The Kindly Ones

The special train left not from one of the main stations but from the S-Bahn station on Friedrichstrasse. The platform, cordoned off by police and Waffen-SS forces, was swarming with senior officials and Gauleiters, in SA or SS uniforms, greeting one another noisily. While a Leutnant from the Schupo checked his list and my orders, I examined the crowd: I didn’t see Dr. Mandelbrod, whom I was supposed to meet there. I asked the Leutnant to show me his compartment; he consulted his list: “Herr Doktor Mandelbrod, Mandelbrod…here it is, the special car, at the end of the train.” This car was specially built: instead of an ordinary door, there was a double door, as in a cattle car, comprising about a third of its length; and steel blinds hid all the windows. One of Mandelbrod’s amazons was standing in front of the door, in an SS uniform with an Obersturmführer’s stripes; she was wearing not the regulation skirt but masculine riding breeches, and was at least an inch taller than I. I wondered where Mandelbrod recruited his aides: he must have had a special arrangement with the Reichsführer. The woman saluted me: “Sturmba