Finding Rebecca: A Novel of Love and the Holocaust (25 page)

“Well, we have so many different currencies…”

“No, no, let us worry about that, how
many suitcases?”

“Oh, four suitcases this week.”

“Times are good in Auschwitz then?”
Kohl said with a smile and Christopher managed to smile back. They walked out
to the car together, Kohl making small talk about Christopher’s trip as they
went. They unloaded the cases as if they were taking them out of the back of
the car after a vacation and brought them inside and up the stairs to Kohl’s
office. They set them down on the floor by Kohl’s desk and Christopher stood
there, waiting for something else to happen. Kohl looked at him. “Thank you,
Obersturmführer Seeler.”

Christopher looked back at him. “Can
you sign for them so that I’ve something to show my superior?”

“Of course, show me the ledger.” He
signed it with a slapdash scrawl and handed it back. “We’ll see you again in
two weeks. And keep up the good work.”

Reichsführer
Heinrich Himmler’s office was on the
same floor and Christopher nodded to his secretary as he walked past, noting to
himself to speak to the secretary next time he was here. Christopher left SS
Headquarters, feeling as if he’d just been mugged. It was just after one
o’clock as Christopher walked out onto
Stresemannstrasse.
He had not been given an exact time to be back. He had not been given
instructions about his return at all. There was no one he had to call or check
in with. It was he alone. Harald’s house was less than half an hour away and on
the way back towards the camp. His hands were wet as he laid them on the
steering wheel. He hadn’t expected this level of autonomy. There should have
been someone there with him, watching him, making sure he didn’t abscond with
the money, but there wasn’t, and there was no one to stop him seeing his
family.

Christopher
felt ashamed to be driving through the city in his uniform and pulled up the
top on the car even though it had turned into a fine day. Harald lived in a
large, five bedroom house with his wife, his children having grown up and left
years before. There was room for Christopher’s father and sister, but surely no
room for contentment, particularly for Alexandra, completely isolated from Tom.
Christopher approached the door and somehow felt nervous. He hadn’t seen them
in almost three months. Harald’s wife Steffi answered, “Isn’t this a wonderful
surprise, what are you doing here? You father will be so happy, come in, come
in, Christopher, look at you in your uniform, don’t you look handsome?” He
didn’t feel handsome. She threw her arms around him. Christopher stepped inside
the house where he had stayed himself for his first few weeks back in Germany.
But that was a lifetime ago now. “Stefan, Stefan, you’ll never believe who’s
here.” Stefan walked out and the pain in Christopher’s chest moved up. Stefan
took him in his arms and Christopher could see the look in Steffi’s face. “I’ll
leave you two to talk,” she said as she edged away.

Christopher
stood there with his arms around his father for a minute, or maybe more, before
he broke back away to look at him. His hair was almost completely grey now, his
blue eyes shining through against the lines on his face. “Is Alex here? How is
she?”

“No,
she’s at work. She’s doing as well as can be expected. What on earth are you
doing here? Is everything all right?”

“Yes,
I’m fine, I was sent up to Berlin on…. on an errand.” Stefan looked back at
him, the puzzlement plain to see in his face. They walked through into the
dining room where they sat down at the table, Stefan at the head.
 
Christopher didn’t speak, looked down at
the white tablecloth. There was a color to the house he hadn’t seen since he
had joined the SS, bright flowers captured in paintings and orange curtains
over the windows.

“Christopher,
are you all right? You seem…”

“The
camp where I work is called Auschwitz-Birkenau, or Auschwitz II.” It suddenly
felt cold and he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Is it safe?” Christopher said
as he looked out towards the kitchen where Steffi was.

Stefan
looked at his son and then around towards the door. “As safe as anywhere, I
suppose. You look ill, Christopher. Have you eaten?”

“I’ve no
time for that, I shouldn’t even be here.” Christopher sat back in the chair,
took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a few seconds.

“Is
there news of Rebecca?”

