I returned to Berlin and made an appointment with my old acquaintance Adolf Eichmann. He came to welcome me in person in the vast main lobby of his department on the Kurfürstenstrasse, walking in short strides in his heavy rider’s boots on the polished marble slabs and warmly congratulating me on my promotion. “You too,” I congratulated him in turn, “you were promoted. In Kiev, you were still a Sturmbannführer.”—“Yes,” he said with satisfaction, “that’s true, but you, in the meantime, got two stripes…Come in, come in.” Despite his superior rank, I found him curiously attentive, affable; perhaps the fact that I had come on behalf of the Reichsführer impressed him. In his office, he dropped into his chair and crossed his legs, negligently dropped his cap on a pile of files, took off his large glasses, and began to clean them with a handkerchief while calling out to his secretary: “Frau Werlmann! Some coffee, please.” I observed this little game with amusement: Eichmann had gained self-confidence, since Kiev. He raised his glasses to the window, inspected them meticulously, rubbed them some more, put them back on. He took a box out from under a folder and offered me a Dutch cigarette. Lighter in hand, he gesticulated at my chest: “You’ve received a lot of decorations, I congratulate you again. That’s the advantage of being at the front. Here, in the rear, we have no opportunity to win decorations. My Amtschef managed to get me the Iron Cross, but that was really just so I’d have something. I volunteered for the Einsatzgruppen, did you know that? But C (that was how Heydrich, wanting to give himself an English touch, had himself called by his coterie) ordered me to stay. You’re indispensable to me, he said. Zu Befehl, I said, but in any case I didn’t have a choice.”—“You have a good position, though. Your Referat is one of the most important in the Staatspolizei.”—“Yes, but as far as advancement goes, I’m completely blocked. A Referat is headed by a Regierungsrat or an Oberregierungsrat or an equivalent SS rank. So in principle, in this position, I can’t go beyond Obersturmbannführer. I complained to my Amtschef: he told me I deserved to be promoted, but that he didn’t want to stir up problems with his other department heads.” He made a pinched face that deformed his lips. His balding head gleamed under the overhead lamp, turned on despite the daylight. A no-longer-young secretary came in with a tray and two steaming cups, which she placed in front of us. “Milk? Sugar?” Eichmann asked. I shook my head and smelled the cup: it was real coffee. While I was blowing on it Eichmann asked me out of the blue: “Were you decorated for the Einsatzaktion?” His complaining was beginning to annoy me; I wanted to get to the point of my visit. “No,” I replied. “I was posted in Stalingrad, afterward.” Eichmann’s face darkened and he took off his glasses in an abrupt gesture. “Ach so,” he said, straightening. “You were in Stalingrad. My brother Helmut was killed there.”—“I’m sorry. All my condolences. Was he your older brother?”—“No, the younger one. He was thirty-three. Our mother still hasn’t gotten over it. He fell as a hero, doing his duty for Germany. I’m sorry,” he added ceremoniously, “that I haven’t had that chance myself.” I seized the opening: “Yes, but Germany is asking you for other sacrifices.” He put his glasses back on and drank a little coffee. Then he put out his cigarette in an ashtray: “You’re right. A soldier doesn’t choose his post. What can I do for you, then? If I understood the letter from Obersturmbannführer Brandt correctly, you’re in charge of studying the Arbeitseinsatz, is that right? I don’t quite see what that has to do with my departments.” I pulled a few sheets of paper from my imitation-leather briefcase. (I felt a disagreeable sensation every time I used this briefcase, but I hadn’t been able to find anything else, because of the restrictions. I had asked Thomas’s advice, but he had laughed in my face: “I wanted a leather office set, you know, with a writing pad and a penholder. I wrote to a friend in Kiev, a guy who was in the Group and who stayed on with the BdS, to ask him if he could have one made for me. He answered that ever since we had killed all the Jews, you couldn’t even get a pair of boots resoled in the Ukraine.”) Eichmann was observing me, knitting his brows. “The Jews you are in charge of are today one of the main pools the Arbeitseinsatz can draw on to renew its workforce,” I explained. “Aside from them, there’s really nothing else but foreign workers sentenced for petty crimes, and political deportees from the countries under our control. All the other possible sources, the war prisoners or the criminals transferred by the Ministry of Justice, are mostly exhausted. What I would like is to have an overall view of how your operations function, and especially of your prospects for the future.” While he was listening to me, a curious tic deformed the left corner of his mouth; I had the impression that he was chewing his tongue. He leaned back again in his chair, his long veined hands joined in a triangle, index fingers taut: “Fine, fine. I’ll explain things to you. As you know, in every country subject to the Endlösung, there is a representative from my Referat, subordinate either to the BdS, if it’s an occupied country, or to the embassy’s police attaché, if it’s an allied country. I should point out right away that the USSR doesn’t come into my domain; as for my representative in the Generalgouvernement, he has an entirely minor role.”—“How is that?”