After a few days at Dachau, Dolibois received another assignment. He proceeded to Central Continental Prisoner of War Enclosure Number 32, or CCPWE No. 32. The mission he was now on was classified Top Secret. Everyone he asked about CCPWE No. 32 said that they had never heard of it before. When Dolibois’s driver left the borders of Germany and began heading into Luxembourg, Dolibois became overwhelmed with memories. Luxembourg, of all places—how capricious to be on assignment here. John Dolibois was born in Luxembourg. He had moved to America when he was a twelve-year-old boy, with his father; his mother had died in the great influenza pandemic. Driving into Luxembourg in 1945, Dolibois was seeing his native country for the first time in fourteen years. As his army jeep made its way into a little spa town called Mondorf-les-Bains, images of his youth flooded his mind. He recalled Mondorf’s “beautiful park, a quiet stream on which one could row a boat, lots of old trees, and acres of flowers.” Mondorf was built a few miles from the Moselle River in antiquity, developed by the Romans as a health resort. It was known for its restorative qualities, its mineral baths and fresh air. How different it all looked now, another small city devastated by war. Most homes and shops had been plundered or destroyed. Driving along the main boulevard, Dolibois observed how the fa?ades of many houses had been blown off. He could see people carrying on with their lives inside of what was left of their homes.
Only when his jeep pulled up to its destination did Dolibois realize that he’d arrived at the Palace Hotel. It was unrecognizable to him. A fifteen-foot-high fence ran around the main building, on top of which was a double-stringed curl of barbed wire. There was a second fence that appeared to be electrified. Camouflage netting hung from panels of fencing. Wide canvas sheets had been strung from tree to tree. Huge klieg lights illuminated the place. There were four guard towers, each manned by American soldiers holding powerful machine guns. Not even in photographs had John Dolibois seen an Allied prison facility in the European war theater as heavily fortified as this place was. At the front gate there was a jeep, parked and with its engine turned off. A stern-faced sergeant sat inside. His name tag read “Sergeant of the Guard, Robert Block.” Block addressed Dolibois with a nod.
“Good afternoon, sergeant,” Dolibois said. “I’m reporting for duty here.”
Block just stared at him. Dolibois recalled asking what kind of place this was. What was going on inside?
Block said he had not been inside.
There was a long, uncomfortable pause. Finally Block spoke. “To get in here you need a pass signed by God.” He nodded at the prisoner-of-war facility behind him. “And have somebody verify the signature.”
Dolibois handed over his papers. After Block looked at them, the gate swung open and Dolibois was waved inside. In spite of its fortifications, the Palace Hotel remained surprisingly unscathed by war. The boomerang-shaped building was five stories tall. The fountain at the front entrance lacked water, its stone-carved nymph rising up from an empty pool. Inside the hotel foyer Dolibois was greeted by two guards. A third soldier handed him a key and pointed up a flight of stairs. He told Dolibois to leave his things in room 30, on the second floor.
“I climbed up the stairs, located room 30 and let myself in with the key he had given me. It was an ordinary hotel room,” remembers Dolibois, “with rather noisy wallpaper.” Inside, the fancy light fixtures and plush furniture of a grand hotel had been replaced by a folding table, two chairs, and an army cot. Dolibois unpacked his duffel bag. There was a knock on the door.
Ashcan may have been heavily fortified on the exterior, but inside the facility, the prisoners were free to roam around. Dolibois opened the door and stood face-to-face with a large man dressed in a ratty pearl-gray uniform with gold braids on the collars and gold insignia on the shoulder pads. He held a pair of trousers draped over one arm. Clicking his heels, he nodded and introduced himself as if he were at a party, not in a prison. The man opened his mouth and barked, “G?ring, Reichsmarschall!”
So this was Hermann G?ring. Dolibois recognized him immediately from so many screenings of Triumph of the Will. Here was the man in flesh and blood. G?ring was arguably the most notorious of Hitler’s inner circle still alive. Former commander in chief of the Luftwaffe. Director of the Four Year Plan. Hitler’s long-acknowledged successor until the perceived betrayal at the very end. It was Hermann G?ring who ordered security police chief Reinhard Heydrich to organize and coordinate plans for a “solution to the Jewish question.”
“At once I understood my assignment,” recalled Dolibois. He was here in Luxembourg to interrogate the highest-ranking war criminals in the Nazi Party. This was not a Nazi propaganda film. The individuals who had so populated his mind and his teaching at Camp Ritchie for the past eight months were right here. And they were all prisoners now.
G?ring stood before Dolibois, panting.
G?ring said he had been unfairly tricked by his captors. “He had been told he was going to a palatial spa,” Dolibois explained. When G?ring arrived at Ashcan with his valet, Robert Kropp, he was expecting a vacation. He brought along eleven suitcases and twenty thousand Paracodin pills, and had made sure his toenails and fingernails had been varnished to a bright red shine for his stay. That the spa at Mondorf had lost its chandeliers and been turned into a maximum-security prison complex was not what G?ring had in mind. His mattress was made of straw, G?ring barked at Dolibois. He didn’t have a pillow. A man of his rank deserved more.
Dolibois looked at G?ring. Made a mental note.
“Are you by chance a welfare officer who will see to it that we are treated correctly, according to Articles of War?” G?ring asked Dolibois.
In this question, Dolibois saw opportunity as an interrogator. “Yes,” he said. He would be working “along those lines.” G?ring was pleased. “He made a great show again of heel-clicking, bowing and taking his 280 pounds out of my room.”
G?ring returned to his fellow prisoners. He told the other Nazis about the new officer’s arrival and his responsibilities to see better treatment for all of them. Suddenly everyone wanted to speak with First Lieutenant John Dolibois.