Those Who Save Us

  Trudy manages a sip of coffee.

  What a coincidence, she tells Mr. Pfeffer. I was born there as well. But closer to the center of the city.

  Mr. Pfeffer rears back in delight.

  Were you! But you are quite right: that is an extraordinary coincidence. However, I could have guessed you were a native German from your given name. Trudy is short for Gertrude, correct?

  Yes, it is. I can’t imagine what my mother was thinking.

  Mr. Pfeffer laughs. It could have been worse. You could be a Helga, for instance . . .Und sprechen Sie jetzt Deutsch? Do you know what my name means in our original language?

  Ja, natürlich. Auf Deutsch, Pfeffer ist Pepper.

  Mr. Pfeffer claps. Ah, yes, your accent is Thuringian! But I was not referring to my surname. I meant my first: Felix.

  That I don’t know, says Trudy. Is there a direct translation?

  No, says Mr. Pfeffer. But it means happy. Or, I should say, happy-go-lucky.

  He wags a finger at Trudy.

  My mother, Hannaliese Pfeffer, was a smart woman. She named me well. I have been lucky all my life.

  In what way? Trudy asks.

  In what way? Mr. Pfeffer repeats. His brows again rise, wrinkling skin the color and texture of caramel. Why, in almost every way. I am blessed with good health and an optimistic disposition. My business interests in this country have thrived, as you can see. And in Weimar, during the war, while so many of my compatriots were dying in such nasty ways in the Russian snow or the deserts of Africa, my business ventures exempted me and fed me and kept me warm. Until my unfortunate incarceration, that is. But I managed to survive, and here I am—whereas so many others of my generation are rotting in the ground . . .

  Mr. Pfeffer pats Trudy’s knee, his hand lingering perhaps a bit longer than it should.

  And if that isn’t lucky, dear lady, he says, his small brown eyes shining, what is?

  60

  THE GERMAN PROJECT Interview 14

  SUBJECT: Mr. Felix Pfeffer DATE/LOCATION: May 10, 1997; Minnetonka, MN

  Q: . . .You mentioned your business interests in Germany, Mr. Pfeffer. Can you tell me more about that?

  A: With pleasure. To begin with, at fifteen I was an apprentice to an antiques wholesaler in Weimar—Fizel, his name was. I fibbed about my age in order to get the job, I must confess. But while my numerous siblings contented themselves with woodcutting and carpentry and other forms of manual labor, I somehow had been born with a taste for the finer things and a talent for persuasion, and within a few months I became Fizel’s best salesman. When I had learned as much as I could from him, I advanced to working for a jeweler whose specialty was old stones in valuable settings. I traveled the Continent seeking such merchandise, and while doing so I met a great many influential people with an appetite for acquisition; in addition to gems, they wanted art, carpets, rare books. I soon discovered that I possessed, you should forgive my immodesty, an exceptional ability to procure for them whatever they asked for. By the time the war broke out, I had established quite a name for myself. I was only twenty-two then, but already on my way up. And as the Reich came to full power, other business opportunities presented themselves, of which I took quick advantage.

  Q: What opportunities were those?

  A: Well, I suppose you could say I became a broker [subject laughs ]. Yes, a broker.

  Q: A broker of . . . ?

  A: Why, people, my dear, of course. Jews escaping the oncoming juggernaut. It is true that many of them did not recognize the danger in time; they put their heads down and prayed it would pass. But there were plenty who were desperate to get out, and thanks to the numerous connections I had made, both among the wealthy and the, shall we say, less reputable element, I was able to help them. They were frantic to barter whatever they could to secure visas, new identification papers, passports. The supply soon overwhelmed the demand, I can tell you. I was swamped with furs, silver, paintings, heirloom jewelry, a grand piano or two. One family even convinced me to take [laughs ] a canary in an antique cage. The bird naturally was worthless, but the cage was solid gold and I was able to find a home for it in short order.

  Q: And what happened once you had accepted these payments?

  A: I would put my Jewish clients in touch with the right people, and those people would get them out. Despite the Gestapo, there was a strong Resistance network in Germany, at least in the early days. As to what happened once I had turned my clients over to my contacts, that I do not know. I assume most of them got out.

