The Hitler File
A Novel of Fact
By Sam Vaknin
Draft
For your consideration
© 2006-2007 All Rights Reserved
Based on hundreds of newly-discovered documents in archives the world over – now …
THE HITLER FILE
Israel Sarid Roth is the only son of two survivors of the Holocaust. When his boss at the Genocide Monitoring Group sends him to Israel on a routine assignment, he finds himself at the deadly center of a nightmare.
What is on the floppy disk he picked up in Jerusalem?
Who is Frankenberg, the investigative journalist and how did he track down the fearsome former Chief of the Nazi Gestapo, Heinrich Mueller, long thought dead?
Why did Himmler, the leader of the SS, release Frankenberg’s father from the death camp Auschwitz?
What was in Hitler’s personal file, kept by the Nazi Party’s own intelligence service, the SD?
Who blackmailed Hitler and what was the dark secret in his past?
Why was the Holocaust, the mass extermination of Europe’s Jews, set in motion only so late in World War II?
Why did the Nazi SS work hand-in-glove with Zionist organizations in Palestine and throughout occupied Europe, even as the Holocaust was taking place?
Who assassinated the prominent Zionist leader Chaim Arlosoroff in 1934 and why?
Time is running out. To survive, Roth must find the answers to these questions and remain one step ahead of Nazis, old and new, as well as the Israeli Mossad.
There is only one rule: TRUST NO ONE.
Dedicated to Lidija, my wife and life.
Facts and Speculations
All the historical events and personalities mentioned in this book are true and factual.
The only exceptions are:
Leo Frankenberg the investigative journalist and his grandfather, the Auschwitz inmate, Ernst Frankenberg, are fictional characters.
Heinrich Mueller. Though his body was never found, he probably died in the bunker in besieged Berlin or not far from it in May 1945. But, read on and judge for yourselves.
All the speculations in this book are just that: speculations.
The author visited all the locations mentioned in this tome and met many of the protagonists that populate this work of fiction.
In a way, therefore, this is a roman-a-clef.
Still, names and circumstances were altered to protect the identity of those involved.
******
“We are in,” – he almost whispered – “the files merged.”
Enraptured, we gazed at the screen as the text document unwound itself, page by flickering page.
I leaned forward:
“It’s an interview … It’s the transcript of an interview …”
Dan nodded, mouth open, hand frozen in mid-twitch. His voice was hoarse:
“It’s an interview with Gestapo Mueller.”
“Interview with Mueller?” – I had hoped for more – “He must have given many of them in his career.”
Dan blinked.
“Not posthumously, he didn’t. Not 16 years after he died in Berlin.”
Prologue
“Pol und Jude”
Political and a Jew.
It’s around 4 o’clock in the morning. I am not sure of the date. The days all look the same, so do the seasons. The barking, snarling, phlegm-permeated roar of the block’s senior prisoner. Beatings, curses, the fading reverberations of the wake-up gong.
I tear myself from my lice-infested dream. My clothes are still rain-drenched and crawling with the brown, hardy bugs. My skin is festering and spewing pus. My broken, dirt-encrusted nails leave bloody trails where I furiously burrow into the florid rash. I sleep in my tattered clogs – it saves some precious time and makes them hard to steal.
I jump down from the wooden bunk and make up my “bed” – a rotting clump of straw or wood shavings wrapped in paper which here pass for a mattress, a blanket rendered translucent by overuse. My narrow plank is shared with others. We move like automata, eyes downcast, skeletal hands shuttle with frenzy, folding the decomposing covers at precise, military angles. Failure to do so means flogging, or worse.
Fending off the rats that constantly attack us, we rush to the latrines. The silent, desperate scrimmage for the covered manholes into which we hastily relieve ourselves, half standing, half crouching, clothes dipped in excrement, no air, just the pervasive stench of aging urine.
A river of human flotsam, its moldy delta the elongated metal sinks. We push and shove to wash at least the moldering tips of our fingers, the parched corners of the mouth, the backside of a desiccated, weather-furrowed neck, rarely the sweat-cemented armpits, never the swollen feet or groin. Hundreds of us and so few water taps and such a feverish hush.
Don’t be among the last. Don’t miss the nebulous liquid that passes here for coffee, our only nourishment until the dinner break. In line, cup extended, I greedily measure the putrid slush and gulp it hurriedly, half-running to the roll call. The orchestra is playing a cheerful march in the distance. The sounds waft around us, disembodied, nightmarish, like some discordant smoke.
The green stripe painted on a piece of cloth attached to the right pants leg of the eclectic attire of the prisoner in front of me identifies him as a common criminal. Not good company. Additionally, I am the last in the row of ten, not an auspicious place. They count us every morning when we depart, assigned to work details, and every evening, when some of us return, carrying the dead and murdered on our shoulders. The first and last positions in every row attract attention. Attention here means pain and, often, death.
This morning’s roll call is mercifully brief, the foul mist and drizzle driving even the guards lethargic. Numbers are assigned to tasks and teams.
“A8806”
That’s me.
From the corner of my eye, I see the block senior and two high-ranking officers, black tunics, iron crosses, skulls and bones, mirror-shiny boots. I am not allowed to look at them. I remove my cap forthwith. I can sense them examining the two pieces of cloth sewn to the left side of my shirt – a yellow square and a red triangle perched beneath it.
“Pol und Jude.” – says one of them. The voice of his younger but evidently senior colleague instructs: “Ask him.”
“Name?” – barks the other. I recoil. I have to think back to answer him. I haven’t used my name since I arrived, since having crossed the wrought iron gates of this inhospitable planet.
I tell him my name, haltingly.
“He is the one” – the first, older officer opines.
Someone pushes me from behind with the tip of a wooden club: “You heard it, move!”
Move where? The other prisoners file away, putting distance between their emaciated selves and me, who am about to die. Smothered between four guards, I am half walking, half carried from the square, through the barracks, across the rail tracks, on the ramp, and to the “Sauna”, the registration office, a vast expanse, littered with chairs and discarded personal belongings.
It is the usual mayhem this time of dawn: hundreds of new inmates, baffled, terrified, clinging to obsolete vestiges of their former lives. Some of them are ordered to climb on a rotating chair, are photographed en face, half profile, right profile, the lever is released, the chair bolts, they fall, the administrative personnel roar in unrestrained and venomous laughter.
