The Commandant of Lubizec: A Novel of the Holocaust and Operation Reinhard (16 page)

“What do you do?” she asked while sipping a martini.

“Reich’s business.”

“
What
, though?”

A slow smile. “Reich’s business.”

They kept on talking until he kissed her wrist and placed his SS hat on her head. They went someplace even louder and then, after that, a place where champagne flowed and someone banged out bright tunes on a piano. There was an enormous swastika cake made out of marzipan and it was circled by huge wet strawberries, the largest ones Jasmine had ever seen. Trumpets blared out and women danced around with long strings of pearls. They talked until the sun came up and then stepped over people who had crashed out on the dance floor. They grabbed a bottle of champagne and moved out into the pale morning light. They held hands and walked along the river, where she wore his SS hat at a jaunty angle. She liked feeling his eyes on her when she looked away.

When Guth was sent to Poland, it felt like they had been banished to some hinterland because there were no parties, no piano bars, and no new restaurants to discover. Lubizec was a tiny village in a dense forest of nothingness. It was like living on a lost continent. Oh sure,
there were a few lakes to paddle around but it was dull and boring. Humdrum. Tedious. Try as she might, she just couldn’t understand why her husband had been exiled to such a dead place. What had he done wrong? Why was he running a transit camp for Jews?

These are just some of the questions in Jasmine’s diary. She clearly enjoyed having a large home on a private lake, and she also enjoyed having a servant jump whenever she rang a little brass fingerbell, but in reading her choppy handwriting, it becomes clear that she was losing patience with both Guth’s evasiveness and her new station in life. She missed Berlin and her extended family. She missed the hustle-bustle. She also had a problem with state secrets driving a wedge between them and she wanted to discover the truth about Lubizec because, if she could just find out what was really going on, maybe she could use it as an excuse to go home.

“This is the last straw,” she envisioned herself saying. “I’m going back to Berlin.”

As the days ticked by, ideas boiled in her head. Did he really love her? Was he capable of sharing his life with her? Maybe he was having an affair? He sure didn’t seem very interested in her sexually any more.

Although there are many reasons why she might have decided to find out about Lubizec once and for all, what we can say with absolute certainty is this: What she does on September 8, 1942, is both unexpected and startling. It will change her family.

It began when she woke up and reached beneath the duvet for her husband. He wasn’t there (again) and his side of the bed was cold (again). As she dressed in front of the large bay window, turning this way and that to admire her reflection, she looked at the lake and found herself thinking about the camp. It was out there somewhere, like a dark magnet, and her eyes searched the treetops, wondering about it. The sky was hazy.

She put on an old pair of hiking boots and moved down the grand wooden staircase, where she reached for a hunting cap. She twisted her bronze hair into a bun, went into the dining room, and began rummaging around in a drawer.

Karl was busy playing with a tin model of Hitler. He placed the Führer in a shoe and pretended to drive him towards a frontline of matchboxes. Sigi was reading another book about Old Shatterhand, but when she saw her mother in a man’s cap and weeding through drawers for something, she used her finger as a bookmark and looked up.

“Here they are,” Jasmine announced to herself. She slid a pair of opera glasses into a leather satchel and turned to the maid, who, at that moment, happened to be bringing in an armful of logs.

Jasmine’s voice was stern and businesslike. “Watch the children for me, Malina. I’ll be gone for a few hours.”

Sigi put down her book. “Can I come?”

Jasmine kept speaking to the maid. “Don’t forget to clean the windows and get those apples cored.”

The country girl let the logs tumble into an iron grate. Bits of bark fell on the carpet and she bent down to sweep them up.

“Can I come?” Sigi asked again.

“No,” Jasmine said, without looking at her. The air curdled as she moved down the dark hallway and slammed the front door. A string of decorative bells jiggled into silence.

Sigi touched an eyelet on her hiking boot. Why was her mother dressed so strangely and how come she needed opera glasses? What would Old Shatterhand do if he saw such a thing?

Without thinking about it, Sigi tied her laces and slipped out the front door so quietly the bells hardly jiggled. At the far end of the cinder driveway, her mother was pushing into the woods.

Sigi followed. She ran on her tiptoes like an Indian scout.