  Q: Did you ever feel guilty about making money this way?

  A: No, dear, not at all. I did feel sorry for the Jews, but guilt? No.

  Q: Then do you see yourself as a hero for helping Jews to escape?

  A: [laughs] Oh my, no. Allow me to explain. In wartime there is always excellent business to be done, if one is only enterprising enough to spot the opportunities. As a historian you must know that certain men have always built fortunes from others’ misfortune. If there must be wars—and given the nature of man, they are inevitable, sad but true—then why should one not profit from them if he is able? Business is business.

  Q: How long did your business continue?

  A: This particular sideline lasted until the, oh, I’d say, late thirties. Then the source dried up, as my Jewish clientele had already left the Vaterland with my aid or in less pleasant ways, at the behest of the Nazis. Yet I still had more business than I could handle, for the SS were by then entrenched at Buchen-wald, that hellhole on the hill. Their demand for certain goods was more rapacious even than that of my former wealthy customers, and as my reputation had preceded me, I began to procure for them as well. Of course, the products were somewhat different.

  Q: And they consisted of . . . ?

  A: Liquor, primarily. And drugs. Medicines, hashish, opium, cocaine. Also French cigarettes—the Schutzstaffeln had an unpatriotic preference for Gauloises, for whatever reason. At any rate, I knew everyone from Marrakech to Moscow, so whatever the SS requested, I could get.

  Q: Who exactly asked you to get these things?

  A: I had dealings with almost all the SS, but my main contact was Kommandant Koch, and he was my best client. You know, nowadays historians make a big hoo-ha about Göring having been an opium-addicted degenerate; I never had the dubious honor of making the man’s acquaintance, so for all I know, they may be right. But from what I observed, he could not have held a candle to Koch. Now there was a fellow who enjoyed his pleasures. A sensualist. A hedonist. His position enabled him to do whatever he wanted, and believe me, he took full advantage.

  Q: In what ways?

  A: There were, for instance, the Comradeship Evenings, a little ritual Koch established during the early days of the camp. At least, that was what he called them. In reality, they were orgies. They occurred every Sunday, regular as clockwork, in the Bismarck Tower just outside the camp boundaries. There all of the officers would gather—their attendance being mandatory—to enjoy the company of prostitutes. Not the poor girls working in the Special Building, the Buchenwald brothel, but imports. And Puppenjungen, boys who were chosen from incoming transports specifically for this purpose. I supplied the champagne the officers drank and, when the evening’s activities were concluded, in which they bathed. Also cigars, marijuana, the opium and cocaine I previously mentioned.

  As you can imagine, this was a highly profitable venture, and it had the additional benefit of exempting me from service in the Wehrmacht. Nor was I the only one to reap the rewards of a contract with Koch, I can assure you. Some of Weimar’s most respectable merchants did quite nicely for themselves. Herr Fischkettel, for one, a metalworks owner. Wohnmeyer, a purveyor of fine wursts and other meats. Frau Staudt, a local baker, made a tidy sum supplying bread for the officers, as well as the petit fours of which Koch was so fond.

  Q: How long did your enterprise continue?

  A: Oh dear, I was afraid we would come to this sooner or later...Well, I have told you I am a
lucky man, but in 1940 my good fortune ran out for a while. Koch said that some of the cocaine I had provided was a bad grade—cut with sugar, he claimed, or some such nonsense. One of his deputies, an Unter-scharführer Glick, had a somewhat nasty reaction to it: he died. I suspect overindulgence rather than any fault of the product, but one never knows. At any rate, the Gestapo caught and arrested me in late 1940, and I was taken to Buchenwald.

  Q: What happened to you there?

