Pursuit (45 page)

She came back in a short while, bearing a large manila envelope.

“Here,” she said, her voice triumphant, and opened the envelope, sliding a single picture from it. He reached for it; it was a photograph about five inches by seven inches. He picked it up and studied it, feeling a little shock run through him. He had not been mistaken the night before; it was a picture apparently of himself, except he looked a little older, and he was wearing the uniform of the SS, the cap tilted a bit to one side, smiling with his own lips into the camera. The photograph had been touched in color, and the hair was the same blond hair he had combed that morning, and his own slate-blue eyes looked back at him, a trifle sardonically, it seemed. It was a studio picture, and he noted that the photograph had been made in Munich in the year 1942, which was six years before he had been born. Below, in thick ink strokes placed there, apparently, by some librarian, was the name,
Helmut von Schraeder, Colonel SS
. He looked up to see the girl studying the picture over his shoulder in amazement.

“He is you!”

“Let's just say he looks like me,” Herzl said, and shook his head in wonderment. “Damn, but he does look like me! Do you have any more?”

She shook her head sadly. “It is the only picture we have, that and the one in the book. The one in the book is taken by a prisoner with a homemade box camera and some in-smuggled film. He is taking the picture when nobody is watching. He takes an awful chance, but at least we have now the picture, and from it we are identifying three of the people in the line. He is a very brave man. The other picture is being salvaged from a pile of photographs supposedly burned in Munich in a studio. The negative is gone. This is a copy. The original is in the Wiener Library in London.”

Herzl went back to the picture, shaking his head in admiring disbelief.

“Remarkable! He looks more like me than I do. He looks like I'm dressed for a costume party.” He suddenly grinned, a boyish grin. “Wait until I tell my sabra mother and my soldier-in-the-Israeli-Army father that they spawned a duplicate of the Monster of Maidanek!” He looked up at Miriam Kleiman. “Here's the boy I start with; he should prove interesting. Say!” He grinned as another idea struck him. “Do you suppose there's any possibility that von Schraeder had any Jewish blood in him?”

“I doubt,” she said seriously. “We are researching most of the top war criminals in great extension. Extension?” She pondered the word a moment and then went on. “Of course some Jews are disguising themselves as gentiles, and some are even joining the Nazi Party to save themselves. But very few are escaping with it.” Her face reddened slightly. “The physical difference, for just one thing.”

“I know, but von Schraeder obviously wasn't born or raised a Jew; he wouldn't have been circumcised. It could be possible, couldn't it? Somewhere back in the line of his family? Look at how much we look like each other, and I promise you I'm a Jew from both ends.” He heard how that sounded and reddened slightly himself. “I mean—”

“I still doubt,” she said insistently. “With a prominent Nazi like von Schraeder there are always plenty of enemies both in and out of the Party always who look for anything they are hanging on him. It is how they operate. No, I think not that he has any Jewish blood.”

“You mean you hope not,” Herzl said with rare insight.

“That also, of course.”

“But if he had it would be generations back, maybe. What a story if he did! Just suppose—” He hesitated as he considered the possibilities, and then continued. “Suppose in some way I was related to the man? Distantly, of course, generations back, but just suppose? Look at that resemblance! It's unbelievable.”

“Are you looking like your father?”

“No, not at all. Our coloring is the same, but that's all.”

“Like your mother?”

“My mother's family originally came from Iraq. She was born in Israel—Palestine then—but the Assavar family, my mother's, are dark. We're alike in many respects, but not in looks.” He waved a hand. “But these family characteristics can jump generations at times! What if there was some Grossman blood, way back, in the von Schraeder line?” He rubbed the back of his neck in excitement. “I could end up with a far better story than I started out for. Let me at those files!”

“Let me go to the files,” Miriam said. “I know them better. You read—I am getting the reference books. As you say, it is interesting, no?”

