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In my relations, as I may have said, I always took care to avoid intellectuals or men of my social class: they always wanted to talk, and had an a
In October, just after my birthday, I was sent back to Hungary. Horthy had been overthrown by a coup organized by von dem Bach-Zelewski and Skorzeny; now Szálasi’s Arrow Cross Party was in power. Kammler was clamoring for labor for his underground factories and his V-2s, the first models of which had just been launched in September. Soviet troops were already penetrating Hungary, from the south, as well as the Reich’s own territory, in eastern Prussia. In Budapest, the SEk had been dissolved in September, but Wisliceny was still there and Eichma
My legal case continued its course; Judge von Rabingen regularly summoned me to clear up one point or another. From time to time I saw Mihaï; as for Helene, she seemed to be growing increasingly transparent, not from fear, but from pent-up emotion. When, back from Hungary, I told her about the atrocities of Nyíregyháza (the Third Armored Corps had retaken the city from the Russians at the end of October, and had found women of all ages raped, parents nailed alive to doors in front of their mutilated children; and these had been Hungarians, not Germans), she looked at me for a long time, then said gently: “And in Russia, was it very different?” I didn’t say anything. I looked at the extraordinarily thin wrists her sleeves revealed; I could easily have looped my thumb and index finger around them. “I know their revenge will be terrible,” she said then. “But we’ll have deserved it.” In the begi