Chapter 4 Photographers in Salzburg - 3

The boy no longer limped when he walked.He wasn't gaining weight yet—that would be an absurd term for a survivor like this—but at least he was looking better, and he wasn't looking so scrawny anymore. "We can talk in German," Taalas said. The intent gray eyes met Taras's, and looked around the room slowly and deliberately. "Is this your office?" He speaks German.Taras nodded.He felt a strange, almost shy feeling.He himself thought this strange feeling was ridiculous. "Before," said the boy, "this was the office of the SS commander."

"Did you come here often then?" The teenager was looking at the pictures on the wall and moved closer to them. "Aside from the ones taken here, where were the other photos taken?" "Dachau," said Taras, "that's a place in Bavaria. What's your name?" silence.At this time, the boy had gone around behind Taras and continued to carefully look at the pictures on the wall.Taras suddenly realized that the other party did this on purpose. He refused to sit across from me, and now he wanted to force me to turn around, so as to show me that he wanted to take the initiative in this conversation.

"Okay then." Taras said gently, "You haven't answered my question yet." "Klimrod. Reb Michel Klimrod." "Born in Austria?" "In Vienna." "Birth date?" "September 18, 1928" "As far as I know, Klimrod is not a Jewish surname." "My mother's name is Itzkovich." "So you're only half-Jewish," said Taras, already jotting down the first two names.Reber is the baptismal name, and Michel is a commonly used name among Jews, especially in Poland. silence.The boy began to wander along the wall again, sometimes walking behind Taras, sometimes circling around Taras, reappearing on his left.He walked slowly, lingering for a while in front of each photo.

Turning his head slightly, Taras saw the boy's legs trembling, and suddenly a strong feeling of sympathy swept over his heart.The poor little guy can barely stand up!He observed Klimrod from behind, and saw that he was wearing a pair of leather boots without straps, which might be too small for him.Likewise, his trousers and shirt were pitifully short, dangling from his pole-like body.His body was twisted and twisted in pain many times, but purely relying on the strength of will, he still maintained the original height, and it didn't shrink even centimeters.Taras also noticed that his hands were slender and graceful, but the old scars from the cigarette butts were still there, and there were new marks from the quicklime burn.The hands were not clenched, hanging at the side of the body, and Taras knew from experience that this false indifference just reflected the self-control ability that ordinary adults, including Taras himself, could hardly achieve.

At this moment of questioning, Taras understood in his heart more what was the power that shocked Setiniaz so much.It turned out that Reber Michel Klimrod had an unusual and indescribable temperament. Taras continued to ask questions. "When and how did you come to Mauthausen concentration camp?" "I came here in February this year. I'm not sure about the exact date. It's probably early February." He spoke very slowly, with an extremely deep tone. "He came under escort, right?" "It's not escorted." "Then who's with you?"

"The boys who were buried with me." "Someone had to bring you here." "Officer of the SS." "How many officers are there?" "About ten." "Who are they in command?" "A lieutenant colonel." "What's his name?" At this time, Klimrod was standing in the left corner of the room.In front of him was a zoomed-in photo taken by Blackstock.Above the painting is a cremator, with the door open, and the charred corpses look extremely pale under the flashlight. "I don't know anyone's name." Klimrod said calmly.

He raised one hand, and his slender fingers touched the smooth photo paper, as if stroking the photo.Then he swung his body around and leaned against the wall.He stared into the empty space, expressionless on his face.His regrowth hair was dark brown. "What right do you have to ask me these questions? Just because you're American and because you won this war?" "My God!" thought Taras.He felt as if he had been hit by a sap, only this time in his life he was at a loss for words. "I don't feel defeated by the United States of America. In fact, I don't feel defeated by anyone..."