Sunlight got caught in a cathedral of branches. It was murky and Jasmine threaded her way through the trunks, stopping now and then to look at a compass. Her feet stepped around pinecones and large stones. She knew roughly where the camp was supposed to be and she decided to circle around to the north. It was dangerous to approach Lubizec and she was reminded of this when she saw a large wooden sign nailed to a tree. It had a skull on it along with
the words, DANGER! REICH ZONE OF INTEREST. TRESPASSERS WILL BE
SHOT
! The angry eyesockets of the skull made Jasmine look around.

She thought about turning around but what purpose would that serve? She would only be back where she started, and if she told her husband she was coming to see the camp, he’d only try to stop her. No, it was best to approach the camp and pull out her opera glasses. She’d get close enough for a quick peek and then run home. If it was a transit camp she could put the matter to rest, but if it wasn’t a transit camp—if it was something else—well—she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

Jasmine studied the skull for a long moment and wondered if the guards would really shoot her. There were so many trees around it seemed impossible that a bullet could hit her from a long distance, but it was still an ugly thought. It made her shudder. What would it be like to have metal come through your chest?

She looked at her hiking boots and rolled a pinecone beneath her toe.

A robin sang from somewhere overhead and, in that moment of gentle peace, she stepped over an invisible line. She put one foot in front of the other and moved beyond the wooden sign. It felt like she was crossing a border.

It was strange to look at the ground for twigs that might snap beneath her weight, and it was stranger still to wonder if her sternum was in the crosshairs of a riflescope, but she took off her cap and let down her long curly hair. It tumbled over her shoulders. Cobwebs would get caught in the strands but surely they wouldn’t shoot a woman, especially not a good German woman with bronze hair and blue eyes. They’d see that in a riflescope surely.

Jasmine kept walking. Slowly. Carefully. Watchfully.

When she slapped a mosquito, the sound seemed too loud, too noisy, but she didn’t like the idea of a bloodsucking needle sinking into her skin.

“My God,” she whispered. “I left Berlin for this?”

The little compass needle bobbled in her hand as she walked to
the northwest. A terrible smell clawed at the back of her throat—it was campfire and something else—bacon fat—rancid butter—burnt fish. She covered her mouth and kept on moving through matted leaves and twigs. Shafts of sunlight pierced the air and the wind whooshed overhead, making the branches creak. There was another sign, one that had the twin lightning bolts of the SS. It read, in white paint, RETREAT OR DIE.

An engine was running up ahead. It sounded like someone was using a gigantic typewriter. It revved into a higher gear and a whiff of gasoline floated on the wind.

She stepped closer. It felt like she was on a tightrope. Gently, gently. One step, another step. Easy now.

She saw a wall of barbed wire and every hundred meters or so there was a guard tower. Each one stood on four legs and the guards had machine guns slung over their shoulders as if they were backpacks. Each tower had a searchlight. A sharp terror made Jasmine’s muscles coil into hyperawareness and every atom in her body felt like it was being pulled away from the camp, like some kind of magnetism tugged at her to run away, but slowly, very slowly, she crouched down and lay behind a tree. The wind rocked the leaves overhead and the engine—wherever it was—continued to thrum. Cicadas were screaming up ahead.

She reached into her satchel and noticed that her hands were shaking. The ground was cold against her chest and she brought the opera glasses up to her face.

So there it is
, she almost said out loud.

Everything was in a jerky circle of vision in her hands and she saw that the guards faced in, towards the camp, as if they were busy watching the inmates. They seemed more concerned with what happened inside Lubizec than what happened outside it. Maybe if they heard something in the woods, they’d assume it was a deer or a falling branch? Jasmine couldn’t be sure, but beyond the silvery threads of barbed wire, she noticed what looked like men running around in ratty shirts and trousers. Each of them dragged something slender and rubbery behind them. It was hard to see what they
were tugging through the grass but each of them moved quickly and they dashed back to a large wooden shed in an endless circle of work.

She lowered the glasses.

Jasmine breathed heavily and thought about running away, but if she did that now she wouldn’t be any wiser about what lay beyond the barbed wire. Was it a transit camp or a prison?