Helmut August Karl Klaus Langer von Schraeder, born April 14, 1917, in the main house on the family estates at Angermünde in Mecklenburg. Son of General Karl Klaus Sonnendorf von Schraeder and Ilsa Gerda Boetticher Langer. An only child. His early childhood normal, the life of a young Junker, with a private nurse and a governess, and private tutors after the age of six. When Helmut was eight years old his father committed suicide. The general had accumulated huge gambling debts and had borrowed heavily to meet them, mostly from Jewish financial houses, and the estates were forfeited to his creditors, at which point the general shot himself. As a result, Helmut was raised hating Jews, whom he blamed for his father's death. The boy, his mother, and one servant moved to the gatehouse of the estate where they lived for the following five months, at which time Helmut's mother died of pneumonia. The young Helmut also blamed the Jews for his mother's death, because of their reduced living conditions. On his mother's death young Helmut was taken to Hamburg by an aunt, the sister of his mother, herself a widow, and Helmut was raised there—

Hamburg? It was where Benjamin Grossman had been born, also in 1917 although not in April. It was also where Benjamin Grossman had been raised until he went away to the university. A coincidence? Possibly not. Possibly this unnamed aunt of von Schraeder or the mother might be the connection to some Grossman family in the past. However—

Helmut's education was in public school, followed by university at the Technical Institute in Munich, where he graduated second in his class with a degree in mechanical engineering—

That
was
a coincidence. Benjamin Grossman had also graduated as a mechanical engineer, although in Switzerland, not in Munich. Although it wasn't all that much of a coincidence—there must have been thousands upon thousands of students around the world who graduated with degrees in mechanical engineering in the year 1938. Let's move on, Herzl thought, and reached for another book.

In Hamburg, while still in public school, Helmut joined the Hitler Youth, and as soon as he registered for admission at the university in Munich, he went to Party headquarters in that city and joined the Nazi Party. Thereafter throughout his university career he was very active in all Nazi Party affairs, being the leader in the harassment of Jewish students and professors until their banishment from the university. When Germany announced Anschluss with Austria in March of 1938, von Schraeder requested and received early graduation so that he could join the troops as a lieutenant in the SS. His young age—he still lacked one month to his twenty-first birthday—for the rating of lieutenant was due, it was felt in many quarters, to the fact that his father had many friends in high positions in the army who used their influence in the SS for Helmut. Thereafter his career was in the army
.

Like my father, Herzl thought without knowing he was thinking it, and went on with his work.

The following year, 1939, as a captain, Helmut von Schraeder was in the first line of mechanized infantry in the invasion of Poland, and received his majority on the field in that country from the hands of Hitler himself. He received his colonelcy in Russia six months after the attack on that country in June of 1941, mainly as a result of his fearlessness and fierceness in battle. His troops were said to admire him extremely
.

Again like my father, Herzl thought, and opened yet another book.

Throughout his army career his superiors had noted von Schraeder's engineering talents and ingenuity, and when the Final Solution program was put into effect in 1942, von Schraeder was transferred from the Waffen SS to the regular SS and posted to the concentration camp at Maidanek in Poland as assistant to the commandant. Here he was in charge of the operation and efficiency of the gas chamber and the crematoria ovens, where his work won him many commendations. In 1944, shortly before the liberation of Maidanek by Russian troops, Colonel von Schraeder was transferred to Buchenwald, and shortly after his arrival contracted typhus and died. He was cremated in the camp crematorium. It was suspected that he was one of the officers involved in the plot against Hitler's life at Wolfschantze in July of 1944, but no proof of this is available
.

Herzl leaned back wearily and rubbed the back of his neck, staring at the mountains of books he had had to go through to garner the little information he had managed to extract, a sentence here and a sentence there. Research, it seemed, was not much different from the job of carrying the equipment, after all; they both involved hard labor. But at least he had a base from which to launch his investigation. There had been nothing in his findings to indicate von Schraeder had any Jewish blood in him, but Herzl had not expected to find that in his study of the man himself. That would come from going back into the history of both parents, but probably chiefly the mother's forebears, the Langers and the Boettichers. Some of the information might be available in the Almanach de Gotha, some in other records, possibly in the town hall in Angermünde, and in the records of wherever the Langers or the Boettichers had lived before the marriage to Karl Klaus von Schraeder. All in all he was satisfied with his day's work.

