It quickly became apparent to me that the most delicate question would be that of lodging: I couldn’t stay indefinitely at the hotel. The Obersturmbannführer from the SS-Personal Hauptamt proposed two options: SS housing for single officers, very inexpensive, with meals included; or a room with a lodge, for which I would have to pay rent. Thomas stayed in a three-room apartment, spacious and very comfortable, with high ceilings and valuable old furniture. Given the grave housing crisis in Berlin—people who had a room empty were in principle forced to take on a tenant—it was a luxurious apartment, especially for a single Obersturmbannführer; a married Gruppenführer with children wouldn’t have turned it down. He laughingly told me how he had gotten it: “It’s not at all complicated. If you like, I can help you find one, maybe not as large, but with two rooms at least.” Thanks to an acquaintance working at the Berlin Generalbauinspektion, he had had a Jewish apartment, liberated in view of the reconstruction of the city, assigned to him by special dispensation. “The only problem is that it was only granted to me provided I pay for the renovation, about five hundred reichsmarks. I didn’t have the money, but I managed to get it allocated to me by Berger as a one-time aid.” Leaning back on the sofa, he ran a satisfied eye around him: “Not bad, don’t you agree?”—“And the car?” I asked, laughing. Thomas also had a little convertible, which he loved to go out in and in which he sometimes came to pick me up in the evening. “That, my friend, is another story that I’ll tell you someday. I did tell you, in Stalingrad, that if we got out of it, life would be good. There’s no reason to deprive ourselves.” I thought about his offer, but finally decided on a furnished room with a family. I wasn’t keen on living in a building for the SS, I wanted to be able to choose whom I met with outside of work; and the idea of staying alone, of living in my own company, made me a little afraid, to tell the truth. Lodgers would at least be a human presence, I would have my meals prepared, there would be noise in the hallways. So I filed my request, specifying that I would like two rooms and that there had to be a woman for cooking and housekeeping. They offered me something in Mitte, with a widow, six stations on a direct U-Bahn line from Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, at a reasonable price; I accepted without even visiting it and they gave me a letter. Frau Gutknecht, a fat, ruddy-cheeked woman past sixty, with voluminous breasts and dyed hair, examined me with a long, wily look when she opened the door to me: “So you’re the officer?” she said with a thick Berlin accent. I stepped across the threshold and shook her hand: she stank of cheap perfume. She retreated into the long hallway and showed me the doors: “This is my place; that’s yours. Here’s the key. I have one too, of course.” She opened the door and showed me around: mass-market furniture laden with curios, yellowing, wrinkled wallpaper, a musty smell. After the living room was the bedroom, isolated from the rest of the apartment. “The kitchen and toilets are in the back. Hot water is rationed, so no baths.” Two black-framed portraits hung on the wall: a man about thirty, with a little civil servant’s moustache, and a young, solid, blond boy in a Wehrmacht uniform. “Is that your husband?” I asked respectfully. A grimace deformed her face: “Yes. And my son, Franz, my little Franzi. He fell the first day of the French campaign. His Feldwebel wrote me that he died a hero, to save a comrade, but he didn’t get a medal. He wanted to avenge his dad, my Bubi, there, who died gassed in Verdun.”—“My condolences.”—“Oh, for Bubi, I’m used to it, you know. But I still miss my little Franzi.” She cast me a calculating look. “Too bad I don’t have a daughter. You could have married her. I would have liked that, an officer son-in-law. My Bubi was Unterfeldwebel and my Franzi was still a Gefreiter.”—“Yes,” I replied politely, “it’s too bad.” I pointed to the curios: “Could I ask you to take all those away? I’ll need some room for my things.” She looked indignant: “And where do you suggest I put them? In my place there’s even less room. Plus they’re pretty. You just have to push them over a little. But watch out! If you break it you pay for it.” She pointed to the portraits: “If you like, I can take those away. I wouldn’t want to inflict my mourning on you.”—“That’s not important,” I said.—“Fine, then I’ll leave them. This was Bubi’s favorite room.” We came to an agreement on the meals, and I gave her a section of my ration book.