  A: It was a very nasty business all around. Firstly, I was classified as a Green Triangle, a Berufsverbrechen, which was the camp designation for professional criminal. Not a desirable occurrence, for the BVs were treated much more harshly than, say, the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Red Triangles, the politicals. And in some cases we were worse off even than the Jews, for often the Green Triangle guaranteed one time in the punishment block, being reeducated by the madman Sommer. Everyone called him the Hangman, for that was his preferred method of teaching: to string a man up by the wrists and let him dangle for days, from meat hooks or window bars. And that was his least creative method. A more inventive one was to force a garden hose down the throat of a hanging man and let the water run until his stomach burst.

  I managed to avoid this initiation because of my connections within the camp. However, I was immediately assigned to the worst work detail, the stone quarry. I started making arrangements to be transferred to the laundry or the Gustloff armament works, where one would at least be inside, or to the kitchen, which of course was ideal because of the access to food. And that is where I did end up. Until liberation, in fact. But organizing the proper payments took some time, and meanwhile Koch was still irritated enough with me that I began my incarceration in the quarry. And that was a literal hell.

  Q: What did quarry detail consist of ?

  A: We worked twelve hours a day, from six in the morning until six at night. We had the poorest rations, and we worked in all weathers, carrying enormous stones about. I never quite saw the point of it, but then I’ve never been one for manual labor. The exposure to the elements and the lack of food started to tear me down fairly quickly.

  However, it was the guards who posed the greatest danger. They hated the monotony of overseeing the quarry; they called it Shit Detail—you should forgive the vulgarity. They were very easily bored, as stupid men often are, and often hungover and most often drunk, and they had atrocious ways of combating their ennui. The favorite was to whisk the cap off the head of some unfortunate inmate and throw it across the sentry line. It was punishable by death to be without one’s cap, and it was equally forbidden to cross the boundary. Yet the poor devil singled out would be commanded to retrieve his cap, and the instant he stepped over the line he would be shot. All of the guards found this endlessly entertaining. Gretel and Lard-Ass, as we called them, were two of the most willing participants. And Wasserkopf—water on the brain—a Kapo so nicknamed because of his abnormally large head and total idiocy. But the worst sadists, the originators of the game, were Hinkelmann and Blank, and more inhuman creatures I have never met to this day. As was the case with all the guards, they had been professional criminals before the war—real ones—and to keep them out of trouble, Koch posted them permanently in the quarry. I used to thank God I was adept at hiding behind the other prisoners, for evading the notice of Hinkelmann and Blank was one’s only hope of surviving each day.

  The sole benefit of quarry detail—and it kept some of the men alive long past the point at which they would have otherwise perished—was that bread was left for us just beyond the sentry line. It was sometimes possible, when the guards were involved in their sport, for one of us BVs to steal over and retrieve it and conceal it in our trousers. This duty often fell to me, since I was relatively small in stature and good at not calling attention to myself. Two women from Weimar, Aryan civilians, hid rolls for us in the hollow trunk of a large pine. They did this at great risk to themselves, of course, since füttern den Feind—feeding the enemy—was also punishable by death. We revered them; we called them die Bäckerei Engel, the Bakery Angels. Those who were religious prayed for them every night.

  That was a miserable winter, but I managed to squeak by, and in the spring of 1941—

  Q: Mr. Pfeffer, can we backtrack for a minute? Can you tell me more about the Bakery Angels?

  A: Certainly. Let me see...Well, they made these Special Deliveries—as they were known—every Wednesday. And at the same time, they would collect messages we managed to smuggle out of the camp. We did so in a most unsavory way, I’m afraid; we wrote on tiny sheets of paper and hid them in prophylactics. I will leave it to you to imagine where the prophylactics were concealed. We were hoping to get word to the Outside about what was happening in the camp, so that it might be sent through the Resistance network to Israel or America. In the early days, before the SS put a stop to it, film was also left by the tree in this way. There was a photography department in the camp, and some of the more enterprising Red Triangles managed to use its equipment to take photographs for evidence. It was then up to the Angels to ensure that it got out.

