Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CURATOR’S NOTES

  PROLOGUE

  THE ORDERS

  THE BARGAIN

  THE BLACK FOREST

  THE ANGEL OF AUSCHWITZ

  FUGITIVES

  THE TUNNEL

  THE TRUNK

  THANKS

  Copyright Page

  This book is dedicated to the memory of

  Stanley Adleman—typewriter expert extraordinaire,

  friend to innumerable writers

  And to DS, Fred, and Ike Dude

  Cross Section of Compound of Scribes—Hans Ewigkeit Architect 1941

  Plan of Compound of Scribes—Hans Ewigkeit Architect 1941

  CURATOR’S NOTES

  This exhibit of letters dates roughly from 1942 to the end of WWII. Most are letters written under coercion as part of a program called Briefaktion, or Operation Mail. Some are letters from ghettos or notes passed between prisoners in barracks at concentration camps. The letters from Operation Mail illuminate German WW II strategies that are often obscured by more historical and dramatic events.

  OPERATION MAIL OR BRIEFAKTION

  Briefaktion was created to assure anxious relatives about the relocations and deportments, as well as dispel rumors about the Final Solution, which the Reich at all costs wanted to keep secret. The letters were usually written as soon as prisoners arrived—often before they were led to an idyllic woods or corridor of pine boughs that concealed gas chambers. The letters weren’t mailed directly to their recipients, but from an office in Berlin called The Association of Jews, making it impossible to know their origin. Answers were sent back to Berlin and rarely delivered; but most couldn’t have been read because a majority of the letter writers had already been killed. The result was enormous quantities of unread mail, some of which were retrieved after the war.

  THE SUPERNATURAL AND THE THULE SOCIETY

  It was widely known that Hitler consulted astrologers. Far less known is the fact that the Reich placed astounding reliance on the supernatural for strategies about the war and the Final Solution. A group called Die Thule-Gesellschaft (The Thule Society), comprised of mystics, psychics, members of the Reich, and select SS men, met regularly to channel advice from the astral plane. The Thule Society got its name from Lanz von Liebenfels’s concept of Ultima Thule, a place of extreme cold where a race of supermen lived. Hitler didn’t attend these meetings and prevented Liebenfels from publishing after he came into power, probably to conceal his own fascination with Ultima Thule. Heinrich Himmler (who allegedly carried a copy of The Bhagavad Gita with him everywhere to relieve his guilt about the war) was the Thule Society’s most prominent member. Messages thought to come from the astral plane were incorporated into the Reich’s strategies. Although he avoided the Thule Society, Hitler relied on numerous mystics, astrologers, and clairvoyants for support and advice. The most famous is Erik Hanussen, who taught Hitler to hypnotize crowds.

  JOSEPH GOEBBELS AND THE PARADOX OF PROPAGANDA

  On April 30th, just before he committed suicide, Hitler made Goebbels Reich Chancellor. But Goebbels held this position for just one day. When the Russians refused a treaty that was favorable to the Nazi Party, Goebbels followed Hitler in suicide, along with his wife and six children. With Goebbels’s death, the Nazi Regime lost its voice. Goebbels was a brilliant orator—humorous, sarcastic, and detached. His famous motto was: If you want to tell a lie, tell a big lie. Goebbels was skilled at hiding the Reich’s reliance on the occult—a reliance he didn’t share. He was openly contemptuous of Himmler’s obsession with the supernatural and may have been a key influence in dissuading Hitler from joining the Thule Society. He was far less successful in hiding the Final Solution. Many Germans were convinced by Goebbels’s propaganda; others, however, knew about the camps as is evident by Germans in the Resistance, people in the Nazi Party who used their influence to save Jews, and the White Rose Party, a radical student group that distributed pamphlets about the camps.

  MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND WORLD WAR II

  Among Germans who denied any knowledge of the Final Solution was the philosopher Martin Heidegger—an enigmatic figure during the Nazi regime. In 1933, he became a member of the Party and was appointed Chancellor of the University of Freiburg. A year after he assumed the Chancellorship, he resigned. Some Party members who viewed Heidegger as a rival resented the Chancellorship. Others thought his philosophy was gibberish. And Heidegger himself believed Germany was betraying its promise to return to its cultural roots. His criticisms of the Party were vociferous; on the other hand, he never resigned from or denounced the Party, even in an evasive, posthumous interview published by Der Spiegel.

  Heidegger’s affiliation with the Party has generated heated discussions about whether there are Nazi doctrines in his philosophy. Some philosophers feel there is clear evidence of this and often refer to a famous conversation with Karl Löwith before the war where he claimed that one of his most important ideas (historicity) was the foundation for his political involvement. Other philosophers think that Heidegger was simply incapable of integrating his philosophy and his politics and see much revisionism in the views he expressed. Heidegger is still acknowledged as having great influence on modern philosophical thought, as well as on poetry and architecture. Ironically—given his affiliations with views driven by chauvinism—he raised cogent questions about the nature of existence, the nature of herd mentality, and the nature of thought itself. He also wrote and spoke with great sophistication about the human impulse to avoid knowledge of mortality. Over ten years before the Reich came into power, Heidegger’s own eyeglasses were one of several catalysts for a revelation about this aspect of human existence, and he mentioned them in his seminal work, Being and Time.