Everyone is ordered to strip naked (“handkerchiefs and belts allowed!”), issued a number, tattooed, given new clothes, pushed into the showers, scalding hot or ice cold water, out of the showers, shivering, out the door, beaten, clubbed, cursed, into the barracks, whispered horror gossip, resented by his overcrowded blockmates, threatened, shoved, pushed, pulled …
One of the guards motions; “Undress!” and when I am slow to respond, he mockingly taps me on the head with his baton. Frozen naked I am placed under a rusty showerhead. The icy emanation takes my belabored breath away. Seconds later, I am handed an oversized, perspiration-drenched, dandruff-flaked shabby business suit. I put it on.
The guards, ominous grins on their immaculately shaven faces, escort me back to the registration desk. A prisoner hands them a form bearing my number and photos of my previous incarnation. One of the guards signs and marks the date in a bulky book.
Next we exit the block and I am marched away from the camp, along the now-deserted railway ramp, through the electrified fences, the warning signs, the watchtower, the car barriers. There, on the muddy road, like an apparition, lurks a black Mercedes, no license plates, a white-gloved chauffeur holding the door wide open, snapped to attention.
My attendants blindfold me. A few minutes pass and then they address someone as “doctor”. They roll up my sleeve and I feel the painful prick of a syringe needle in my right arm. As I crumble, the last thing I see is the crooked sign that says: “Auschwitz II – Birkenau”. And then there’s darkness.
Chapter the First
The Frankenberg Bequest
Delivering me into this world was an act of defiance as is my name: Israel Sarid Roth. From early on, I was told that “Sarid” means “remnant” in Hebrew and this is what my parents were: survivors, ashen residues of that great conflagration, the Holocaust.
After the War, they met as two near-skeletons in a DP camp - that’s a Displaced Persons facility, often only marginally better than a concentration camp. They clung to each other in a hurried act of marriage and fourteen years later – the time it took them to regain some trust in life, not least by making a small fortune in the specialty publishing industry - they made me.
My mother slid the plate of broiled vegetables across the Formica-top table:
“Finish it!” – she demanded, almost ferociously – “You never know when you will eat next.”
My father pleaded with sad, rheumatic eyes and I nibbled half-heartedly at the multicolored mash.
It was almost time.
In Israel, the Holocaust Memorial Day opens with a wailing siren, followed by two minutes of contemplative, silent observation. One year, my mother traveled all the way to Jerusalem and, standing on the grounds of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, she taped the piercing sound and the ensuing silence.
She played it every year since then on the appointed date and this year was no exception. As the sound faded, I rose up and exited this funereal abode, mumbling barely audible goodbyes.
The air outside was fresh with life.
I was 46 years old but didn’t have much to show for it, except a string of failed relationships. More out of angst than out of need, I worked three days a week in the musty acquisitions department of the Genocide Monitoring Group (GMG), a non-government organization as well-funded and as morbid as my family.
There was a note on my creaking, plain-wood desk at the office: “urgent to see the manager Bauer”, Ashok, my Hindu assistant, scribbled. Bauer is my irascible boss. It sounded bad.
******
“Sit down” – droned Bauer, straightening an errant bow tie and, then, without a pause – “You’ve heard of Leo Frankenberg?”
I haven’t. And there was nowhere to sit in Bauer’s windowless and airless cubicle. The only thing that passed for a chair was bent shapeless by an avalanche of cardboard folders and reams of folded printouts. I crouched, resting my back on a polyglot tower of hardbacks.
“Neither have I,” – he confessed cheerfully – “until recently, that is. He is … was … supposed to have been a veteran and venerable investigative journalist. In other words, a bore and a loser …”
Ever since he was criticized by the media for his high-handed ways at the GMG, Bauer detested journalists, investigative or otherwise.
“Was? He died?”
Bauer gave
me a cryogenic look: “Of course he died! Why else would we be
dissecting him here and now? For pleasure?”
Bauer was well-known for his rhetorical questions. I learned to avoid them.
Instead, I asked:
“It’s a bequest, then?”
Bauer beamed at me:
“Now you are talking. Bequest it is. The poor schmuck left us his notes, would you believe it? Luckily, they come with a handsome and” – he wagged a sausagy finger – “may I add, much-needed trust fund …”
He rummaged among the tottering Everest of paper on his desk and withdrew what looked to me like a legal form.
Triumphantly:
“A sum of, never mind you how much, to defray all costs related to the cataloging, preservation, and publication of said works.”
I waited patiently. Perseverance paid with Bauer.
“I want you to travel to Israel tonight. Take an inventory of the bequest, a rough record, that sort of thing.”
“It’s that urgent?” – I protested mildly.
It didn’t register.
“On the one hand, it’s probably a load of worthless junk” – mused Bauer – “On the other hand, we sure could use the money.” He weighed his own arguments. I got up. When Bauer started to debate with himself, the meeting was over.
Only when I reached the incongruous carved oak door, did he come up for air:
“Breaking and entering is frowned upon in Israel. You may wish to take the key to his apartment with you.”
He had a point.
******
I have never been to Israel before. At the surprisingly shabby Ben-Gurion airport, the first thing that grabs you is the inordinate ubiquity of uniforms. They are everywhere: police, army, and a half dozen security agencies. Both men and women similarly attired, monolithically unsmiling, robotically efficient. It gave me the chills.
Add to that the largest concentration of yarmulkes and streimels this side of Brooklyn and a litany of sweaty, unkempt, bejeweled Levantine men and you can see why I wasn’t too impressed.
And the decibels! Israel’s typical noise level must be illegal in most civilized locales. People are very animated and amiable but there is something neurotic about it all, some pent-up aggression that is almost palpable.
Matters didn’t improve in the queue to the idling taxis and my mood was hardly elevated when the driver refused to turn on the meter. “I will make you a special price” – he bawled in broken English. He kept his word.
I climbed the winding stairs to the top floor of a Jerusalem stone encased apartment block and faced a gaunt door whose erstwhile greenish paint was peeling exuberantly all over the mud-caked floor. The key fitted in but then refused to budge in either direction.
Talk about inauspicious.
