AMOS OZ
THEY WERE DEFINITELY CREATED IN
GOD'S
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Here's an example of "true German irony": RudolfVrba, well–
spoken, charismatic, elegant in a well-tailored suit, who escaped from
Auschwitz on April 7, 1944, describes, with a slight, sardonic smile, his work
as a registration clerk at a death camp:
"It was night at Auschwitz. They woke us for work. On the platform,
at ten-yard intervals, stood the SS troops with dogs and submachine guns.
The platform was flooded with blinding spotlights. We waited. The locomo–
tive pulled in slowly. The train came to a stop. One of the Unterscharfuhrers
moved from one car to the next and unlocked them from the outside. People
peered out of the windows, which were covered with barbed wire. They
had been en route for ten or fifteen days. They were hungry, thirsty, and
exhausted. Inside the cars, the living sat on the bodies of the dead and the
dying. They had no idea what this station was. The name Auschwitz told
them nothing. They streamed out of the cars, and the Germans shouted,
"Raus! Schnell!" and hit them with whips and sticks. But at one point, one of
the German officers spoke to the crowd on the platform with unusual
courtesy: 'Welcome,' he said. 'We apologize for the inconvenient travel
conditions. In a little while each of you will get a cup oftea and you'll be well
taken care of You'll bejust fine here.'''
In a secret address delivered to SS generals in Poznan on October 4,
1943, Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler praised his unsung heroes, who car–
ried out their difficult, thankless task: "... I also want to talk to you quite
frankly on a very grave matter. Among ourselves it should be mentioned
quite frankly, and yet we will never speak of it publicly. I mean... the ex–
termination of the Jewish race.... Most of you must know what it means
whan 100 corpses are lying side by side, or five hundred, or one thousand.
To have stuck it out and at the same time-apart from exceptions caused by
human weakness-to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us
hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and
is never to be written...."
"On August 31, [1942] Himmler had ordered an Einsatz detachment
to execute a hundred inmates of the Minsk prison, so that he could see how it
was done. According to Bach-Zalewski, a high officer in the SS who was
present, Himmler almost swooned when he saw the effect of the first volley
from the firing squad. A few minutes later, when the shots failed to kill two
