Mila 18 - Leon Uris [192]
They came to their feet sharply.
“Heil Hitler.”
“Heil Hitler.”
“Herr Sauer ... a moment please.”
The Gestapo chief returned to his seat. Horst von Epp also remained. When the others were gone, Funk turned to Sauer.
“On this matter of the archives in the ghetto of which I spoke to you on my last visit. What have you been able to ascertain?”
“Not too much. The Jews protect these historians with an uncommon devotion. Not even their Militia will inform on them. Fear of retribution, I suppose.”
“What’s this about?” Horst asked.
“The Jewish mania for diaries. We have unearthed thousands of them in reservations around Poland and particularly in the special-treatment camps. We have long been aware of an entire organization here writing records.”
Well, well! Horst thought.
“We cannot proceed with the final liquidation of the ghetto until these records have been found,” Funk continued. “Hitler himself gave me specific instructions to see that these Jew lies are found. We cannot permit their distortions to be published.”
Sauer was unmoved by Funk’s double talk. The general sensed it. “Isn’t it enough,” Funk pressed, raising his voice to a sharper pitch, “that this filthy pack of lies about our labor camps was smuggled out of Poland?”
“Perhaps,” Sauer said softly, “the Führer should take the matter up with our Italian friends to learn how this was done.”
“It is the job of the Gestapo to learn these things and stop them before the crime is committed.”
Horst became fascinated at the sudden sharpness of argument. Someone had to give.
“We want positive information on these ghetto archives,” Funk snapped.
“Certain people,” Sauer answered, “were in such a hurry to cover their business transactions, they did away with the Big Seven prematurely and in a single fell swoop destroyed my entire system of informers.” The implication was obvious. Half of Warsaw’s Nazis wanted Max Kleperman’s lips sealed.
The policeman rubbed his eyes and meditated, speaking as if to himself. “If anyone in the ghetto knows about these papers it would be Alexander Brandel, but he has not been seen all winter. We know there is a bunker under Mila 19. We have not been able to determine the entrance.”
Funk, anxious to oversimplify the matter and get rid of Sauer, whom he could not bully, made an abrupt decision. “I shall have Stutze find this Brandel immediately. Then we can proceed with the liquidation of the ghetto.”
Later that evening Horst walked down two flights in the Bristol Hotel to where a brace of SS guards flanked the door leading to Alfred Funk’s suite. Funk’s orderly let him in.
“The Oberführer is taking a bath,” the orderly Said. He mixed a drink for Von Epp and disappeared into the bedroom.
Funk bathing again. Funk bathed before and after all conferences. Some days he took five or six baths. Often, when a good party was moving into its second stages and the women were getting deliriously vile, Funk would excuse himself and run off to a shower.
Reading the Jew Freud was legally banned, but Horst had brought several volumes to Warsaw nevertheless. Freud’s interpretations afforded him a never-ending, amusing list of clues to the strange behavior of his Nazi cohorts. Alfred Funk’s mania for cleanliness, he concluded, was an unconscious effort to wash his soiled soul with soap. However, the ersatz soap was of a very poor quality these days.
Horst reflected on the bizarre reactions at the earlier conference. He had attended many conferences at long polished tables where Funk and other Nazis announced dogma and sent everyone on his merry way with crisp “Heil Hitlers.” But today there was a roomful of unusual performances. The first cracks. The minute trace of doubt and fear.
Rudolph Schreiker loosened with a dozen audible sighs of relief that the ghetto was to be liquidated.
One could see the wheels of Koenig’s mind spinning to shift his fortune to Argentina, which alone showed a friendship for the Nazis.
Stutze was afraid to execute the final liquidation. In a moment he showed outright cowardice.
Sauer. A fine