******
That evening, safely ensconced in a faded leather armchair, I started taking stock of the cataract of paper that constituted Frankenberg’s life. It wasn’t much to behold and it was sad. One’s life’s work is another person’s trash.
But there was a lot of it and it kept me busy for almost three days. And, then, as I was getting ready to up and go, I saw it. A black floppy disk of the kind that has been out of favor and out of use for years. It was labeled 3/3.
Frankenberg had an antique computer with a floppy drive and I tuned it on and inserted the diskette. It contained a strange file that wouldn’t open no matter what I tried.
This was the first time in days that I felt curious about something. Frankenberg was a humdrum sort of fellow, not the kind that does well in his chosen line of work. The interviews he conducted were insipid, his writing was lethargic, his incredible naivety galling. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him good and proper. But under the circumstances that would probably have been against the law.
This obsolete piece of magnetic media was different. Frankenberg evidently did not want it read or why would he encode it? Did he encrypt it or was the data merely corrupt? Maybe the file could be opened by one of those ancient word-processing applications still in use only by my mother? The file extension, 003, was something I never came across before.
I was out of my depth here but I knew that this was right up Dan’s alley and that’s where I was heading next. On an impulse I would live to bitterly regret, I omitted to include the dismal object in the inventory. I shoved it into the inner pocket of my crumpled jacket and took the next flight home.
******
In the three days of my absence, Bauer was transformed. It wasn’t owing to grief brought on by our separation. Bauer was excited, that much was obvious. But there was something else. Had I not known the man, I would have said that he was frightened.
He thumped the list with a clenched fist:
“Are you absolutely, one hundred and ten percent sure that everything is here?”
I shrugged. This was the third time in as many minutes that he had asked.
“There was nothing else? It’s a big apartment, you may have missed something?”
“Like what?”
Bauer, apoplectic:
“I don’t know what, dammit! Had I known what I wouldn’t be asking you now, would I?”
Alert: rhetorical question. Mum’s the word.
“OK, OK” – he panted – “Listen, I want you on the next flight to that narcissist’s flat. I want you to buy a fine toothed comb before you leave. And then I want you to apply it as you go over the place again and again, until you find it!”
“Find what?”
“Go, go! Don’t waste my time!” – Bauer was clearly pointing at the door. He really meant it. I spend five decades of my life avoiding the Holy Land and then, within a week, I am visiting it twice.
“Sit!”
As I didn’t rise from my chair yet, this was an easy one to comply with.
“Listen, I have a better idea. Personally - and I mean you, as ‘in person’ - go there and pack the whole thing up. Don’t leave a dust mote behind. Pack the dog food, too. I want the whole garbage dump on my doorstep, special delivery.”
“You mean …”
“I mean courier, Federal Express or whatever we are using.”
“It will cost a fortune! Plus, I don’t think FedEx or UPS do these kinds of shipments.”
“Find someone who does. You go with the goods door to door. Don’t show your face here, unless accompanied by Frankenberg’s junk.”
I lost my patience.
“Bauer,” – I muttered ominously – “you mind filling me in? What’s the rush? What’s going on here? Anything I should know?”
“Nothing. I am eager to lay my hands of the trust fund, that’s all. The sooner the better. Can’t do that until the notes and everything else are actually in our warehouse.”
I don’t mind being lied to. But I hate being taken for a fool. For the first time, I felt real good for having absconded with the disk.
******
Back at Frankenberg’s apartment, I had no problems with the key this time. The door was ajar. Actually, it was off its torn hinges. Someone went through the premises with a malfunctioning giant vacuum cleaner. The house was a mess, paper everywhere, the innards of the computer and its disemboweled printer strewn randomly across the carpet. Even the old men’s suits were not spared. Pillows, shelves, book bindings, and folders littered the floor.
Jerusalem is the strangest place. The scene of much mayhem throughout three millennia of tortured history, it still exudes an air of ethereal tranquility, a calming effect that I would have called “spiritual” had I been so inclined. Between wailing walls and golden domes, this metropolis played host to King David and to Jesus, to King Solomon and to countless wannabe Roman emperors. It is one of the cradles of civilization and you can feel it among its winding alleys, stone facades, quaint bazaars (“Kasbahs”), and barren hills.
So, this ransacked private space was incongruent. This is what I told Bauer when I returned, empty-handed:
“There was little to salvage. I think they were equipped with the same fine toothed comb you had recommended.”
Bauer glowered at me, speechless for a change.
******
I half expected it, but it was still a shock, the mutilated privacy of my shredded clothes, my trampled suits, my family photos, and my stolen laptop. Nothing else was missing but my apartment was in chaos. Whoever did it was thorough and brought to cruel light many things I had conveniently forgotten I possessed. I stared around in disbelief and budding outrage and then I crumbled on the knife-torn pillowcases on my bed and slept.
I woke up even more exhausted. Whatever had to be done will have to wait another day. I couldn’t stay here. I had to get away and put some thinking distance between me and this bizarre affair.
I assembled a random sample of attire, stuffed it into a battered suitcase, and headed towards the office. Better to spend the night with Eddy, the watchman than alone with the ghosts of my past and a potentially revenant burglar.
One of the reasons I took the job with the GMG was that their headquarters was right across the street. This proximity came handy with a workaholic boss like Bauer. Two blocks, the traffic lights and there I was, entering the nondescript cottage and waving a fatigued hello at Eddy.
“Mr. Roth,” – he commented soberly – “You don’t look too good”.
“I don’t feel too good.” – I obliged him – “It’s been a long day.”
“And now it’s going to be a long night.” – Eddy gave me his mock-Latino wink – “They are waiting for you.”
I felt a tad disoriented.
“Waiting for me …” – I repeated densely.
“Upstairs.” – Eddy was nothing if not patient – “All three of’em.”
“Eddy,” – I said slowly, trying to convey the gravity of the occasion – “who are these people? I came here by sheer chance. We wouldn’t be talking now had someone not broken and entered my apartment. So, you see” – I patronized him – “I don’t have an appointment with anyone or any three people.”
Eddy was on his feet, gun drawn, long before I ended my speech. He pressed a button under his counter at the reception. “The cops” – he mouthed as he moved stealthily down the corridor motioning me not to follow him which, of course, I did, too terrified to remain all by myself in the deserted lobby.
