See Under by David Grossman (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

a herring barrel from Hirsch Weinograd’s grocery store. Now he really stank unbearably, and Giza, Marcus’s shrewish wife, said her husband could go on thinking Ginzburg was a lamed vavnik if he wanted, but he smelled more like a mem-tetnik, one of the forty-nine degrees of impurity. But someone watches over fools, it seems, which may be why, despite his madness and limited intelligence, Ginzburg could survive even the most difficult days in the ghetto. He was never caught by the guards, and twice miraculously escaped an Aktion. Eventually, however, his exploits were discovered, and people began to say there was method in his madness. What Ginzburg did was this: Because he stayed in the street at night when no one else was allowed out, he could see members of the various Jewish undergrounds roaming around like shadows. There’s no evidence that he understood what they were up to exactly, but something must have sunk in. It would be hard to explain otherwise why on a very cold winter’s day early in December of ’42, Ginzburg walked into the Paviak, or prison, by the back entrance, directly past the guard, who mistook him for one of the slave laborers. He walked down the moldy corridors, opened doors, and peered in. He had, it would seem, a definite goal. He walked in this reckless and innocent way past all the sentries till he reached a door marked INTERROGATION ROOM. SS interrogator Fritz Orf was just then sitting inside. A handsome young man embittered with boredom, Orf had been posted to Warsaw sixmonths earlier by order of Von Zamern Franknag, chief of police and the SS Warsaw region, who thought an expert interrogator would be more useful to him than a battalion of half-witted Polish soldiers patrolling the streets of the ghetto day and night.

But the Jews captured in the ghetto had nothing of interest to tell Orf, and were ordinarily put to death before the interrogation stage. Orf requested a meeting with Von Zamern and complained to him that he was “rusting away” in Warsaw, where there was no real need for him, in his opinion, but he was only reprimanded by his commander for insolence and ordered to obey without question. So Orf sat dully in the workroom, polishing his tools and reading books. No one had mounted his “ironing board” for six weeks now; not a fingernail had been removed, and the floor was clean of blood. Behind the door, on a hook, hung his shiny black-rubber treatment apron, and Orf was ashamed to look at it. A serious, responsible young man, he would have been incapable of “rusting away” even if he had been idle for ten years. He was a real professional, and proud of it. He found aesthetic pleasure in his work, in the fixed rules of interrogation, in its predictable stages and moments of tension and climax. In other words, Orf viewed his work as ART [q.v.]. He never allowed himself to enjoy the suffering of his subject. He knew perfectly well what his fellows in the army and police thought of him and his kind. He could feel their looks of revulsion and fear when he rode the train with them. Even high-ranking officers glanced suspiciously at his black uniform with the white epaulettes. And his own father always found a way to be out of town when Orf came home on leave. So be it. He was strong enough to withstand this covert antagonism. Only a strong man could handle a tough job like his, and somebody had to do it. Orf justified himself by believing he had chosen his special vocation out of a sense of idealism. As the door opened and Diogenes peered in, Orf was deep in Nietzsche’s Will to Power. In the SS interrogation course, his admired advisor had recommended Thus Spake Zarathustra, and Orf, who considered himself an intellectual, was captivated by the wild, deep power of Nietzsche’s writing. It should be mentioned that Orf was somewhat disappointed with The Will to Power, because of Nietzsche’s denial therein of “objective truth.” Orf was a firm believer in objective truth, because when you stuck electrodes into a prisoner’s sex organ and nipples, he eventually told you things that had an unqualified dimension of truth, subjectivetruth, perhaps, but torture made everyone alike in the end, which raised the suspicion that a single harrowing voice was screaming out the words.

The really strange thing was that Ilya Ginzburg had reached very similar conclusions. Otherwise he would not have done what he did: like old Diogenes in his day, Ilya Ginzburg braved countless dangers as he wandered with his candle in search of truth, till at last he arrived in the interrogation basement. Orf looked at the filthy Jew standing before him and was filled with revulsion at the sight and smell. He demanded roughly what he was doing there, and Ginzburg stuck his hand into his filthy shirt and pulled out three posters warning the ghetto Jews of mass transports to the “East” for “resettlement.” “Not to the East, but to Death!” screamed the posters in Polish. Orf jumped to his feet and circled Ginzburg, covering his nose with a handkerchief. “Suspect everyone!” he had learned in military school. “The innocent-looking ones are the most dangerous!” He made a quick decision. He shut the door behind Ginzburg and beckoned him into the room. Then he locked the door. He had the vague impression that the Jew had wound up here by mistake, but Orf did not want to waste the opportunity. He intended to get out the truth about the people behind the posters. When the interrogation was over, he would send the results to Von Zamern and reinstate himself. He rubbed his hands together quickly like a fly over its food, then turned and put on his black-rubber apron, smoothing it down with the accustomed movements that inspired him with confidence. Surprisingly gentle, he led Ginzburg by the shoulder and sat