A Family Madness (16 page)

She dressed him again and wheeled him out. An hour later the young doctor of Italian parentage told him it had turned out to be no more than savage bruising.

21

F
ROM THE
J
OURNALS OF
S
TANISLAW
K
ABBELSKI
, C
HIEF OF
P
OLICE
, S
TAROVICHE
.
Sept. 16, 1943

Asked to lunch. Kappeler visiting again from Kaunas. It's him, Bienecke, Harner at SD/Gestapo headquarters, Natural History Museum. They have Moselle wine—it is astonishing the things that come east at a time when the front is imperiled, especially in the Don/Donetz area. I have not finished the first glass when they ask me about Ganz. What do I think of his theory of anti-terrorist behavior?

I am fortunate to be able to say what I now
know
. “This is a test of savageries, gentlemen. I believe that to hope that a policy of mildness will somehow inhibit the recruitment of partisans is a seductive but impractical recourse. Above all, I am sure that young Daskovich—if he were here—would argue against it. He ran Krotinitsa in a rational and exemplary way. This made him
more
not
less
of a target. It would be nice to administer this oblast in an Artistotelian manner. Unhappily the partisans will not join the dialogue.”

Might have been mixing my Plato with my Aristotle, but Kappeler did not seem to mind—seemed delighted with my response. He rang a small bell which sat beside the cruets of oil and vinegar. His secretary appeared, carrying a file. Kappeler told the young man to hand the file to me. Its cover was marked by a system of abbreviations and numbers. There were a few intelligible words—“Juden,” “Ganz,” the initials RMORKO, which all Ostministerium documents carried, and “Bstar,” the symbol for Staroviche. Inside many letters sealed up with tape, so that file opened straight to a copy of a letter written last March by Dr. Kappeler to Oberführer Ganz, going something like:

“I request a report on the Jewish situation in the
Generalbezirk
of Staroviche, especially about the extent to which Jews are still employed by German and Belorussian agencies as interpreters, chauffeurs, tutors, mechanics, etc. I would appreciate a prompt reply because it is the intention of our office to order a swift solution to the Jewish question in your area.”

The answer from Ganz came six weeks later, in early May, Ganz doing his trick of implying the discussion was theoretical, like an exchange of chess moves by letter, and had nothing to do with daily policy. In cooperation with the Security Forces in the
Generalbezirk
of Staroviche, he was subjecting the question of further repression of Jewry (he used the word
Zurückdrängen
, a word both too gentle and too direct by Ministry standards) to constant exploration.

Could have told Kappeler but didn't that in that first week of May, Danielle revived and began to take the children to the garden to paint in the afternoons, and that every afternoon Ganz was there rallying her spirits—for which I am grateful—but hardly exploring the idea of subjecting Staroviche Jewry to futher
Zurückdrängen
. In any case, wrote Ganz, concluding his letter, the reduction of the Staroviche ghetto with its remnants of skilled Jewish labor was a slow, grinding process.

A further letter from Kappeler asked for regular reports on the speeding up of this slow, grinding process. No report or reply was however visible in the file. In July Kappeler wrote asking for news of progress. Ganz's reply was that the skilled Jewish workers remaining in the ghetto had been now reduced to a level beyond which the war effort and the welfare of various agencies would begin to be affected.

In the end Kappeler wrote straightaway to Bienecke to ask him whether Special Treatment had been carried out on the Jewish population of Staroviche. Bienecke replied quickly, saying that apart from some new arrivals from Latvia in June, who had been immediately subjected to resettlement (
Ansiedlung
, Bienecke's euphemism), the population of the ghetto, added to the small number of Jews who lived outside the ghetto to perform special services, had remained steady as a matter of the Kommissar's, that is Oberführer Ganz's, policy.