  Zoë-Eleanor Englehardt, Guest Curator,

  The Museum of Tolerance, New York City, New York

  PROLOGUE

  In the ordinary winter of 1920, the philosopher Martin Heidegger saw his glasses and fell out of the familiar world. He was in his study at Freiburg, over one hundred and sixty kilometers south of Berlin, looking out the window at the thick bare branches of an elm tree. His wife was standing next to him, pouring a cup of coffee. Sunlight fell through the voile curtains, throwing stripes on her crown of blond braids, the dark table, and his white cup. All at once a starling crashed against the window and dropped to the ground. Heidegger reached for his glasses to look and as he leaned over, the coffee spilled. His wife cleaned the table with her apron while he cleaned the glasses with his handkerchief. And all at once, he looked at the thin gold earpieces and two round lenses and didn’t know what they were for. It was as though he’d never seen glasses or knew how they were used. And then the whole world became unfamiliar: The tree was a confusion of shapes, the blood-spattered window a floating oblong. And when another starling flew by, he saw only darkness in motion.

  Martin Heidegger didn’t mention this to his wife. Together they cleaned and muttered. She brought more coffee and left the room. Heidegger waited for the world to fall back into place and eventually the ticking belonged to the clock again, the table became a table, and the floor became something to walk on. Then he went to his desk and wrote about this moment to a fellow philosopher named Asher Englehardt. Even though they often met for coffee, they enjoyed writing to each other about tilted moments: The hammer that’s so loose its head flops like a bird. The picture that’s crooked and makes the room seem uncanny. The apple in the middle of the street that makes you forget what streets are for. The thing made close because it’s seen at a distance. The sense of not being at home. Falling out of the world.

  A few days later Asher Englehar
dt wrote back in his familiar, hurried script, chiding Heidegger for always acting as though the sensation was new. “There is nothing of substance to depend on, Martin,” he wrote. “All these cups and glasses and whatever else people have or do are props that shield us from a world that started long before anyone knew what glasses were for and will go on long after there’s no one left to remember them. It’s a strange world, Martin. But we can never fall out of it because we live in it all the time.”

  Asher believed this resolutely and continued to believe it twenty years later when he and his son were taken from their home in Freiburg and deported by cattle car to Auschwitz.

  Dear Mother,

  Can you bring me the shoes I kept in the cupboard? I know I’ll need them for the journey.

  Love,

  Mari

  THE ORDERS

  Nearly a quarter of a century after Heidegger’s revelation about his glasses, a woman with a red silk ribbon snaking around her wrist drove a captured U.S. jeep to a village in Northern Germany. The village was in blackout, and its outpost—a wooden building set far back in a field—would have been easy to miss if she hadn’t made many trips there in the dark. It was a bitter winter night, and snow fell on her face as she walked across the field. She stopped to brush it off and looked at the sky. It was dazzling, brilliant with stars, so wide it seemed carved into separate galaxies. And even at this stage of the war, the woman felt happy. She had just smuggled three children to Switzerland and hoodwinked a guard. Her name was Elie Schacten.

  Elie looked at Orion’s hunting dogs and scattered them into points of light—ice-flowers in the dark sky. Then she knocked twice on the shrouded door. It opened, a hand pulled her inside, and an SS officer kissed her on the lips.

  What happened? he said. You were supposed to be here yesterday.

  There was a problem with the clutch, said Elie. You should be glad I got here now.

  I am glad, said the officer. But I think you were up to something, my willowy little friend.

  I’m not your willowy little anything, said Elie. She shook him off and looked around. How’s the junk shop? she asked.

  You can’t believe what we’re getting, said the officer. Five kilos of Dutch chocolate. French cognac. Statues from an Austrian castle.

  They were talking about the outpost—a pine room with crooked beams. It had one oblong window with a blackout curtain and was crammed with objects from raided shops and houses. It was also cold. Wind blew through cracks in the walls, and the coal stove was empty. Elie tightened her scarf and walked through a maze of clocks, books, coats, chifforobes, and two optometrist chairs to a velvet couch. The officer dragged over eight bulging mailbags and leaned in so close Elie felt his breath. She let her hair loose so it screened her face.

  That tea-rose is hard to come by these days, said the officer, meaning her perfume. He leaned in closer and touched her blond curls.

  Elie smiled and began to read postcards and letters. The sheer amount always overwhelmed her. Most were from Operation Mail—letters written under coercion at camps or ghettos, often moments before the writer was led to a cattle car or gas chamber. Most were on thin, brittle paper and had a dark red stamp that overrode the addresses to relatives. The instructions on the stamp were: “Automatically forward all Jewish mail to 65 Berlin, Iranische Strasse.”

