Höfle, his deputy for the Einsatz Reinhard, was also an Austrian, but much more staid than his superior. He received me with a dispirited, weary air: “Not too shaken up? Don’t worry about him, he’s like that with everyone.” He chewed his lip and pushed a piece of paper toward me: “I have to ask you to sign this.” I skimmed over the text: it was a declaration of secrecy, in five points. “But it seems to me,” I said, “that I’m already compelled to secrecy by my very position.”—“I know. But it’s a rule imposed by the Gruppenführer. Everyone has to sign.” I shrugged my shoulders: “If it makes him happy.” I signed. Höfle put the paper away in a folder and crossed his hands on his desk. “Where do you want to start?”—“I don’t know. Explain your system to me.”—“It’s quite simple, really. We have three installations: two on the Bug and one on the Galician border, in Belzec, which we’re in the process of closing because Galicia, aside from the labor camps, is mostly judenrein. Treblinka, which mainly served Warsaw, is also going to be closed. But the Reichsführer has just given the order to transform Sobibor into a KL, which will be done toward the end of the year.”—“And all the Jews pass through these three centers?”—“No. For logistical reasons, it wasn’t possible or practical to evacuate all the little towns in the region. For that, the Gruppenführer received some Orpo battalions that dealt with those Jews on-site, little by little. I’m the one who directs the Einsatz on a day-to-day basis, together, with my inspector of the camps, Sturmbannführer Wirth, who’s been there since the beginning. We also have a training camp for Hiwis, mostly Ukrainians and Latvians, in Travniki.”—“And aside from them, all your personnel are SS?”—“Actually, no. Out of about four hundred and fifty men, not counting the Hiwis, almost a hundred were assigned to us by the Führer’s Chancellery. Almost all our camp commanders are from there. Tactically, they’re under control of the Einsatz, but administratively, they depend on the Chancellery. They supervise everything having to do with salaries, leaves, promotions, and so on. Apparently it’s a special agreement between the Reichsführer and Reichsleiter Bouhler. Some of those men aren’t even members of the
Allgemeine-SS or of the Party. But they’re all veterans of the Reich’s euthanasia centers; when most of those centers were closed, some of the personnel, with Wirth at their head, were transferred here so that the Einsatz could profit from their experience.”—“I see. And Osti?”—“Osti is a recent creation, the result of a partnership between the Gruppenführer and the WVHA. Since the beginning of the Einsatz, we’ve had to set up centers to deal with the confiscated goods; little by little, they’ve expanded into various kinds of workshops, for the war effort. Ostindustrie is a limited liability corporation created last November to regroup and rationalize all those workshops. The board of directors named an administrator from the WVHA, Dr. Horn, to run it, along with the Gruppenführer. Horn is a rather nitpicking bureaucrat, but I suppose he’s competent.”—“And the KL?” Höfle waved his hand: “The KL has nothing to do with us. It’s an ordinary WVHA camp; of course, the Gruppenführer is responsible for it as SS- und Polizeiführer, but it’s completely separate from the Einsatz. They also manage companies, especially a workshop of the DAW, but that’s the responsibility of the SS economist attached to the SSPF. Of course, we cooperate closely; some of our Jews have been handed over to them, either to work, or for Sonderbehandlung; and not long ago, since we were overflowing, they set up their own installations for the ‘special treatment.’ Then you have all the armament enterprises of the Wehrmacht, which also use the Jews we’ve provided them; but that’s the responsibility of the Armaments Inspectorate of the GG, headed by Generalleutnant Schindler, in Cracow. Finally, you have the civilian economic network, under the control of the new district governor, Gruppenführer Wendler. You might be able to see him, but be careful, he doesn’t get along at all with Gruppenführer Globocnik.”—“The local economy doesn’t interest me; what concern me are the channels for assigning prisoners, in terms of the economy as a whole.”—“I think I understand. Go see Horn, then. His head’s a little in the clouds, but you can probably get something out of him.”