The last item in the file was a recent confidential memo addressed to Kappeler from Dr. Lohse, Kappeler's chief. Lohse had been to Minsk and been in conference about Ganz with General-kommissar Kurt von Gottberg, Ganz's superior, and with SD chief of Belorussia, Obersturmbannführer Eduard Strauch. Lohse explained in the confidential memo that Ganz's equivocations in the matter of the remaining Staroviche Jews were demonstrated to these two distinguished leaders through the letters Ganz had written. Obstf. Strauch, notoriously brutal and a bad enemy to have, is reported in this confidential memo to have said that Ganz reminded him of the late Generalkommissar Kube, who had been similarly slack in this matter. Strauch had complained so bitterly to the Minister about Kube that Minister had sent one of his secretaries of state to give Kube a serious warning, and Himmler himself had been pressing for Kube's dismissal and disgrace when the partisans had done everyone a favor—one of his chambermaids had planted a bomb under his bed and it went off at three in the morning. The point is, said Strauch, you could not really depend on the partisans to deliver the Reich of a second great embarrassment—Ganz. Generalkommissar von Gottberg had concluded the conference by saying, “Lohse, I recommend that your office initiate an executive measure aimed at Oberführer Willi Ganz.”

When finished reading, Dr. Kappeler asked me what I thought. We all knew what an “executive measure” is,
Executivmassnahme
, a classic “soft word” whose intent can be convincingly denied long after the corpses are counted. The truth was that the two most powerful men in White Russia seemed to want poor, soft, amusing Ganz assassinated, though no one could say it in those terms. Given that he is a familiar at my house and that since last July twelve months my men have been engaged in his protection, with only a token SS guard participation, the thing can't be done without my cooperation.

First reaction to the proposal is to think of Danielle and to realize with a clarity I have not enjoyed until now that Ganz has in fact taken from my shoulders the task of attending to the mental well-being of both my wife and children. The whole bleak, besieged experience seems all at once intolerable without this gentle fool, who obviously has the talent but not the stomach for government, government as it is practiced in this brutal world, in this penultimate age of the history of man.

Found myself growing irritable. “You expect us to go on giving and giving,” found myself saying to Kappeler. “You take advantage of the fact that the Belorussian view of man and his destiny coincides so closely to your own. What are you really offering us for all our cooperation, all our engineering of society.” Kappeler said, “You people are
prodigious
patriots.” He was smiling when he said it. Then he told me that the final meetings between von Gottberg and Ostrowsky were in progress to set up a Belorussian National Parliament in Minsk. Told me, “You can easily check, since Ostrowsky's your boy's godfather, I believe. All I can say of this happy circumstance is that your exemplary work, Herr Kabbelski, has been one of the determining factors in the evolution of Belorussian independence.”

Naturally ecstatic myself. Bienecke seemed to take a load off me by saying, “All we want is for Mrs. Kabbelski to ask Oberführer Ganz to your house to drink tea.”

Realized gratefully that what they wanted in first place was not Ganz himself, but merely his Jewish chauffeur. I temporized, saying that to alienate the Kommissar might place my police force in an awkward position. Knew however, even as I left Bienecke's office, that for political reasons of my own, I would make the arrangements Kappeler and Bienecke required.

Sept. 17, 1943

SS and SD Headquarters in one wing of old Natural History Museum. You approach Bienecke's office through a door in main facade protected by sandbagged emplacements, then through galleries of dusty cases containing wolves stuffed and mounted at the end of the last century, and heaps of stone axe blades as used by our swamp-dwelling neolithic ancestors. Always the impression that you're entering a medieval bestiary when you come in here—ambience must have a strong effect on the feelings of prisoners brought here for interrogation.

Bienecke and Harner both in office and Bienecke's secretary Lena, the tidy dark-haired girl who always seems so proper. Beluvich says she responds to drink tempestuously—B. saw her sitting on Bienecke's lap with her blouse undone during the interrogation last month of the mechanic found with explosives in his garage. Bienecke's office during interrogations a venue which, in spite of the stereotypes the public applies to those who have the task of grilling the enemy, would not normally be considered romantic even by a policeman's woman. Lena's posture can't have contributed much to the seriousness of the boy's examination.

