The Kindly Ones

One morning, Janssen suggested I come witness an action. That had to happen sooner or later, I knew it and had thought about it. I can in all honesty say that I had doubts about our methods: I had trouble grasping their logic. I had talked with Jewish prisoners; they told me that for them, bad things had always come from the East, and good ones, from the West; in 1918 they had welcomed our troops as liberators, saviors; those troops had behaved very humanely; after their departure, Petliura’s Ukrainians had returned to massacre them. As for Bolshevik power, it starved the people. Now, we were killing them. And undeniably, we were killing a lot of people. That seemed atrocious to me, even if it was inevitable and necessary. But one has to confront atrocity; one must always be ready to look inevitability and necessity in the face, and accept the consequences that result from them; closing your eyes is never an answer. I accepted Janssen’s offer. The action was commanded by Untersturmführer Nagel, his adjunct; I left Tsviahel with him. It had rained the night before but the road was still good; we traveled slowly between two high walls of green streaming with light, which hid the fields from us. The village, I’ve forgotten its name, was on the edge of a wide river, a few miles beyond the old Soviet border; it was a mixed hamlet, the Galician peasants lived to one side, the Jews to the other. At our arrival I found the cordons already deployed. Nagel had pointed to a wood behind the hamlet: “That’s where it happens.” He seemed nervous, hesitant; he too had probably never killed anyone yet. On the main square, our Askaris were gathering the Jews, men of advanced age, adolescents; they took them in little groups from the Jewish alleyways, sometimes striking them, then they forced them to crouch down, guarded by a few Orpos. Some Germans were accompanying them too; one of them, Gnauk, was lashing the Jews with a horsewhip to push them on. But apart from the shouting everything seemed relatively calm, well ordered. There weren’t any spectators; from time to time, a child appeared in the corner of the square, looked at the squatting Jews, then went away. “We need another half hour, I think,” Nagel said.—“Can I look round?” I asked him.—“Yes, of course. But take your orderly with you.” That’s what he called Popp, who ever since Lemberg was always with me and prepared my quarters and my coffee, polished my boots, and washed my uniforms; not that I had asked him for anything. I headed toward the little Galician farms, in the direction of the river, with Popp following a few steps behind, rifle on his shoulder. The houses were long and low; the doors remained obstinately closed; I didn’t see anyone at the windows. In front of a wooden gate coarsely painted pale blue, about thirty geese were noisily cackling, waiting to go back in. I went past the last houses and down to the river, but the bank grew swampy, I climbed back up a little; farther on, I caught sight of the woods. The air resounded with the throbbing, obsessive croaking of frogs mating. Farther up, threading their way between soaked fields where pools of water reflected the sun, a dozen white geese were walking in a line, fat and proud, followed by a frightened calf. I had already had a chance to visit some villages in the Ukraine: they seemed much poorer and more miserable than this one; Oberländer would be disappointed to see his theories demolished. I turned back. In front of the blue gate, the geese were still waiting, watching a weeping cow, its eyes swarming with clusters of flies. In the square, the Askaris were making the Jews get into trucks, shouting and whipping them, though the Jews were not resisting. Two Ukrainians, in front of me, were dragging an old man with a wooden leg; his prosthesis came off and they threw him unceremoniously into the truck. Nagel had walked away; I caught hold of one of the Askaris and pointed to the wooden leg: “Put that with him in the truck.” The Ukrainian shrugged, picked up the leg, and tossed it in after the old man. About thirty Jews could be crammed into each truck; there must have been 150 in all, but we only had three trucks, so it would take two trips. When the trucks were full, Nagel motioned me to get into the Opel and headed toward the wood, followed by the trucks. At the edge, the cordon was already in place. The trucks were unloaded, then Nagel gave the order to pick the Jews who would go and dig; the others would wait there. A Hauptscharführer made the selection, and shovels were handed out; Nagel formed an escort and the group disappeared into the wood. The trucks had already left. I looked at the Jews: the ones closest to me looked pale, but calm. Nagel approached and bawled at me sharply, pointing to the Jews: “It’s necessary, you understand? Human suffering mustn’t count for anything in all this.”—“Yes, but still it does count for something.” This was what I couldn’t manage to grasp: the yawning gap, the absolute contradiction between the ease with which one can kill and the huge difficulty there must be in dying. For us, it was another dirty day’s work; for them, the end of everything.