CHOLM: HEAPS OF SKULLS
545
made to them, acting as though they understood nothing, and this
game went on for days and weeks. But there were others who listened
to the denunciations and reported them as was required by the
authorities. I am proud never to have been responsible to Hitler's
hangmen for
.a
single Jew. I made no secret of the fact that I despised
militarism and if someone told me that the "disintegration of the
Reich" was the sole alternative, I would say that death was in this
camp the greatest disintegrator. Did death choose good or evil, did
he choose the Jews or the Christians, the communists or their enemies,
the Ukrainians or Cossacks, the Poles or Mongolians? He swept
them all out, bald as rats' tails and uncounted; only a
ftw
were
spared, and these will testify for thousands of years how things were
with us Germans. Yes, with us Germans.
In the camp at Cholm I was able to spot carefully the brutes
among us. The percentage of brutes was small, but that of the indif–
ferent was frighteningly high. The German people is in its entirety
responsible for these crimes, and only through the admission of guilt
will
it be possible to lay the foundation for a better life.
Change is indeed necessary, a change from the bottom up. An
end must be put to ingenious excuses, to the weighing of so-called
national considerations and to all those other ways of escaping the
truth. Don't leave it for others to judge us. Let us judge ourselves,
and with justice. None is guiltless, neither you nor I, neither those
who suffered nor those who caused the suffering. A false star misled
us, and this false star shall fade in the flush of a new dawn.
IV
Trains roll eastward. Battles are fought, victories won. Adolf
Hitler is speaking about the Russian campaign. What is he saying?
What counsel does he offer? The loudspeaker stutters. Hasn't some–
one got the speaker by the neck and is shaking him? Is
it
that
grim
creature, the white ghost who hides his weapon in his cloak? The
doctor's art is done, the experiments on mice and rats have led to
nothing, though the care-ridden medical assistant is still studying the
fever graphs. It is whispered that we are no longer dealing with
dysentery but with spotted fever; hunger typhus, the soldiers call
it. In the mortuary barracks the corpses are piling up by the thousands.
The Jews who have furnished the burial squads are themselves suf–
fering fearful losses. Already a few German soldiers are down with
dangerous symptoms; they say it is influenza, but it is death who has
