SS Camp Kommandant Schwarzhuber, in charge of Birkenau, and Dr. Mengele, the SS captain with “special” responsibilities, are the only two left in the mess hall. The Kommandant has a bottle of apple schnapps in front of him while the medical captain has a cup of coffee.
Mengele studies the Kommandant with detachment—his long face and fanatical look. The medical captain does not consider himself an extremist; he’s a scientist. Perhaps he doesn’t want to admit to being envious of Schwarzhuber’s incredibly blue eyes, so unmistakably Aryan compared to his own, which are brown, and which, together with his darker skin, give him a disconcertingly southern Mediterranean appearance. At school, some children made fun of him, calling him a Gypsy. He’d love to lay them down on his dissection table and ask them to repeat their comments to him now.
Vivisection is an extraordinary experience. It’s like the view a watchmaker has of a watch, but of life …
He observes Schwarzhuber drinking. It’s deplorable that an SS Kommandant with dozens of assistants at his disposal is incapable of appearing with perfectly polished boots or properly ironed shirt collars. It’s a sign of slackness, and that’s unforgiveable. He despises country bumpkins like Schwarzhuber who cut themselves when they shave. And on top of that, Schwarzhuber does something that utterly annoys Mengele: He repeats conversations they’ve already had, using the exact same words and the same stupid arguments.
Yet again Schwarzhuber asks Mengele why his superiors have such an interest in this absurd family camp, expecting the doctor to give him the usual answer. Mengele musters his patience and puts on a show of affability while deliberately speaking as if to a small child or the mentally handicapped.
“You are already aware, Herr Kommandant, that this camp is strategically very important to Berlin.”
“Dammit, Herr Doktor, yes, I do already know that! But I don’t know why it’s shown such consideration. Are we now going to set up a child care center for them as well? Have they gone mad? Do they think Auschwitz is a resort?”
“That’s what we would like a few countries that are keeping a close eye on us to think. Rumors are rife. When the International Red Cross started to request more information about our camps and asked to send inspectors, our commander in chief, SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, was brilliant, as always. Rather than banning the visit, he encouraged them to come. We will show them what they want to see: Jewish families living together and children running around Auschwitz.”
“Too many complications—”
“All the work that was done in Theresienstadt will have been useless if, when we receive inspectors of the International Red Cross who have tracked the inhabitants of that ghetto to here, they see what we don’t want them to see. We’ll invite them to see the house, but we won’t show them the kitchen, just the playroom. And they’ll return to Geneva satisfied.”
“To hell with the Red Cross! Who do these cowardly Swiss, who don’t even have an army, think they are, telling the Third Reich what it should do? Why aren’t they shown the door as soon as they get here? Or even better, have them sent to me, and I’ll stick them in the ovens without first stopping off in the kitchen.”
Mengele smiles condescendingly as he watches Schwarzhuber becoming more and more red in the face. He has to restrain himself from grabbing his riding crop and bringing it down on Schwarzhuber’s head. No, not his crop, that’s too valuable. Better yet, he would have enjoyed pulling out his gun and blowing Schwarzhuber’s brains out. But Schwarzhuber is the Kommandant of Birkenau, even if he is a complete idiot.
“My dear Herr Kommandant, don’t underestimate the importance of the image we offer to the world and our project. We must be careful. Do you know which executive office our beloved Führer first held within the Nazi party?”
Mengele pauses theatrically; he knows he’s going to answer his own question, but he enjoys humiliating Schwarzhuber. “Head of propaganda. He talks about it in his book, Mein Kampf—have you read it?” He relishes the Kommandant’s worried expression. “Many people, both within Germany and outside our borders, have still not understood the need to cleanse humanity genetically by eliminating racial degeneration. There are still countries that would go on alert and open up new war fronts. And we absolutely don’t want that right now. We want to be the ones who decide where and when fronts are opened. It’s the same as performing an operation, my dear Kommandant. You can’t cut just anywhere; you have to choose the appropriate place for an incision. The war is our scalpel, and we have to handle it with precision. If you handle it like a madman, you might end up sticking it into yourself.”
Schwarzhuber can’t stand Mengele’s patronizing tone—the same one a teacher might use with a hopeless pupil.
“Dammit, Mengele, you talk like a politician! I’m a soldier. I have my orders and I’ll carry them out. If SS Reichsführer Himmler says we have to keep the family camp, so be it. But this business of a child care center … where does that fit in?”
“Propaganda, Herr Kommandant … pro-pa-gan-da. We’re going to get these inmates to write home and tell their Jewish relatives how well they’re being treated in Auschwitz.”
“And what the devil do we care what those Jewish pigs think about how we treat them?”
Mengele breathes in and mentally counts to three.
“My dear Herr Kommandant, there are still many Jews out there who’ll have to be brought here progressively. An animal that doesn’t know it’s going to the slaughterhouse allows itself to be led there much more docilely than one that knows it’s going to be sacrificed and thus puts up all kinds of resistance. As someone from a village, Schwarzhuber, you ought to know that.”
Mengele’s final comment irritates Schwarzhuber.
“How dare you call Tutzing a village? For your information, Tutzing is considered the most beautiful town in Bavaria, in all of Germany, even … which means we could say in the whole world.”
“Of course, Herr Kommandant. I completely agree: Tutzing is a marvelous town.”
Schwarzhuber is about to reply, but he realizes that this pedantic, middle-class doctor is deliberately provoking him, and he’s not going to play along.
“Very well, Herr Doktor, a child care center, whatever is necessary,” he roars. “But I’m not going to let it cause the slightest problem or disturbance in the camp. It will be closed at the first sign of lack of discipline. Do you think that Jew who’s in charge will be able to maintain discipline?”
“Why not? He’s German.”
“Captain Mengele! How dare you say that a repugnant Jewish dog like him belongs to our glorious German nation?”