We climbed the muffled stairs slowly. My office was at the end of a semi-elliptical hallway, so we couldn’t see it from where we were standing. But we could definitely hear the voices, one commanding, the other two obliging.
“We are blocking their escape route.” – whispered Eddy – “You stay here and I will go and see what’s it all about.”
“Suppose we change places.” – I counter-susurrated – “You stay here and I will go and see what’s it all about.”
Eddy hesitated and then: “Suit yourself. It’s your office.”
I tiptoed towards the open door that marked my niche, knocked, and entered.
I remember little else, except the sound of a distant shot and the blurred image of two very surprised men, huddled around my filing cabinet. I woke up hours later in what looked like the emergency ward of a down-at-heel hospital, head bandaged.
The first thing I saw was Eddy, all bruised and livid. Next to him was a swarthy and burly cop who eyed me dispassionately.
“Can you answer a few questions for us, Mr. Roth?”
Clearly, empathy was not his strong suit. I groaned a “yes”.
“Did you see any of the three burglars? Can you identify them if I show you an album?”
“What burglars? I saw the silhouettes of two men in my office. They were going over the contents of my desk. They were not happy to see me, I guess.” – trying to sit up was a bad idea.
“Come now, Roth,” – growled the lawman – “don’t give us the runaround. We have been to your apartment, Mr. de Piccioto and I.” – It took a minute to register that Mr. de Piccioto was Eddy.
“Someone broke into my apartment, too” – I said obtusely.
The cop sighed. Eddy sighed. So, I joined them and sighed, too.
“Listen, mister” – the officer tried another tack – “They will be back, you know. Whatever it is they are looking for, they couldn’t find it in your apartment and you rudely interrupted them at your office. But these are pros and they are not going to go away. “
“I haven’t seen anyone, officer. I must have been hit on the head or something.” – I winced. Eddy nodded in confirmation:
“One of them was watching the door. Mr. Roth didn’t have a chance. Then they came bursting down the hallway. I fired at them but they were all over me before I could get a good aim.”
The cop waved a hirsute hand to stem the verbal avalanche.
“OK, forget the burglars, just tell me what they were after.”
“I have no idea” – I lied and not too well. Even Eddy eyed me with sudden suspicion and unease.
“You’ll have only yourself to blame next time you meet with this delightful crew.” – snorted the officer – “In a dark alley late at night perhaps?”
I had it with his fear-mongering.
“I don’t go out at night.” – I retorted angrily – “And, now, gentlemen, if you have no official business here, I would ask you to leave my room. My head feels like a foundry in heat.”
I saw that the simile was lost on them.
“Throbbing and on fire.” – I translated.
That did the trick.
Chapter the Second
The Interview
A day later, in my ruined flat, head still pulsating, I reached an important decision: I couldn’t stay here any longer. I knew that somehow all this had to do with the disk: the invasion of Frankenberg’s apartment, the scouring of my home, using false pretenses to enter my office, and the vicious attack on my extremity.
Miraculously, through it all, I succeeded to hang on to my suitcase. I left it, and the disk, next to Eddy’s station when I began to shadow him last night. It was there this afternoon, apparently unmolested. I lost the key but I didn’t let that worry me.
******
Dan accepted my materialization on his doorstep with equanimity, if not with grace. He always did. We first met at the GMG, when he came to enquire about a piece of software that we authored, something to do with demographics and genocides.
I then thought him pompous and socially constipated. But there was something in his brown eyes that mitigated his overweening ways. Later I discovered what it was: pain.
We had nothing in common, really. He was into computers and other gadgets; I was into morbidity in its myriad manifestations. He was technology, I was humanities. But somehow these disparities brought us closer and we meshed well.
Dan was modestly taller than I, considerably stouter and sported an auburn, neatly trimmed moustache-cum-beard. He walked around barefoot and invariably wore a djellaba that succeeded to appear both flowing and well-pressed.
“Come in.” – he said simply – “You look horrible. Tell me everything about it.”
So, I did. Dan listened carefully, fingertips steepled under his an oval chin.
At long last, he moved, breaking the spell.
“Let’s have a look at the floppy.” – he suggested quietly.
I handed it to him and we walked in a truncated procession into his study.
Dan was interested in everything and his library was, therefore, best characterized as eclectic. But he was the most thorough person I knew. He really delved into the topics he fancied. Though an intellectual itinerant and an autodidact, he was not a charlatan. He was always willing to admit to ignorance. “My nescience fuels my learning” – he explained to me one quiet evening.
He was an early adopter and his house was always filled with gadgets. But he never bought anything just because it was new. He made good use of his acquisitions.
In his study, he kept his collection of personal computers, from the pioneering Sinclair, Atari, and Commodore to the latest HPs, iMacs, and Compaqs. He must have had dozens of them. I never asked him how he could afford all this and his lavish lifestyle to boot and he never volunteered the information. It was this kind of friendship.
Dan scrutinized the disk, nestled in his fleshy palm. He looked up at me:
“Why don’t you simply give it to them?”
Good question, this.
“Perhaps because they didn’t ask me nicely.” – I answered glibly. Dan wasn’t impressed. I tried again, more seriously this time:
“They broke into my apartment, raided my office, and rendered me unconscious for a few hours. This persistence makes me curious. I want to know what’s on this disk that’s worth taking so many risks.”
“What’s on this disk is dangerous. Perhaps the less you know, the better.” – Dan opined.
“You sound like my mother.” – I could think of no worse slight.
“She did survive two years in Auschwitz.” – observed Dan calmly.
An awkward pause ensued. Then, Dan:
“They can’t take the chance that you may have copied the disk. Giving it to them won’t be enough.”
That sounded alarming. And true.
“What do you mean?”
“Sarid” – expounded Dan patiently – “There’s something on this disk that’s worth breaking the law for. Something on it makes people risk life and limb and assault perfect strangers. This disk is bad juju.”
“It’s too late for that, isn’t it? I have the disk in my possession and I did not enter it in the inventory list. It’s a done deal, Dan.” – a miserable pun.
But Dan, his wide back to me, was already firing up a huge boxlike device.
“Let’s prey that the diskette is still readable. You ever hear of media rot?”
I haven’t.
“Magnetic media tend to disintegrate under the influence of airborne spores and gravity-induced leakage of bits and bytes.”
