Frederick Forsyth - The Odessa File

And so he got a new identity.

“That was all right in the immediate aftermath of the war, which was when most of the SS criminals were getting their new identities. But what happens to a man who is blown wide open in 1955, as was Roschmann? He can’t go to the authorities and say he lost his papers during the war.

They would be bound to ask bow he had got by during the ten-year interim period. So he needs a passport.”

“I understand so far,” said Miller. “But why a passport? Why not a driving license or an ID card?”

“Because shortly after the founding of the republic the German authorities realized there must be hundreds or thousands wandering about under false names. There was a need for one document that was so well researched that it could act as the yardstick for all the others. They hit on the passport. Before you get a passport in Germany, you have to produce a birth certificate, several references, and a host of other documentation. These are thoroughly checked before the passport is issued.

“By contrast, once you have a passport, you can get anything else on the strength of it. Such is bureaucracy. The production of the passport convinces the civil servant that, since previous bureaucrats must have checked out the passport-holder thoroughly, no further checking is necessary. With a new passport, Roschmann could quickly build up the rest of the identity-driving license, bank accounts, credit cards. The passport is the Open Sesame to every other piece of necessary documentation in present-day Germany.”

“Where would the passport come from?”

“From the Odessa. They must have a forger somewhere who can turn them out,” Wiesenthal said.

Miller thought for a while. “If one could find the passport-forger, one might find the man who could identify Roschmann today?” he suggested.

Wiesenthal shrugged. “One might. But it would be a long shot. And to do that one would have to penetrate the Odessa. Only an ex-SS man could do that.”

“Then where do I go from here?” said Miller.

“I should think your best bet would be to try and contact some of the survivors of Riga. I don’t know whether they would be able to help you further, but they’d certainly be willing. We are all trying to find Roschmann. Look.” He flicked open the diary on his desk. “There’s reference here to a certain Olli Adler from Munich, who was in Roschmann’s company during the war. It may be she survived and came home to Munich.”

Miller nodded. “If she did, where would she register?”

“At the Jewish Community Center. It still exists. It contains the archives of the Jewish community of Munich-since the war, that is. Everything else was destroyed. I’d try there.”

“Do you have the address?” Simon Wiesenthal checked through an address book. “Reichenbachstrasse, number twenty-seven, Munich,” he said.

“I suppose you want the diary of Salomon Tauber back?”

“Yes, I’m afraid I do.”

“Too bad. I’d like to have kept it. A remarkable diary.” He rose and escorted Miller to the front door. “Good luck,” he said, “and let me know how you get on.”

Miller had dinner that evening in the House of the Golden Dragon, which had been in business as a beer house and restaurant in the Steindelgasse without a break from 1566, and thought over the advice. He had little hope of finding more than a handful of survivors of

Riga still in Germany or Austria, and even less hope that any might help him track Roschmann beyond November 1955. But it was a hope, a last hope.

He left the next morning for the drive back to Munich.

MILLER DROVE into Munich at 10 midmorning of January 9 and found 27 Reichenbachstrasse from a map of Munich bought at a newspaper kiosk in the out skirts. Parking down the road, he surveyed the Jewish Community Center before entering. It was a flat-fronted five-story building. The fagade of the ground floor was of uncovered stone blocks; above this the façade was of gray cement over brick. The fifth and top floor was marked by a row of mansard windows set in the red tiled roof. At ground level there was a double door of glass panels at the extreme left end of the building.

The building contained a kosher restaurant, the only one in Munich, on the ground floor, the leisure rooms of the old people’s home on the one above. the third floor contained the administration and records department, and the upper two housed the guest rooms and sleeping quarters of the inmates of the old people’s home. At the back was a synagogue.

He went up to the third floor and presented himself at the inquiry desk.

While he waited he glanced around the room. There were rows of books, all new, for the original library had long since been burned by the Nazis.

Between the library shelves were portraits of some of the leaders of the Jewish community, stretching back hundreds of years, teachers and rabbis, gazing out of their frames above luxuriant beards, like the figures of the prophets he had seen in his Scripture textbooks at school. Some wore phylacteries bound to their foreheads, and all were hatted.

There was a rack of newspapers, some in German, others in Hebrew. He presumed the latter were flown in from Israel. A short dark man was scanning the front page of one of these.

“Can I help you?” He looked around to the inquiry desk to find it now occupied by a dark-eyed woman in her mid-forties. There was a strand of hair failing over her eyes, which she nervously brushed back into place several times a minute.

Miller made his request: any trace of Olli Adler, who might have reported back to Munich after the war?

“Where would she have returned from?” asked the woman.

“From Magdeburg. Before that, Stutthof. Before that, from Riga.”

“Oh dear, Riga,” said the woman. “I don’t think we have anyone on the lists who came back here from Riga. They all disappeared, you know. But I’ll look.” She went into a back room, and Miller could see her going steadily through an index of names. It was not a big index. She returned after five minutes.

“I’m sorry. Nobody of that name reported back here after the war. It is a common name. But there is nobody listed.”

Miller nodded. “I see. That looks like it, then. Sorry to have troubled you.”

“You might try the International Tracing Service,” said the woman. “It’s really their job to find people who are missing. They have lists from all over Germany, whereas we only have the lists of those originating in Munich who came back.”

“Where is the Tracing Service?” asked Miller.

“It’s at Arolsen-in-Waldeck. That’s just outside Hanover, Lower Saxony. It’s run by the Red Cross, really.”

Miller thought for a minute. “Would there be anybody else left in Munich who was at Riga? The man I’m really trying to find is the former commandant.”

There was silence in the room. Miller sensed the man by the newspaper rack turn around to look at him. The woman seemed subdued.

“It might be possible there are a few left who were at Riga and now live in Munich. Before the war there were twenty-five thousand Jews in Munich.

About a tenth came back. Now we are about five thousand again, half of them children born since nineteen forty-five. I might find someone who was at Riga. But I’d have to go through the whole list of survivors. The camps they were in are marked against the names. Could you come back tomorrow?”

Miller thought for a moment, debating whether to give up and go home. The chase was getting pointless.

“Yes,” he said at length. “I’ll come back tomorrow. Thank you.” He was back in the street, reaching for his car keys, when he felt a step behind him.

“Excuse me,” said a voice. He turned. The man behind him was the one who had been reading the newspapers.