But I really should tell you about those famous negotiations. I didn’t participate in them directly: only once did I meet Kastner, with Becher, when Becher was negotiating one of those private agreements that made Eichmann so upset. But I took a keen interest in them because one of the propositions consisted in putting a certain number of Jews “on ice,” that is, sending them to work without going through Auschwitz, which would have suited me perfectly. This Becher was the son of a high-society businessman in Hamburg, a cavalryman who had ended up as an officer in the Reiter-SS and had distinguished himself several times in the East, especially in the beginning of 1943, on the Don front, where he had gotten the German Cross in gold; since then, he occupied important logistical functions at the SS-Führungshauptamt, the FHA that supervised the entire Waffen-SS. After he had gotten his hands on the Manfred-Weiss Werke—he never spoke to me about it, and I know how it happened just from books, but apparently it began entirely by chance—the Reichsführer ordered him to continue negotiations with the Jews, while giving similar instructions to Eichmann, no doubt on purpose, so that they would compete with each other. And Becher could promise a lot, he had the Reichsführer’s ear, but wasn’t in principle responsible for Jewish affairs and had no direct authority over the matter, even less than I did. All sorts of other people were mixed up in this business: a team of Schellenberg’s guys, noisy, undisciplined, some from the former Amt VI, such as Höttl, who went by the name of Klages and later on published a book under yet another name, others from Canaris’s Abwehr, Gefrorener (alias Dr. Schmidt), Durst (alias Winniger), Laufer (alias Schröder), but maybe I’m mixing up the names and the pseudonyms, there was also that odious Paul Carl Schmidt, the future Paul Carrell whom I’ve already mentioned, and who I don’t think I’m confusing with Gefrorener alias Dr. Schmidt, but I’m not so sure about that. And the Jews gave money and jewelry to all these people, and they all took it, in the name of their respective services or else for themselves, impossible to know; Gefrorener and his colleagues, who in March had placed Joel Brandt under arrest to “protect” him from Eichmann, had asked him for several thousand dollars to introduce him to Wisliceny, and then Wisliceny, Krumey, and Hunsche had received a lot of money from him, before the matter of the trucks came up. But I never met Brandt, it was Eichmann who dealt with him, then he left quite quickly for Istanbul and never came back. I saw his wife, once, at the Majestic, with Kastner; she was a girl of a pronounced Jewish type, not really beautiful, but with a lot of character, it was Kastner who introduced her to me as Brandt’s wife. The idea of the trucks, no one really knows who had it first, Becher said it was he, but I’m convinced it was Schellenberg who whispered the idea to the Reichsführer, or else if it really was an idea of Becher’s then Schellenberg developed it, whatever the case at the beginning of April the Reichsführer summoned Becher and Eichmann to Berlin (it was Becher who told me this, not Eichmann) and gave Eichmann the order to motorize the Eighth and Twenty-second SS Cavalry Divisions, with trucks, about ten thousand, that he was to get from the Jews. And so this is the famous story of the proposition known as “goods for blood,” ten thousand trucks equipped for winter in exchange for a million Jews, which has made a lot of ink flow and will continue to do so. I don’t have a lot to add to what has already been said: the main participants, Becher, Eichmann, the Brandt-Kastner pair, all survived the war and testified about this affair (though the unfortunate Kastner was killed three years before Eichmann’s arrest, in 1957, by Jewish extremists in Tel Aviv—for his “collaboration” with us, which is sadly ironic). One of the clauses of the proposition made to the Jews stipulated that the trucks would be used solely on the Eastern Front, against the Soviets, but not against the Western powers; and these trucks, of course, could only have come from the American Jews. Eichmann, I’m convinced, took this proposition literally, all the more so since the commander of the Twenty-second Division, SS-Brigadeführer August Zehender, was one of his good friends: he really thought that motorizing these divisions was the objective, and even if he grumbled at “letting go” of so many Jews, he wanted to help his friend Zehender. As