The Commandant of Lubizec: A Novel of the Holocaust and Operation Reinhard by Patrick Hicks Read Free Book Online Page A

bed?”
    A shrug.
    She pointed to the stairs. “Off you go.”
    “Do I have to?” he half sang, half whined.
    Guth cleared his throat and this brought the boy to full attention. He gathered up his soldiers and thudded slowly, very slowly, up the stairs, one after the other.
    “Faster,” Guth said without raising his voice.
    The boy’s footsteps were soon moving around his bedroom. A door slammed. The house was silent except for the ticking of a grandfather clock and, from the other room, the mumbling radio. The window was open and a night breeze fluttered the drapes. A rotten-egg smell floated around the table and Jasmine made a face. She got up, latched the window, and pulled the drapes across in one fluid motion.
    “Agh. What
is
that?”
    He speared an apricot and used it to mop up some beef juice. “We’re back to that again, are we?”
    “Don’t be dismissive. Not with me. I’m not one of your guards.”
    He picked up a linen napkin and wiped the O of his mouth. “I told you,” he said, reaching for the seltzer water. “It’s a transit camp. I can’t tell you more, I’m sorry. It’s official business. You know I can’t tell you more.”
    “Can I see the place?”
    “Good Lord, no. No one’s allowed within a kilometer of the camp without being shot, not even you, my dear.”
    The grandfather clock ticked heavily in the background.
    “Are the prisoners treated well?”
    Guth was confused. “Why should that matter?”
    “Rumors. In the village.”
    He pushed his plate away and reached for her hand. “I crunch numbers. Other men take care of discipline.”
    “So these rumors are—”
    “Rumors, my lovely. Just rumors. Don’t worry about all that stuff.”
    “I have a right to know.”
    He squinted as if to challenge her. “No. You don’t. Not when it comes to Reich’s business.”
    They looked at each other for a long moment before Guth glanced at his daughter. She was still reading.
    “Are you eavesdropping on us?” he asked. His tone was sharp.
    Sigi shook her head.
    “Don’t lie. You must never lie.” His face hardened and he pointed his chin upstairs. “Go to bed.”
    She closed her book and stood up.
    “You must never lie,” Guth said again. “Always tell the truth, especially to family.”
    In
The Commandant’s Daughter
, Sigi mentions how her father never raised his voice. Instead, he was able to make a room tremble by speaking slowly and drilling holes into the air with his eyes. This hard gaze now followed her as she went upstairs but, according to her account of this particular evening, she sneaked back down on bare feet. She was curious to know about the smell and what her father did in the camp. These thoughts wouldn’t have concerned her at all except that her mother had been wandering around the house and was now obsessed with the tangy stench. “What in God’s name
is
that?” she asked, squirting perfume here and there. Sigi began to wonder too. It became a big mystery and she thought about creeping into the woods like Old Shatterhand to find out more. She would bring a compass and head out into the wild.
    That summer was one of the hottest on record, so the stink would have been overwhelming and ghastly, especially when thousands of new corpses were stuffed into the ground each day. As the bodycount continued to grow, quicklime seemed increasingly useless. “It was like throwing salt into the sea,” one guard later said. Other accounts mention how the ground heaved up and down by half a meter or more because the gasses under the soil began to expand and contract. An unholy essence lifted up from the ground and blood began to seep
up
towards the surface. It was against the laws of gravity and common sense but somehow the thick motor oil of these bodies wicked up into the sandy soil. Bloated earthworms began to appear in biblical plaguelike proportions and a low popping sound came from the ground as if the earth itself refused to hide the dead, as if it were