Mila 18 - Leon Uris [204]
“I don’t propose it, nor do I suggest it. I know it,” Horst said. “You will lead three hundred men into a massacre.”
“And I say they will flee and bury themselves at the sight of us. Jews won’t fight.”
“How unfortunate that you have become victimized by our own propaganda. Oh yes, I know. You have proof. We have translated our theories by acting out our superiority on helpless people. You’ll find another caliber of man left inside those walls.”
“Do you really believe that I would hesitate in the face of Jews?”
“When I was in the ministry in Berlin I spent week after week inventing and expounding the theories of Jewish cowardice, Alfred. The plain and simple fact of the matter is—we are liars.”
Funk’s entire face reacted with shock.
“I doubt if any warriors in the world were as furious in battle as the ancient Hebrews, nor did any people in man’s history fight harder for freedom. Not once, but many times, they made Rome totter. And since their dispersion, because they have not had the opportunity to fight under a Jewish flag, we have been able to isolate them into individual units and riddle them with inferiority complexes. German torment has taken these segregated masses and jelled them together as a people for the first time in two thousand years. We cannot measure their determination to acquit themselves, but we can make an educated guess that we’d better be damned careful from this point on.”
Funk sprang to his feet. “I will not listen to this anarchy. You defile the noble purposes of the Third Reich!”
“Oh, stop shouting, Alfred. I invented half the noble purposes of the Third Reich.” Horst walked to the window and drew the curtains apart. Across Krakow Boulevard and beyond the Saxony Gardens some of the ghetto roofs could be seen. “Who is left in that ghetto is the one man in a thousand in any age, in any culture, who through some mysterious workings of forces within his soul will stand in defiance against any master. He is that one human in a thousand whose indomitable spirit cannot bow. He is the one man in a thousand who will not walk quietly to the Umschlagplatz. Watch out for him, Alfred Funk. We have pushed him to the wall.”
Oberführer Funk became confused. Von Epp, one of the very creators of the Aryan myth, was ripping it apart. Suddenly it became clear to him. “I have been ordered by Himmler to have the ghetto liquidated, and that is what shall be done,” he snapped.
Horst flopped his arms to his side in disgust “Simple, eh? Orders are orders.”
“Naturally.”
“Alfred, you represent that confounding German idiocy which is unable to improvise from a fixed plan. Forget that orders are orders before you perform a monumental blunder.”
“You know, Horst I really should report your conversation to Himmler. I really should. What possible blunder can I make by fulfilling orders? Say that these noble creatures do fight. So what? We shall destroy them.”
“For a decade we have been preaching a gospel of Jewish cowardice. It is Nazi dogma. What happens if the Reinhard Corps is wiped out tomorrow in the ghetto? How shall we explain it to the world? Shall we say that Jews fight, after all? How would we look to those whom we have impressed as supermen to be forced even to admit that Jews were standing up against us?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Funk admitted.
“Suppose this defiance in the ghetto lasts a week ... ten days ...”
“Impossible.”
“But suppose it does. It could ignite rebellions all over Poland. ‘See,’ the Poles would say, ‘the Germans have lied to us. Let us take a crack at them too.’ Perhaps the Czechs and the Greeks may like to have a crack at superman hides. You invite insurrection.”
Funk sank to the seat, completely confused now. “Hitler will be out of his mind with rage,” he mumbled.
“Get back to Berlin immediately,” Horst said. “We must put across to them that this liquidation can be completed only if it can be carried out with no further armed conflict. We could invite a dangerous precedent, otherwise.