Fatherland

marks. Jewish Sonderkommando detachment enters to hose down corpses, wearing rubber boots, aprons, gas masks (according to W., pockets of gas remain trapped at floor level for up to two hours). Corpses slippery. Straps around wrists used to haul them to four double-doored elevators. Capacity of each: 25 [illegible] bell rings, ascend one floor to . . .
    10:02 a.m.: Incineration room. Stifling heat: 15 ovens operating full blast. Loud noise: diesel motors ventilating flames. Corpses from elevator loaded onto conveyor belt (metal rollers). Blood etc. into concrete gutter. Barbers either side shave heads. Hair collected in sacks. Rings, necklaces, bracelets, etc. dropped into metal box. Last: dental team—eight men with crowbars and pliers—gold removal (teeth, bridgework, fillings). W. gives me tin of gold to test weight: very heavy. Corpses tipped into furnaces from metal pushcarts.
    Weidemann: four such gas chamber/crematorium installations in camp. Total capacity of each: 2,000 bodies per day = 8,000 overall. Operated by Jewish labor, changed every 2-3 months. The operation thus self-supporting; the secret self-sealing. Biggest security headache—stink from chimneys and flames at night, visible over many kilometers, especially to troop trains heading east on main line.
    March checked the dates. Luther had visited Auschwitz on July 15. On July 17 Buhler had forwarded the map locations of the six camps to Kritzinger of the Reich Chancellery. On August 9 the last deposit had been made in Switzerland. That same year, according to his wife, Luther had suffered a breakdown.
    He made a note. Kritzinger was the fourth man. His name was everywhere. He checked Buhler's pocket diary. Those dates tallied also. Another mystery solved.
    His pen moved across the paper. He was almost finished.
    A small thing, it had passed unnoticed during the afternoon; one of a dozen or so scraps of paper stuffed at random into a torn folder. It was a circular from SS- Gruppenführer Richard Glücks, Chief of Amtsgruppe D in the SS Economic Administration Main Office. It was dated August 6, 1942.

    Re: the utilization of cut hair.
    In response to a report, the Chief of the SS Economic Administration Main Office, SS-Obergruppenführer Pohl, has ordered that all human hair cut off in concentration camps should be utilized. Human hair will be processed for industrial felt and spun into thread. Female hair that has been cut and combed out will be used as thread to make socks for U-boat crews and felt stockings for the railways.
    You are instructed, therefore, to store the hair of female prisoners after it has been disinfected. Cut hair from male prisoners can be utilized only if it is at least 20 mm. in length. . . .
    The amounts of hair collected each month, separated into female and male hair, must be reported on the 5th of each month to this office, beginning with September 5, 1942.
    He read it again: ". . . for U-boat crews. . ."

    One. Two. Three. Four. Five . March was underwater, holding his breath, counting. He listened to the muffled noises, saw patterns like strings of algae float past him in the dark. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. With a roar he rose above the surface, sucking in air, streaming water. He filled his lungs a few more times, took an immense gulp of oxygen, then went down again. This time he made it to twenty-five before his breath exploded and he burst upward, slopping water onto the bathroom floor.
    Would he ever be clean again?
    Afterward, he lay with his arms dangling over the sides of the tub, his head tilted back, staring at the ceiling like a drowned man.

SUNDAY, APRIL 19

    However this war may end, we have won the war against you; none of you will be left to bear witness, but even if someone were to survive, the world would not believe him. There will perhaps be suspicions, discussions, research by historians, but there will be no certainties, because we will destroy the evidence together with you. And even if some proof should remain and some of you survive, people will say that the events you describe are too monstrous to be believed: they will say that they are the exaggerations of Allied propaganda and will believe us, who will deny everything, and not you. We will be the ones to dictate the history of the Lagers.
    SS OFFICER, quoted in The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi

1

    In July 1953, not long after Xavier March had turned thirty and his work as yet consisted of little more than the arresting of whores