Leiber's eyes fell on a glass cabinet, there were many files piled up in the cabinet, Taras put some books beside the file, Leiber was looking at these books... "We arrived here at the beginning of February," said Klimrod. "We came from Buchenwald. There were twenty-three of us before Buchenwald, but there were five boys over there. Burned, and two more died on the road from Buchenwald to Mauthausen. The officers who made us women killed those two children in the truck, and I buried them. They They couldn't walk, they were crying all the time, and they lost all their teeth, so they didn't look very good. The two children were only nine years old, and the other was a little older, about eleven years old. The officers rode in a limousine, We were in a truck, but they often forced us to get out of the car and walk, sometimes with a rope around our necks, forcing us to run. They used this method to consume our energy, so that we could not escape, or even want to escape .”

Reber propped his body away from the wall with his hands.He stared at the books in the cabinet almost as if in a hypnotic state, but at the same time he did not stop talking. Taras felt that Reber was like a schoolboy looking at a bird out of the window while reciting a lesson. "We arrived in Buchenwald just after Christmas. Some time before that we were in Chemnitz. Before Chemnitz we were in Gross Rosen concentration camp. To Gross Rosen Before, we were in Plaszow concentration camp, which was in Poland, near Krakow, and it was summer." Reber now moved away from the wall completely and began to walk slowly towards the glass case.

"But we were only in Plaszow for three months. Several boys died there, chiefly from starvation. Six people died in all. I don't know their names. Before we got to Plaszow, We walked for a long time in the forest... No, we went to Przemysl first... But we walked a long time before and after. We started from the Janowska concentration camp. I have been to Janowska twice. Once last May, and once earlier, in 1941, when I was only twelve and a half." The way Leiber narrates his experience is unique.He rewinds his memory from the present to the past, like rewinding a movie projector.He took three steps forward and stood in front of the cabinet, separated from the books in the cabinet only by a layer of glass.