Very clear.
“Most magnetic media are not readable after ten years.”
“I saw the file on Frankenberg’s computer. I just couldn’t open it.”
The machine under Dan’s massive work area coughed and started and then hissed.
Dan paid no heed to it.
“Then he must have created this file within the last 5 to 10 years. No earlier, no way.”
“Why is that so important?” – I was beginning to feel exasperated.
Dan shrugged:
“I am not sure it is but one never knows. It is important to establish all the facts, pertinent or not, at the initial phase of a forensic investigation.”
I told him that I didn’t realize that’s what we were doing.
Dan remained standing as he gently inserted the disk into the slot of an antiquated driver and turned the latch down to secure its position.
The drive whirred and the computer shook violently. Gradually, a text line appeared:
Mint.003
“Outlandish file extension” – I commented knowingly.
Dan nodded, distracted:
“It’s not a file extension, it’s a chain numerator.”
He lost me. That’s all it took.
“What does that mean?” - I ate humble pie.
“This file is not encrypted,” – explained Dan – “it is the last link in a chain of 3 records. The original file was too big to fit on a single diskette, so Frankenberg or someone used a file splitter application to divide it to three parts. The first part contains the instructions on how to reconstruct or reconstitute the original document.”
He went to another computer, far more recent, and invited me over to watch.
He clicked open an application and selected a document. The program hummed and hawed and created six new files, each one 720 kilobytes large. They were numbered 001 to 006.
Dan then proceeded to copy them into a separate folder. There, he clicked on file number 001. Miraculously the original document reappeared.
I looked at him, dumbfounded.
“But we don’t have the first parts.” – I stammered.
Dan nodded gravely: “It’s a serious problem, but not insurmountable. I will have to create two dummy files with the attributes of the two missing installments. Then I will fool the application into believing that we have all three segments. Give me half an hour.”
******
“Sarid” – Dan’s voice was odd, almost choked – “Sarid, come here, man.” I never heard him like that before.
I found Dan crouching in front of the screen, mesmerized. I hurried over and kneeled by his side.
“We are in,” – he almost lisped – “the files merged.”
Enraptured, we gazed at the screen as the text document unwound itself, page by flickering page.
I leaned forward:
“It’s an interview … It’s the transcript of an interview …”
Dan nodded, mouth open, hand frozen in mid-twitch. His voice was hoarse:
“It’s an interview with Gestapo Mueller.”
“Interview with Mueller?” – I had hoped for more – “He must have given many of them in his career.”
Dan blinked.
“Not posthumously, he didn’t. Not 16 years after he died in Berlin.”
Chapter the Third
Transcript of an interview with Heinrich “Gestapo” Mueller
Segment 3
“said to you is not true. I would have never collaborated with the Bolsheviks, not even to save my life!” – I imagined him more dispassionate, the much-feared “Gestapo” Mueller.
I imagined him taller. His eyes are still deep set and cunning, his chin still squarely firm despite his years, lips pursed and bloodless, his nose more massive, hawkish, now twitching in palpable disdain. He is as menacingly bullnecked as he must have been all those years back in occupied and tortured Europe.
I acknowledged his outburst by nodding my head and he calmed down abruptly. He grunted and shifted in the horsehair armchair:
“We, the Nazis were the natural allies of the Zionists – not the so called “liberal democracies”. Our idea was to clean Europe of Jews, our intractable enemies. We wanted to solve the Jewish question for centuries to come. We wanted them out, the Zionists wanted them out. The Jews are a race and the Zionists accepted that – they were proud of it!”
He leaned forward, transfixed, as if by a revelation:
“You know what? The Zionists agreed with us that the Jews have no place in Germany. Our mob shouted ‘To Palestine with you!’ and the Zionists concurred!”
He gazed at me intently, as though trying to gauge the effect of his words.
Suddenly, he threw back his head and laughed hoarsely:
“Hitler was the great white hope of Zionism! Our Jewish policies virtually guaranteed the emigration of wealthy Jews to Palestine! There would have been no State of Israel without us!”
He clutched his abdomen in excruciating pain. “The cancer,” – he volunteered unnecessarily – “it’s killing me.” Matter of factly.
“Some fools in the SD and the SS even learned Hebrew, listened to Jewish folk music, and published pro-Zionist articles in Goebbels’ propaganda rag and in the Schwarze Korps. But they were disillusioned soon enough.”
“Disillusioned? Why?”
He shrugged:
“Most Jews didn’t want to go to the Palestinian hellhole. They got too accustomed to the finery of Berlin. They wanted to make off with their money and possessions. They didn’t take us seriously. They laughed in our faces in our own country.”
A body-shattering cough. I moved to offer him a glass of water - then I remembered who he is and froze in mid-motion. He grinned as he noticed my cumbersome antics; he missed nothing, “Gestapo” Mueller.
“Anyhow, we let them haul their precious money with them. God knows, we were in dire economic straits ourselves, but we let them get away with their lucre. And still they wouldn’t go. Hitler gave up on Zionism as early as 1935, but he still staunchly supported the Transfer agreement … Everyone wondered why, but only Rohm and later Himmler and myself found out.”
I must have raised my eyebrows, because Mueller brushed an imaginary insect aside and muttered: “Be patient. It is all in the file. He was being blackmailed by the Jews.”
He wouldn’t add a syllable to this cryptic and seemingly counterfactual announcement, so I tried a different tack:
“Why did Hitler give up on Zionism? After all, well over one third of Germany’s Jews did leave in the 1930s and many of them did go to Palestine. The Zionists did deliver …”
He waved my words aside impatiently:
“We were acquiring Jew-infested territories far faster than the Zionists could ever evacuate them. I sent Eichmann on a mission in 1941 and he returned with horror stories that you won’t believe. We were drowning in disease-ridden, Bolshevik, partisan-supporting Jews.”
He paused, as if for emphasis:
“No one wanted the Jews. The British sealed off Palestine. The Americans imposed immigration quotas. The Jews merely abused our magnanimity.”
“I don’t understand” – I said and his head jerked up, his face a hostile mask.
I forced myself to proceed:
“Yesterday you told me that Russia was in the clutches of a Jewish-Bolshevik clique, that America and the United Kingdom were Jewish fiefdoms. Now, you are telling me that they did not want the Jews …?”
