What’s your opinion of the castle, Gerstein?
Well, from the outside it seems—
The Führer has said that everything Polish must be erased from the world.
Heil Hitler! cried Gerstein at once.
The railroad tracks were the same color as the evening sky.
They went by car to Lvov, which our forces had captured a year ago from that Slavic general, Vlasov. (Vlasov would soon begin working for us.) Lvov was now called Lemberg. In the windows of all the nice restaurants, neat signs warned: GERMANS ONLY. NO POLES ADMITTED.
You’re a quiet young man, Gerstein. I commend that.
Thank you, Herr Captain.
You haven’t been in Lemberg before.
No, Herr Captain.
I’m happy to say that Lemberg was a very anti-Semitic city long before we arrived here. Even the Polish students used to…
Gerstein smiled on him with hatred.
Hidden beyond the greatness and greenness of Polish summer trees, past tallish rounded Polish haystacks like ancient tumuli, a railroad spur ran to the secret place called Belzec, which would sometimes appear in his nightmares as a negative image, white on black, the Nazi eagle-stamp a white blotch on the document with the swastika black; sometimes eagle and swastika went completely white together, becoming a winged bomb falling in prefiguration of our V-2 rockets: 
. And then that file was opened; the secret of Belzec opened unto him in typed and numbered paragraphs, the numbers centered, the section titles underlined after the fashion of legal contracts. It was all for the best; thus the lesson he’d been meant to learn. Once the zone was clean and clear, there’d be happier scenes: Volksdeutsche receiving farmhouses, identification cards and framed photographs of the Führer as they entered their new inheritance.
Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet 
-Brigade Chief Otto Globocnik. Chief, I believe you’ve already met Professor Dr. Pfannenstiel, our Waffen- hygienist. And this fresh-faced young man is our delousing expert, -Obersturmführer Kurt Gerstein.
Heil Hitler! Yes, Dr. Pfannenstiel and I exchanged ideas just two weeks ago, in Lublin.
Heil Hitler!
Heil Hitler!
Brigade Chief Globocnik has been entrusted with organizing the actions against the Jews in Lublin District. And how’s the good work coming?
It’s a cesspool here, Günther. No matter how hard we work, there’s more shit and more shit! Jewish shit. Hopefully we’ll be able to clean it up faster—
That’s your task, Brigade Chief.
Of course. But they keep dumping more Jews on me. Just when I got Lublin nearly cleaned up, they sent me Jews from Austria. Last week I got a shipment from the Old Reich, and they’re all pretending to be war heroes!
What scoundrels!
They’ve all gone to the bathhouse now! Do you understand me, Gerstein?
No, Brigade Chief.
Well, you’ll learn. Now, you’re going to have two jobs at Belzec. First of all, you’ll develop a procedure for disinfecting clothing. We have mountains of it piling up, all used, and crawling with God knows what sort of vermin from Russians, Poles, Jews and all that riffraff…
By your order, Brigade Chief.
Secondly, we need a faster working gas than diesel exhaust. That’s where your prussic acid comes in.
Gerstein trotted after them, smiling woodenly as he waited to be enlightened. Dr. Pfannenstiel already knew. Dr. Pfannenstiel horrified him.
Gerstein, meet Kripo Chief Herr Christian Wirth. Wirth, this is -Obersturmführer Kurt Gerstein, who’s a very ingenious and reliable young man, I’ve heard…
Heil Hitler, Captain Wirth!
Heil Hitler! You’ll get used to the smell, Gerstein. Haven’t you ever passed by a rendering plant? Even paper-mills stink. Now, this here is the dressing hut. Do you see that window to turn in valuables? It’s surprising how many of them actually do it. We find that it reassures them. Moreover, it saves work for the Sonderkommando later, although our regulations do require us to inspect every body cavity.
That was when Captain Günther said: You’re not going to disappoint us, will you, Gerstein?
By your order, sir—
Next I’ll take you to the barber room, where we shave the heads of the women. We actually turn quite a profit on haircloth. Jewesses in particular seem to pamper their hair. I suppose it’s a racial characteristic. Then that lane over there with barbed wire on both sides, that leads to the baths, which is where you come in.
By your order, Captain Wirth—
A naked blonde Jewess, smiling at Gerstein without hope or shame, raised her hands one by one above her head and mopped her sweating armpits with a rag which had not yet been taken from her. The hair of her axilla resembled golden wire. Seeing how he looked at her, Captain Wirth shook his head.
Nature is inherently cruel, Gerstein, explained Captain Günther.
Gerstein, start your stopwatch.
In a fury, Captain Wirth was whipping Heckenholt’s Ukrainian assistant.
After two hours and forty-nine minutes, Heckenholt got the diesel motor working. Thirty-two minutes after that, all the Jews were dead.
Gerstein said to nobody in particular: The Führer himself has stated that Madagascar would be an acceptable residence for the Jews.
As a matter of fact, replied Captain Wirth in a monitory tone, the wishes of the Führer on this matter are top secret. Just remember this: The Final Solution is the only way we can reduce the danger of epidemics.
I understand, Herr Captain.
Now what? he was wondering. The answer proved logicaclass="underline" iron hooks in the mouths, then Captain Wirth gloating over his jam-box filled with the gold teeth of dead Jews. (The Ukrainians had made off with a golden mace from the sixteenth century, some coins, an ivory figurine of some saint.)—Into the mass grave! Now for petrol and match!
Dr. Pfannenstiel approached the pit rather gingerly and said: These bodies have not been completely burned.
So what, man? They’re only Jews!
Dr. Pfannenstiel cleared his throat and reproachfully explained: That’s not the issue. The whole procedure is not entirely satisfactory from the point of view of hygiene.
Gerstein was sure that he must be wearing his horror as conspicuously as an Iron Cross, but down sank another of his illusions. Everybody smiled at the handsome young blond man. Captain Wirth slapped him on the shoulder and said: There are not ten people alive who have seen, or will see, as much as you.
There is a roster of good souls. Open the dark grey folder and read: The names and identification numbers of these righteous have been typed in the lefthand column, followed by other boxes which contain in turn the dates of service, the methods employed and the numbers of people saved. To tell the truth, I had imagined that this roster resembled one of those Greek codices with golden anchors and crowns in the margins; but the practice of virtue is such a dreary, low-paying business that it’s all that the angels can do to hire a military typist; not even alphabetical order can be respected here, which is why on one of the loose sheets we find, in this order, Dr. Hermann Maas of Heidelberg, who helped many Jews get safely to England and Switzerland (he got sent to a labor camp in 1944, but survived the war despite his advanced age); Pastor Erik Myrgren of Berlin, whom the Israelis have designated one of the Righteous Among Nations; and Dr. Elisabeth Abegg, also of Berlin, who sold her jewelry in order to finance the escapes of Jews.—The name of Kurt Gerstein is not here.