The
Terminal
|
I show you fear in a handful of dust.
|
T.S. Eliot
|
Rudolph Höss
had a strict catholic upbringing, was even expected to become a man of
the
cloth. Instead he chose to commit murder on an industrial scale. Not
that he
had any illusions about the nature of what he was doing, in fact he
understood
that this was not right. But from a screwed up sense of duty or
"sacrifice" he not only followed orders, but agreed with Heinrich
Himmler, Hitler's chief of the SS, that somebody had to do it, so that
normal people
could find rest in their sleep and not be held accountable for the
implementation of the Nazi's eugenic laws. At least, that's the
perception, for
which Höss himself would have liked to be remembered.
His
perverted sense of heroism should fool nobody, but the truly scary
aspect is
not the monster in uniform. What is really disturbing is the perfectly
humdrum
persona of a committed and efficient executive manager and devoted
family man,
somebody who in different circumstances easily could be your next door
neighbor, or partner on the golf course.
In
1881 an enterprising Jewish family moved from an obscure place, called
Birkenau, to Oldenburg in Prussia. Herr Cohn was an enthusiastic
believer in
assimilation, his wife a great fan of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. They
christened
their oldest son "Emil." At the age of 19
the young man had made his A-levels, but decided
against an academic career. From his tiny inheritance he bought one of
those
high wheel velocipedes, and pedaled all the way to London. There he
rented a
two room basement flat in Tottenham Court Road, hung up his vehicle in
the
window and opened a bicycle shop. A few
years later we find him associating with a
group of enterprising
gentlemen who recently had broken Brazil's latex monopoly.
Acting
for the British Government in 1876, Henry Wickham had smuggled rubber
seeds
and shoots out of Matto Grosso. The
seeds were germinated at the Tropical Herbarium in Kew Gardens, London,
and
from there exported to Ceylon and
Singapore. For young Cohn this meant, he did well in the tire business
and made
a fortune from his possessions in India. An early widower, he employed
a
mail-dating agency to find his second wife and in 1911 he married my
grandmother
at a registrar's office of his Majesty, King George V. The
British Raj is now merely a footnote to
history, but the paperwork still
exists and when the Brits packed their duffel bags on August 15, 1947
they took
the files with them to the Indian Office in London where it still can
be found.
Had it ever been made available to German authorities, I probably
wouldn't
be around. Because after the
assassinations in Sarajevo, Emil Cohn chose to be a patriot, sold his
possessions, expatriated himself and his family to Germany, and,
already in an
advanced age, enlisted in the Kaiser's army.
In
1933 it was the Fatherland's turn to repay his patriotic services.
Since there
had never been papers filed with the German authorities, Emil’s crafty
Aryan
wife and the four surviving children slipped through.
But
for old Cohn there was a boxcar waiting, which in 1942 shipped him back
to his
place of birth, Auschwitz. The German Reichsbahn (imperial railway)
debited the
fare for him and his travel companions to the "resettlement
department" (Referat IV B44). We all have heard of its chief of
operations,
SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann. The office squared its
accounts from funds
extorted from Jewish emigrants and from the precious metal in the tooth
fillings
of victims in the death camps. After the war 1,200,000 railway
employees and
their uncounted friends and families protested to have been utterly
oblivious
to the nocturnal transmigrations of the rolling stock in their charge.
On
arrival my grandfather went through the selection procedure - an old
man of
failing health, what chance did he have? - and Dr. Mengele directed him
to file
in into the column who was made running to the phony shower rooms.
There is a
possibility that Commandant Höss had been present on the platform
to oversee
the selection procedure. But I am not sure; I don’t know the exact day.
©
- 4/6/2008 - copyright by michael sympson,
725 words, all rights
reserved