A Murder in Auschwitz (15 page)

“Directly behind him?”

“Directly.”

Meyer used Deschler’s technique of turning over a piece of paper to reinforce the finishing of that stage of questioning. He hoped that this would help the jury keep in mind how close Frau Engel had been to Peter Vogel as they exited the train and made their way along the crowded platform.

“Can you describe the way the crowd of passengers were behaving as they left the platform?”

“Everyone was very polite, and thankfully no-one was pushing or attempting to get out faster than anyone else or there may have been a terrible accident. It was awful. People should never be treated this way.”

Meyer hemmed Frau Engel back in again. “As you neared the end of the train and the opening out of the platform into the main concourse, did you notice anything or anyone in particular?”

“Yes, I certainly did. One of the guards from the train was watching as we were funnelled like rats along a pipe. I was going to make a complaint to him about the state of the platform and...”

“Frau Engel, where was this guard standing?”

“He was leaning out of the guard's door at the very front of the first carriage, looking across the heads of the passengers. Then, and I mean with great difficulty because of the flow of people, he managed to get down onto the platform.”

“Was he being jostled as he was standing there?”

“Absolutely. He had a hold of one of the handles of the carriage with one hand and he was checking his pocket watch with the other.” Frau Engel gave her nose another wipe.

Meyer waited as she returned her handkerchief to her handbag.

“Did this guard have the watch in his hand all the time?”

“Well, I couldn’t always see him, but it looked like he was checking his watch and then returning it to his pocket only to take it out again a few seconds later.”

“And how long do you estimate it took you to travel from your carriage, past the guard, to a more open area?”

Frau Engel thought for a moment. “A good five minutes, maybe slightly longer.”

“Did you see anyone bump into this guard?”

Frau Engel let out a small laugh. “Yes, everyone that was next to the carriages did. He was jostled the whole time I was there. I bumped into him myself.”

“Did you notice if he had his watch in his hand as you bumped into him?”

“He didn’t, but he was checking his inside pocket at that moment. Shortly afterwards I heard a shout, and he pushed through the crowd and called to two policemen on duty there.”

“What happened next?”

“He indicated that Herr Vogel should be stopped by the police, which he was, very quickly.”

“Was this because they were near to Herr Vogel?”

“No. It was because Herr Vogel stopped walking and waited for them.”

Meyer left a long pause after that answer. He wanted it to sink in.

“One final question, Frau Engel. Did you see Peter Vogel steal the guard, Kristian Amsel’s, watch?”

Frau Engel cleared her throat and she turned her head to the jury. “No,” was her reply.

Auschwitz, 17th August 1943

ALONG with Geller, Meyer stood in line with his tin plate and cup clutched tightly to his body. With the rest of the working party groups which had now returned to the main camp, he waited for the single meal of the day. But the doors to the mess hut remained stubbornly shut.

There was very little noise from the several hundred men who stood waiting. There was no hum of conversation. No laughs from shared jokes.

Meyer turned and looked down the line, which snaked back and around a guard hut and out of sight. At the corner of the hut, a kapo was talking to an inmate, too far for the sound to travel. It struck Meyer that it was like watching an old movie, like the ones he used to see with Klara; there was no sound and very little colour. Auschwitz had drained the colour from the people, the land, and the buildings. Only the distant trees outside the camp shone with colour and life. If he listened carefully enough, Meyer could hear faint birdsong from the distant trees. There was no birdsong in the camp though. No birds ever ventured near to this place of misery.

He loved to watch their tiny black shapes flying in the blue sky. They were free to go where they pleased. There were no borders or fences or cages which could hold them. They gave him hope and reminded him of an earlier life.

The eeriness of the silence which filled the camp was what disturbed Meyer the most. Strangely though, the silence wasn’t alone, it had a companion; the Whisper. There was the sound of the guards' work; orders given, their chatting, the sound of their boots. The buildings whispered too. Occasionally though, even the Whisper was suddenly disturbed. Doors slammed, window shutters battered against the walls in the wind. And the wind itself. Sometimes, even the slightest of breezes could be caught in your ear, adding a whistle to a cacophony of silence.

But the inmates made very little sound. With so many people in one place, the noise of them just living should be deafening. But it was as if they were all dead, in a land of the dead. There was very little talk. Very little noise. Almost total silence. Except at night.

That was when the screaming began, shattering the silence of the day.

But now, waiting in line, something else shattered it. Meyer heard a laugh.

Sitting on the ground, with his back leaning against a barrack hut, was a prisoner. He sat with his knees tucked up under his chin, his striped trousers halfway up his calves, revealing emaciated legs. Sores covered his skin, especially around his wrists and where his clogs bit at his ankles.

He was smiling.

It was difficult for Meyer to work out how old the man was. Deeply lined from a vacant smile on a face which held no fat, he could have been twenty years old or he could have been fifty. If the man had been standing, Meyer thought that he might be quite tall, perhaps one metre eighty, but he was folded against the hut wall in such a way that it was difficult to tell.

What was this man doing there? Was there anything Meyer should do? He turned and looked at Anton Geller, the silent question in his eyes.

Geller leaned close to Meyer.

“He has become absent,” he said, in a low voice.

“What?” questioned Meyer.

“After a while, with not enough food, with the gruelling work and the fear, it becomes too much for some people. Any hope that they had leaves them and they become absent. Their mind switches off their fear but also switches off their understanding.”

