For the first time in his life, Eichmann had real power. Whatever he had said to his superiors upon his return from Egypt had obviously made an impression.
We only spoke for a minute or two before he stepped into the back of a staff car and drove away. I remember thinking, there goes the most Jewish-looking man who ever wore an SS uniform.
After the war, whenever I saw his name appear in a newspaper, that was always how I thought of him. The most Jewish-looking man who ever wore an SS uniform.
There’s one more thing I always remembered about him. It was something he told me on the boat from Alexandria. When he wasn’t being seasick. It was something of which Eichmann was very proud. When he lived in Linz, as a boy, Eichmann had gone to the same school as Adolf Hitler. Maybe it explains something of what he was to become. I don’t know.
ONE
Munich 1949
W e were just a stone’s throw from what had once been the concentration camp. But when we were handing out directions, we tended not to mention that, unless it was absolutely necessary. The hotel, on the east side of the medieval town of Dachau, was down a cobbled, poplar-lined side road, separated from the former KZ—now a residential settlement camp for German and Czech refugees from the communists—by the Würm River canal. It was a half-timbered affair, a three-story suburban villa with a steep saddle roof made of orange tiles, and a wraparound first-floor balcony overflowing with red geraniums. It was the kind of place that had seen better days. Since the Nazis and then the German prisoners of war had left Dachau, nobody came to the hotel anymore, except perhaps the odd construction engineer helping to supervise the partial erasure of a KZ where, for several very unpleasant weeks in the summer of 1936, I myself had been an inmate. The elected representatives of the Bavarian people saw no need to preserve the remnants of the camp for present or future visitors. Most residents of the town, including myself, were of the opinion, however, that the camp presented the only opportunity for bringing money into Dachau. But there was little chance of that happening so long as the memorial temple remained unbuilt and a mass grave, where more than five thousand were buried, unmarked. The visitors stayed away, and despite my efforts with the geraniums, the hotel began to die. So when a new two-door Buick Roadmaster pulled up on our little brick driveway, I told myself that the two men were most probably lost and had stopped to ask directions to the U.S. Third Army barracks, although it was hard to see how they could have missed the place.
The driver stepped out of the Buick, stretched like a child, and looked up at the sky as if he was surprised that birds could be heard singing in a place like Dachau. I often had the same thought myself. The passenger stayed in his seat, staring straight ahead, and probably wishing he was somewhere else. He had my sympathies, and possessed of the shiny green sedan, I would certainly have kept on driving. Neither man was wearing a uniform but the driver was altogether better dressed than his passenger. Better dressed, better fed, and in rather better health, or so it seemed to me. He tap-danced up the stone steps and through the front door like he owned the place, and I found myself nodding politely at the hatless, tanned, bespectacled man with a face like a chess grandmaster who had considered every possible move. He didn’t look lost at all.
“Are you the owner?” he asked as soon as he came through the door, without making much of an effort at a good German accent and without even looking at me while he awaited an answer. He glanced idly around at the hotel decor which was supposed to make the place feel more homey, but only if you roomed with a milkmaid. There were cowbells, spinning wheels, hemp combs, rakes, sharpening stones, and a big wooden barrel on top of which lay a two-day-old Süddeutsche Zeitung and a truly
We only spoke for a minute or two before he stepped into the back of a staff car and drove away. I remember thinking, there goes the most Jewish-looking man who ever wore an SS uniform.
After the war, whenever I saw his name appear in a newspaper, that was always how I thought of him. The most Jewish-looking man who ever wore an SS uniform.
There’s one more thing I always remembered about him. It was something he told me on the boat from Alexandria. When he wasn’t being seasick. It was something of which Eichmann was very proud. When he lived in Linz, as a boy, Eichmann had gone to the same school as Adolf Hitler. Maybe it explains something of what he was to become. I don’t know.
ONE
Munich 1949
W e were just a stone’s throw from what had once been the concentration camp. But when we were handing out directions, we tended not to mention that, unless it was absolutely necessary. The hotel, on the east side of the medieval town of Dachau, was down a cobbled, poplar-lined side road, separated from the former KZ—now a residential settlement camp for German and Czech refugees from the communists—by the Würm River canal. It was a half-timbered affair, a three-story suburban villa with a steep saddle roof made of orange tiles, and a wraparound first-floor balcony overflowing with red geraniums. It was the kind of place that had seen better days. Since the Nazis and then the German prisoners of war had left Dachau, nobody came to the hotel anymore, except perhaps the odd construction engineer helping to supervise the partial erasure of a KZ where, for several very unpleasant weeks in the summer of 1936, I myself had been an inmate. The elected representatives of the Bavarian people saw no need to preserve the remnants of the camp for present or future visitors. Most residents of the town, including myself, were of the opinion, however, that the camp presented the only opportunity for bringing money into Dachau. But there was little chance of that happening so long as the memorial temple remained unbuilt and a mass grave, where more than five thousand were buried, unmarked. The visitors stayed away, and despite my efforts with the geraniums, the hotel began to die. So when a new two-door Buick Roadmaster pulled up on our little brick driveway, I told myself that the two men were most probably lost and had stopped to ask directions to the U.S. Third Army barracks, although it was hard to see how they could have missed the place.
The driver stepped out of the Buick, stretched like a child, and looked up at the sky as if he was surprised that birds could be heard singing in a place like Dachau. I often had the same thought myself. The passenger stayed in his seat, staring straight ahead, and probably wishing he was somewhere else. He had my sympathies, and possessed of the shiny green sedan, I would certainly have kept on driving. Neither man was wearing a uniform but the driver was altogether better dressed than his passenger. Better dressed, better fed, and in rather better health, or so it seemed to me. He tap-danced up the stone steps and through the front door like he owned the place, and I found myself nodding politely at the hatless, tanned, bespectacled man with a face like a chess grandmaster who had considered every possible move. He didn’t look lost at all.
“Are you the owner?” he asked as soon as he came through the door, without making much of an effort at a good German accent and without even looking at me while he awaited an answer. He glanced idly around at the hotel decor which was supposed to make the place feel more homey, but only if you roomed with a milkmaid. There were cowbells, spinning wheels, hemp combs, rakes, sharpening stones, and a big wooden barrel on top of which lay a two-day-old Süddeutsche Zeitung and a truly
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