However, demeanor of all parties very correct today. Was able to assure Bienecke Ganz would be out of his office from 10:45 tomorrow morning, would be at my place drinking coffee with Danielle. Harner repeated his earlier tired witticism about how wonderful it is for a man as busy as I to have found a continual and proper companion for his wife. Looked them both in eye and said that I treasured the Herr Kommissar's friendship and that I was sure that in his way he loved Danielle. They did not dare smile, and Lena nodded, as if touched by noble sentiment.

“Further,” I told them, “it is essential for my relationship to the Oberführer, who is after all the provincial governor, that it be clear that the order for tomorrow's action originates here with the SS, or if you wish with Dr. Kappeler's Political Section. I do not wish my Belorussian police blamed for the initiative, or put in bad odor with Herr Kommissar Ganz.”

Bienecke gave assurances. We planned allocation of squads for tomorrow—two platoons of my men to operate with SS in ghetto, groups of roughly section strength to collect interpreters, mechanics, and so on scattered round the city. Party of Russian POW's preparing site this afternoon on Mogilev road. Bienecke and Harner show their contempt for Ganz by code-naming the operation
Kaffee Aktion
.

Got home early to find Hirschmann there, tutoring away, treating Radek and Genia to French irregular verbs. Called him into my study—clearly Hirschmann expected reprimand over one or other aspect of his educational approach. Gave him half pack of cigarettes and filled him a glass of brandy. Thanked him for taking my earlier remarks concerning the content of his teaching to heart. Thanked him for the influence he was having on Radek. After three astonished mouthfuls of his brandy, he said, “Sir, I regret I have not been altogether as successful as I would have wished in your daughter's case. Her interest has been diffused both by the terrible state of the world and if I dare say so the first flush of womanhood.” Says it's a phenomenon he has become professionally accustomed to. Said it with such military forthrightness and correctness—even after all this time in ghetto—that I remarked, “I have had the exact same thoughts about her. I can see Herr Hirschmann that with your intuitive grasp of others you must indeed have made a good soldier.”

So encouraged, he began chatting. “In battle,” he said, “in battle all your values are different, they are all related to death. Death seems as reasonable—or worse still as insignificant—as sneezing. Coming out of the lines and seeing women again and having leisure—that was painful to me, like being reborn.” He smiled. “I was more troublesome at such times.” I really didn't mind him talking with such familiarity. He was a man who understood how things went. He was saying, Your children have restored me to the values of life, but I know that is temporary, that in the end I have to go into the line.

As much as any educated man, Hirschmann is aware of the direction of history. I let him take the rest of the bottle back to the ghetto to console himself. I sent a covering note in view of fact he would inevitably be searched.

22

R
ADISLAW
K
ABBEL'S
H
ISTORY OF THE
K
ABBELSKI
F
AMILY

One morning Herr Hirschmann, winner of the Iron Cross, failed to arrive for the start of our classes. Mother had sent us into the parlor to get ready for the day's work, which I did and Genia—deeply set now in the sullen rebelliousness which had begun in the war's first autumn—didn't. When it was a quarter past nine I began to quiz her about what could have happened to our tutor. Now she took the usual delight in not answering. I began to feel the sort of choking panic the young feel when they are lost from their parents in strange territory, and then—since I was less than ten years of age—I began to cry.

“Huh!” said Genia and laughed a little to herself while sharpening a pencil. I heard the telephone pealing in the living room.

My mother came in a few seconds later. She was thinner now—her hair was wispier, and I believe I could see for the first time what she would look like when she was old. There was also a forced liveliness in her voice, the sort that was associated in my mind with the phrase “making an effort for the sake of the children.” Papa had called and said Mr. Hirschmann would not be there today. He had meant to let us know earlier but had forgotten. She put an arm around me. “What's the matter, Radjiu?” she asked me. Genia said, “He wants to get his day's supply of algebra from that old Jew.”

Mother screamed at her. “Don't talk in that brutal way!”

She soothed me then with the news that Willi Ganz was coming for morning coffee, and we could join the party. Genia uttered a word I had never heard before, and before I could ask for a repeat and a definition, Mother had again screamed, and I knew it would not be the same as coffees and painting sessions of the golden past, even of the
sweet
besieged period after Mrs. Kuzich's murder, as distinct from the bitter besieged period we were now enduring.