The Last Nazi

by Stan Pottinger; Read by Paul Hecht and Maggi-Meg Reed

• ISBN13: 9781559279666
• ISBN10: 1559279664
• Edition: Abridged
• Format: Audio CD
• Copyright: 2003-08-05
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Summary

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Author Biography

Stan Pottinger is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He practiced law in California and served as director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and as assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division, Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C. He is the New York Times bestselling author of The Fourth Procedure. Mr. Pottinger lives in the New York City area.

Table of Contents

The Last Nazi

CHRISTMAS EVE, 1944

Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp Poland

He heard a soft voice, a little girl's voice, singing quietly in the operating room. When it stopped, Adalwolf told her to keep singing, there was no need to be afraid, everything was going to be fine. Twelve-year-old Ben didn't need to guess what was going on in there. He knew.

Sitting in the darkened anteroom, Ben stared out the frosted windows, anxiously waiting for a kapo to come and take him back to his barracks. It was ten o'clock at night, and a blanket of snow had turned the camp unusually quiet. The boilers in the clinic had been turned off, leaving it bone-chillingly cold, and Crematorium V was working at reduced capacity so that more SS officers could be home with their families. Ben wondered why Adalwolf, the sixteen-year-old foster son of Dr. Mengele, wasn't one of them, but evidently this was where he preferred to be. Apparently this was his Christmas present to himself.

Ben nervously fingered an ivory pendant hanging on a chain around his neck, then unwrapped a piece of chocolate and held it lightly on his fingertips to keep it from melting. The door to the operating room was slightly ajar, casting a long shard of light across the anteroom floor. He could hear Adalwolf still trying to convince the little girl that everything was fine, but to no avail. And no wonder: That was Ben's job. Lacking the warmth to tell a comforting lie, Adalwolf had conscripted him to calm the children who were about to undergo one of Dr. Mengele's procedures. Sometimes Ben did it by teaching them a song; sometimes by giving them a piece of chocolate or a toy that Dr. Mengele had made available. Regardless of how he did it, he knew what to do--so why hadn't Adalwolf asked him to talk to the girl? Why bring him here if he wasn't going to use him?

He ran his hand through his dirty hair. Maybe he should knock and let him know he was here. Then he caught himself.

Rule number one in the camp: Don't volunteer. For anything. Ever.

He wiggled his toes nervously in his thin shoes. Snow had melted down his ankles, turning the leather soggy. He'd been there for nearly half an hour. Where was that kapo?

The snowflakes were coming down harder now, blanketing the muddy paths and powdering the trees in the Little Wood. Ben wondered if he'd ever see another snowfall in his hometown of Vakhnovka, wondered if he'd smell the flowers in the cornfields in spring. He wondered about many things until he remembered it was better not to wonder about any.

He lifted the ivory pendant--it had come from a woman prisoner--and kissed it for good luck, even though he didn't believe in luck anymore. Survival in this place didn't depend on good fortune, hard work, or any of the virtues he'd been taught as a child. Survival depended on one thing: obedience. Calming frightened children was simply doing what he'd been told, although, as far as he was concerned, it was also a good deed. If ever he was in their shoes, he hoped someone would do the same for him.

He exhaled impatiently, then stood up and crept over to the operating-room door, careful not to touch it for fear of making it creak. What was there to be curious about? He'd been inside the room many times and knew it well: the holding cots, the operating tables, the metal autopsy islands, the countertops with bell-shaped jars and stainless-steel tools, the formaldehyde, the gooseneck lamps lighting bare walls.

He peeked through the crack and saw the little girl sitting on a sheet-covered gurney, shivering and scrawny from rations of stale bread, margarine, and black coffee. In her hands was a red-and-silver Christmas tree ornament that reminded Ben of a fishing pole bobber about to be dropped into a summer pond. A summer in a different life, a pond in a forgotten world.

Adalwolf's white lab coat moved in front of the slender opening, blocking Ben's view. Even though he was only sixteen, Adalwolf's uniform and chiseled face gave him the bearing of a grown-up Nazi doctor.

"Sing to me," Adalwolf said, prompting the girl with a few bars of "Silent Night."

Instead, she sat quietly.

"Come, come, Rochele," Adalwolf said. "If you sing, everything will be fine." He held her hand and, after a little more cajoling, she stopped sniffling and tried again.

"Stille Nacht ... Heilige Nacht ..."

The little girl kept singing softly, clutching the Christmas tree ornament against her belly.

"Alles schaft, einsam wacht ..."

Ben heard the hiss of a bottle being opened. As he craned his neck to see where Adalwolf had gone, tears filled his eyes, some from the chemical fumes, some from the ache in his heart. He squeezed the pendant through his shirt and stuffed it into his mouth. The aroma of melted chocolate on his fingers mingled with the smell of chloroform.

The little girl was singing the last stanza now: "Schlafe in himmlischer Ruh." Ben held his breath, closed his eyes, and waited for what was to happen next.

It didn't happen.

The door opened abruptly, bumping Ben's shoulder and jolting open his eyes. Adalwolf stood in the doorway looking down at him, a chloroformfilled syringe held in one rubber-gloved hand while the other reached for Ben's chocolate-covered fist. He pried the boy's fingers off the pendant, lifted it from around his neck, and held it up between them.

"You shouldn't have taken it, Ben," he said, dropping it into his lab coat pocket.

Ben volunteered nothing. His flushed cheeks did it for him.

"Don't worry," Adalwolf said, "your punishment will fit the crime." He laid his hand on Ben's shoulder and pushed him into the room.

THE LAST NAZI. Copyright © 2003 by Stan Pottinger. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.