I met L. at T.’s home. L. is an architect, Jewish, lost his family at Auschwitz; after spending ten years, first in camps, then in hegiras to various countries, he came back to Vienna in 1948. Understandably, he has a bit of a reputation for knowing all the angles about exit and entrance visas, residence permits, etc. Here is the story he told us:

About three weeks ago Huber, one of my draftsmen, walked into the office. A reliable chap, middle thirties I should think. He asked if I could spare a few minutes. He and a group of other technicians were thinking of leaving Austria to settle in Australia. He could find work there on one of the large settlement projects.

“Congratulations,” I said. “So you’ve come to say goodbye?“

He shrugged his shoulders. “I thought perhaps you might be able to give me some advice.”

“Go ahead.”

He hesitated a moment. Then: “They refuse to give me an exit visa.”

“How comet?“

Another pause, a little longer this time. Then he swallowed and said: “I was convicted by the People’s Court.” Another pause.

You should know—the architect stopped to tell us—that the People’s Court only convicts people who are unquestionably Nazis. No wonder I was shocked. It didn’t occur to me at first that it was stupid of Huber to pick me of all people to come to about this matter—and impudent, abysmally impudent of him. So I didn’t think of throwing him out.

Huber saw me wince, and as he wasn’t exactly what you would call a sensitive plant, this encouraged him. In a patronizing tone of voice, in fact with a kind of good humor, he went on: “Don’t worry, I won’t bite you, Herr Doktor.” And then, quite casually: “Well, I just happened to be a member of the SA.”—Listen to that well. And to take the sting out of it: just happened! And then, almost jolly: “And so one day we cleaned out a Jewish house.”

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Now you have to remember—L. continued—that the man had been working for me for two years. A clever type, very useful, skillful draftsman, a big hulk of a man, bony, with the face of a theological student from the country. He dragged his left foot a little. Even that had given me confidence in him, I don’t know exactly why. All in all, I found him a sympathetic character; every once in a while we joked with each other. And now all of a sudden he was one of them. And had been all along.

He stood there, realizing that what I needed was a word of reassurance. “Look, Herr Doktor,“ he said encouragingly, “everything we did was under orders. So you see. . . .” He waited.

He waited for quite a while. But when he realized that I wasn’t going to speak, he simply acted as though I had said, “Oh, I see,” or “Of course!”

“And because I’m an unlucky fellow,” he concluded, “I happened to be the only one they identified. By this.” He pointed to a scar on his forehead. Then, giving the whole thing an innocuous air, he reached for a chair, said “May I?” and sat down.

I pulled myself together at last—at least enough to be able to think. Throw him out, I thought at once, or else talk. I decided to do the latter.

“And I’m the one to advise you?” I asked, quite matter-of-factly, I think. “I, of all people?”

“Yes, Herr Doktor, if you would be so kind.” Indeed, he said kind, and the word came out intact.

“I assume,” I continued, “that you know I am a Jew.”

“Yes, I know.” Then he shook his head as though he meant to say: It makes no difference to me. He went on: “I’ve been told, Herr Doktor, that you’ve been around and seen quite a few things. So I thought . . .”

“Been around,” I repeated.

“So it occurred to me that you would know . . . how to handle this sort of thing. I’ve taken the liberty of—”

“Certainly,” I interrupted him. “I know quite a lot about this sort of thing.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“On account of you,” I added.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said on account of you. Who sent whom traveling?”

I doubt that Huber got the point right away. He frowned.

“You understand me perfectly,” I said. “I don’t have to explain further.”

He pointed to himself incredulously.

“And now you expect me to teach you overnight what it took me ten hard years to learn?”

As I spoke he slowly began shaking his head. “So you honestly think it was me?”

“Who else?”

“Me—the one who kicked you out then?”

I found this a little blunt. I made no reply. We sat facing each other silently for about a minute. You may think that my silence was meant to put him in his place. Or that I hoped to be able to get rid of him this way, after all. I really don’t know. I think I simply felt unequal to the situation. I couldn’t think of anything to say. As for Huber, it was quite apparent that something was happening to him. His face suddenly looked helpless—altogether incongruous with that great hulking frame. He shook his head again, not because he wished to object, but because he couldn’t believe—what I couldn’t tell. Several times he made as if to speak, and his face as he did so had a pleading, desperate look.

“But, Herr Doktor,” he finally burst out, wiping his forehead with the back of his huge hand, “after all, I was only seventeen!”

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L. Looked up at us. “Seventeen,” he repeated, as if to impress it on us. Evidently he was still unable to take the word in calmly. For he now got up, walked the stiffness out of his legs, and then stood leaning against the back of his chair.