He glanced at his watch and was surprised to see it was past six o'clock. The day had gone by without his being aware of it. He was also suddenly aware that he had missed lunch and was ravenously hungry. He looked up; Miriam Kleiman was watching him.

“You are finding what you search for?”

“A decent base for further investigation, at least.” He thought a moment. “Do you suppose Rolf Steiner is still here?”

“He is always here. He lives here. He is being like a watchman.”

“I wonder if we could ask him to dig out any films he might have on von Schraeder—”

“But it is quite very late …”

“I know. I mean for tomorrow.” He waited while she made a telephone call and spoke into the instrument for several minutes. When she hung up he said, “And I want to thank you for your help.” Something suddenly occurred to him. “You didn't go out for lunch.”

“Often I am not going out.”

“I don't believe you. You stayed because you didn't want me to be at loose ends, wanting for books. The least I owe you for that is a decent meal.” He hesitated a moment and then suddenly smiled his boyish smile. “How about tonight?”

She looked at him gravely a moment, then also smiled. “All right.”

“Good! When are you through for the day?”

She smiled again. “An hour past. Come, I am locking up.”

They ate at a small intimate restaurant near the Olympiapark, and over their food they spoke of many things, of their mutual love of books, of music, of the interest she had had in languages since a child, inherited, she said, from her father, who had spoken even more languages than she did. They spoke of the difference between being raised as a Jew in Germany, as she had, and being raised as a Jew in Israel, as Herzl had. It was hard for either one of them to clearly understand the difference, and they changed the subject to places they had been or hoped to visit.

“I am hoping soon to go to London,” she said. “There is there a library much like our institute here. It is called the Wiener, in a street called Devonshire, number four. You should also be going for your work. Tomorrow I write down the address for you.”

“When do you plan to go? Maybe we might go together.”

She laughed. “If you wait for me, you maybe never go. I have no plans.”

“And if it's the same as here, why go?”

“I go to see London. Also to perfect my English.” She put the accent on the first syllable and then smiled, a gamin smile. “Per
fect
. You see?”

And how I would love to help you perfect your English! Herzl thought, but he said, “You really have no definite plans as to when you go?”

“All I know is, someday.”

“Have you ever been to Israel?”

“No, but of course I am wanting someday to go there, also. What is it like?”

“It's—” Herzl stopped. What was Israel like? What would it be like to a person who hadn't been born there, or who hadn't come there to find a refuge from a world that wanted to kill him? What would it be like for Miriam? “It's like many countries all in one, even if it isn't very big,” he said. “Tel Aviv has wonderful beaches and the streets are wide and clean, and the buildings are neat and well kept and the weather is good, and I think it's a beautiful, wonderful city. Of course we live in a suburb of Tel Aviv and I'm prejudiced.” He suddenly smiled. “American visitors come and they say that Tel Aviv is like Miami Beach, and they don't mean that as a compliment, either. But I don't know Miami Beach and they don't live in Tel Aviv. I must admit, though, that our traffic is far worse than Munich's. Probably worse than Miami Beach.”

Miriam was watching him, listening in a fascinated manner.

“And Jerusalem?”

“Jerusalem? Jerusalem is—well, Jerusalem. There is no city in the world like it. It's beautiful—it's more than beautiful. It's history. But Jerusalem is also indescribable; you have to see it for yourself. It's hilly, and the buildings are all made of the same kind of stone that our ancestors used thousands of years before, and when you go into a
souk
—that's a native street—in the Old City, you swear it cannot be real, that it is a movie set. Munich is old, I know; Paris is old. But Jerusalem was a city when all Europe was merely plains. It's impossible to describe Jerusalem properly. I wish I could, but I can't.”