Christopher
brought his hands up to his head. His forehead felt hot, clammy, yet cold. “No,
no news. Well, I do know that she was never in Auschwitz. I just have to find
out where she is now.” It was hard to talk, the words sticking in his throat as
his voice became thicker. “Father, what do you think has become of our house in
Jersey? Do you think that the little tree house is still there?”

“I do,
Christopher.” The pause lay heavy in the air. “The house will be there, waiting
for us, after all of this ends.”

“It
doesn’t seem possible. It doesn’t seem possible that places like Jersey exist
anymore.”

“They
do, son.” Stefan seemed to be waiting for his son to speak, but Christopher
just sat there, trying to get the words trapped inside him out. “How is your
new posting? Is it where you need to be? Are you able to help with the
resettlement of the Jews at least?”

Christopher’s
eyes flashed over to his father. “There’s no resettlement,” he said,
concentrating on each word, fully aware of his oath of silence to the SS.
“There’s only murder. Auschwitz-Birkenau is a death camp. It only exists for
the purpose of murder and theft. And I’m in charge of the theft, the robber in
chief. That’s what I was doing in Berlin this morning, depositing the funds of
the murdered with the Reich.”

The
blood was draining from Stefan’s face and he looked down at the table. “Is it a
punishment camp? Are the inmates being executed criminals?”

“Their
only crime is that they’re Jews, or political prisoners, or gypsies or Soviets.
It’s murder. I’ve been there less than a month and I’ve seen almost forty
thousand die, herded in on trains and gassed by the hundreds.” Christopher
locked eyes with his father. “Women, children, the elderly, they’re the first
to go. Those fit enough to work are kept until they’re executed on a whim or
starved to death. And I’m one of them. I walk amongst the butchers, the
murderers there, eat my meals with them, drink with them at night.”

Bewilderment
came across Stefan’s face. “How can this be?” he whispered. “You’re not one of
them, Christopher.” His jaw tightened. “Listen to me. You’re not one of them.
You’re there for a reason.”

“I don’t
know if she’s still alive. I don’t know if I can do this. I never thought the
camp would be like this.” His eyes were moistening as Rebecca came to him. “No
one else questions it. They’re all completely convinced that what they’re doing
is right. I have no one to confide in.”

“You
have me and the rest of your family. How many prisoners do you oversee?”

“About
six hundred, almost all women.”

“Are you
able to look after them at least?”

“To some
extent. I’ve banned summary executions, and my commanding officer seems okay
with that, he only seems to care about keeping the money flowing.”

“Well,
then, you’ve got to use that power, whatever power you have to make things
better, even in some tiny way. And to find Rebecca.”

“How can
I? What can I do? One person? There are thousands of SS there, with the whole
country behind them. There’s nothing I can do. I can only hope to find Rebecca
and even then, I’ve no idea how I’m going to get her out of that hell. That’s
what it’s like-hell. No worse place on the earth.”
 

“You
have to be strong, for the ladies you oversee, for Rebecca, for yourself. There
are always ways to influence things. You’re in charge of the money? Money is
influence.”

Christopher
looked at his watch. “I have to go. I have to go back there. Is there any news
from Uli?”

“No, but
no news is good news.”

Christopher
stood up, his father did the same. “Tell Alex I said hello. I’ll be coming to
Berlin on this day, every two weeks. I’ll come back, at the same time.”

His
father hugged him, held him tightly for longer than usual. “I’ll be here
waiting for you.” He took Christopher, his face between his two hands. “Don’t
forget who you are.”