Now, L. went on, until Huber said “seventeen” I hadn’t had any human feeling for him at all. It’s true, I hadn’t thrown him out, but simply because the shock had thrown me off. Not that the word “seventeen” had soothed me. Quite the opposite: it gave me a further shock. Seventeen—that I hadn’t thought of before. But the horror I had felt at sitting face to face with a Storm Trooper somehow disappeared. I looked at him; I should have liked to recognize the boy of seventeen in him. I don’t know why, but I probably expected to grasp his innocence better that way. Of course I could see no trace of the seventeen-year-old boy. On the contrary, I thought: How old he looks! Going on forty at least. But this was impossible. I began figuring.

“Why do you look at me like that?” he asked.

“Seventeen, you say? So you’re thirty now?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“You mean, a lot has happened in the interval?”

He nodded.

I was eyeing his foot. “Stalingrad, or something?”

“Tobruk.”

“It’s all the same. Another consequence.”

“Of what?”

“Of the time when you were seventeen.”

“That too was a consequence.”

“And you’re still the same?”

“The boy of seventeen?”

He shrugged his shoulders. I nodded.

“So you’re not sure?”

“But you see, don’t you, that it doesn’t depend on me? The label is still pinned on me, isn’t it? In fact, here you are pinning it on again.”

Perhaps there was something in what he said.

“And here you are believing that a wreck of twenty-nine ought to go on paying for the mistakes he made at seventeen—mistakes made under orders—aren’t you?”

All of a sudden he pretended to be two people. But perhaps there really were two, a Huber of seventeen, and the one of today. I made no answer.

“Is that what you really think?”

To say no would be too simple,“ I answered cautiously. Too many people had to pay for your mistakes—if pay is the right word for it. The innocent ones, I mean—my sisters, for instance. You’re responsible for their fate. But now you people expect to be treated as though nothing had happened, because the wrong is irreparable anyhow.”

He looked at me questioningly.

“Auschwitz, for instance,” I said.

“I see.”

“And here you are claiming that old accounts should be forgotten. And expecting absolution and forgiveness. . . . No, it isn’t even absolution you are after—apparently you don’t need that—but advice, Huber!”

Yes, I suddenly called him by his name. How this happened, I can’t explain. I remember feeling surprised at the moment. All the more since I had always before called him Herr Huber. Blaming people brings you closer together. There’s nothing to be done about that. It’s just the way things happen. My mistake was not to have shown him the door long before. Subjects like that are just too delicate. I should never have mentioned Auschwitz in his presence, at least not the way I did. And as a matter of fact, the moment that I spoke his name I was absolutely sure he would take advantage of our new intimacy. But whether he simply lacked presence of mind, or whether there was really a vestige of decency left in him, he didn’t become familiar.

“Herr Doktor,“ he said instead, in a tone that gave me no cause for suspicion, “I’ll be perfectly frank with you. There was nothing left of the boy of seventeen by the time the People’s Court got to work. I wasn’t kept in jail for very long, and even by that time he was no longer alive. What I mean is that the connection between what happened then and my ‘punishment’ was not always very clear in my mind. After all, I had seen much worse things. During the war, I mean. Things that were never punished. All right. Water under the bridge. And later on, when I was set free, the boy of seventeen seemed dead and buried forever.” He pointed to his chest. “In any case, in here he no longer exists, if you see what I mean.”

I nodded.

“Until the business of the visa came up. Until I had to run from Pontius to Pilate on the Australian business. Then the boy of seventeen came to life again.”

I failed to understand.

“You’ll understand in a minute. When I got up to the highest office, they suddenly dug the boy of seventeen up.”

“I still don’t understand what you mean.”

“Well, you see, Herr Doktor, they sent me from pillar to post to get my exit visa, and who do you think I finally landed up with?”

I hadn’t the faintest idea.

“One those men. The ones I had truck U with back in 38.” And when I still looked blank: “One of my former leaders, a high officer in the SA.” He put on a look of contempt. I said nothing.

“Well, I can’t say you people were so smart when you put that fellow behind a desk,” he continued after a pause. By “you people” he meant all of us who had fought against Hitler and beaten him, and now have let the victory slip through our fingers. Every one of us was included in his sarcasm.

“I have nothing to do with placing people in official jobs,” I remarked, as dryly as possible. “But why should you complain? I suppose it was a piece of luck that you ran into someone like that.”

“That’s the way I felt, too. But times have changed a little, after all.”

“Really?”