“Precisely!” – He bellowed triumphantly – “The Jews betrayed their own! This is what forced us to adopt desperate measures in the East! The Jews themselves would not accept their own race and blood! The Zionists worked with us hand in glove, but they were impotent. The rest of the Jewish-controlled world hated our new, hopeful Germany. Naturally, they showed no interest to help us solve our problems with the Jews. They sought to poison us from the inside.”
“Did you need any help to solve your problems with the Jews?”
He glared at me, uncertain whether I was mocking him or not. His smallish body tensed and he put on a pair of rimless glasses that he removed from an inner pocket of his shirt. He studied me a while.
“Someone came up with the idea of establishing a Jewish reserve somewhere: Madagascar, Lublin, Palestine. Then the Arabs became our friends” – he snorted derisively – “and Palestine was out, officially.”
He ticked sausagy fingers:
“Immigration failed. Evacuation failed. Reservoirs failed. Being a Mischling, Hitler was soft on the Jews – but, by 1941 it was clear even to him that we are all alone in this business. We did what we had to do. We had no choice, a la guerre comme la guerre.” – In guttural French.
As he took off his glasses, I noticed the abnormal proximity of his eyes, set in cavernous and penumbral sockets.
I may have misheard:
“Mischling? Person of mixed-race, partly Jewish?”
He became restless:
“Look, this is why I am talking to you, a Jewish journalist today. I want you to publish something for me. It is evidence that the Jews killed the Jews. We, the Germans only helped logistically. Hitler, Goebbels, Heydrich – they were all Mischlinge. Himmler and I had proof, of course. Courtesy of Rohm.” – He gave a malevolent chuckle.
He bent over the armrest of the creaky seat and grasped with arthritic fingers a slender manila envelope. He thrust it at me:
“Here, take it. Publish it. The truth must out.”
I merely watched him, not moving an inch. He sighed and raised both hands, manila envelope and all, in resignation:
“On April 30, the Fuehrer took his own life and left us all orphaned. I remained in the Feuhrerbunker with my radio specialist, Scholz. On May 1, we ran the 600 meters to my office in the headquarters of the RHSA. The week before, I packed all the files into large crates and Scholz and I and a couple of good men carried them into a waiting van.”
He hesitated but plunged on:
“The Catholics helped me get here through Spain aboard a submarine. The files were always with me. I never let them out of my sight. This envelope is the crown jewels” – he laughed bitterly – “My comrades would kill me if they knew that I am giving it to you.” He sobers up: “You are as good as dead if they find out about this little transaction of ours.”
This was it. He wouldn’t say another word. He just eyed me pensively as I probed and tried to provoke him into a response. Finally, I got the hint and rose from my seat.
“Look,” – Mueller said suddenly – “Hitler abandoned us and betrayed us all by committing unmanly suicide in his bunker. He left us orphaned and at the mercy of the Red barbarians. He mismanaged the war and unnecessarily and stupidly abused the nations he occupied, many of them our natural allies. His master race delusions brought ruin on my nation and for that I cannot forgive him. But Europe should be grateful to Hitler: it could have never prospered and be peacefully united with the Jewish race amidst us.” – He half-whispered – “Even you, the Jews, must recognize this.”
There was nothing more to say. I left.
Asuncion, Paraguay, September 1960
Note to myself:
Devreaux and I decided not to publish any of it during the Eichmann trial. To re-consider later as per outcomes of the proceedings.
Enclosure
Gestapo name file:
Hitler, A. (Geheimestaatspolizei VP-55b/9.44/Zo/IG) – 81 pages
Chapter the Fourth
The Reichsfuehrer Enquires
“Cigar?”
I am facing a shuttered window. A picture of Hitler on the wall, eyes distant, body erect, hair swept across the prairie of his forehead. He is wearing a uniform of his own design. In the corner, a swastika flag clings to its pole. A leather armchair. Padded walls. The smell of …
“Cognac?”
No, thanks, to both.
“It’s been a long time since you had either” – the voice is firm but understanding, almost compassionate or forgiving. My foibles seem to enhance its ostentatious magnanimity.
He is off focus. I blink and he waves at someone out of my field of vision. Another pinprick. Much better. Boundaries emerge and objects spring to autonomous life all around me – and so does he.
A puffy face and mousy moustache, eyes alternately hooded and frozen gray and blue behind his dainty pince-nez, his chin receding, faint whitish scars across a flabby cheek. He ceremoniously opens a folder and spends some time perusing it, marking it with a green pencil. He then looks up. I am surprised how stout he is. The photos in the papers and the newsreels do him injustice. He is almost athletic.
“Your name is Ernst Frankenberg?”
He knows the answer.
“Yes, Herr Reichsfuehrer!”
“Ah,” – he feigns pleasurable surprise – “so you recognize me?”
Someone prods me from behind. I am expected to respond.
“Yes, Herr Himmler, the whole world knows who you are.”
I can see that he is not sure how to take my backhanded compliment. He coughs nervously and the mask of courtly and infinitely tolerant schoolmaster crumbles momentarily.
“Well, yes,” – he declaims at last – “one has duties to perform, a debt to one’s predecessors as well as to future generations.” He doesn’t talk, he lectures.
“Back to our little business.”
He ruffles through the assorted documents in the file. One of them seems to catch his eye.
“You studied Law in Berlin in 1929?”
“Yes, Herr Reichsfuehrer, I did.”
He hums and haws.
“You knew one Magda Quandt?”
I nod and then, painful reminder in ribs, I mutter: “Yes, I did.”
Himmler smiles, but his eyes do not:
“You knew her real well, one might say?”
“One might” – I agree.
“How well?” – He leans forward conspiringly.
“We were lovers.” – I tell him. His mouth twitches and he clasps his stomach, as though in the throes of agony. After a while, he reasserts his posture.
“Were you the only Jew that had defiled her?”
“No. She had many Jewish friends of both sexes. One of them had loved her before me.”
“Viktor, Vitaly Arlosoroff” – he mutters darkly.
“Chaim” – I correct him – “Chaim Arlosoroff. He changed his name when he became a Zionist.”
“And an important one” – Himmler seek to impress me with his ersatz omniscience.