The days
wore on with no news of Rebecca. She was always with him, hovering in his mind
like a mist he could sense and smell, but not touch. He saw her face in every
woman in Canada. He tried to stay among the women in Canada, to leave the
selections to Breitner, who was always eager to be seen by the officers at the
train station. Breitner was 31, almost six years older than Christopher, and
had been a member of the SS for three years. It must have galled him that a
younger man, raised outside the Reich, took the position he saw rightfully as
his. But his work was sloppy, the accounts and ledgers rushed and often
incomplete. Breitner had had problems with alcohol in the past, but seemed
sober now. He never engaged in the drinking sessions that the rest of
Christopher’s colleagues seemed to have almost every night. Christopher never
saw him after work, never knew what he did, never knew what moved him. Other
than Friedrich, the officers never visited the offices or the warehouses in
Canada where Christopher spent most of his time, as far away from the killing
as he could keep himself. But he couldn’t sever himself from the grip of death.
The crematoria were only a few hundred yards away on either side, and the smell
of freshly burnt flesh lay heavy in the air, all the time.

It was a
convoy of Slovak Jews, about eight hundred. They were in the changing room of
Crematorium 3, sufficiently calm after the lies of the SS men. It was good for
Christopher to be seen close to the action. He had noticed the looks of a few
of his fellow SS men in the last week or so. So he walked along the benches in
the changing room, about two hundred feet long, watching the people undress,
trying desperately not to make eye contact with them.
 
An SS man named Northen, a guard from
Hamburg, walked with him, barking orders between chatting to Christopher.
Christopher tried to walk ahead of Northen, but every time he did, the SS guard
would catch up. He was telling Christopher about his dog. Christopher smiled as
Northen spoke, wishing he would stop. As he went on, a small middle aged man
with a greying moustache, dressed in a white shirt with a thick brown tie,
stood up and took Christopher by the arm.
 
He was much smaller than Christopher, only up to his shoulder.

“Excuse
me sir, but we’re not meant to be here.”

Christopher
pulled his arm away. “I’m sure you’re where you’re meant to be.” He thought to
say the standard line about the hot bowl of soup and a life of labor on behalf
of the Reich in front of him and the rest of the prisoners, but he couldn’t do
it. He looked at the man’s brown eyes. In just a few minutes he would suffer a
horrific, agonizing death. Christopher had seen the piles of bodies by the
doors of the gas chambers, all desperately trying to force their way out into
the air, to force themselves back into life. “Calm down sir, everything is in
order.”

But the
man grabbed his arm again. “No, you are an officer, I must speak with you. I’m
very concerned about what’s going on here. We were meant to be on a train to
Switzerland, we were to be released there. We have all paid for this right. We
have all paid a lot of money for this and were promised safe passage to
Switzerland.”

“This is
only a stop on the way to your final destination,” Northen interjected. “You’re
here to shower and be fed. The Swiss Government has spoken to our
administrators at length about this. We have to make sure there are no lice, no
infectious diseases on any of the passengers before they are transported.”
Northen looked at Christopher, a twinkle of mirth in his eye but Christopher’s
insides convulsed. Christopher had not been outside in the yard when they were
brought in, had not heard the latest round of lies.

“We are
from Czechoslovakia. Why were we brought northeast? Why were we brought away
from the logical route through to Switzerland? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Northen
slapped the man’s arm away from Christopher and shifted his holster to the
front to show an air of menace, but the man snatched for the gun and a shot
rang out. Christopher saw the bullet burrow into Northen’s chest and the spurt
of blood that came out and then the man trained the gun on him. Christopher
dove to the ground as he felt the bullet graze his arm and braced himself for
the pain. Panic spread through the changing room and screams rang out in the
enclosed space. Half-naked bodies moved and merged together and clothes flew
through the air. Christopher was on the ground as the man disappeared into the
crowd. There was no pain in his arm, just a slight burning sensation. He was
too far into the changing room to see, but Christopher heard the door slam and
knew that the other SS men had fled. There was a Sonderkommando about ten feet
away, also lying on the ground and to his right, Northen lay gurgling his last
few breaths. Christopher drew his pistol. The screaming was subsiding now and
the crowd of people that he had expected to attack him was just watching. The
man was nowhere to be seen. The lights went out and the screaming began again.
It was absolutely dark. There was the sound of another gunshot and Christopher
threw himself onto the concrete floor again. The floor was cold against his
cheek. Several seconds passed before he heard the voice next to him. The
Sonderkommando had crawled over to him.