“I think I also go,” he said quietly. “I am over twenty years in Brazil. I think maybe you exaggerate. However. Von Roesler, good day.” He nodded stiffly to the others and left the room. The grinding of the Ford’s starter came from below.
“And now,” said Erick softly in the shocked silence that had fallen, “are there more to leave? Does the Reich have more traitors in this room?” No one answered. He studied their faces, studiously avoiding his uncle’s look of misery, but somehow strengthened by it. “You are all sure? You have no doubts?” His eyes flashed from one to the other; they all stared back in waiting silence. “No? Then let us get to work!” He seated himself at the table and drew his briefcase toward him. “The plans are all drawn. We shall discuss them. Actually, the situation is not very different between the different countries...” The others moved around him as he spread his papers upon the table top and continued to talk.
This was the young Captain Erick von Roesler of the Sicherheitsdienst, provisionally assigned by the SD as Gauleiter-to-be for the country of Brazil, in South America, in the month of June, in the year of 1939.
Chapter 5
When the patience of the leaders of the Third Reich could no longer tolerate the constant attacks to which they were viciously and unfairly subjected, they established their first line of defense in Poland. This was in September of 1939. This proved so successful that further defense lines were later established even more to the east.
In those early days, the assignments given to Gauleiters-to-be in the countries-defended-as-yet-not were many and varied. Captain Erick von Roesler, his voluminous notes on Brazil largely unread and buried in the vast archives of some obscure bureau of the SD, was first assigned to Lithuania as assistant to the Gauleiter of Riga. His enthusiasm in this first opportunity to prove to the Führer as well as to his superiors his complete devotion to the sacred cause eventually led even the Gauleiter of Riga himself to complain directly to Rosenberg. “To have buried alive seriously wounded people,” ran the astonishing report, “who then worked their way out of the graves again, is such extreme beastliness that it should be reported to the Führer and Reichsmarschall...” Since the Gauleiter of Riga merely proved in this purposeless complaint to be either extremely naive or poorly indoctrinated, von Roesler earned no reprimand. Instead, he was awarded the Iron Cross and his military grade raised to major. However, in the interests of peace-the-family-in, which at that stage of the military effort was easily afforded, he was reassigned and told to report directly to Reichsminister Saukel in Paris.
His new post required him to concentrate on the recruitment of foreign workers into the slave labor program. In this new assignment, von Roesler was again swept with an excess of enthusiasm which bore no relationship to the purposes of the program; or possibly he felt that the impressing of labor was an end in itself. At any rate, the result was the same. Since dead slaves do no work, he found himself once again reassigned. This time there was no promotion attached.
His new position was more logical; he found himself posted to Dachau, where his activities, rather than causing unfavorable comment, aided his commendation record.
Von Roesler had finally found his forte. In quick succession, Auschwitz saw him, and Birkenau. To his surprise, he discovered that he had a certain talent for organization, combined to some extent with a technical ability almost bordering on engineering. Through his efforts he was able to increase the daily output of the cremation ovens spectacularly; even the technicians whose function it was to see to the proper operation of the ovens had to admit that von Roesler played no small part in the success of the extermination program.
But it was actually not until early in 1943 that he really felt settled. This was when his service was finally recognized, and he was transferred on a permanent basis to the long-established camp at Buchenwald. The years had given him maturity; victims capable of working were no longer whipped into the false showers; those who could walk and bend over were saved for the factories of Weimar, their place in the daily file to the ovens taken by the utterly decrepit, or the women too weak to contribute, or the useless children. His title in his new position was Assistant to the Obergrüppenführer, and it also carried a promotion to the level of colonel.
The mental development of Erick von Roesler in these years might be interesting to study, were it unfortunately not so standard. The vital necessity for furthering the destiny of the Third Reich, which had manifested itself in the excesses of Lithuania, had turned in his months with Reichsminister Saukel to bitter resentment at his victims for having forced these very excesses. From this resentment to a state of active hatred was a short step. Hatred being a reason in itself, no feeling of guilt could, or ever did, accrue to his activities.
His hatred had no particular focus. He hated all his enemies, but particularly he hated the Jews, because the ones he encountered at Buchenwald were German, and because they were not in the camp for sabotage or political acts against the Reich. He secretly considered du Waldeck and Koch weak and almost degenerate, for they seemed to kill and torture from pleasure, rather than from his more exalted hatred.
Brazil seemed far away in those days of daily tasks, but von Roesler never forgot it. He kept a map of the vast country on his desk and in free moments would pore over it, tracing with his finger the tiny path that led from Santos, winding erratically along the coast to cut in to Itapave. He never ceased being amazed at the insignificance of what had been a full day’s journey, when compared with the great reaches of the country that dwarfed this minute part.
The winning of the war having already been assured by the constant elimination of enemies, either in the bloody blitzkrieg battles to the east, or in the gas chambers, he often sat back at night and planned his future. Goetz! Without any doubt tainted by more than a little Jewish blood. And Riepert; not a common Jewish name, no; but certainly a Jew. Little Erick, eh? From his office he could see the huge prison yard, and the floodlights bathing the area in cold shadowlessness; he looked back in his memory to Dachau, and Ausehwitz, and Birkenau. Little Erick, eh? Hartzlandia would rise before him, the Berchtesgaden of his future. His foolish uncle was growing old, senile; imagine the old man inviting Jews to that meeting! And then, having invited them, imagine the old man feeling miserable because they left! Well, when the time came, the old man would pose no problem. Von Roesler’s fingers would stroke the warm wood of his pipe rhythmically, the sinuous twisting trails of smoke blending in the air with his lush dreams.
All this, of course, was before the bombings. It was only at Hamburg, on that fateful night of August 3, 1943, that the first maggots of doubt ever entered his mind. The order had come crisply to the apartment of the Obergrüppenführer and had been routinely transferred to his office. A swift call to Weimar started a priority train on its way to the camp; within thirty minutes three hundred inmates had been brutally routed out of their tiered shelves, certain that their final hour had arrived. Von Roesler supervised the loading of the cattle cars personally, saw the last frightened animal beaten into withdrawal from the doors, the panels slammed into place and latched. He nodded to the signalman, who waved his red lantern and scrambled aboard to join him in the small coach at the rear.