“And an important one” – I concur – “When he … when he died, he was the head of the political section of the Jewish Agency.”
“You mean when he was assassinated by his own flesh and blood” – Himmler inserts, venomously.
“Yes, when he was murdered on the coast of Tel-Aviv in 1934.”
There is a pregnant pause and then Himmler proceeds:
“Did you ever meet Arlosoroff?”
“I did.”
“Once, more than once? Do I need to extract this information from you or perhaps you would consider sparing my time and energy?”
“More than once. I met him in Berlin a few times. He came to visit Magda.”
“When was the last time you met him?”
It was as if we are dissecting the contents of a movie, so far and alien it feels, my erstwhile life.
“In … in 1933, I think. “
“You think?”
He never raises his voice and never wavers or flounders or gets flustered, Himmler. He reminds me of a Fritz Lang industrial robot.
“May 1933, Herr Reichsfuehrer, I am certain of it now.”
“And so are we” – he grins. He looks proud as though his favorite pupil had just passed an important test.
He toys with a golden pen on the bureau.
Almost inaudibly: “Did you give him the documents?”
“What documents?”
“Come, come, Herr Frankenberg” – laughs Himmler – “I thought that we have succeeded to impress you with our thoroughness. Don’t make me repeat the question, I beg you.”
Someone moves imperceptibly behind my back.
“I gave him the documents.”
“That’s better” – sighs Himmler – “I hate it when people force us to behave in manifestly un-Germanic and uncivilized ways.”
He scribbles something in a pad and then looks up:
“Well, go on, I haven’t got all day!”
A sudden gust from the ventilation shaft ruffles the pages of a wall calendar behind his chair. July 19, 1944. Chaim is dead. Magda is a hostage of the evil dwarf that she had married. Of the triangle only I am left, a prisoner in Auschwitz.
“These documents, Herr Reichsfuehrer, were handed down the generations in our family. After my ancestors converted to Christianity, we settled in Graz. It was there that the whole affair began.”
Chapter the Fifth
Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma
“There are four groups of documents here.” – Dan said as he tended the espresso-maker, all that he salvaged from his 5-years old marriage – “There’s the interview and three sets of images.”
“How can you drink this sludge?” – I mused aloud.
Dan glanced at me thoughtfully and chose to ignore my culinary aside.
”Now, we have read the interview – rather the last third of it – and we have had a look at the images.”
“Which didn’t advance us much. I have no idea what Muller is all about and the documents look pretty innocuous to me: birth certificates, business contracts, and the like.”
Dan nodded: “Yes, it is rather cryptic. But there are two reasons not to dismiss the whole thing out of hand.”
Dan had this unnerving habit of lapsing into telepathy and needed reminding that not all his interlocutors were similarly endowed.
“What reasons?” – I writhed as I sipped the tarry libation that he handed me.
“One,” – expounded didactic Dan – “the fact that the interviewee is Muller and two,” – he gargled contentedly as he let the dark lava caress his larynx – “the fact that this floppy disk seems to bring out the worst in people.”
I gingerly touched my skull. I knew exactly what he meant.
“This could be a hoax” – I suggested feebly. Dan shook his head emphatically: “Then why the breaking and entering? Why attack you so viciously? Why Bauer’s sudden obsession with the inventory?”
Good questions.
“Listen, Sarid, the cop was right. They seem to be a determined lot. You may be in real danger.”
I should have felt intimidated or helpless, but instead the whole affair struck me as hilarious. I laughed convulsively, tears running down my java-seared cheeks, and gasped for air.
Dan sounded worried:
“Maybe you better stay here tonight.”
Which was the coup-de-grace. I splayed out on the couch, bellowing with untrammeled mirth.
Dan fired his prized laptop.
“I am going to upload the contents of the disk to a Web page.”
That sobered me up.
“You are going to do what? Websites are public, aren’t they? You are going to publish the damn thing?”
Dan stroked the wireless mouse:
“Of course I am not. The page will be password protected. Only you and I will be able to access it from any computer in the world.”
Lapsed into telepathy again. “Dan?”
“Should something happen to you” – he paused and then: “or to me, the other one goes public with the page and makes the contents of the disk available to all Netizens.”
“What if we are both bumped?”
Poor joke. Dan took it seriously.
“I am going to set up a task and schedule it. If none of us reschedules the task, the address of the Webpage and the password will be e-mailed to selected online, print, and electronic media.”
“I don’t know how to reschedule a task” – I protested.
“It’s never too late to learn!” – declared Dan solemnly – “Grab a chair, there’s still some espresso left.”
I was afraid of that.
*****
“Do you think they killed him?”
Dan’s conspiracy theory paranoia was infectious.
“Killed whom?”
“The journalist. Do you think they found out that he was had the documents and did him in?”
“Why wait four decades to eliminate such a substantial risk?”
Dan’s iron logic prevailed.
“So, having discovered it only recently, it came as a shock to them, the fact that the documents were in his possession?”
“It definitely unsettled some of them” – concluded Dan with an understatement.
Chapter the Sixth
Old News
“Heinrich Mueller? Gestapo Mueller? The head of the Nazi secret state police?”
I felt more awkward by the minute. Libby was the reference librarian of the GMG, a degreed historian, a recognized authority on both the Nazi Party and the Holocaust, a beauty in a quirky, decadent French way, and, unbeknownst to her, the perennial cynosure of my most illicit fantasies.
I tended to dismiss the disk as a ruse, the hybrid outcome of bad taste-meets-mass psychosis. With the Eichmann trial dominating the airwaves at the time, people were inclined to suspect even their own parents of being former high-ranking SS officers. An unscrupulous journalist could have made a killing by interviewing – or even by pretending to have interviewed – someone like Mueller.
Of course, this pet theory of mine failed to account for many facts:
If Frankenberg was a mere publicity hound, why did he decide not to publish the sensational interview after all?
If what’s on the disk was a spoof, why all the cloak and dagger stuff? Why bludgeon me into oblivion and why brutally alter the interior design of at least two apartments and one office a continent apart?
I needed a second opinion. Hence Libby. I sprawled on a laid-back settee, facing the counter behind which she presided from a battered swivel chair. The librarian position was adjacent to the frosty glass door that opened into an elongated corridor that spanned the length of the entire building. The library’s collections, some of them priceless, were stacked rather haphazardly on grey aluminum shelving which reached up to a semipternally cobwebbed ceiling and two paint-chipped fans.
