her there. I learned that she had been freed from a concentration camp in springtime, about four months before—and had since eluded every agency that might have liked to help her. She should by now have been in a hospital for displaced persons. She was uninterested in ever trusting anybody with her destiny anymore. Her plan was to roam alone and out-of-doors forever, from nowhere to nowhere in a demented sort of religious ecstasy. “No one ever touches me,” she said, “and I never touch anyone. I am like a bird in flight. It is so beautiful. There is only God—and me.”
I thought this of her: that she resembled gentle Ophelia in
Hamlet
, who became fey and lyrical when life was too cruel to bear. I have a copy of
Hamlet
at hand, and refresh my memory as to the nonsense Ophelia sang when she would no longer respond intelligently to those who asked how she was.
This was the song:
How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff
,
And his sandal shoon
.
He is dead and gone, lady
,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf
,
At his heels a stone—
And on and on.
Ruth, one of millions of Europe’s Ophelias after the Second World War, fainted in my motorcar.
I took her to a twenty-bed hospital in the
Kaiserburg
, the imperial castle, which wasn’t even officially operating yet. It was being set up exclusively for persons associated with the War Crimes Trials. The head of it was a Harvard classmate of mine, Dr. Ben Shapiro, who had also been a communist in student days. He was now a lieutenant colonel in the Army Medical Corps. Jews were not numerous at Harvard in my day. There was a strict quota, and a low one, as to how many Jews were let in each year.
“What have we here, Walter?” he said to me in Nuremberg. I was carrying the unconscious Ruth in my arms. She weighed no more than a handkerchief. “It’s a girl,” I said. “She’s breathing. She speaks many languages. She fainted. That’s all I know.”
He had an idle staff of nurses, cooks, technicians, and so on, and the finest food and medicines that the Army could give him, since he was likely to have high-ranking persons for patients by and by. So Ruth received, and for nothing, the finest care available on the planet. Why? Mostly because, I think, Shapiro and I were both Harvard men.
One year later, more or less, on October fifteenth of Nineteen-hundred and Forty-six, Ruth would become my wife. The War Crimes Trials were over. On the day we were married, and probably conceived our only child as well,
Reichsmarschall
Hermann Göring cheated the hangman by swallowing cyanide.
It was vitamins and minerals and protein and, of course, tender, loving care, that made all the difference to Ruth. After only three weeks in the hospital she was a sane and witty Viennese intellectual. I hired her as my personal interpreter and took her everywhere with me. Through another Harvard acquaintance, a shady colonel in the Quartermaster Corps in Wiesbaden—a black marketeer, I’m sure—I was able to get her a suitable wardrobe, for which, mysteriously, I was never asked to pay anyone. The woolens were from Scotland, the cottons from Egypt—the silks from China, I suppose. The shoes were French—and prewar. One pair, I remember, was alligator, and came with a bag to match. The goods were priceless, since no store in Europe, or in North America, for that matter, had offered anything like them for years. The sizes, moreover, were exactly right for Ruth. These blackmarket treasures were delivered to my office in cartons claiming to contain mimeograph paper belonging to the Royal Canadian Air Force. Two taciturn young male citizens delivered them in what had once been a
Wehrmacht
ambulance. Ruth guessed that one was Belgian and the other, like my mother, Lithuanian.
My accepting those goods was surely my most corruptact as a public servant, and my
only
corrupt act—until Watergate. I did it for love.
I began to speak to
I thought this of her: that she resembled gentle Ophelia in
Hamlet
, who became fey and lyrical when life was too cruel to bear. I have a copy of
Hamlet
at hand, and refresh my memory as to the nonsense Ophelia sang when she would no longer respond intelligently to those who asked how she was.
This was the song:
How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff
,
And his sandal shoon
.
He is dead and gone, lady
,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf
,
At his heels a stone—
And on and on.
Ruth, one of millions of Europe’s Ophelias after the Second World War, fainted in my motorcar.
I took her to a twenty-bed hospital in the
Kaiserburg
, the imperial castle, which wasn’t even officially operating yet. It was being set up exclusively for persons associated with the War Crimes Trials. The head of it was a Harvard classmate of mine, Dr. Ben Shapiro, who had also been a communist in student days. He was now a lieutenant colonel in the Army Medical Corps. Jews were not numerous at Harvard in my day. There was a strict quota, and a low one, as to how many Jews were let in each year.
“What have we here, Walter?” he said to me in Nuremberg. I was carrying the unconscious Ruth in my arms. She weighed no more than a handkerchief. “It’s a girl,” I said. “She’s breathing. She speaks many languages. She fainted. That’s all I know.”
He had an idle staff of nurses, cooks, technicians, and so on, and the finest food and medicines that the Army could give him, since he was likely to have high-ranking persons for patients by and by. So Ruth received, and for nothing, the finest care available on the planet. Why? Mostly because, I think, Shapiro and I were both Harvard men.
One year later, more or less, on October fifteenth of Nineteen-hundred and Forty-six, Ruth would become my wife. The War Crimes Trials were over. On the day we were married, and probably conceived our only child as well,
Reichsmarschall
Hermann Göring cheated the hangman by swallowing cyanide.
It was vitamins and minerals and protein and, of course, tender, loving care, that made all the difference to Ruth. After only three weeks in the hospital she was a sane and witty Viennese intellectual. I hired her as my personal interpreter and took her everywhere with me. Through another Harvard acquaintance, a shady colonel in the Quartermaster Corps in Wiesbaden—a black marketeer, I’m sure—I was able to get her a suitable wardrobe, for which, mysteriously, I was never asked to pay anyone. The woolens were from Scotland, the cottons from Egypt—the silks from China, I suppose. The shoes were French—and prewar. One pair, I remember, was alligator, and came with a bag to match. The goods were priceless, since no store in Europe, or in North America, for that matter, had offered anything like them for years. The sizes, moreover, were exactly right for Ruth. These blackmarket treasures were delivered to my office in cartons claiming to contain mimeograph paper belonging to the Royal Canadian Air Force. Two taciturn young male citizens delivered them in what had once been a
Wehrmacht
ambulance. Ruth guessed that one was Belgian and the other, like my mother, Lithuanian.
My accepting those goods was surely my most corruptact as a public servant, and my
only
corrupt act—until Watergate. I did it for love.
I began to speak to
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