I
Hans Frank, Governor General of Poland, “wanted a Reich under the law (230)” as long as the law could be used to justify anything. One pointed the law toward a desired end and drafted laws that fulfilled that end. Like Himmler, Frank wished for the elimination of “all feelings of pity (217).”@
At 18, he was already anti-Semitic and right-wing. Fanaticism works on the young. Its certitude appeals to their sense of righteousness. If it captures them when they are young, they rarely give up or actively reject their beliefs. True believers remain devoted to their mission.
Frank was incapable of irony. He remained committed to the murder of Jews and Poles even as the Soviet armies closed in. He believed that “mass extermination offered a path to happiness (230).” @
At Nuremberg, on trial for his life, Frank showed no reaction when evidence was presented that “between September 7, 1941, and July 1943 … the Germans killed more than eight thousand children in the Janowska Camp …. (272).” That Camp was within his purview. He was responsible. Frank “recognized collective guilt, but not his own (256).” Under interrogation, he placed the blame elsewhere.@ Someone else is always to blame.
He was also a man who played Schumann, Brahms, Chopin and Beethoven beautifully, tenderly. He was “a deeply cultured man, widely read, greatly interested in classical music and well connected to leading writers and composers (256).” @
At the end, awaiting execution, he spent his time weeping and in prayer. He said to one of his interrogators, “You cannot hide the truth from God (291).”@ The suspicion here is that many of his ilk know that what they are doing is terribly wrong, but that they either bury that knowledge so deep it has little to no effect on their actions, or that, facing their absolute end, they break up or play act in hope of mercy. Their lives are so polluted by lies that it is impossible to tell the difference.
II
Otto Wachter, deputy to Hans Frank, “wrote poetry and a film script (4).”#
In 1921 when Wachter was 20 years old, he participated in a large anti-Jewish protest in central Vienna where a crowd of 40,000 called for Jews to be stripped of citizenship and property (21).” During that same protest he attacked Jews on a streetcar and was convicted of the offense.
He joined the Party in 1923 and again in 1930. His wife, Charlotte, also a committed Nazi until her death as an old woman, gave him a copy of Mein Kampf in 1931. In the summer of 1932, he spent 3 weeks at a summer school for aspiring Nazis. He wrote to Charlotte about “a wonderful feeling of camaraderie he experienced there (32).”
He actively sought to join the SS: “He risked his reputation by putting the commitment to the SS above all professional and ethical duties (51)” He wanted to be a part of that energy. He worked in the main office of the SS where he “came into the orbit of Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler (52).”
He and his wife were together on a balcony watching Hitler’s triumphant return to Vienna after the Anschluss:
“The road to Helden Platz was completely full, people standing shoulder to shoulder …. It took a long time to clear the route. The Fuhrer was standing with a raised hand, greeting the crowd, which was shouting excitedly. Everyone was carried along in this feeling of heartfelt joy (61).”
In April of 1937 he reported to the SS that he had “completed his resignation from the Roman Catholic Church.” He signed it “Heil Hitler! Wachter (52).” He moved upward in his career and incrementally became a superintendent of murder.
After the invasion of Poland, he was promoted to become chief administrator of the District of Krakow. Charlotte observed that “Life was good, Otto was on a fine upward trajectory (79).”
When he was promoted and moved to modern Lviv (Lemberg), he and his family lived in a large villa, “a fine place to welcome visitors from abroad and across Galicia. A lunch party for twenty might be followed by an afternoon tea for forty. The city was on the way to the Russian Front …. (94).”
“The House came with a big garden, a tennis court and swimming pool and came with a pony that pulled a little carriage (97) (if you have not done so, please watch the movie Zone of Interest). “The Jews are being deported in increasing numbers and it’s hard to get powder for the tennis court: Otto complained about the lack of manual labor (100).”
During this time, Jews were being deported to Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, all of which lay within the district of which he was Governor-General. During the first year of Wachter’s reign in Lviv, more than 130,000 Jews were murdered, more than 8,000 of whom were children (146).” He ordered most Jews expelled from Krakow, ordered hostages taken, ordered the creation of the Krakow Ghetto, ordered Jews to move there “on pain of death (84).” He ordered the murder of 56 randomly chosen Poles in reprisal for an attack on German soldiers. He was present at the killings in Bochnia on December 12, 1939.
He expressed no doubts about any of his actions in any of the many cards and letters he sent to his wife during the War years.
He died, unpunished but hunted, in a Roman Hospital in 1949 after having been hidden by a pro-Nazi Austrian bishop, Alois Hudal.
III
Walter Rauff, SS officer, an engineer essentially, “designed a prototype gas van that was tested on Soviet prisoners at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Locked into the back, prisoners were killed by internally fed exhaust fumes in less than eight minutes, their bodies then cremated. Under his direction, the design was constantly improved.”
Over the next year, Rauff oversaw the construction of hundreds of vans (63).” & “Rauff had no qualms about the work: it would lessen the emotional burdens of those who killed in the public interest (63).”&
Before he escaped to South America, he stated in an interrogation that “the main issue for me was that the shootings were a considerable strain for the men who were in charge, and this burden was removed through the use of gas vans (64).”&
He had been “tutored” by Reinhard Heydrich, who appreciated Rauff’s organizational abilities. “He was a man who didn’t ask questions and got things done (62).” & Later, he ordered Jews to be murdered in Milan, “and was involved in the first deportation of Italian Jews to Auschwitz (67).” &
In Chile, where he was protected By Pinochet and where he operated a crab canning factory, he once told his workers, “I drink to forget and so I can sleep at night (129).”&
Unpunished, he died of a heart attack in May of 1984, in Santiago, Chile, under the protection of Augusto Pinochet, a dictator and mass murderer.