—“The Jewish question, in the GG, is the responsibility of the SSPF in Lublin, Gruppenführer Globocnik, who reports directly to the Reichsführer. So the Staatspolizei isn’t concerned, in general.” He pinched his lips: “Except for a few exceptions that still have to be settled, the Reich itself can be considered judenrein. As to the other countries, everything depends on the degree of understanding about the resolution of the Jewish question shown by the national authorities. Because of that, in a way every country poses a special case that I can explain to you.” As soon as he began to talk about his work, I noticed, his already curious mixture of Austrian accent and Berlin slang was complicated by a particularly muddled bureaucratic syntax. He spoke calmly and clearly, choosing his words, but it was sometimes hard for me to follow his phrases. He himself seemed to get a little lost in them. “Take the example of France, where we have so to speak only begun to work last summer once the French authorities, guided by our specialist and also by the advice and wishes of the Auswärtiges Amt, um, if you like, had agreed to cooperate and especially when the Reichsbahn agreed to provide us with the necessary transportation. We were thus able to begin, and in the beginning it even had some success, since the French showed a lot of understanding, and also thanks to the assistance of the French police, without which we could have done nothing, of course, since we don’t have the resources, and the Militärbefehlshaber certainly wasn’t going to provide them, so the aid of the French police was a vital element, since they’re the ones who arrested the Jews and transferred them to us, and they even overdid it, since we had only officially asked for Jews over sixteen—to begin with of course—but they didn’t want to keep the children without their parents, which is understandable, so they gave them all to us, even the orphans—in short we soon understood that in fact they were only giving us their foreign Jews, I even had to cancel a transport from Bordeaux because they couldn’t find enough to fill it, of those foreign Jews, a real scandal, since when it comes to their own Jews, the ones who were French citizens, I mean, for a long time, well then, you see, it was nothing doing. They didn’t want to and there was nothing to be done. According to the Auswärtiges Amt it was Maréchal Pétain himself who made problems, and it was useless for us to explain to him, it didn’t do any good. So after November, of course, the situation changed completely, because we were no longer necessarily bound by all those agreements or by the French laws, but even then, this is what I told you, there was the problem of the French police, which didn’t want to cooperate anymore, I don’t want to complain about Herr Bousquet, but he too had his orders, and of course it wasn’t possible to send the German police knocking on doors, so, in fact, in France, we’re not making much progress anymore. What’s more, a lot of Jews have gone to the Italian sector, and that’s really a problem, since the Italians have no understanding at all, and we’re having the same problem everywhere, in Greece and in Croatia, where they’re in charge, there they protect the Jews, and not only their own Jews but all of them. And this is a real problem and it’s completely beyond my competence, and also I think I know for a fact that it was discussed at the highest level, the highest there is, and that Mussolini replied that he would take care of it, but obviously it’s not a priority, is it, and at the lower levels, the ones we’re dealing with, there it’s downright bureaucratic obstruction, delaying tactics and that’s something I know a lot about, they never say no but it’s like quicksand, and nothing happens. That’s where we are with the Italians.”—“And the other countries?” I asked. Eichmann got up, put on his cap, and motioned for me to follow: “Come. I’ll show you.” I followed him to another office. He was, I noticed for the first time, bowlegged, like a rider. “Do you ride horses, Obersturmbannführer?” He made another face: “In my youth. Now I don’t get much of a chance.” He knocked at a door and went in. Some officers got up and saluted; he returned their salute, crossed the room, knocked at another door, and entered. In the back of the room, behind a desk, was a Sturmbannführer; there was also a secretary there and a subaltern. They all got up when we came in; the Sturmbannführer, a handsome blond animal, tall and muscular, buttoned up tight in his tailored uniform, raised his arm and shouted a martial “Heil!” We returned his salute before walking over to him. Eichmann introduced me and then turned to me: “Sturmbannführer Günther is my permanent deputy.” Günther contemplated me with a taciturn look and asked Eichmann: “What can I do for you, Obersturmbannführer?”—“I’m sorry to disturb you, Günther. I wanted to show him your board.” Günther moved away from his desk without a word. Behind him on the wall was a large multicolored chart. “You see,” Eichmann explained, “it’s organized by country and brought up to date every month. On the left, you have the objectives, and then the totals accrued to realize the objective. You can see at a glance that we’re approaching the goal in Holland, fifty percent in Belgium, but that in Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria we’re still close to zero. In Bulgaria, we’ve had a few thousand, but that’s deceptive: they let us evacuate the territories they occupied in 1941, in Thrace and Macedonia, but we can’t touch the ones in Old Bulgaria. We officially asked them again a few months ago, in March I think, there was an approach from the AA, but they refused again. Since it’s a question of sovereignty, everyone wants