“And you think these are the men I’m up against?” asked Miller.
“I’m sure of it. The warning you were given in Bad Godesberg could not have come from anyone else. Do be careful; these men can be dangerous.”
Miller’s mind was on something else. “When Roschmann disappeared, after his wife had given away his new name, you said he would need a fresh passport?”
“Certainly.”
“Why the passport particularly?” Simon Wiesenthal leaned back in his chair and nodded. “I can understand why you are puzzled. Let me explain. After the war in Germany, and here in Austria, there were tens of thousands wandering about with no identification papers. Some had genuinely lost them; others had thrown them away for good reason.
“To obtain new ones, it would normally be necessary to produce a birth certificate. But millions had fled from the former German territories overrun by the Russians. Who was to say if a man was, or was not, born in a small village in East Prussia, now miles behind the Iron Curtain? In other cases the buildings in which the certificates were stored had been destroyed by bombing.
“So the process was very simple. All one needed were two witnesses to swear that one was who one said, and a fresh personal ID card was issued.
In the case of prisoners-of-war, they often had no papers either. On their release from camp, the British and American camp authorities would sign a release paper to the effect that Corporal Johann Schumann was certified as released from prisoner camp. These papers were then taken by the soldier to the civilian authorities, who issued an ID card in the same name. But often the man had only told the Allies his name was Johann Schumann. It could have been something else. No one checked.
And so he got a new identity.
“That was all right in the immediate aftermath of the war, which was when most of the SS criminals were getting their new identities. But what happens to a man who is blown wide open in 1955, as was Roschmann? He can’t go to the authorities and say he lost his papers during the war.
They would be bound to ask bow he had got by during the ten-year interim period. So he needs a passport.”
“I understand so far,” said Miller. “But why a passport? Why not a driving license or an ID card?”
“Because shortly after the founding of the republic the German authorities realized there must be hundreds or thousands wandering about under false names. There was a need for one document that was so well researched that it could act as the yardstick for all the others. They hit on the passport. Before you get a passport in Germany, you have to produce a birth certificate, several references, and a host of other documentation. These are thoroughly checked before the passport is issued.
“By contrast, once you have a passport, you can get anything else on the strength of it. Such is bureaucracy. The production of the passport convinces the civil servant that, since previous bureaucrats must have checked out the passport-holder thoroughly, no further checking is necessary. With a new passport, Roschmann could quickly build up the rest of the identity-driving license, bank accounts, credit cards. The passport is the Open Sesame to every other piece of necessary documentation in present-day Germany.”
“Where would the passport come from?”
“From the Odessa. They must have a forger somewhere who can turn them out,” Wiesenthal said.
Miller thought for a while. “If one could find the passport-forger, one might find the man who could identify Roschmann today?” he suggested.
Wiesenthal shrugged. “One might. But it would be a long shot. And to do that one would have to penetrate the Odessa. Only an ex-SS man could do that.”
“Then where do I go from here?” said Miller.
“I should think your best bet would be to try and contact some of the survivors of Riga. I don’t know whether they would be able to help you further, but they’d certainly be willing. We are all trying to find Roschmann. Look.” He flicked open the diary on his desk. “There’s reference here to a certain Olli Adler from Munich, who was in Roschmann’s company during the war. It may be she survived and came home to Munich.”
Miller nodded. “If she did, where would she register?”
“At the Jewish Community Center. It still exists. It contains the archives of the Jewish community of Munich-since the war, that is. Everything else was destroyed. I’d try there.”
“Do you have the address?” Simon Wiesenthal checked through an address book. “Reichenbachstrasse, number twenty-seven, Munich,” he said.
“I suppose you want the diary of Salomon Tauber back?”
“Yes, I’m afraid I do.”
“Too bad. I’d like to have kept it. A remarkable diary.” He rose and escorted Miller to the front door. “Good luck,” he said, “and let me know how you get on.”
Miller had dinner that evening in the House of the Golden Dragon, which had been in business as a beer house and restaurant in the Steindelgasse without a break from 1566, and thought over the advice. He had little hope of finding more than a handful of survivors of
Riga still in Germany or Austria, and even less hope that any might help him track Roschmann beyond November 1955. But it was a hope, a last hope.
He left the next morning for the drive back to Munich.
10
MILLER DROVE into Munich at 10 midmorning of January 9 and found 27 Reichenbachstrasse from a map of Munich bought at a newspaper kiosk in the out skirts. Parking down the road, he surveyed the Jewish Community Center before entering. It was a flat-fronted five-story building. The fagade of the ground floor was of uncovered stone blocks; above this the façade was of gray cement over brick. The fifth and top floor was marked by a row of mansard windows set in the red tiled roof. At ground level there was a double door of glass panels at the extreme left end of the building.
The building contained a kosher restaurant, the only one in Munich, on the ground floor, the leisure rooms of the old people’s home on the one above. the third floor contained the administration and records department, and the upper two housed the guest rooms and sleeping quarters of the inmates of the old people’s home. At the back was a synagogue.
He went up to the third floor and presented himself at the inquiry desk.
While he waited he glanced around the room. There were rows of books, all new, for the original library had long since been burned by the Nazis.
Between the library shelves were portraits of some of the leaders of the Jewish community, stretching back hundreds of years, teachers and rabbis, gazing out of their frames above luxuriant beards, like the figures of the prophets he had seen in his Scripture textbooks at school. Some wore phylacteries bound to their foreheads, and all were hatted.
There was a rack of newspapers, some in German, others in Hebrew. He presumed the latter were flown in from Israel. A short dark man was scanning the front page of one of these.
“Can I help you?” He looked around to the inquiry desk to find it now occupied by a dark-eyed woman in her mid-forties. There was a strand of hair failing over her eyes, which she nervously brushed back into place several times a minute.
Miller made his request: any trace of Olli Adler, who might have reported back to Munich after the war?
“Where would she have returned from?” asked the woman.
“From Magdeburg. Before that, Stutthof. Before that, from Riga.”
“Oh dear, Riga,” said the woman. “I don’t think we have anyone on the lists who came back here from Riga. They all disappeared, you know. But I’ll look.” She went into a back room, and Miller could see her going steadily through an index of names. It was not a big index. She returned after five minutes.