if some trucks could have changed the course of the war. How many trucks or tanks or planes could a million Jews have built, if we had ever had a million Jews in the camps? The Zionists, I suspect, and Kastner in the lead, must have understood right away that it was a lure, but a lure that could also serve their own interests, let them gain time. They were lucid, realistic men, they must have known as well as the Reichsführer that not only would no enemy country ever agree to deliver ten thousand trucks to Germany, but also that no country, even at that time, was ready to welcome a million Jews, either. For my part, it was in the stipulation according to which the trucks would not be used in the West that I see Schellenberg’s hand. For him, as Thomas had led me to understand, there was only one solution left, breaking the unnatural alliance between the capitalist democracies and the Stalinists, and playing the “bulwark of Europe against Bolshevism” card to the end. Postwar history has since proven that he was entirely right, and that he was only ahead of his time. The proposition of the trucks could have had several meanings. Of course, you never knew, a miracle could happen, the Jews and Allies could agree to the deal, and then it would have been easy to use those trucks to create dissension between the Russians and the Anglo-Americans, even incite them to turn against each other. Himmler possibly dreamed about that; but Schellenberg was much too realistic to place his hopes in that scenario. For him, the whole affair must have been much simpler, it was a question of sending a diplomatic signal, via the Jews who still had a certain influence, that Germany was ready to discuss anything, a separate peace, a cessation of the extermination program, and then to watch how the English and the Americans reacted so as to pursue other approaches: a trial balloon, in other words. And what’s more the Anglo-Americans interpreted it that way at once, as their reaction proves: information about the proposition was published in their newspapers and denounced. It is also possible that Himmler thought that if the Allies refused the offer, that would demonstrate that they didn’t care about the lives of the Jews, or even that they secretly approved of our measures; at the very least, that would throw part of the responsibility onto them, it would drag them in as Himmler had already dragged in the Gauleiters and the other dignitaries of the regime. Whatever the case, Schellenberg and Himmler didn’t give up, and negotiations continued until the end of the war, as we know, always with the Jews as stake; Becher even managed, thanks to intervention of the Jews, to meet McClellan, Roosevelt’s man, in Switzerland, a violation by the Americans of the Tehran agreements, which led to nothing for us. For a long time already I had had nothing to do with this: from time to time, rumors reached me, via Thomas or Eichmann, but that was all. Even in Hungary, as I’ve explained, my role remained peripheral. I got especially interested in these negotiations after my visit to Auschwitz, at the time of the Anglo-American Normandy landings, around the beginning of June. The mayor of Vienna, the (honorary) SS-Brigadeführer Blaschke, had asked Kaltenbrunner to send him some Arbeitsjuden for his factories, which desperately lacked workers; and I saw this as an occasion both to advance Eichmann’s negotiations—these Jews, delivered to Vienna, could have been considered as “on ice”—and to obtain labor. So I set about pushing the negotiations in that direction. It was at that time that Becher introduced me to Kastner, an impressive man, always perfectly elegant, who dealt with us as equals, with a complete disregard for his own life, which gave him a certain strength when confronted with us: no one could make him afraid (there were attempts, he was arrested many times, by the SP or by the Hungarians). He sat down without being invited to do so by Becher, took an aromatic cigarette out of a silver case, and lit it without asking us for permission, and without offering us one, either. Eichmann claimed he was very impressed by his coldness and his ideological rigor and thought that if Kastner had been a German, he would have made a very good officer in the Staatspolizei, which for him was probably the highest compliment possible. “He thinks like us, that Kastner,” he said to me one day. “He thinks only about the biological potential of his race, he is ready to sacrifice all the old to save the young, the