Etta had wanted to come but I explained that this was work, not a day-trip. Besides, I could enquire on another matter in Weimar which would be easier without her.
*
It is only fifteen minutes and ten pfennigs to take the train to Weimar. There are five crematoria for the city. Paul owns two of them. He is on the steps of his chapel in Jacob Street in his black suit waiting for me like he must wait for his hearses or the wagons from the camps. He sees me, and his dignified stance changes to an animated rush as he runs to greet me like the boy in school again.
‘Ernst!’ He waves, clasps my hand. ‘So good to see you!’
‘Thank you for seeing me.’
‘Of course, of course! Come. I make you coffee. How is Etta? How can I help you?’
I needed my friend’s advice, his opinion. Colleagues and family, even wives, sometimes reflect only your own.
Old friends the mirror that you cannot see yourself in.
*
‘What is this, Ernst?’ Paul studied the paper, the plans across his coffee-table in his private rooms. A comfortable place. Nicer than my home. Not an office. No paperwork here. If working men had rooms where they could retire to during the day I am sure they were doing well. He had left school at fourteen. I went to university and rent a gas cooker with one working hob.
‘These are replacement ovens for a few of the crematoria at the Auschwitz camps. The place is enormous. Its own city almost.’
Paul sat back to furnish his pipe. I would not show him that I still smoked rolled cigarettes. His speech lisped as the pipe hung from his mouth. He sounded like my father judging my school-work.
‘You know, Ernst, the camp at Buchenwald used to bring wagons of corpses to us for disposal. Not so much the last year. And we used to get deliveries of ashes from the eastern camps to return to families. Not now. The camps have dispensed with formalities. Ignored the laws of their own government. By law the remains are supposed to come to people like myself. We formalised the paperwork and contacted the relatives. We store them here for them if they cannot pay for their release. The SS charge them for the cremation. We have cupboards full of them.’
‘The typhus means they are having to burn more deceased. I suppose in times of emergency laws must be bypassed.’
‘But we get no ashes now. None. They cannot all die of disease. The Party are the ones who regulated. Would you not wonder what hand decided that the rules no longer mattered? That the dead do not matter?’
‘I have been inside Buchenwald,’ I said. ‘There are sixty thousand men there. They have one crematorium. Six ovens. They are overwhelmed. The morgue is below the ovens. The stench was incredible. They cannot cope. Topf is trying to help them. Auschwitz must have the same problems.’
‘And what is so different about this crematoria. What am I looking at?’ He went back to looking at the plan and I pointed the rooms out to him.
‘Instead of the ovens being on the ground floor they will be on the same level as the morgue, the mortuary and pathology. All underground. They use hand-drawn lifts currently.’
‘So do I. And what is this large room between?’
‘The delousing room. This annexe next to it is for the clothes.’
‘They delouse the prisoners next to the mortuary and the ovens?’
‘They delouse,’ I indicated the showers in the ceiling, ‘and then they shower them. This is for the new prisoners. Straight off the train. The track is close by so they do not mingle with the rest of the camp.’
He sucked on his pipe and it rattled on his teeth.
‘And what are these lines here, to the morgue?’
‘Gas pipes.’
‘Gas for what?’
‘I do not know. Exactly. Heating?’
He sat back. ‘You do not heat a morgue, Ernst. You do the opposite.’
‘For the hot water then?’
‘I doubt they give them hot water. What is the building above?’
‘I do not have that plan.’
He studied for three puffs of his pipe.
‘This building makes no sense to me.’
I watched his hands navigate the drawing.
‘You have five triple-muffle ovens behind a delousing room the size of a school hall. The dead would have to be trundled through this hall making it inoperative at those times and – if it is to be as busy as you say it is – that is useless. The morgue and pathology also in this room? There is also only one entrance. These are steps leading to it, yes?’
I agreed, but unsure of it.
‘Well, I do not see any chutes leading to the morgue. So they carry the dead down one by one? By these stairs?’
I looked hard at the plan.
‘There was a chute at Buchenwald. To the morgue.’
‘There does not seem to be one on this plan. Are the dead expected to walk down?’
I had not noticed, felt foolish in front of my friend. Fool. Idiot.
‘Perhaps it is missing?’ My first thought glinted. I had found an error, an oversight I could highlight. To my superiors. Ernst Beck. A designer. ‘They have missed the chutes.’
‘Do you think Topf would make such a mistake, Ernst?’
‘Maybe it is a cost issue? From the SS.’
‘Cement stairs rather than a couple of chutes or a lift to the morgue? I could not operate a morgue underground without a platform lift or a chute. With this design I would be carrying the bodies through the chapel. That is illegal, Ernst. This design is illegal.’
I could no longer refrain from pulling out my sweepings of tobacco. His observations needed a deliberating smoke. Paul watched me roll a cigarette before he went on. I do not think he judged my cheap simulation of smoking, as Klein would have done.
‘I would like to copy this plan, Ernst. I could maybe help with its improvement. Make suggestions. One friend to another.’
‘You have helped, Paul. I did not notice there were no chutes. And you are right. It makes no sense to wheel the dead through a shower room.’ I struck a match and lit up, to think on my next words as I folded the plan away from him. ‘I’m sure that it is an SS request rather than an error of our engineers. No need to trouble yourself further.’
The plan would stay with me. Paul had once been a stonemason. In my innocence, my naivety, I could only think of Freemasons. Of unions and communists. And I had been warned often enough. And I had copied this plan without permission.
‘It is no trouble, Ernst,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you and Etta could come to supper one evening? Catch up properly.’
‘I would like that. We would like that.’ I stood. ‘Thank you, Paul.’ We shook hands.
‘Is there anything else I can help you with, Ernst? A long way to come for so short a visit.’
‘Actually there is. While I’m here.’
‘Of course. Anything.’
‘Could you direct me to the Party office? We have none in Erfurt.’
Paul’s hand dropped from mine, went to hold his pipe in his mouth.
‘An office? Headquarters, Ernst. Weimar has an NS headquarters. The Gauforum. A whole square of them.’
I think he wanted me