William & Rosalie: A Holocaust Testimony

eleven: On the border

142 “It is not true that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was desired and instigated solely by international finance conspirators of Jewish blood or working for Jewish interests.” In his suicide note Adolf Hitler tried to shift the blame for the six years of pain he forced on the world by invading Poland. The day before he dictated the note he learned that Heinrich Himmler had betrayed him. A radio brought the news down into the bunker. When Hitler heard that Himmler was trying to negotiate a separate peace he screamed until his face turned brownish purple. The thinker of the new Germany had finally been abandoned by his doer, the man who translated hate into bodies. Himmler killed himself three weeks later. After the Allies spurned his absurd diplomatic overtures his last days were desperate. Of the 800,000 elite killers he commanded in his prime, only two nervous aides remained. Forced to drive his own bulletproof car, the SS National Leader promptly ran it into a ditch. He shaved his moustache, donned an eye patch, and disguised himself as a sergeant. When the British caught chapter eleven On the border WRStxt.indd฀฀฀142 5/9/07฀฀฀10:18:45฀AM Chapter Eleven 143 him and stripped him down to his underpants he sneered at the burly sergeant who ordered him into his jail cell. It was the last order he ever obeyed. Once it became clear that he would face a judge he shook loose the capsule of cyanide hidden inside a molar. Fear of the noose made him bite through the glass. He had seen a lot of hangings. After his death a reporter asked his wife about the SS National Leader’s reputation as evil incarnate. She shrugged her shoulders: “He was a cop. Nobody likes cops.” A few other diehards went down defiantly. Paul Budin knew that no Allied judge would accept his excuses for HASAG’s murder of 60,000 work slaves. The war CEO and his socialite wife died when Budin blew up the company’s main office in Leipzig. And Plaszow commandant Amon Goeth gave a stubborn Nazi salute when a Polish tribunal hanged him. During his trial he objected that Poles had no right to judge a German in the first place. When it came to specific charges he denied facts and blamed other soldiers. In one of Goeth’s last blood orgies at Plaszow he shot Jewish police chief Willek Chilowitz, William’s old girlfriend Marysia, Mietek Finkelstein, and all the other top police captains . He showed the bodies on the dirty campground so prisoners could marvel at the flies in their mouths. As the Reich crumbled, worker bees like Pavlovska tossed their swastikas and faded into the crowd. In later life she may have argued that she was a victim of dehumanization training and factory managers who gave her direct orders to grind the slaves. She may also have blamed Berlin and her fellow countrymen . After the Nazi takeover, almost everyone signed off on the program either by saluting or remaining silent. When the party said it was time for preemptive strikes against any new atWRStxt .indd฀฀฀143 5/9/07฀฀฀10:18:46฀AM 144 William & Rosalie tack the Jews might be plotting, Pavlovska and millions of other citizens felt they had to believe this to be good Germans. In summer 1945 William and Rosalie are on the road together , trying to hitch a ride out of Poland. William will not miss the storybook castle on Wawel Hill. The first week I came back I went to my father’s salon. When the Nazis made it illegal for Jews to own a business Dad made an arrangement with his most trusted employee. We legally transferred the business to this guy for a few bucks with the understanding that my family would get our shop back after the war. When I walked in he was shaving a customer. He was friendly until I reminded him of the agreement. Then he got ugly and started shouting. “I paid for it! It’s mine!” And he dared me to take him to court. The communists were in charge now so I knew better than to bother. Instead, I went to visit the wall-paneling factory that Rosalie’s dad built. One of his original partners offered me a great job, but by this...