If I have described these meetings with Eichmann at such length, it’s not because I remember them better than the others: but this little Obersturmbannführer, in the meantime, has become a kind of celebrity, and I thought that my memories, shedding light on his character, might interest the public. A lot of stupid things have been written about him: he was certainly not the enemy of mankind described at Nuremberg (since he wasn’t there, it was easy to blame everything on him, especially since the judges didn’t understand much about how our services functioned); nor was he an incarnation of banal evil, a soulless, faceless robot, as some sought to present him after his trial. He was a very talented bureaucrat, extremely competent at his functions, with a certain stature and a considerable sense of personal initiative, but solely within the framework of clearly circumscribed tasks: in a position of responsibility, where he would have had to make decisions, in the place of his Amtschef Müller, for example, he would have been lost; but as a middle manager, he would have been the pride of any European firm. I never perceived that he nourished a particular hatred of the Jews: he had simply built his career on them, they had become not just his specialty but, in a way, his stock in trade; later on, when they tried to take it away from him, he defended it jealously, which is understandable. But he could just as easily have done something else, and when he told his judges that he thought the extermination of the Jews was a mistake, we can believe him; many people, in the RSHA and especially in the SD, thought similarly—I’ve already shown this—but once the decision was made, it had to be seen through to the end, he was very aware of that; what’s more, his career depended on it. Of course he wasn’t the kind of person I liked to see frequently, his ability to think on his own was extremely limited, and when I returned to my place, that night, I wondered why I had been so expansive, why I had fallen so easily into that familial, sentimental atmosphere that is usually so repugnant to me. Maybe I too had some need to feel I belonged to something. His interest was clear; I was a potential ally in a higher sphere to which he would normally have had no access. But despite all his friendliness I knew that for him I remained an outsider to his department, and thus a potential threat to his domain. And I sensed that he would cunningly and stubbornly confront any obstacle to what he regarded as his objective, that he wasn’t a man to let himself be easily checked. I understood his apprehensions, faced with the danger posed by concentrations of Jews: but for me this danger, if needed, could be minimized, one simply had to be aware of it and take the necessary measures. For the moment, I kept an open mind, I hadn’t reached any conclusions, I reserved my judgment till my analysis was complete.

And the Kantian Imperative? To tell the truth, I didn’t have much of an idea, I had told poor Eichmann pretty much whatever came into my head. In the Ukraine or in the Caucasus, questions of this kind still concerned me, difficulties distressed me and I discussed them seriously, with the feeling that they were a vital issue. But that feeling seemed to have gotten lost. Where, when did that happen? In Stalingrad? Or afterward? For a while I thought I had drowned, submerged by the things resurfaced from the depths of my past. And then, with the stupid, incomprehensible death of my mother, this anguish too had disappeared: the feeling that dominated me now was a vast indifference—not dull, but light and precise. Only my work engaged me; I felt I had been offered a stimulating challenge that would call on all my abilities, and I wanted to succeed—not for a promotion or for any ulterior ambitions, I had none, but simply to enjoy the satisfaction of a thing well done. It was in this state of mind that I left for Poland, accompanied by Piontek, leaving Fräulein Praxa in Berlin to see to my mail, my rent, and her nails. I had chosen a good time to begin my trip: my former superior in the Caucasus, Walter Bierkamp, was replacing Oberführer Schöngarth as BdS of the Generalgouvernement, and, having learned this from Brandt, I had gotten myself invited to the presentation ceremony. This took place in mid-June 1943, in Cracow, in the inner courtyard of the Wawel Castle, a magnificent building, even with its tall, thin columns hidden beneath banners. Hans Frank, the Generalgouverneur, gave a long speech from a platform set up in the rear of the courtyard, surrounded by dignitaries and by an honor guard. He looked a little ridiculous in his brown SA uniform with his tall stovepipe cap, the strap of which cut into his jowls. The crude frankness of the speech surprised me, I still remember, since there was a considerable audience there, not just representatives from the SP and the SD, but also from the Waffen-SS, civil servants in the GG, and officers from the Wehrmacht. Frank congratulated Schöngarth, who stood behind him, stiff and a head taller than Bierkamp, on his successes in the implementation of difficult aspects of National Socialist ideology. This speech has survived in the archives; here’s an extract that gives a good idea of the tone: In a state of war, where victory is at stake, where we are looking eternity in the face, this is an extremely difficult problem. How, it is often asked, can the need to cooperate with an alien culture be reconciled with the ideological aim of, say, wiping out the Polish Volkstum? How is the need to maintain industrial output compatible with the need, for example, to annihilate the Jews? These were good questions, yet I found it surprising that they were so openly aired. A GG civil servant assured me later on that Frank always spoke this way, and that in any case in Poland the extermination of the Jews wasn’t a secret for anyone. Frank, who must have been a handsome man before his face drowned in fat, spoke with a powerful but squeaky, almost hysterical voice; he kept rising on his toes, stretching his paunch over the podium, and waving his hand. Schöngarth, a man with a tall, square forehead, who spoke in a calm, somewhat pedantic voice, also gave a speech, followed by Bierkamp, whose National Socialist proclamations of faith I couldn’t help myself from finding a little hypocritical (but I probably found it hard to forgive the dirty trick he’d played on me). When I came up to congratulate him during the reception, he acted as if he were delighted to see me: “Sturmbannführer Aue! I heard you behaved heroically, in Stalingrad. My congratulations! I never doubted you.” His smile, in his little otter face, looked like a grimace; but it was entirely possible that he had in fact forgotten his last words in Voroshilovsk, which were hardly compatible with my new situation. He asked me some questions about my duties and assured me of the complete cooperation of his departments, promising me a letter of recommendation to his subordinates in Lublin, where I counted on beginning my inspection; he also told me, over a few drinks, how he had brought Group D back through Byelorussia, where, renamed Kampfgruppe Bierkamp, it had been assigned to the anti-partisan fight, especially north of the Pripet Marshes, taking part in the major cleansing operations, like the one code-named “Cottbus” that had just ended at the time of his transfer to Poland. About Korsemann, he whispered to me in a confidential tone that he had acted poorly and was on the point of losing his position; there was talk of putting him on trial for cowardice in the face of the enemy, he would at the very least be stripped of his rank and sent to redeem himself at the front. “He should have followed the example of a man like you. But his indulgence toward the Wehrmacht has cost him dearly.” These words made me smile: for a man like Bierkamp, obviously, success was everything. He himself hadn’t done too badly; BdS was an important position, especially in the Generalgouvernement. I didn’t mention the past, either. What counted was the present, and if Bierkamp could help me, so much the better.