Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [38]
Chapter Eighteen
THE MARCH MACABRE LASTED for the entire day. The line of grumbling shufflers stretched from the pontoon bridge for six miles along the road to the forest. Graf Ludwig Von Romstein, Baron Sigmund, and Father Gottfried led them. In the opposite direction truckloads of half-dead inmates were raced out of Schwabenwald to the cathedral. The marchers turned their eyes away. At Ludwigsdorf the villagers of the district joined those from Rombaden, and together they walked, the stench growing stronger.
They saw it all. Most of them looked on in silence. Some fainted, some vomited, a few wept. The mothers, indeed, held their hands over the eyes of their children.
And when it was over they clutched their food-ration certificates in sweaty hands and stumbled back to Rombaden.
“I am old. I had nothing to do with it. Why did they make me see it?”
“Hitler brought us to this.”
“It was Hitler’s fault. Hitler and the crazy Nazis.”
“We did not know.”
“Hitler’s fault.”
“We did not know.”
“We did not know.”
“We did not know. How could we know?” asked Herr Himmelfarb, the district recorder.
Sean and Dante Arosa glared at the bureaucrat coldly.
“You must believe me,” he repeated.
“Himmelfarb. How long have you been the Landkreis recorder?”
“Since 1924,” he said proudly. “January 4, 1924.”
Dante lifted a huge ledger and handed it to him. “What is this?”
“Death records of Schwabenwald.”
“They were found in the basement.”
“Ja. I put them there for safekeeping.”
Dante took the ledger back and opened the cover. “This is your handwriting?”
“Ja.”
“Your entries?”
“Ja.”
“Herr Himmelfarb. We have fourteen more ledgers like this one.”
“Thank goodness. I thought they might have been lost.”
“Recording 116,000 death certificates issued from Schawabenwald Concentration Camp.”
“Ja. That would be correct. Fifteen ledgers, 116,000 deaths recorded.”
“Of these, 110,000 are listed as either heart failure or natural causes.”
“Ja.”
“What is meant by ‘natural causes’?”
“I have no idea,” Himmelfarb answered.
“Did it ever occur to you that there was something strange about being handed a thousand death certificates because of heart failure in a given week?”
“I had no thoughts about it one way or the other. My job is merely to see if the certificate is legal and then record it.”
“It never entered your mind that mass murder was being committed?”
“I beg of you, Lieutenant. I am a mere civil servant I do not have opinions. My duty is to keep records and that is all I do. Just keep records.”
“Herr Himmelfarb!” Dante shouted with rising wrath, “were you a member of the Nazi Party?”
“Ja. I was a member. Please remember that my position was nonpolitical. Strictly nonpolitical.”
“You wore a uniform?”
“Ja.”
“With swastikas on it?”
“Ja.”
“You attended Nazi Party meetings?”
“Ja, of course.”
“Nazi rallies?”
“But we all had to attend meetings and rallies. Even on my day off I had to attend whether I wanted to or not.”
“Did you want to?”
“Never!”
“But you did attend them.”
“What choice did I have? Look, Lieutenant, I had very good Jewish friends, even.”
“What happened to them?”
“I don’t know. They disappeared.”
“Did you ever inquire what happened to them?”
“One did not do that.”
“Did you offer them help before they disappeared?”
“It was too dangerous, but I felt very badly when they were taken away.”
“But you were a party member, right?”
“Don’t you understand, Lieutenant? I joined the Nazi Party for only one reason ... to keep my position.”
Dante had reached the boiling point. Sean held up his hand. “Save your breath, Dante. O’Toole!”
The orderly tumbled into the office.
“Lock him up.”
Dante flung up his hands in frustration. “How many have we talked to today? Twenty? Thirty? None of them say, it was my fault. None of them say ... forgive me. ‘I joined the party to save my job.’ ‘I had a good friend who was a