The recent deportation of John Demjanjuk, aka "Ivan the Terrible", to Germany where he will stand trial for war crimes once again raises the issue of the "willing executioners" of the Third Reich. Who were these low-level operatives that killed and tortured on command? Why did they do it? Two weeks ago Der Spiegel caused an international firestorm of controversy with a cover article on non-German, European collaboration in the Holocaust (Hitler's European Holocaust Helpers). The article was the source of a diplomatic row with Poland, a nation that refuses to practice Vergangenheitsbewältigung.
It is not likely that the aging and ailing Demjanjuk will provide any testimony that would give us insight into his actions over 64 years ago. But I thought about Ivan Demjanjuk when I recently read Anna Seghers' 1946 novella Das Ende (The End), for the story is told primarily from the perspective of a death camp guard very much like Demjanjuk.
We first encountered the character Zillich in Seghers' bestselling novel Das siebte Kreuz (The Seventh Cross - 1942). Zillich is a SA-Mann who had distinguished himself with special brutality and is selected to help run the Osthofen concentration camp. In the novel, Zillich fails to capture the escaped protagonist Heisler, but Seghers was evidently not finished with him. Das Ende describes what happens to Zillich after Germany's defeat.
At the beginning of Das Ende, Zillich has made his way back to the American zone in southern Germany to his family in a rural village. There he keeps a low profile, and hopes that no one will recognize him or turn him in for his actions as sub-commandant at a concentration camp in the east. His luck runs out when a railroad worker, who had been a prisoner at the camp, recognizes him. Zillich flees and, under an assumed name, tries to find sanctuary at work camps in the region. We follow the tormented Zillich through the ruined landscape as he attempts to escape his past. At no point does he express any remorse or guilt for what he had done at the camps. Still, the camps haunt his dreams:
Der Schlaf brachte ihm aber keine tiefere Ruhe, sondern Unrast und Beklemmung. Er spürte traumlos oder in einem uferlosen, gestaltlosen Traum die Drohung in allen Fasern; er spürte den Tod allgegenwärtig, allmächtig und allwissend zugleich, als ob er ihm folge und als ob er ihn verfolge. Er riss ihn am Haar, der Tod, er brannte ihn im Herzen, er kitzelte ihn an den Fersen, er surrte in dem dünnen Gemurmel im Rücken. Zillich wollte rasen vor Wut, der Störung ein Ende machen. Er brüllte: Ruhe! Er befahl: Raus! und: Wird's bald! und: Marsch, marsch! (Sleep did not bring him any deeper peace, but rather restlessness and a feeling of oppression. In a dreamless state, or in a formless, unending dream he could feel the threat in every fiber of his being, he could sense death, all powerful, ever present, and all knowing, as if it were following him and as if he were pursuing it. Death was grabbing his hair, burning in his heart, licking at his heels, humming softly at his back. Zillich wanted to explode in rage to put an end to the torment. He shouted out: Quiet! He ordered: Get out! and Do it now! and March, march!)
We learn about Zillich's past as a bully, how he was despised by others in the village and feared by his own wife and son. But the Nazis valued these qualities, and for the first time in his life Zillich achieved some measure of recognition. His willingness to "do the dirty work" - even if it involved murder and torture - eventually earns him the promotion at the camp. But his victims can never forget him. At every turn Zillich confronts a strange Männlein dressed in a suit with a flower in his lapel. The Männlein, who may or may not be a Jew, seems to know Zillich's past. Zillich, in the end, realizes there is only one escape route.
Segher's (uncharacteristically) brings in one important personal detail to Das Ende: Zillich ended his Nazi career at the concentration camp in Piaski, where Anna Seghers' mother was relocated and perished.
In my opinion, Seghers' novella is superior to Bernhard Schlink's Der Vorleser (The Reader), which has won many awards and was made into a Hollywood feature film (as was The Seventh Cross). Compared to Zillich, Hanna Schmitz, the illiterate former SS guard at Auschwitz in Der Vorleser, is unconvincing. What little I know about Ivan Demjanjuk, I believe him to be more like Anna Seghers' fictional creation.
Yes, I agree with you.
Posted by: hattie | May 29, 2009 at 02:21 PM