strong, the fertile women. He thinks about the future of his race. I said to him: ‘Me, if I were Jewish, I’d have been a Zionist, a fanatical Zionist, like you.’” The Viennese offer interested Kastner: he was ready to put down money, if the security of the Jews being sent could be guaranteed. I transmitted this offer to Eichmann, who was worried sick because Joel Brandt had disappeared and there was no reply about the trucks. Becher, during this time, was negotiating his own arrangements, evacuating Jews in small groups, especially via Romania, for money of course, gold, merchandise, Eichmann was mad with rage, he even ordered Kastner to stop talking to Becher; Kastner, of course, didn’t pay any attention to him, and Becher arranged for his family to get out. Eichmann, seething with indignation, told me that Becher had shown him a gold necklace he was planning on offering the Reichsführer for his mistress, a secretary with whom he had a child: “Becher has a hold on the Reichsführer, I don’t know what to do anymore,” he groaned. In the end, my maneuverings had some success: Eichmann got sixty-five thousand reichsmarks and some rather rancid coffee, which he regarded as an advance on the five million Swiss francs he had asked for, and eighteen thousand young Jews left to work in Vienna. I proudly reported this to the Reichsführer, but received no reply. In any case, the Einsatz was already reaching its end, even though we didn’t know that yet. Horthy, apparently terrified by BBC broadcasts and American diplomatic cables intercepted by his services, had summoned Winkelmann to ask him what was happening to the evacuated Jews, who were still, after all, Hungarian citizens; Winkelmann, not knowing what to reply, had in turn summoned Eichmann. Eichmann told us about this episode, which he found hilarious, one night at the bar in the Majestic; Wisliceny and Krumey were there, along with Trenker, the KdS for Budapest, an affable Austrian, a friend of Höttl’s. “I told him: we’re sending them to work,” Eichmann said, laughing. “He didn’t ask me anything else.” Horthy wasn’t satisfied with this rather evasive response: on June 30, he put off the evacuation of Budapest, which was supposed to begin the next day; a few days later, he completely forbade it. Eichmann still managed, despite the prohibition, to empty Kistarcsa and Szarva: but that was only a gesture to save face. The evacuations were over. There were a few more episodes: Horthy dismissed Endre and Baky, but was forced under German pressure to take them back; later on, at the end of August, he removed Sztójay and replaced him with Lakatos, a conservative general. But by then I had been gone for some time: sick, exhausted, I had returned to Berlin, where I ended up collapsing. Eichmann and his colleagues had managed to evacuate four hundred thousand Jews; out of those, barely fifty thousand had been retained for industry (plus the eighteen thousand in Vienna). I was shattered, horrified by so much incompetence, obstruction, ill will. Eichmann was doing hardly any better than I. I had seen him one last time before I left, in his office at the beginning of July: he was both elated and gnawed by doubts. “Hungary, Obersturmbannführer, is my masterpiece. Even if we have to stop here. You know how many countries I’ve already emptied of their Jews? France, Holland, Belgium, Greece, part of Italy, Croatia. Germany too of course, but that was easy, it was simply a technical question of transport. My only failure is Denmark. But here I gave Kastner more Jews than I let go in Denmark. What’s a thousand Jews? Dust. Now, I’m sure, the Jews will never get over it. Here it’s been magnificent, the Hungarians offered them to us like sour beer, we just couldn’t work fast enough. Too bad we had to stop, maybe we’ll be able to continue later.” I listened to him without saying anything. Tics were distorting his face even more than usual, he rubbed his nose, twisted his neck. Despite these proud words, he seemed very despondent. Suddenly he asked me: “And what about me, in all this? What’s going to become of me? What’s going to become of my family?” A few days before, the RSHA had intercepted a radio broadcast from New York that gave the numbers of Jews killed in Auschwitz, numbers that were quite close to the truth. Eichmann must have known, as he must have known that his name figured on all our enemies’ lists. “You want my honest opinion?” I said gently.—“Yes,” replied Eichmann. “You know that despite our differences, I’ve always respected your opinion.”