The GMG’s library was not an inspiring place.
“Let’s have a look” – she said. We spent the next half hour in contented propinquity – at least, I did.
“There’s nothing here that was not widely known or speculated on in 1960, when the interview ostensibly took place.” – was her verdict.
I felt relived. But not for long:
“Except for one curious point.” – She chewed on a lucky pencil – “Mueller says that Hitler, being a Mischling, went soft on the Jews….”
“And that’s not news?” – I barged in – “You should tell my mother that!”
“Whether or not he treated the Jews leniently, at least until 1941, is a matter for a debate among historians that goes back to the 1970s. That’s hardly news.” – Libby observed coolly – “I am referring to the assertion that Hitler was blackmailed by the Zionists into accepting and then actively supporting the Transfer Agreement, in the face of strong internal opposition.”
I wheeled away my librarian chair and raised my hands despondently:
“Libby, whoa, please! I don’t understand a word you are saying, even though it sounds suspiciously like English. You lost me back in 1941.”
She smiled and it was like the lights went on. I grinned back at her, I couldn’t help it. She had freckles, I noticed for the first time.
“Can I ask you some questions and can you try to answer them in a way that won’t force me to ask them all over again?”
She giggled girlishly:
“Sure, go ahead. Sorry I got carried away.”
“Was Hitler a Mischling? Did he have any Jewish blood in him?”
I thought of my mother. The mere question would have rendered her permanently apoplectic.
“No historian found any shred of evidence that Hitler had even one drop of Jewish blood in him.”
“It sounds like there’s a ‘but’ somewhere …” – I wagered cautiously.
“But, during the 1930s, a lot of people – including senior members of the Nazi Party – believed that Hitler’s paternal grandfather might have been Jewish. The original birth certificate of Alois, Hitler’s father, said: father – unknown.”
“Hitler’s father was a bastard. That explains a lot of his off-springs’ foul character. Were children born out of wedlock common at that time?”
Libby
nodded affirmatively: “In the second half of the nineteenth
century, many rural folk moved to the cities. Sexual abuse was not
unheard off.”
“So why was Hitler singled out?”
Libby twitched and looked away uncomfortably.
“Some of his relatives threatened repeatedly to reveal the family’s secrets. These recurrent attempts at blackmail convinced everyone that Hitler’s closets were crammed with skeletons.”
“What an apt metaphor” – I commented dryly.
She blushed: “Sorry, I forgot” – and touched my hand flutteringly.
“Hitler is known to have paid close to a quarter million US dollars to his nephew, a certain William Patrick. It was not out of familial devotion. Hitler found the little creep repulsive. The curious thing is that this extortionist was living in Berlin when he successfully bled Hitler, the omnipotent Reichskanzler! Hitler could have ordered him killed – but he didn’t.”
“OK, so he had some leeches for relatives. How does that lead to a Jewish ancestor?”
She shrugged:
“I think that this canard would have died a natural death had it not been for Hans Frank, a trusted lawyer who, during World War II, became entangled in all sorts of genocides in Poland and was executed in 1946. He wrote his memoirs in jail. He insisted that in the 1930s, Hitler asked him to delve deeper into the murky genealogy of his family in order to rebut the nasty and damaging rumors once and for all.”
“Be careful what you wish for” – I muttered.
“Precisely” – Libby agreed – “Frank discovered, or so he claimed, that Hitler’s grandfather was the 19 years old scion of a Jewish family from Graz, Austria – the Frankenbergs. This overactive youth is said to have impregnated Hitler’s parental grandmother, Maria Anna. Leopold Frankenberg, the clan’s patriarch, paid Alois child support until he was 14 or 18. The strange thing is that Hitler admitted to Frank that his grandmother had received these regular payments, but he said that she cheated the Jews and made them believe that she had conceived the child she was carrying with their son.”
I stared at her dumbfounded:
“Was any of this ever substantiated?”
“Not one iota. Graz expelled all its Jews in the 15th century and had remained Judenrein – cleansed of Jews – until the 1860s. There is no record of Maria Anna ever having been to Graz. There are no child support payment slips, money orders, or cancelled checks, nothing.”
I gestured my incomprehension and it worked.
“There is one more thing that may explain the persistent gossip about Hitler’s Jewish impurity. Mueller is right, you know” – Libby mused – “Hitler was atypically soft on the Jews until at least 1940.”
“You mean 1935 – the Nuremberg race laws?”
Libby shook her curls at me:
“No, I mean 1940. Maybe he felt insecure. Maybe he believed his own propaganda and was terrified of what World Jewry might do to him. Maybe he was biding his time, waiting for Germany to get mightier and less dependent on other countries. Whatever the reason: regarding Jewish policy, Hitler was by far the most conciliatory and moderate figure in the Nazi Party and, perhaps even in Germany.”
“I never heard that one before.” – I countered, sarcastically.
“But it’s true.” – assured me Libby solemnly.
Chapter the Seventh
The Fuehrer’s Curious Reluctance
“Is it always this busy?” – I asked Libby and she laughed. Not one patron, not a single phone call shattered the serene afternoon silence. Libby spent the last ten minutes grappling valiantly with an obstreperous coffee vending machine. She finally gave up and we settled for Coke.
“When Hitler assumed power in 1933, he exhorted the wild men of the SA not to attack the Jews: ‘Harassment of individuals, the obstruction of cars, and disruptions to business are to be put to an absolute stop … Never let yourselves be distracted for one second from our watchword, which is the destruction of Marxism.’”
“Hitler made so many speeches … Surely, you can find isolated quotes to substantiate any thesis…”
“No,” protested Libby, “this was not an isolated utterance. It is a pattern that remains unbroken for almost eight years. When Jews and others began to boycott Germany and German goods in early 1933, Hitler made his Vice-Chancellor, von Papen, publish an open letter addressed to the American Chamber of Commerce and saying that Jews were safe in Germany. Even Goering was forced to apologize to German Jewish organizations for the truly spontaneous violence of the SA and lower party ranks.”
“Hitler was always strong on expedience. I am not impressed. It was merely a tactical retreat in the strategic war on the Jews.”
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