I settled in as well as I could; in any case I didn’t have a lot of things. By piling up the curios and the cheap prewar novels, I managed to free up a few shelves where I put my own books, delivered from the basement where I had stored them before I left for Russia. It made me happy to unpack them and leaf through them, even though many of them had been damaged by humidity. Next to them I put the edition of Nietzsche that Thomas had given me and that I had never opened, the three Burroughs books brought back from France, and the Blanchot, which I had given up reading; the Stendhal books I had taken to Russia had remained there, just like Stendhal’s own 1812 diaries and somewhat in the same way, really. I regretted not having thought to replace them during my Paris trip, but there would always be another opportunity, if I were still alive. The booklet on ritual murder puzzled me a little: whereas I could easily arrange the Festgabe next to my economics and political science books, it was a little harder to find a place for this book. I finally slipped it in with the history books, between von Treitschke and Gustav Kossinna. These books and my clothes were all that I owned, aside from a gramophone and a few records; the kinzhal from Nalchik, alas, had also stayed in Stalingrad. After I had put everything away, I put on some Mozart arias, dropped into an armchair and lit a cigarette. Frau Gutknecht came in without knocking and was immediately upset: “You’re not going to smoke here! It’ll make the curtains stink.” I got up and pulled down the tails of my tunic: “Frau Gutknecht. Please be so kind as to knock, and to wait for my reply before you come in.” She turned crimson: “Excuse me, Herr Offizier! But I’m in my own home, aren’t I? And also, with all due respect, I could be your mother. What does it matter to you, if I come in? You don’t intend to have girls up here, do you? This is a respectable house, the house of a good family.” I decided it was urgent to make things clear: “Frau Gutknecht, I am renting your two rooms; so it’s no longer your home but my home. I have no intention of having girls up, as you say, but I am attached to my private life. If this arrangement doesn’t suit you, I’ll take my things and my rent back and leave. Do you understand?” She calmed down: “Don’t take it like that, Herr Offizier…I’m not used to it, that’s all. You can even smoke if you like. Only you might open the windows…” She looked at my books: “I see you’re cultivated…” I interrupted her: “Frau Gutknecht. If you have nothing else to ask me, I would be grateful if you left me alone.”—“Oh yes, sorry, yes.” She went out and closed the door behind her, leaving the key in the lock.

I put my papers in order with the personnel office and returned to see Brandt. He had freed up one of the small, light-filled offices fitted out in the attic of the old hotel. I had an antechamber with a telephone and a work room with a sofa; a young secretary, Fräulein Praxa; the services of an orderly who assisted three offices; and of a pool of typists available for the whole floor. My driver was named Piontek, a Volksdeutscher from Upper Silesia who would also serve as my orderly whenever I went anywhere; the vehicle was at my disposal, but the Reichsführer insisted that any trip of a personal nature be itemized separately, and the cost of the gas taken from my salary. I found all this almost extravagant. “It’s nothing. You have to have the means to work correctly,” Brandt assured me with a little smile. I couldn’t meet the head of the Persönlicher Stab, Obergruppenführer Wolff; he was recovering from a serious illness, and Brandt had in effect taken over all his duties for months. He gave me a few additional instructions on what was expected of me: “First of all, it’s important that you familiarize yourself with the system and its problems. All reports addressed to the Reichsführer about this are archived here: have them brought up to you and look them over. Here is a list of the SS officers who head the various departments covered by your mandate. Make appointments and go talk with them, they’re expecting you and will talk frankly to you. When you’ve gotten a suitable overall impression, you can go on an inspection tour.” I consulted the list: they were mostly officers from the Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (the SS Main Office for Economics and Administration) and from the RSHA. “The Inspectorate for Concentration Camps has been incorporated in the WVHA, isn’t that right?” I asked.—“Yes,” replied Brandt, “a little over a year ago. Look at your list, that’s the Amtsgruppe D now. You’ve been referred to Brigadeführer Glücks, who heads the directorate, and his deputy Obersturmbannführer Liebehenschel—who between you and me will probably be more useful to you than his superior—along with some department heads. But the camps are only one facet of the problem; there are also the SS enterprises. Obergruppenführer Pohl, who heads the WVHA, will receive you to talk to you about that. Of course, if you want to meet other officers to go more deeply into certain points, please do: but see these people first. At the RSHA, Obersturmbannführer Eichmann will explain the system of special transports to you, and he’ll also present you with the current progress of the resolution of the Jewish question, and its future perspectives.—“May I ask you a question, Obersturmbannführer?”—“Of course.”—“If I understand correctly, I can have access to all documents concerning the definitive solution to the Jewish question?”—“Insofar as the resolution of the Jewish problem directly affects the maximum deployment of manual labor, yes. But I should point out that this will make you a Geheimnisträger, a bearer of secrets, to a far greater degree than your duties in Russia did. You are strictly forbidden to discuss this with anyone outside of the service, including the civil servants in the ministries or the Party functionaries with whom you will be in contact. The Reichsführer allows only one sentence for any violation of this rule: the death penalty.” He again pointed to the sheet he had given me: “You can talk freely with all the officers on this list; for their subordinates, check first.”—“Understood.”—“For your reports, the Reichsführer has issued Sprachregelungen, language regulations. Any report that doesn’t conform to them will be returned to you.”—“Zu Befehl, Obersturmbannführer.”