Waffen SS troops are about as tough as any I have ever seen. But their field troops are not garbage like the SD and SA." He could see the doubt in her eyes; there was one way that he might get through to her. "Mah sheem-Hah?" He asked her name in Hebrew. Startled she looked back and answered, "Shem meesh-pakht-teh Deborah Sapir. Hah-Eevreet-yoht Ah-Tenn?"
"No, I'm not a Hebrew, though I did spend some time in Judea a long time ago."
The ice was broken; curiosity overcame some of her caution. She looked at the square-built figure as he took his coat off; the room was warming. True, he looked the part of a German, the close-cropped hair and scarred face, and there was something brutal about him, but it wasn't that insane cruelty of the SS or NKVD. His was that of a hunting animal who kills only for survival, not pleasure. There was something else too. She looked deep into the gray-blue eyes; behind them lay a great sadness, a feeling of terrible isolation and weariness. She shook her head to clear these feelings, as if she had almost been hypnotized. Taking a bite from his own chunk of bread, he chewed slowly, thinking. He caught her looking at the medals he wore, the fear and suspicion coming back. He leaned back in his chair and spoke softly, but in a direct way, to her. "Don't let the uniform influence you. Most men are no different, no matter what color the uniform they wear. Most Germans are the same as men everywhere, with families that they love, but they, like the Russians, are victims of a few ambitious men, men gone insane seeking their immortality; and insanity is contagious, it can drive those about them mad with the same sickness of mind and spirit.
"Those who fight this war, the soldiers, are caught up in that madness. It's too big to resist, and now they're committed to see it through to the end; it's gone too far to back away. I believed in the war in the beginning for reasons of my own. I felt that Russia had to be stopped before she grew so strong that no power would ever be able to resist her. The Communists are no better than the Nazis, they both feed on fear and power, but as wrong as the war was to start with, it has to go on a while longer. I know Germany is losing; the Allies have landed back on the European continent. Italy is almost gone, and every day we have fewer men to face the hordes of Russians that come at us."
Deborah watched him closely; there was no doubt in her mind that he was telling the truth as he saw it. "But why then do you continue to fight, don't you want the war to end?"
He nodded. "Yes, it's about time for this one to come to a halt, but not yet." He lit up another cigaret. "You see, the job now, though it will cost thousands of lives, is to bleed the Soviets as dry as we can every day, and hold them back long enough to give the British and Americans time to advance further into Europe and give more civilians time to escape to the West, ahead of the Russians. If we stopped now, there would be no stopping them, they would overrun all of Europe. In his own mind, Stalin is the Genghis Khan of this century and he wants to achieve what every conqueror has always wanted, to be master of the world and all that's in it. Hitler is no different, perhaps only a little madder."
She still didn't understand fully; consternation showed in her facial expressions. "If that's true, why did you fight to start with?"
He sucked on his smoke and blew the residue out of his nostrils. "In the beginning, as I told you, I believed the great lie, too. I have fought the hordes before. I believed, as did most of the other Germans, that war was inevitable between the West and Asia.
"It was felt that the Soviets would someday advance with all the hordes of Asia at their command, to loot and destroy the Western nations. They had to be stopped by a united Europe if civilization was to survive, and not drop back into the dark ages. I couldn't believe that the Germans I knew were capable of the horrors that they later inflicted on the world, but by then, it was too late to stop. You just had to go on and hope for the best, and there was some indication that Hitler would not outlast the assassination attempt by members of the general staff, but somehow the madman survived. So now I wait, and do what I can. One man can never really do a great deal; everything is too big, you're lost among the rules and regulations, the habits of training and survival take over; you're just too small to fight insanity on a scale the size of this, so I go on. But recently a friend of mine died to prove something, and now I think it's time for me to try another way, to separate myself from the masses of this holocaust, although what I will do will have little, if any, real effect on the outcome."
Rising, he stretched his arms and put another log on the fire, turning his back to the flames. The heat felt good against the back of his legs. "And you! What about you, Deborah Sapir?"
Deborah thought carefully before answering; what difference did it make if he were lying, the SS were going to kill her anyway. "I was at Auschwitz for six months; the officers liked my looks so they let me live. I was being taken to entertain at a party for one of them when the car was ambushed by partisans. Since that time I have been with different organizations trying to do what we could to save the Jews remaining; there are very few left now."
Langer moved a little bit away from the fire; it was growing too warm on the back of his legs. "Tell me what it was like there, I have to know." He moved to the table and sat opposite her again.