  Elie scanned without reading—her only purpose was to identify the language. She tried to ignore her sense of revulsion—never pausing to look at the name of the writer or what they’d written. Sometimes, when she was trying to fall asleep, she saw phrases from these letters—hurried, terrified lies, extolling the conditions in the camps. But when she scanned them quickly, she noticed nothing—except when she saw the enormous bag marked A, for Auschwitz. It was bigger than the other mailbags and seemed larger than anything this world could contain, as if it had fallen from another universe. Elie always had the sense that she had fallen with it and paused before reading the first letter.

  What’s wrong? said the officer.

  I’m just tired, she said.

  Is that all?

  The officer, who loved gossip, always tried to pry into Elie’s past because these days people parachuted into the world as if they’d just been born, with new papers to prove it, and she was no different—the daughter of Polish Catholics, transformed into a German by Goebbels. Her features conformed to every Aryan standard. Her German accent was flawless.

  Elie stared at some bolts of wool wedged between two bicycles. Then she went back to sorting letters. The officer lit a cigarette.

  You won’t believe this, he said. But a Jew just got out of Auschwitz. He walked past the fence with the Commandant’s blessing.

  I don’t believe you, said Elie.

  It’s all over the Reich, said the officer. An SS man came to the Commandant and said this guy owned a lab, and the Reich needed it for the war and the guy had to leave to sign over the papers. So the Commandant said he could, and now they can’t find the lab or the name of the SS man. They don’t even think he was real. They call him the Angel of Auschwitz.

  My God, said Elie.

  Is that all you can say? It’s a fucking travesty. And Goebbels won’t shoot the Commandant. He says he can’t be bothered.

  Elie fussed with the strands of the red ribbon on her wrist. She couldn’t take the ribbon off because, along with special papers, it gave her unlimited freedom to travel and amnesty from rape, pillage, or murder. The officer leaned close and offered to untangle the strands. One had a metal eagle on it—the beak was the size of a needle’s eye. He paused and admired the craftsmanship.

  Elie let him untangle the ribbon and counted things on the walls: five gilt-edged mirrors, fifteen typewriters, one globe, seven clocks, eight tables, bolts of white cashmere, a mixing bowl, twelve chairs, a tailor’s dummy, five lamps, numerous fur coats, playing cards, boxes of chocolate, and a telescope. A jumble shop, she thought. The Reich can raid everything but heat.

  I must get back, she said, standing up. If I see any codes from the Resistance, I’ll let you know.

  Stay the night, said the officer, patting a confiscated couch. I’ll keep my hands off you. I promise.

  You have more than hands, said Elie.

  My feet are safe, too, said the officer. He pointed to a hole in his boots, and they laughed.

  As she always did, Elie accepted his offer to take whatever she wanted from the outpost—this time, fourteen bolts of wool, a grandfather clock, the telescope, the globe, ten fur coats, a tailor’s dummy, two gilt mirrors, three boxes of playing cards, and half a kilo of chocolate.

  She also accepted his offer to carry everything across the field, where the snow was still soft, and the sky still promised pageants of light. Elie let the officer kiss her on the lips just once and hold her longer than she would have liked. Then she drove deep into the North German woods where pine trees hid the moon.

  At one point a thin girl without shoes darted across the road. Elie wasn’t surprised: at this stage of the war, people appeared just like animals. But she couldn’t stop, even to offer bread. There were as many guards as trees. And one rescue was dangerous enough.

  The pines grew thicker; wind blew through the canvas roof of her jeep, and Elie’s fear of the dark rose up, along with a terror of being followed. She concentrated on the road as if her only mission were to drive forever.

  Alongside her fears ran her shock about the Angel of Auschwitz. Elie always found clever escape routes for people—sewers in ghettos, tunnels below factories. But she’d never contemplated an escape from a camp. She wondered if the angel was a rumor. What better way to annoy the Reich than imply a place like Auschwitz wasn’t foolproof?

  Near three in the morning, the road became an unpaved road, jolting the car and making the grandfather clock tick. Elie’s ribbon brushed against the gearshift, reminding her she was tethered to the Reich. She looked in the rearview mirror to make sure she wasn’t being followed and made a sharp turn to a clearing wher
e another jeep and two Kübelwagens were parked near a shepherd’s hut with a round roof. The clearing had a watchtower by its entrance and a well set far back near the forest.

  A tall man in a Navy jacket and rumpled green sweater ran out and threw his arms around her. Then he helped her unload the jeep. They brought the telescope, the tailor’s dummy, the bolts of wool, the coats, the mirrors, the chocolate, the playing cards, the clock, the globe, the mailbags, and a hamper of food to the shepherd’s hut. The room had a pallet and a crude wooden table. Opposite the door was a fireplace. To its left was another arched door that opened to an incline. Elie and the officer dragged everything down the incline to a mineshaft and loaded it into a lift. He leaned over to kiss her, but she shook snow from her coat and turned away, caught in thoughts about the angel.