guarantees that his neighbor will do the same thing, that’s to say that the Bulgarians want the Romanians to start, and the Romanians the Hungarians, and the Hungarians the Bulgarians or something like that. Note that since Warsaw we’ve at least been able to explain to them the danger it represents, having so many Jews in one’s country, it’s a hotbed of partisans, and well, I think that impressed them. But we haven’t reached the end of our efforts yet. In Greece, we began in March, I have a Sonderkommando over there, in Thessalonica right now, and you see that it’s going quite rapidly, it’s already almost over. After that we’ll still have Crete and Rhodes, no problem, but for the Italian zone, Athens and the rest, I’ve already explained to you. Then, of course, there are all the associated technical problems, they’re not just diplomatic problems, that would be too easy, no, and so especially the problem of transport, that’s to say rolling stock and thus the allocation of freight cars and also, how should I say, of time on the tracks even if we have the cars. For example, sometimes, we’re negotiating an agreement with a government, we have the Jews in hand, bam, Transportsperre, everything’s blocked because there’s an offensive in the East or something and they can’t let anything else go through Poland. So of course when it’s quiet we work twice as hard. In Holland or in France, we centralize everything in transit camps, and we’re emptying them out little by little, when there’s transport and also according to the admission capacity, which is also limited. For Thessalonica, on the other hand, it was decided to do everything all at once, one two three four and that’s it. In fact, since February, we’ve really had a lot of work, transport is available and I received an order to speed things up. The Reichsführer wants it to be over this year and then we won’t talk about it anymore.”—“And can that be realized?”—“Where it depends on us, yes. I mean transport is always a problem, finances too, since we have to pay the Reichsbahn, you know, for each passenger, and I don’t have any budget for that, I have to make do. We ask the Jews to help out, that’s fine, but the Reichsbahn only accepts payment in reichsmarks or at a pinch in zlotys, if we send them within the GG, but in Thessalonica they have drachmas and of course it’s impossible to exchange currency there. So we have to make do, but we know how to do that. After that of course there are the diplomatic questions, if the Hungarians say no, I can’t do anything about it, it doesn’t depend on me and it’s up to Herr Minister von Ribbentrop to see to that with the Reichsführer, not me.”—“I see.” I studied the chart for a bit: “If I understand correctly, the difference between the numbers there in the ‘April’ column and the numbers on the left represents the potential pool, subject to the various complications you’ve explained to me.”—“Exactly. But note that those are overall figures, that is to say that a large part, in any case, doesn’t interest the Arbeitseinsatz, because you see they’re old people or children or I don’t know what, so from that total you can deduct a large number.”—“How big, in your opinion?”—“I don’t know. You should check that with the WVHA—admission and selection is their problem. My responsibility stops when the train leaves—the rest I can’t talk about. What I can tell you is that in the opinion of the RSHA, the number of Jews temporarily kept for work should be as limited as possible: creating large concentrations of Jews, you see, is inviting a repetition of Warsaw, it’s dangerous. I think I can tell you that that’s the opinion of Gruppenführer Müller, my Amtschef, and of Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner.”—“I see. Could you give me a copy of these figures?”—“Of course, of course. I’ll send them to you tomorrow. But for the USSR and the GG, I don’t have those, as I told you.” Günther, who hadn’t said a word, let out another resounding “Heil Hitler!” while we got ready to leave. I returned with Eichmann to his office so that he could explain a few more points to me. When I was ready to go, he accompanied me. In the lobby he made a low bow: “Sturmbannführer, I would like to invite you to my place one night this week. We sometimes give chamber music performances. My Hauptscharführer Boll plays first violin.”—“Oh. That’s very nice. And you, what do you play?”—“Me?” He stretched out his neck and head, like a bird. “Violin too, second violin. I don’t play as well as Boll, unfortunately, so I gave way to him. C…Obergruppenführer Heydrich, I mean, not Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner whom I know well, we’re from the same province and he’s the one who had me enter the SS and he still remembers—no, the Chief played the violin magnificently. Yes, really very fine, he had a huge amount of talent. He was a fine man, whom I respected very much. Very…considerate, a man who suffered in his heart. I miss him.”—“I hardly knew him. And what are you playing?”—“At the moment? Mostly Brahms. A little Beethoven.”—“No Bach?” He pinched his lips again: “Bach? I don’t like him very much. I find him dry, too…calculated. Sterile, so to speak, very beautiful, of course, but soulless. I prefer Romantic music, it sometimes overwhelms me, yes, it takes me far beyond myself.”—“I’m not sure I share your opinion of Bach. But I’ll happily accept your invitation.” The idea in fact bored me profoundly, but I didn’t want to offend him. “Good, good,” he said, shaking my hand. “I’ll check with my wife and I’ll call you. And don’t worry about your documents. You’ll have them tomorrow, you have my word as an SS officer.”