The Kindly Ones

With Dr. Wirths, I had an interesting discussion about precisely this question of physical violence, since to me it evoked problems I had already encountered in the Einsatzgruppen. Wirths agreed with me in saying that even men who, in the begi

I had left Wirths and was walking up the Kasernestrasse toward the Kommandantur. Just before the checkpoint with its red-and-white barrier, I noticed one of Höss’s children, the oldest one, squatting in the street in front of the gate to their house. I went over and greeted him. The boy raised frank, intelligent eyes to me and stood up: “Hello, Sturmba

At the end of the day, after stopping by the Haus der Waffen-SS to wash and change, I went back to the Hösses. In front of the gate, there were now only a few dozen ants left, rapidly crisscrossing the surface. The thousands of others must have been underground now, digging, clearing away, shoring up, invisible but continuing their mad labor without respite. Höss welcomed me on the steps, glass of Cognac in hand. He introduced me to his wife, Hedwig, a blond woman with a fixed smile and hard eyes, wearing a becoming evening gown with a lace collar and sleeves, and his two eldest daughters, Kindi and Püppi, also prettily dressed. Klaus shook my hand in a friendly way; he was wearing a tweed jacket of English cut, with suede patches on the elbows and large horn buttons. “That’s a handsome jacket,” I remarked. “Where did you find that?”—“My dad brought it back for me from the camp,” he replied, beaming with pleasure. “The shoes too.” They were polished brown leather ankle boots, with buttons up the side. “Very elegant,” I said. Wirths was there and he introduced me to his wife; the other guests were all camp officers: there were Hartjenstein, the garrison commander; Grabner, the head of the political department; Lagerführer Aumeier, Dr. Caesar, and a few others. The ambiance was somewhat formal, more than at Eichma