“The man didn’t belong to the old bunch any more. At least not as regards certain cases—mine, for instance. You see, I come into his office, and there I see a very calm and good-natured-looking gentleman sitting over his papers, side-whiskered like old Franz Joseph. But, as I come closer, the Hofrat looks familiar to me. And before I manage to place him, I get an uncomfortable jolt, and my arm almost goes up in the Hitler salute. This tells me where I knew him, and I finally recognize him. I suddenly feel as jittery as I used to in the old days. The fellow used to be quite a martinet. It wasn’t until then that I was struck with the idea you just expressed: this is certainly a stroke of luck. And if it isn’t an old comrade! and—this is the end of the runaround. So I stand there with a happy grin, but in a second or so the grin fades away for now the man looks up from his desk. He’s gotten a little gray at the temples—a civil service edition of the man I used to know—but unchanged in every other respect. The same way of looking at you, no eyelashes and no expression, as though his eye were just a thing, not to see with, but to look through you. Then I have a feeling the man has recognized me. Perhaps he knew all along who I was, from the time my name was sent in. But he won’t let on. He’s determined not to give himself away. As for my stroke of luck, that’s all over with. Most likely the same sort of thing had happened to him before. Cases like this may be part of his daily routine. Anyhow, he looks right through me, asks the usual questions—name, birth certificate, etc.—as though I were a complete stranger, evidently hoping that if he didn’t seem to recognize me, I wouldn’t recognize him, but would think I had made a mistake. A fine example of a Volksgenosse!”

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Huber stopped and waited, in the hope, it seemed, of hearing me say something indignant about disloyalty. But for me, a Jew, to have to listen to an ex-Nazi reviling another ex-Nazi was about all I could take; preposterous, any idea of making common cause with him. Besides, I couldn’t feel any indignation whatever about the Hofrat’s lack of solidarity. I keep my emotions for worthier occasions.

So I refused to be sympathetic, and simply asked: “So you took the cue, and played his game?”

“I did at first. His questions came so quick, one after the other, that I couldn’t get through to him. Exactly as in the old days. Only his choice of words was more refined now. ‘Civil servant,’ ‘highest echelon.’ After five minutes, just as I was saying to myself that now the discussion was going to begin, he pushed back his chair and said: ‘People’s Court—awfully sorry, but there’s nothing I can do for you. Exit on the right. Next man, please!’”

“And that’s how it ended?”

“Yes, that was the way it ended. Naturally, I would have liked to grab him by the throat. But you get older.”

“So you didn’t say a thing?”

“Yes, after the event. As I walked down the stairs, and later in the street. Then I didn’t choose my words. Except that he wasn’t there any more. Herr Hofrat, I shouted. Back in 38 you had a different title, a much snappier one. Do you know how old I was in those days? Seventeen. And you? Maybe forty or forty-five. Quite grown-up, in other words. Who inveigled whom into joining the SA? Answer me, please. Who told stories to whom? Who gave orders to whom? I to you or you to me? And who got me into that mess with the People’s Court? You see what I mean. Now you’ve changed your tune: People’s Court?—awfully sorry, but there’s nothing I can do for you.—That was the way I shouted, really telling him off, but it was all in the street, and I finally noticed that people were staring at me, so I stopped, and said to myself: Finis. Connections, emigration, Australia. Then I came to see you.”

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L. fell silent and wiped his forehead. Now i what do you people make of all this? he finally asked. Of course it was foolish of him to think that I of all people would be able to help him. But imagine now if, tomorrow, somebody else comes to see me, another of those fellows who went through the same thing at seventeen, a Huber Number Two, but this time asking for the kind of help I can give. What would you do? Would you help? Ought you to help? Would not anything you did be ambiguous? And any refusal to act just as ambiguous?

Nobody in the group offered to answer.

I can’t persuade myself that Huber was a cynic, L. went on. Simply an ordinary man, caught in the crush of history, who wasn’t over-fastidious in his choice of means when it was a question of survival. Seeking advice from a Jew wasn’t a sign of turpitude, but simply a lack of moral sensitivity. His outbursts, though they might look suspicious, were genuine, I think. Mediocrity does not protect you from despair, and it’s no proof of dishonesty either. After all, Huber had every reason to feel desperate. And the question whether a man of thirty should be held accountable for what he committed at the age of seventeen—under duress, besides—remains a valid question, no matter what moral stuff the “victim” is made of.

Then suddenly L. cried: Do you want me to tell you? I’m fed up. Yes, fed up. It’s more than anybody can put up with. Honestly, I think I’m going to get out of here again. Yes, emigrate once more. Far away from here to the opposite end of the world, to a place where such things can’t happen—if necessary to Australia.

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