  I remember one poor fellow in particular who had been arrested for just this subversive activity: the Good Doktor, we called him, Herr Doktor Max Stern. I had known him before the camp as well, since he was the first link in the chain that enabled my Jewish clients to escape. He also once treated me for influenza. He was skinny even before the war, and after some time in the punishment block he was emaciated. They had beaten him to a jelly, too, of course. Yet he managed to last much longer than any of us thought he would, and I suspect this was a triumph of mind over matter. He’d had a love affair with one of die Bäckerei Engel, you see; she had hidden him until his arrest, and with her he had a child, a daughter he never saw, born Outside. I am convinced he lived for the messages about her. I remember well when she was born, November 1940, since I provided the cigars for the occasion. We smoked them in the barracks after lights out, though the Good Doktor was too weak to enjoy his by then—

  My dear, are you all right?

  Q: Yes. I’m sorry. Please go on. Who were the Bakery Angels? What were their names? Did you ever see them?

  A: Of course. One was Frau Mathilde Staudt, whom I mentioned earlier as providing the pastries for the Comradeship Evenings. She was also in the Resistance, and I had helped her from time to time. Some of the men called her die Dicke, Fatty, and indeed she was quite plump. But I found this rather ungracious, considering what she was doing for us, and personally I have always preferred a woman to be buxom—

  Q: The other one. The other Angel. What did she look like?

  A: Her I did not know. She became Frau Staudt’s apprentice during my unfortunate incarceration, and I had never had any prewar dealings with her, so I do not know her name. But I did glimpse her on occasion and once I saw her quite well, while Hinkelmann was squeezing the life out of some poor fellow by standing on his throat. She must have been so horrified by the sight that she had forgotten her caution, for she was standing too close to the quarry. I heard that later, after Frau Staudt was discovered and executed, the apprentice Angel managed to save herself and her daughter from the same fate by becoming the mistress of one of the camp’s highest-ranking officers, one Ober-sturmführer Horst von Steuern, a colder-hearted murderer than even Hinkelmann or Blank. He was quite taken with her, I heard, and I can imagine why. She was very beautiful, small but generously curved, with light eyes and dark hair shot through with blond streaks—

  Q: Stop the tape. Stop the tape. Stop the tape!

  All right, Trudy, says Thomas, it’s off, the camera’s off. What is it? What’s wrong?

  Trudy shakes the contents of her purse onto Mr. Pfeffer’s coffee table and seizes her wallet. Her hand is trembling so that she tears the photograph when she extracts it from its plastic sleeve. But it is still intact enough to show Anna at its center, Anna in 1952 with Jack and Trudy on the farmhouse porch, on the Fourth of July.

  Trudy thrusts the snapshot toward Mr. Pf
effer.

  Is this the woman you saw? she demands. Is this the apprentice Angel?

  Mr. Pfeffer holds the photograph at arm’s length.

  I cannot be sure, he admits. It was so many years ago...But there is a striking resemblance. I’m fairly certain this is her.

  How certain?

  Mr. Pfeffer purses his lips and lets out a pssssh of air.

  Oh, I’d say, perhaps eighty percent?

  He hands the photograph to Trudy, but she makes no move to take it. She stares at the rippling sun crescents on the wall over Mr. Pfeffer’s shoulder.

  My God, she says. My God.

  Trudy, what is it? Thomas asks again.

  After a minute Trudy shakes her head.

  I’m not sure yet, she answers. But let’s pack it up for now, okay?

  To Mr. Pfeffer, who is observing her with keen interest, she adds, The woman in the photograph is my mother.

  Mr. Pfeffer smiles.

  Ah, yes, he says. I had surmised as much.

  Would you mind terribly if we finished your interview another day? I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed . . .

  Of course. I completely understand.

  And if you have time, I’d so appreciate it if you’d come home with me—just for a little while—

  You wish, naturally, to see whether I recognize your mother, says Mr. Pfeffer.

  He produces a heavy gold pocketwatch and flicks back the cover.

  I do have a dinner engagement, he says, but there is plenty of time. Until then, dear, I am all yours.

  He stands, shakes out the creases in his trousers, and offers an arm to Trudy. They adjourn to the front steps to wait while Thomas disassembles his equipment. Mr. Pfeffer examines the sky and removes his suitjacket, then blots his forehead with his silk handkerchief. The sun is at its zenith, and the day has grown hot.