The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man_ A Norman De Ratour Mystery - Alfred Alcorn [88]
“But the Holocaust,” I said, my answering anger making me stumble over the words.
“The Holocaust.” The man laughed, a laugh I can still hear. Then serious, boring in again. “The Holocaust was Hitler’s masterstroke. With the Holocaust he made himself immortal. Look around you, Norman. His monuments are everywhere. Every time the Jews put up another memorial or try to get the Gentiles to acknowledge their suffering, they honor Hitler’s achievement.”
I took my napkin off my lap and put it on the table preparatory to rising. “Who are you?” I asked.
He ignored my question. “Think about it, Norman. Think of those he killed. The Jews. Stalin killed more people, many more. Stalin had them shot. He had them worked and starved and frozen to death. But who did he kill? Kulaks. For Christ’s sake. Peasants with a couple of cows. A few intellectuals. Poets. Bureaucrats. Do you think if Hitler had killed twenty million Chinese anyone would care? Mao killed many more than that. No, Hitler killed Jews. The best and the brightest, no?”
I was reduced to shaking my head.
His eyes, cold and mocking in his inflamed face, bore into mine. “They wanted, my friend, to be chosen. Hitler chose them.”
“I am not your friend.”
“As you please. I regret to upset you.”
But he clearly didn’t. He was leaning even farther across the table, his voice a loud whisper. “Do you know what every Jew fears deep in his heart?”
“People like you.”
“No, no, I am not jesting. They fear, my friend, deep in their hearts, that Hitler was right.”
“That kind of fear is only human,” I replied with some fervor. “Most people know in their hearts that Hitler was wrong.”
“Don’t be so sure, Mr. de Ratour. You would like to think, wouldn’t you, that you would never have joined the Schutzstaffel, that you and those you know would be incapable of such a thing. But under different circumstances, in different times … People who thought of themselves as decent and law abiding and progressive joined the Nazi Party. The same kind of people joined the Communist Party …”
Incredibly, he laughed. “They both got more than they bargained for, didn’t they? They got right up to their noses in the blood of others. And when the party was over and the fingers started pointing, they scuttled for cover like cockroaches.” Then he turned serious. “But my father never did. He never hid what he was.”
“Diantha, I think you should come along with me now.”
“You see, Norman, what we really don’t want to admit to ourselves is that evil can be fun. Think of all those films that have Nazis and ex-Nazis in them. That shiver of excitement when the swastika fills the screen.”
“Hitler is dead.”
“Then why do we have to keep killing him?”
I coughed to clear my throat. “I’m finding this conversation more than distasteful.” I stood up to leave.
He rose to his feet as well. “You’re running away, Norman. You’re running away from yourself.”
“You are not I.”
“Do not be so sure, Norman.” He made my name sounded like a mockery. He stood up as well and leaned across the table. “Tell me, are you a Christian?”
“I’m an Episcopalian,” I responded, not sure I had answered his question.
“Yes. Then tell me, sir, where was your Episcopalian God when the trains pulled into Treblinka? Where was He when Stalin and Kaganovich, a Jew, by the way, deliberately starved to death six or seven million people in Ukraine? Where was He when the machine guns of the special units overheated at Babi Yar? Where was your Episcopalian God when Stalin worked and starved and froze to death those millions in the mines of Magadan? Where was He when Pol Pot murdered a quarter of his countrymen? When the Hutus sharpened their pangas and hacked to death half a million Tutsis? Tell me, sir, where was your almighty Episcopalian God then?”
Had I only heard the man’s voice it might have sounded