Daniel Silva - A Death in Vienna

“What will you tell your child about the war?”

What does he want to hear? What does he want me to say?

He squeezes my face. “Speak, Jew! What will you tell your child about the war?”

“The truth, Herr Sturmbannführer. I’ll tell my child the truth.”

Where these words come from, I do not know. I only know that if I am to die, I will die with a modicum of dignity. I think again of Regina, flying at Mengele armed with a spoon.

He relaxes his grip. The first crisis seems to have passed. He exhales heavily, as if exhausted by his long day of work, then removes a flask from the pocket of his greatcoat and takes a long pull. Thankfully, he does not offer me any. He returns the flask to his pocket and lights a cigarette. He does not offer me a cigarette. I have tobacco and liquor, he is telling me. You have nothing.

“The truth? What is the truth, Jew, as you see it?”

“Birkenau is the truth, Herr Sturmbannführer.”

“No, my dear, Birkenau is not the truth. Birkenau is a rumor. Birkenau is an invention by enemies of the Reich and Christianity. It is Stalinist, atheist propaganda.”

“What about the gas chambers? The crematoria?”

“These things did not exist at Birkenau.”

“I saw them, Herr Sturmbannführer. We all saw them.”

“No one is going to believe such a thing. No one is going to believe it’s possible to kill so many. Thousands? Surely, the death of thousands is possible. After all, this was war. Hundreds of thousands? Perhaps. But millions?” He draws on his cigarette. “To tell you the truth, I saw it with my own eyes, and even I cannot believe it.”

A shot crackles through the forest, then another. Two more girls gone. The Sturmbannführer takes another long pull at his flask of liquor. Why is he drinking? Is he trying to keep warm? Or is he steeling himself before he kills me?

“I’m going to tell you what you’re going to say about the war. You’re going to say that you were transferred to the east. That you had work. That you had plenty of food and proper medical care. That we treated you well and humanely.”

“If that is the truth, Herr Sturmbannführer, then why am I a skeleton?”

He has no answer, except to draw his pistol and place it against my temple.

“Recite to me what happened to you during the war, Jew. You were transferred to the east. You had plenty of food and proper medical care. The gas chambers and the crematoria are Bolshevik-Jewish inventions. Say those words, Jew.”

I know there is no escaping this situation with my life. Even if I say the words, I am dead. I will not say them. I will not give him the satisfaction. I close my eyes and wait for his bullet to carve a tunnel through my brain and release me from my torment.

He lowers the gun and calls out. Another SS man comes running. The Sturmbannführer orders him to stand guard over me. He leaves and walks back through the trees to the road. When he returns, he is accompanied by two women. One is Rachel. The other is Lene. He orders the SS man to leave, then places the gun to Lene’s forehead. Lene looks directly into my eyes. Her life is in my hands.

“Say the words, Jew! You were transferred to the east. You had plenty of food and proper medical care. The gas chambers and the crematoria are Bolshevik-Jewish lies.”

I cannot allow Lene to be killed by my silence. I open my mouth to speak, but before I can recite the words, Rachel shouts, “Don’t say it, Irene. He’s going to kill us anyway. Don’t give him the pleasure.”

The Sturmbannführer removes the gun from Lene’s head and places it against Rachel’s. “You say it, Jewish bitch.”

Rachel looks him directly in the eye and remains silent.

The Sturmbannführer pulls his trigger, and Rachel falls dead into the snow. He places the gun against Lene’s head, and once again commands me to speak. Lene slowly shakes her head. We say goodbye with our eyes. Another shot, and Lene falls next to Rachel.

It is my turn to die.

The Sturmbannführer points the gun at me. From the road comes the sound of shouting.Raus! Raus! The SS are prodding the girls to their feet. I know my walk is over. I know I am not leaving this place with my life. This is where I will fall, at the side of a Polish road, and here I will be buried, with nomazevoth to mark my grave.

“What will you tell your child about the war, Jew?”

“The truth, Herr Sturmbannführer. I’ll tell my child the truth.”

“No one will believe you.” He holsters his pistol. “Your column is leaving. You should join them. You know what happens to those who fall behind.”

He mounts his horse and jerks on the reins. I collapse in the snow next to the bodies of my two friends. I pray for them and beg their forgiveness. The end of the column passes by. I stagger out of the trees and fall into place. We walk that entire night, in neat rows of five. I shed tears of ice.

Five days after walking out of Birkenau, we come to a train station in the Silesian village of Wodzislaw. We are herded onto open coal cars and travel through the night, exposed to the vicious January weather. The Germans had no need to waste any more of their precious ammunition on us. The cold kills half of the girls on my car alone.

We arrive at a new camp, Ravensbrück, but there is not enough food for the new prisoners. After a few days, some of us move on, this time by flatbed truck. I end my odyssey in a camp in Neüstadt Glewe. On May 2, 1945, we wake to discover that our SS tormentors have fled the camp. Later that day, we are liberated by American and Russian soldiers.

It has been twelve years. Not a day passes that I don’t see the faces of Rachel and Lene-and the face of the man who murdered them. Their deaths weigh heavily upon me. Had I recited the Sturmbannführer’s words, perhaps they would be alive and I would be lying in an unmarked grave next to a Polish road, just another nameless victim. On the anniversary of their murders, I say mourner’s Kaddish for them. I do this out of habit but not faith. I lost my faith in God in Birkenau.

My name is Irene Allon. I used to be called Irene Frankel. In the camp I was known as prisoner number 29395, and this is what I witnessed in January 1945, on the death march from Birkenau.

IT WAS SHABBAT. Shamron ordered Gabriel to come to Tiberias for supper. As Gabriel drove slowly along the steeply sloped drive, he looked up at Shamron’s terrace and saw gaslights dancing in the wind from the lake-and then he glimpsed Shamron, the eternal sentinel, pacing slowly amid the flames. Gilah, before serving them food, lit a pair of candles in the dining room and recited the blessing. Gabriel had been raised in a home without religion, but at that moment he thought the sight of Shamron’s wife, her eyes closed, her hands drawing the candlelight toward her face, was the most beautiful he’d ever seen.

Shamron was withdrawn and preoccupied during the meal and in no mood for small talk. Even now he would not speak of his work in front of Gilah, not because he didn’t trust her, but because he feared she would stop loving him if she knew all the things he had done. Gilah filled the long silences by talking about her daughter, who’d moved to New Zealand to get away from her father and was living with a man on a chicken farm. She knew Gabriel was somehow linked to the Office but suspected nothing of the true nature of his work. She thought him a clerk of some sort who spent a great deal of time abroad and enjoyed art.

She served them coffee and a tray of cookies and dried fruit, then cleared the table and saw to the dishes. Gabriel, over the sound of running water and clinking china emanating from the kitchen, brought Shamron up to date. They spoke in low voices, with the Shabbat candles flickering between them. Gabriel showed him the files on Erich Radek andAktion 1005. Shamron held the photograph up to the candlelight and squinted, then pushed his reading glasses onto his bald head and settled his hard gaze on Gabriel once more.