CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I DECIDED TO go away. If I had been able to leave for Auschwitz the next day, I would have
gone. But it would have taken weeks to get a visa. So I went to Struthof in Alsace. It was the
nearest concentration camp. I had never seen one. I wanted reality to drive out the clichés.
I hitchhiked, and remember a ride in a truck with a driver who downed one bottle of beer after
another, and a Mercedes driver who steered wearing white gloves. After Strasbourg I got
lucky; the driver was going to Schirmeck, a small town not far from Struthof.
When I told the driver where I was going, he fell silent. I looked over at him, but couldn’t tell
why he had suddenly stopped talking in the midst of a lively conversation. He was middleaged,
with a haggard face and a dark red birthmark or scar on his right temple, and his black
hair was carefully parted and combed in strands. He stared at the road in concentration.
The hills of the Vosges rolled out ahead of us. We were driving through vineyards into a
wide-open valley that climbed gently. To the left and right, mixed forests grew up the slopes,
and sometimes there was a quarry or a brick-walled factory with a corrugated iron roof, or an
old sanatorium, or a large turreted villa among tall trees. A train track ran alongside us,
sometimes to the left and sometimes to the right.
Then he spoke again. He asked me why I was visiting Struthof, and I told him about the trial
and my lack of first-hand knowledge.
“Ah, you want to understand why people can do such terrible things.” He sounded as if he
was being a little ironic, but maybe it was just the tone of voice and the choice of words.
Before I could reply, he went on: “What is it you want to understand? That people murder out
of passion, or love, or hate, or for honor or revenge, that you understand?”
I nodded.
“You also understand that people murder for money or power? That people murder in wars
and revolutions?”
I nodded again. “But . . .”
“But the people who were murdered in the camps hadn’t done anything to the individuals who
murdered them? Is that what you want to say? Do you mean that there was no reason for
hatred, and no war?”
I didn’t want to nod again. What he said was true, but not the way he said it.
“You’re right, there was no war, and no reason for hatred. But executioners don’t hate the
people they execute, and they execute them all the same. Because they’re ordered to? You
think they do it because they’re ordered to? And you think that I’m talking about orders and
obedience, that the guards in the camps were under orders and had to obey?” He laughed
sarcastically. “No, I’m not talking about orders and obedience. An executioner is not under
orders. He’s doing his work, he doesn’t hate the people he executes, he’s not taking revenge
on them, he’s not killing them because they’re in his way or threatening him or attacking him.
They’re a matter of such indifference to him that he can kill them as easily as not.”
He looked at me. “No ‘buts’? Come on, tell me that one person cannot be that indifferent to
another. Isn’t that what they taught you? Solidarity with everything that has a human face?
Human dignity? Reverence for life?”
I was outraged and helpless. I searched for a word, a sentence that would erase what he had
said and strike him dumb.
“Once,” he went on, “I saw a photograph of Jews being shot in Russia. The Jews were in a
long row, naked; some were standing at the edge of a pit and behind them were soldiers with
guns, shooting them in the neck. It was in a quarry, and above the Jews and the soldiers there
was an officer sitting on a ledge in the rock, swinging his legs and smoking a cigarette. He
looked a little morose. Maybe things weren’t going fast enough for him. But there was also
something satisfied, even cheerful about his expression, perhaps because the day’s work was
getting done and it was almost time to go home. He didn’t hate the Jews. He wasn’t . . .”
“Was it you? Were you sitting on the ledge and . . .”
He stopped the car. He was absolutely white, and the mark on his temple glistened. “Out!”
I got out. He swung the wheel so fast I had to jump aside. I still heard him as he took the next
few curves. Then everything was silent.
I walked up the road. No car passed me, none came in the opposite direction. I heard birds,
the wind in the trees, and the occasional murmur of a stream. In a quarter of an hour I reached
the concentration camp.