She brought the glasses back up to her eyes and studied the guards. They still had their backs to her.

Good
, she thought.
Good
.

Barbed wire had been coiled around the ancient trees and the entire perimeter of the camp was made up of living trunks rather than posts that had been pounded into the ground. It must have been her husband’s idea. It had his hallmark because it was so practical, so handy. Why put in huge wooden posts when barbed wire can just be wrapped around existing trees?

She also noticed a sign, and what it said made her blood turn cold.

DANGER MINEFIELD.

She looked at the ground beneath her rib cage and wondered if explosives were hidden in the earth. Was she lying on something right now? If she stood up, what would happen?

She searched for signs of digging—little mounds of dirt or disturbed pine needles—anything—because if she rolled over or stood up or coughed, maybe something a few centimeters down in the earth would click and this would send wet pieces of her body flying up into the trees.

As she thought about these unpleasant things and carried on a mental conversation with herself about how stupid she was, one of the guards began yelling. He was in a dark uniform and he ran across the field with a rubber truncheon. He began beating one of the prisoners and the man let out a terrible scream. The rod became a blur as he beat the man harder and harder. Spouts of red flew into the air. The other prisoners kept on dragging their loads but Jasmine still couldn’t tell what they were pulling. Sandbags maybe?

She looked at the face of the guard through her opera glasses and recognized him as Heinrich Niemann. He came to the Villa one
evening for dinner and made crude jokes all night long. He swilled two bottles of red wine and stuffed massive forkfuls of sausage and potato into his mouth. She made the mistake of wearing a low-cut dress that evening and whenever she bent over for anything he stared at her breasts.

“He’s a good soldier,” Guth later said.

And now this good soldier was cleaning his rubber truncheon with the hat of the man he had just beaten. He stopped to light a cigarette and looked out at the trees. Jasmine froze. She didn’t drop the opera glasses or make any sudden movements because she didn’t want to draw his attention. Niemann blew smoke out of his nose, dragonlike. From somewhere inside the camp a pistol went off. There was another shot. Niemann twirled his shoulder as if he were working out a kink or a sore muscle and he strolled away, blowing plumes of smoke into the air.

Jasmine sighed with relief and turned to the other prisoners. What on earth were they tugging across the grass? It looked like—

She lowered her opera glasses and felt something icy crawl up her spine. Slowly, almost against her will, she brought the glasses back up to her face.

The bodies were naked, many of them were bruised, and the women didn’t have any hair. She didn’t understand any of it. She squinted at what she thought was a huge pile of wood and let her eyes refocus. It was—arms, legs, heads, feet—it was a compressed jigsaw puzzle of flesh. A truck appeared from around the corner and, as it bumped over the uneven ground, sheets of ash flickered down. The wind caught this fine powder and it drifted away.

Her heart filled up with magma when she thought about her husband coming home with his fabricated stories about this place being a transit camp. She didn’t know what was happening in Lubizec but she knew this much: He had lied once again.

Jasmine became a capped geyser of heat and she wanted to run away from the camp as fast as she could, not because she was disgusted by a truckload of human ash or the sight of prisoners being beaten, but because she was furious with her husband. Before
we address this monumental failure of empathy, it needs to be said that something happened in that moment which made Jasmine wide eyed with terror. There was a loud crack behind her and she turned towards the noise.

Was it a guard? A falling branch?

Her eyes moved back and forth. She didn’t see anything. And then Sigi stepped out from behind a birch tree and tiptoed forward as if she were in an adventure story. She carried a stick and looked around as if she were hunting bears. Jasmine wanted to run to her daughter but she glanced at the guard towers. She also thought about that sign, the one that read, DANGER MINEFIELD. She stood up, slowly. She waved an arm, which caught Sigi’s attention, and the girl in hiking boots stopped walking.

Time became a syrup that Jasmine had to wade through as she crept for her daughter. She expected a bullet to flash through the air at any moment or maybe there would be a tremendous eruption of dirt and her daughter would be blasted up into the trees. It crossed her mind that if they were spotted by the guards, maybe she could raise her arms and say that she was Guth’s wife. Could she yell such a thing before they started shooting with their machine guns?