"Are these books yours?" "Yes." Taras said. "I was in Belzec before my second trip to Janowska. My mother Hanna Itzkovich and my sister Mina died in Belzec on July 17, 1942. I saw them burned alive with my own eyes. Excuse me, may I open the cabinet and touch the books?" "Okay," Taras said, in a daze. "My sister Mino was nine years old and I absolutely believe she was alive when they threw her in the crematorium. My sister Catalina, who was two years older than me, died in a train carriage, and I would have She was assigned to that car. She climbed into a car that could only accommodate thirty-six people, but the Nazis forced a hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty people into it. On top of other people's heads. The Nazis pulled quicklime on the ground. My sister Catalina was the first to get in. At the end when they couldn't even fit a child in, the Nazis closed the doors and pulled the carriage to the siding, Baked in the sun, it lasts for seven days." He read the author's name: "Walt Whitman. Is he British or American?" "American," Taras asked. "Is he a poet?" "Same as Verlaine," replied Taras. The gray eyes flicked across Taras' face, then back up.Taras asked a question, and Reber didn't answer it so long that Taras thought he had to ask it again.But Reber shook his head. "I haven't mastered English yet, only a few words. But I plan to learn English, and Spanish. Maybe other languages, like Russian." Bellas lowered his eyes, then raised them again.He was bewildered.Since Reber Klimrod entered the room, Taras sat at the desk and did nothing but jot down something casually.Suddenly he said to Leiber, "You can borrow this book." "It took me a while to finish reading." "Leave it there as long as you need it." "Thank you," Klimrod said, looking at the American officer again, before continuing his narration. "Before Belzec, since August 11, 1941, we were in Janowska. Before Janowska, we were in Lvov. My mother Hannah Itzkovich We arrived in Lviv on Saturday, July 5, 1941. My mother wanted to see my grandparents, and she received passports for the four of us in Vienna. We arrived on Thursday, July 3 Leaving Vienna, because at that time Lvov was not occupied by Russians but by Germans. My mother believed in passports. But she was wrong." Reber began to turn the pages, but his movements were unconscious.He bent down so that he could read the other titles. "Montaigne (Note: Montaigne (1533-1592) French thinker and prose writer during the Renaissance, whose main works include "Prose Collection"). I know this writer." "You can borrow it, too," said Taras, driven by emotion. If he had to pick just one of the twenty books he kept with him to temporarily forget the horrors of war, it would be Montaigne's. "As for me," said Klimrod, "I survived by luck." Taras re-read the notes in hand to regain his composure.He read in chronological order the list of the camps mentioned by Reber: "Janowska, Belzecs, Janowska again, Plaszow, Gross Rosen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen..." he asked: "Are you really Been to all these places?" Reber nodded indifferently.He closed the glass door of the cabinet, clasping the two books that Taras had lent him tightly to his chest. "When did you become one of those boys?" Klimrod left the glass cabinet and took two steps towards the door. "October 2, 1943, the SS lieutenant colonel rounded us up in Belzec." "The lieutenant colonel whose name you don't know?" "That's him." Klimrod said as he took another step towards the door. "Of course he's lying," thought Taras, feeling more and more uneasy. "Assuming the rest of what he said is true," Taras believes, "it is inconceivable that this boy with such an astonishing He forgot the name of the man he lived with for twenty months in May 2009. He was lying, and he understood that I knew he was lying, but he didn't care. He didn't try to justify himself or explain his How he survived. Besides, he doesn't seem to have any sense of shame or hatred. Perhaps he's been mentally stimulated and hasn't recovered..." The last explanation seemed to Taras the least convincing.He didn't believe it himself.To be honest, this initial meeting with Reber Michel Klimrod lasted no more than twenty minutes, but Taras felt that this scrawny boy who couldn't even stand still had a kind of A great ability to control any situation.Everything in King's Landing—that was the word that came to mind.Behind Reb's gray, deep-set eyes lay a ferocious intellect, and Taras felt its overwhelming weight very concretely. The boy took another step towards the door.The door frame set against his silhouette, forming a cruel beauty.He is ready to leave.At this time, Taras asked some last questions, mainly to prolong the interview. "Is he the one who whipped you and burned you with cigarettes?" "You are asking knowingly." "The officer who lived with you for twenty months?" silence.Reb took another step toward the door. "You told me just now that the Lieutenant Colonel of the SS gathered you together at Belzec at..." "October 2, 1943." "How many children were there in all?" "One hundred and forty-three." "What is the reason for bringing you together?" Reber shook his head slightly, indicating he didn't know.This time he didn't lie.Surprising himself with such certainty of this, Taras asked a few more hasty questions. "How did you leave Beuzets?" "Take the truck." "To Janowska?" "Only thirty people go to Janowska." "And what about the other hundred and twelve?" "They went to Majdanek." Taras had never heard of this place name.He later learned that it was yet another murder camp in Poland, alongside Belzec, Sobipol, Treblinka, Auschwitz, and Chelmno. "Did the lieutenant colonel choose thirty boys? All thirty boys?" "Yes, you are right." Reb Klimrod took two more steps and had already reached the door.He stood on the threshold, and Taras could see his back. "I'll give it back to you," said Reber, stroking Whitman's and Montaigne's Essays. "I will return these two books to you." He smiled slightly. "Please don't ask any more. That lieutenant colonel took us to Janowska, and from then on he used us as envoys for women. Later, as the Russians kept advancing, he and several other officers went to the Germans. Lying about going on a special mission to move us from one place to another. That's why they don't kill us unless we fail." "Don't you remember the names of these six officers?" "do not remember." He is lying. "How many children arrived in Mauthausen with you?" "Sixteen." "When Lieutenant Setiniaz found you in the grave, there were only nine of you." "When we got to Mauthausen, they killed seven of us. They kept only their favorite." It was said in a deliberate and detached tone.He stepped over the threshold and stopped for the last time. "Can you tell me your name?" "George Taras." "T, a, r, r, a, s, right?" "right." silence. "I'll return the book to you." Austria was then divided into four military occupation zones.Mauthausen is in the Soviet-occupied zone.A large number of ex-convicts were transferred to a temporary refugee reception camp in Leonding, which was the school building in the US military area near Linz. Adolf Hitler used to sit in the chair of this school. Lived for quite some time in a small house opposite the school.George Taalas, David Setiniaz and their war crimes unit were also in Linz.Although the relocation made them busy, they did not interrupt their search for former SS guards hiding in the area. Therefore, it was not until a few days later that they realized that young Klimrod had disappeared.