The man’s arms were hanging loose by his sides, and Meyer could see the tattoo of his prison number on his thin forearm. His tin cup lay nearby, although his bowl was missing, and he gazed into the middle distance with a smile so serene that Meyer almost envied him. He wondered what he was seeing. Maybe his family? Maybe his own childhood. Meyer wondered what memories your mind would give you to shield you from your daily terror.

A guard from the other side of the mess queue spotted the absent man and, pushing past Meyer and Geller as if they were not even there, made his way over to him, the eyes of every prisoner in the line now on his back.

He stood with his hands on his hips, looking down at the smiling inmate.

“What are you smiling at, Jew?”

The question broke whatever day-dream filled the man's eyes, and he looked up at the guard. His smile left him and his mouth now hung open.

“Get up and back in line,” came the command from the guard.

The lines from the man’s face had gone, and he looked like a child. His dark eyes stared uncomprehendingly at the soldier, and a thin line of saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth.

“Last chance, Jew. Get up and get back in line,” repeated the guard, pointing at the queue of men.

He didn’t understand. Meyer was not sure if the man understood German, or if he was Polish or Hungarian or Russian or French, but whatever language he spoke, even if he didn’t understand the guard's German language, he should have understood the meaning. But he didn’t.

The guard made this meaning clearer when he unhitched his rifle from his shoulder. For a moment, he stood, holding the rifle with his right hand on the bolt action, looking at the prisoner, waiting for a response. But the man just sat, his face blank, not comprehending what was happening.

The guard removed his cap and ran his right hand across his brow, wiping away a thin sheen of sweat which was building from the late afternoon sun. He replaced his cap, and his hand rested once more on the bolt action of the Mauser rifle.

The absent man’s attention had drifted, and he was staring ahead once more, a smile beginning to form on his face.

The guard pulled back on the bolt, loading a cartridge into the breach of the gun, then pushed it forward, locking it in place. The mechanical noise brought the absent man’s head around again to look up at the guard.

Meyer watched as the guard lifted the rifle to sit against his shoulder, with his right eye looking down the sights of the gun, directly into the absent man’s gaze.

For a moment, Meyer thought that the guard wouldn’t shoot him like that. He must be looking directly into the dark eyes of a lost child. He must see that there was nothing there to hate.

The absent man smiled again, but this time he was smiling at the guard. It was a beautiful, kind smile. The smile a boy would have, unable to contain his love for a parent. Is that what he could see? Could he see his father? Or did he see the guard and smile purely because he recognised him?

Meyer thought that the guard was going to lower his rifle. That he would walk away from this kind, helpless, lost soul. Who could kill a smiling child who showed such love? Surely he couldn’t pull the trigger; he would lower his rifle and help the man to his feet. That was all that he needed to do. Let someone else deal with the absent man and come back and guard the mess hut queue.

And for a moment Meyer thought he wouldn’t shoot him. He thought he wouldn’t kill him like that.

He noticed a sparkle in the absent man’s eye. Was that a tear?

Then the gunshot filled the silence.

Berlin, 30th July 1930

KRISTIAN Amsel sat in the witness box, wearing the uniform of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft. The blue peaked cap sat perfectly straight on his head, and the matching double-breasted jacket had its twin lines of brass buttons polished. Amsel was a stocky man with a thick, dark grey moustache which sat proudly across his top lip and pince-nez glasses perched half way down the bridge of his nose.

Deschler had warned Meyer that Amsel may be a difficult character to deal with. He would be immediately hostile to the questioning and defensive to any suggestion that Peter Vogel was not guilty of stealing his watch.

“You will need to approach the questioning of Kristian Amsel from a different perspective,” said Deschler, as Meyer checked through the notes he would be following.

“In what way, Herr Deschler? I have to get Amsel to admit that he didn’t see Peter Vogel take his watch or even notice that it was gone until Herr Vogel was past him.”

“Herr Meyer, you have managed to paint a perfect picture of the situation at the train station with your questioning of Frau Engel. You don’t need to push this point again until the end of your cross-examination. Treat Amsel as if he was your witness to the events, not as if he was the victim of theft, then, as you come to your conclusion, you need to turn your questioning around.”

Meyer’s eyes betrayed his misgivings about the way he would be able to change direction on the questions.

“Do you know where the word ‘orientation’ originates?” asked Deschler. Meyer shook his head.

“Maps used to be drawn with east to the top rather than north. North was to the left, west to the bottom, and south to the right. But east was at the top. The orient was the most important direction, and you would ‘orientate’ the map so that east sat at the top. Then at some point this was suddenly changed and north became the dominant compass point and was drawn at the top of the maps. Everything changed in the way people saw the world, and yet, they still use the word orientation to mean aligning something.

“This is how you must approach this cross-examination. You question him in the same manner as you did Frau Engel. You must try to get him to forget that you are the defendant’s lawyer. Then, near the end, you change the direction of your questioning. Bring out your ace, his war record, and then hit him with our trump card, the reason the watch chain was in Vogel’s pocket. He will still be seeing east at the top of the map but we will have changed everyone’s direction to see north instead. When he walks away from the witness stand today he should still be thinking of you as a friendly young man. He won’t realise what has happened until he has left the courtroom.”

A small laugh escaped Meyer’s lips. “You have a great deal of faith in my abilities, Herr Deschler.”

“And so should you,” replied Deschler.