But perhaps the most remarkable insight into this aspect of responsibility deferral in the psychology of the desk killer comes from the short interview Claude Lanzmann conducts with Walter Stier in Shoah. Stier, a member of the Nazi Party, rose to become the head of Department 33 at the Reich Ministry of Transport. His department was responsible for organising the Sonderzug (‘special trains’) in occupied Poland, including the trains used to transport people to the extermination camps of Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Yet he professed to know absolutely nothing about the nature of these camps, or who was being sent to them in such vast numbers, repeatedly emphasising that he was just a ‘desk man’, a harmless bureaucrat. To read these words is to understand that the Holocaust could not have happened without millions of Stiers across occupied Europe; whole armies of desk killers who never had to leave their offices.
Lanzmann: ‘You never saw a train?’
Stier: No, never. We had so much work, I never left my desk. We worked day and night.
GEDOB meaning Generaldirektion …?
Generaldirektion der Ostbahn (Head Office of Eastbound Traffic). In January 1940I was assigned to Gedob Krakow. In mid-1943 I was moved to Warsaw. I was chief traffic planner, chief of the Traffic Planning Office.
But your duties were the same before and after 1943?
Yes, the only change was that I became head of the department.
What were your specific duties at GEDOB during the war?
The work was little different from the work in Germany: preparing timetables, coordinating special train movements with ordinary train movements.
There were several departments?
Yes. Department 33 was in charge of special trains … and ordinary trains. Special trains were handled by Department 33.
You were always concerned with special trains?
Yes.
What’s the difference between a special train and an ordinary train?
An ordinary train can be used by anyone who buys a ticket. Say from Krakow to Warsaw. Or Krakow to Lemberg. A special train has to be ordered. The train is specially made up and people pay group fares …
Are there special trains now?
Of course, just as there were then.
A holiday train could be a special train?
Yes. For Guest Workers, for instance, workers returning home for holidays special trains are made available. Otherwise one couldn’t handle the traffic..
You’ve told me that after the war you dealt with the Queen’s visit?
After the war, yes….
If royalty visits Germany by train is that a special train?
Yes, that’s a special train. But the procedure is very different from that for special trains for groups and so on. State visits are handled by the foreign office.
May I ask another question? Why were there more special trains during the war than before or after?
I see what you’re getting at. You’re referring to the ‘Resettlement Transports’.
Yes, ‘Resettlement’.
That’s what these trains were called. The Reich Ministry of Transport ordered these trains – an order from the Ministry – the Reichsverkehrsministerium, Berlin.
In Berlin?
Yes. And those orders were implemented by Head Office, eastbound Traffic in Berlin. Have I made that clear?
Very clear. But who was being ‘resettled’ at that time?
We didn’t know that. Only when we ourselves fled from Warsaw did we learn they could have been Jews, or criminals, and the like.
Jews, criminals?
Criminals. All kinds.
Special trains for criminals?
No, that was just an expression; you couldn’t talk about it. Unless you were tired of life, it was best not to say anything.
But, at that time, you knew that the transports were to Treblinka or Auschwitz?
Of course we knew. These trains … I had destinations – mine was the last district. For instance, a train from Essen had to go through Wuppertal district, Hanover district, Magdeburg, Berlin, