50
PARTISAN REVIEW
represent all that I read; he taught me to equate it with the Soviet
system.
He was not the first who discussed these topics with me in
the name of Stalin. Immediately after my capture I saw how four
other German prisoners of war, just brought in, were shot after
a short questioning by a major. Thereupon the same major began
to interrogate me. My brain feverishly searched for a way out, but
to my surprise he asked me only whether I had studied Hegel and
what I knew of Lenin's works. I didn't even know there were
works by Lenin. He explained that the four had been shot because
they had resisted capture, proving that they were real class enemies
and enemies of the Soviet Union, "conscious fascists." During the
entire conversation he played with his pistol, which he held in his
hands on the table in front of him. He had found a picture of
Christ in my pocket and laughed about it with the lieutenant stand–
ing beside him. Now he held it toward me. "Are you religious?
Do you believe in God?" He acted as though he wanted to tear
the picture to pieces, but he merely put it on the table in front of
him. "You see, now even this God of yours won't save you . Surely
the other four believed in him, too. But we will save you, for your
wife and your mother, because we are not fascists but Soviet men."
He signaled to the guard and had me taken away.
In a later interview a young lieutenant studied my papers.
Then he looked across the table at me for a long time in the pale
candlelight, as though he were trying to locate something in his recol–
lection. Suddenly he quoted in broken German from
Faust,
« ...
und
Leider auch Theologie durchaus studiert
...
Da steh' ich nun, ich
armer Tor!
..."
Another commissar, a first lieutenant on the staff of Marshal
Konev, had been born in Erfurt. He had lost. his Jewish parents in
Maidenek; I first heard about these death camps from him. Due to
a sudden relocation, Konev's staff enjoyed only very sparse pro–
visions, but this man shared his food with me. When he found out
that I was an adherent of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophical views,
he conversed with me about them. "The perfection of man, the
higher development of his personality, the basic teaching of
Christianity, the love of one's neighbor- these are just the things
for which we are fighting. Did you by any chance find them under
