David Albahari - Götz and Meyer

Believing they were being taken to a better camp, Belgrade’s Jews would climb into the truck with a sense of relief. Mainly women, children and the elderly, they expected a long and uncomfortable trip but, after crossing the river, their journey would come to an abrupt end. Here the drivers would get out and attach a hose from the exhaust to the back of the truck …

In 1942 the Nazis systematically exterminated the majority of Serbia’s Jews using carbon monoxide and specially designed trucks.

The only information the narrator of this bleakly comic novel could find about the summer when his relatives disappeared is the names of the truck drivers: Götz and Meyer. During his research he becomes fascinated by the unknowable characters and daily lives of these men. But his imagination proves a dangerous force, and his obsession with the past threatens to overwhelm him.

David Albahari was born in Serbia in 1948 and lives in Calgary, Canada. He founded, and was for many years the editor-in-chief of Pismo , a magazine of world literature. He is also an accomplished translator of English and American literature.

Ellen Elias-Bursać is both a literary translator and a South Slavic scholar with degrees from Macalester College and Zagreb University. She teaches Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian at Harvard University.

GÖTZ AND MEYER. Having never seen them, I can only imagine them. In twosomes like theirs, one is usually taller, the other shorter, but since both were SS non-commissioned officers, it is easy to imagine that both were tall, perhaps the same height. I am assuming that the standards for acceptance into the SS were rigorous, below a certain height you most certainly would not qualify. One of the two, or so witnesses claim, came into the camp, played with the children, picked them up, even gave them chocolates. We need so little to imagine another world, don’t we? But Götz, or Meyer, then went off to his truck and got ready for another trip. The distances were not long, but Götz, or Meyer, was looking forward to the breeze that would play through the open truck window. As he walked towards the truck, the children returned, radiant, to their mothers. Götz and Meyer were probably not novices at the job. Though the assignment was not a big one — we are talking of no more than five thousand souls — the efficiency required meant that only trusted colleagues could handle it. It is entirely possible that Götz and Meyer wore decorations of some sort on their non-commissioned officers’ lapels. I wouldn’t be surprised. I’d be more surprised if one of them had a moustache. I cannot picture Götz, or Meyer, with facial hair. In fact, I cannot picture them at all. The moustaches are no help. It is simplest, of course, to fall back on stereotypes — blond hair, fair complexion, pale face and steely eyes — but I would only be demonstrating my vulnerability to propaganda. The chosen race had barely got off the ground, Götz and Meyer represented only one link in a chain stretching far into the future. But what a link they were! Sometimes it is precisely the little tasks such as theirs that form the cornerstone of a vast edifice; their sturdiness ensures the stability of the foundations. I am not saying that Götz and Meyer dwelt on this — perhaps they merely did their job conscientiously as they might have done any other — but they did, undoubtedly, know what their work was for. Their job, more precisely, that was how they referred to it, their assignment, their order, their command. Military terminology cannot be avoided here. Götz and Meyer were, after all, members of the army, one cannot doubt their loyalty to the Reich and the Führer. Even as they came into the camp, swung children up off the ground, Götz, or maybe it was Meyer, never thought for a moment of what was to come. Everything fitted, after all, into a larger plan, each individual has his own destiny, no-one, least of all Götz, or Meyer, could change that. He was with the children, therefore, only while he was with them. As soon as he’d ruffled the last tousled head, given out the last sweet, lowered the last pair of little feet onto solid ground, they faded from his thoughts and he retreated into his fantasies. Götz, or Meyer, had always wanted to be a fighter pilot. I have no proof whatsoever that this was what he dreamed of, but I find the thought appealing that he’d step up into the cab of his truck as if sliding into the cockpit of a bomber, wearing a leather jacket, but not a pilot’s cap because that would have been a little awkward with his fellow traveller sitting there. The truck was a Saurer, a five-tonner with a box-like body, 1.7 metres high and 5.8 metres long, and it could be hermetically sealed. At first, the Gestapo used smaller trucks, but the Belgrade Saurer was part of a second series, a more perfect series: a full hundred people could stand in the back, apparently, according to what witnesses tell us. One can run a simple calculation based on that and conclude that it was essential for the transport of five thousand souls to make at least fifty trips. During these trips, the souls became real souls, no longer human in form. Götz and Meyer most certainly knew what was happening in the back of the truck, but they definitely would never have described it like that. After all, the people they were driving had no souls, that, at least, was a commonly known fact! Jews were nothing more than mildew on the face of the world! And so, day in and day out, they repeat their practised routine. First Götz, or Meyer, would drive the truck to the gateway of the camp, and then Meyer, or Götz, would open its capacious back. Orderly and calm, the prisoners would climb up into the truck: women, children, a few of the elderly. Beforehand they would place their belongings in another truck, parked within the confines of the camp. They were convinced that the moment had finally come for them to be transported to Romania, though there had been talk of Poland, as if that mattered, what mattered was that they were leaving this gruesome place, no matter where they went from here it couldn’t be worse, and a flash of relief would have crossed their faces. I don’t know where Götz and Meyer were at those moments. It is entirely possible that they were sitting in the truck, or maybe there were administrative chores to do, the signing of orders, the filling out of forms. Whatever the case, when they finally got underway — a guard, a German, would come over, take the paperwork from them, confirm that the loading was finished — when they got underway, everything proceeded according to a precise schedule. And it could be no other way, since the bridge spanning the Sava River had been damaged and traffic was crossing it in alternating directions, using just one lane. The truck had to get there at precisely the moment when the Belgrade lane opened. They’d cross the border without stopping, they had a special permit and special plates, and the camp commander would escort them in a special car. Once they’d crossed the bridge and covered a little distance, they’d pull over, and Götz, or Meyer, would get out, crawl under the Saurer and hook the exhaust pipe up to an opening on the underside of the truck. After that, Götz and Meyer no longer had anything to do but drive, of course. The truck with the belongings had left them behind long before. The souls in the back of the truck had not. They would fly off all at once, precisely when the truck arrived at its destination. The door at the back would open, the corpses would tumble out, the German soldiers would look away, and Serbian prisoners would start the unloading. This was a group of seven prisoners who had been specially selected for the work.