— Wilhelm Speidel. Convicted of participating in the extermination of Serbian Jews and in war crimes related to the expulsion of Greek Jews to extermination camps. Sentenced in 1948 to twenty years in prison but released in 1951.
He listed some familiar names too:
— Untersturmführer Kurt Franz, referred to by the prisoners as Lalka, meaning “Doll.” Arrested only in 1959 and brought to trial. For almost fifteen years, he lived a normal life in his community. Despite the harsh testimonies, his punishment was only imprisonment. As an exceptional case, the court also addressed the culpability of Barry, the St. Bernard dog who took an active part in killing prisoners. The dog was adopted after the war by a German physician, Dr. Strobe, and harmed no one. He reached old age and was euthanised in 1947.
— Erich Lachmann. The original owner of Barry, and the man who instilled his murderous tendencies in him. Also charged with murdering inmates in the Sobibor camp, but acquitted of all charges.
— Heinrich Lohse, Reichskommissar of the Baltic areas. A brutal implementer of the Final Solution, who ordered that Jews in areas under his control be rationed no more than the minimal essentials to sustain life. Sentenced to ten years of penal servitude, but released after three years for medical reasons. Lived in freedom until his death thirteen years later.
— Wilhelm Koppe. A leading figure in the establishment of the Chelmno extermination camp, a ghetto “liquidator” in the Wartheland and a senior SS commander of occupied Poland. Lived under an assumed name after the war and was only captured in 1961. His trial was discontinued due to medical problems. Lived in freedom until 1975.
Endless lists.
Again and again, I am struck by one mounting impression: how quick the world was to forgive, to mitigate death sentences, to release life-term prisoners. Something larger than the Nazis’ crimes was at work here. Something global. It was not only the Nazis whom Attorney Perl was condemning. His explanations encompassed all human beings — otherwise, the Nazis would not be understood. He spread before me the treasures of the Holocaust, rolling them out like a fabric merchant. Together we tore up everything I had learned at school; the Shoah recited in ceremonies, the placards displaying numbers of casualties. It was a competition of sorts, a hope to impress, to shock, to emphasize the magnitude of the catastrophe.
Attorney Perl led the conversations. I, in turn, modestly provided material from encyclopedias, from school, from the books on the shelves in Mrs. Gottmartz’s public library. I also brought to our conversations what little I knew of my family history. Minute details in punctured containers. But Attorney Perl removed our families from his words, so as not to divert the line of logic. His own private Shoah grief rarely emerged, and was quickly covered over when it did. He was authoritative in his speech. Precise, impartial.
“In order to judge the Nazis’ deeds,” he explained, “we need something moral and axiomatic that includes the obligations of both the judged and the judges. Feelings must not be an active factor, but only an additional examination method.”
And when the explanations got complicated, we always went back to the endless lists.
— Heinz Schubert. Sentenced to death at the Einsatzgruppen Case. Released in 1951.
— Erhard Milch, head of the Nazi regime’s Central Planning Board. Charged with exploiting the slave labor economy throughout the Reich and overseeing morbid medical experiments conducted by physicians on camp inmates. Sentenced to life in prison in 1947 but his sentence was commuted to fifteen years and he was in fact released in 1954.
— Walter Kuntze, a general in the German army. Responsible for the murder of thousands of Serbian Jews with the SS. Sentenced to life in prison in 1948 but released in 1953 due to reasons described as “health considerations.”
Outside Attorney Perl’s store, life went on as usual. Yehoshua the barber had to make good on more and more promises to cut the hair of loyal customers at their homes until their dying days. He arrived punctually, not reneging even on the vaguest of vows, but boosting himself by mumbling around his customers’ heads, “Believe me, I’m certain it was you in ’64 over at Golchik the barber on HaNevi’im Street. Not anyone else. So help me God, I shouldn’t have come to you.”
In the neighborhood, the fight between Littman and Sammy raged on — proof that the world did not change. But it did change: Littman installed air conditioning in his corner store (“enough suffering,” he said), paving the way for two frenetic months during which the entire neighborhood fattened up their walls with little air conditioners. A victory for progress.
Littman did not grow old. Neither did Grandpa Lolek. Why would he? He had already been eligible for discounted bus fares for a while now, and besides, there was not much to be gained by old age. His Vauxhall was not what it used to be; every time the engine was turned off, its cooling body trickled out grumbles and complaints. But Grandpa Lolek remained loyal. Thanks to Green the Mechanic, the Vauxhall could still make it to Gedera and back. When Anat was pregnant with Yariv, Grandpa Lolek bought her a car. One day he simply placed the keys to a Fiat Uno in the palm of her hand, as if to say, “I always buy cars for pregnant women.” We tried to graciously refuse, and finally, perplexed, we consented. There were no words. Only the Tarbut encyclopedia could express the sentiment (Everyman, Plate Tectonics, Seventh Wonder).
Grandpa Yosef did not grow old either. His justification was the bike. His wrinkles deepened, his wisdom grew heavier. The university studies breathed new life into him, dragon wings that he politely dragged through the shrubs along Katznelson. His decision to continue his academic adventures even after obtaining his Masters’ impressed us. The topic of his doctoral thesis, Jewish heroism in the Middle Ages, aroused a certain curiosity. By the time he reached the graduation ceremony in 1985, Effi was a medical student and I was an officer — two perfect icons of naches for Grandpa Yosef. Except in our case it was the grandfather who brought naches to his grandchildren. Each of us secretly vowed to fill our lives with rich content, to somehow aspire to be the equal of Grandpa Yosef, who struggled against a lack of time, a multitude of worries and old age. Many other family members seemed to be in a constant flux of hidden motion — a change perceptible only to those proficient in this morphology.
We would come to Grandpa Yosef whenever we could, to eat the ever-changing contents of the fruit bowl, to talk, to fortify ourselves. Around us strange years flew by. We sat with Grandpa Yosef. Things occurred outside. Grandpa Yosef came and went, brought cold fruit, juice. We saw the books on his desk change. Less of Rambam and Radak’s scriptural commentaries, more Traditional Anti-Semitism in Western Europe and The Jewish Leadership’s Interpretation of the Crusades. We went to make coffee in the kitchen and came back. Effi began her studies. Still taking pictures in bursts, but the periodic excess now concealed an impaired desire to photograph. I became an officer and completed a short term of service in the standing army. Grandpa Yosef reveled in the anti-aircraft weaponry I was put in charge of, slightly miffed that I wasn’t allowed to try my hand against real aircraft. Effi’s books, Introduction to Surgery and Biology for Physicians, were respectfully leafed through.
Grandpa Yosef did not have a porch-and-a-loquat-tree-to-sit-beneath. When we came, sometimes both of us, but usually only one, we made do with the big wooden table. There we sat, all grown up, comprehending the amazing power with which its location had been selected: the precise center of an equilateral triangle between Brandy’s calls (Moshe’s needs), Feiga’s calls (Feiga’s needs), and the window (public needs). Grandpa Yosef, the loyal emissary, left his post once in a while to head this way or that to answer a call. Sometimes he went far, if the summons required it. Moshe, Feiga, someone else, Moshe again, Feiga once more, someone else again. Grandpa Yosef on his orbits, never resting, never finished. And he always came back to us, looking straight ahead with severity, even threatening: No pity. God forbid, do not dare pity me.