—“Well, if we lose the war, you’re finished.” He raised his head: “I know that. I don’t plan on surviving. If we’re vanquished, I’ll put a bullet in my head, proud of having done my duty as an SS officer. But if we don’t lose?”—“If we don’t lose,” I said even more softly, “you’ll have to evolve. You can’t always go one like this. Postwar Germany will be different, a lot of things will change, there will be new tasks. You’ll have to adapt.” Eichmann remained silent, and I took my leave to return to the Astoria. Along with the insomnia and the migraines, I was beginning to have strong spikes of fever, which vanished as abruptly as they had come. But what ended up completely depressing me was the visit of the two bulldogs, Clemens and Weser, who presented themselves at my hotel without prior notice. “But what are you doing here?” I exclaimed.—“Well, Obersturmbannführer,” said Weser, or maybe Clemens, I forget which, “we came to talk with you.”—“But what do you want to talk about?” I said, exasperated. “The case is closed.”—“Ah, but actually, it isn’t,” said Clemens, I think. Both of them had taken off their hats and sat down without asking leave, Clemens on a rococo chair too small for his bulk, Weser perching on a long sofa. “You’re not implicated, fine. We completely accept that. But the investigation into these murders is continuing. We’re still looking for your sister and those twins, for example.”—“Can you believe, Obersturmbannführer, that the French sent us the make of the clothes they found, you remember? In the bathroom. Thanks to that, we worked our way back to a well-known tailor, a certain Pfab. You’ve ordered some suits from Herr Pfab before, Obersturmbannführer?” I smiled: “Of course. He’s one of the best tailors in Berlin. But I warn you: if you continue to investigate me, I’ll ask the Reichsführer to have you dismissed for insubordination.”—“Oh!” Weser exclaimed. “No need to threaten us, Obersturmbannführer. We have nothing against you. We just want to continue to interview you as a witness.”—“Precisely,” Clemens said in his coarse voice. “As a witness.” He handed his notebook to Weser, who leafed through it, then returned it to him, indicating a page. Clemens read, then passed the notebook back to Weser. “The French police,” whispered the latter, “found the late Herr Moreau’s last will. I can assure you right now, you’re not named. Nor is your sister. Herr Moreau leaves everything, his fortune, his companies, his house, to the two twins.”—“We,” grumbled Clemens, “find that strange.”—“Quite,” continued Weser. “After all, from what we understand, they’re just children who were taken in, maybe from your mother’s family, maybe not, but not in any case from his own family.” I shrugged: “I’ve already told you that Moreau and I didn’t get along. I’m not surprised that he didn’t leave me anything. But he didn’t have any children, or any family. He must have ended up feeling close to those twins.”—“Let’s suppose so,” said Clemens. “Let’s suppose so. But still: they may have been witnesses to the crime, they inherit, and they disappear, thanks to your sister who has apparently not returned to Germany. And you, couldn’t you enlighten us a little about it? Even if you have nothing to do with any of that.”—“Meine Herren,” I replied, clearing my throat, “I’ve already told you everything I know. If you came to Budapest to ask me that, you’ve wasted your time.”—“Oh, you know,” said Weser venomously, “we never completely waste our time. We always find something useful. And also, we like talking with you.”—“Yeah,” ejected Clemens. “It’s very pleasant. What’s more, we’ll keep at it.”—“Because, you see,” said Weser, “once we begin something, we have to follow it through to the end.”—“Yes,” approved Clemens, “otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense.” I didn’t say anything, just looked at them coldly, and at the same time I was full of fear, for I saw that these lunatics were convinced I was guilty, they wouldn’t stop persecuting me, something had to be done. But what? I was too depressed to react. They asked me some more questions about my sister and her husband, to which I replied absentmindedly. Then they got up to leave. “Obersturmbannführer,” said Clemens, his hat already on his head, “it’s a real pleasure chatting with you. You’re a reasonable man.”—“We hope very much it won’t be the last time,” said Weser. “Do you plan on returning to Berlin soon? You’re going to have a shock: the city isn’t what it used to be.”