Upfall

After the roundup was completed his company received a briefing by the battalion doctor as to how they were to accomplish their next mission. The doctor traced an outline on the ground, shaped roughly like a person. The doctor then demonstrated how the policemen were to shoot the Jews. First the victims would be made to lie upon their stomachs, faces on the earth. The doctor told the policemen were to use their bayonets as a shooting guide, by placing the bayonet on the ground at the point where the victim's neck and shoulder joined, so the muzzle of the rifle was pointed at the nape of the neck. This, the doctor assured them, would make for a quick and clean death.

Before this lecture the men had no idea that this would be their mission that day. They had assumed that the Jews would be shipped off as usual. But to the battalion's credit no men shirked their duty, nobody stepped forward in protest or requested to be relieved of duty — at least at that point.

After the doctor's briefing, Mueller's company boarded trucks and rode out to a heavily wooded area a few miles from the town. After dropping off the policemen the trucks went back to the town for the Jews. Thirty minutes later the trucks returned, each with thirty to forty women and children. Mueller's platoon was assigned a truck and each man in the platoon assigned a woman or child. Then Mueller and the other policemen walked into the woods with their victim to an area selected by the officers. Upon arrival the policemen ordered their companions to lay face down on the ground as the doctor had instructed.

On the first go-round Mueller was assigned a young woman, he guessed in her late teens, weeping begging for her life. Though he wasn't happy about it, Mueller put his bayonet into the ground, lined up his rifle and shot her. After that, it got easier.

As a senior squad leader it was Mueller's job not only to shoot his own Jews, but to ensure that each of his men did their duty. Most did.

But some found it too difficult, particularly those that were paired with the children. One of his men, Gefreiter Popel, found himself with boy of about six. The boy sobbed and cried for his mother. Popel made the boy lay down, put his bayonet in place, but couldn't pull the trigger. After shooting a girl of about ten, his third victim, Mueller looked over at Popel still standing over the squirming boy, alive and uninjured, still weeping, but surrounded now by dead Jews, including in all likelihood, his mother and siblings. Mueller ordered Popel to do his duty, but the private begged to be excused. Disgusted, Mueller pushed Popel away and sent him back to the trucks, where several other men without the stomach for this work busied themselves with other tasks. Mueller placed his boot on the boy's back to hold him down, aligned his bayonet, and fired.

Mueller shot twenty Jews that day by his own reckoning. By the end of the day his uniform was covered with blood and bits of bone and brain. Once or twice, as in Poppel's case, he shot children as a favor, when this man or that had had enough. Mueller reckoned it was a good deed both to his own men and the children—he was more like an angel of mercy than a killer. After all, the child's parents were dead, and there was no hope, only suffering, grief and fear. Mueller's bullets ended that.

Mueller remained proud of himself and his men for their conduct that day. It had not been pleasant, not been easy, but they had done their duty. As for Popel, he wasn't punished for his weakness that day, and still served in the unit; though Mueller made sure he got extra duty and the worst jobs. That was why the timid Gejreiter was riding shotgun outside between the railcars, instead of in the comfortable second-class transport car with most of the squad.

Anyway, thought Mueller, Sobibor was only about twenty kilometers distant, and whatever fate awaited the Jews there, it could not be worse than what had been meted out in Biali. He roused his men, and buckled on his pistol. Soon they'd be done with another successful transport. He'd have another feather in his cap, and perhaps a leg up on promotion to Oberfeldwebel. At least he would have a pleasant and drunken ride back to the barracks.

Chapter 11

Shapira noticed the train by a telltale smudge of smoke on the horizon. He raised his binoculars, looked again, and gasped. It was one thing to accept the possibility that they were nearly a century in the past. It was another to actually find proof of it. The big antique steam engine slowly making its way to his position was pretty convincing.

Yatom, despite himself, also felt a sense of wonder at Shapira's report. A steam engine! Yatom had always liked trains, but had never actually seen a real steam engine outside of a museum. Yatom radioed Feldhandler, and told him the news, although the scientist had heard it too over the radio net. Yatom asked the scientist to let the train pass. Feldhandler said nothing.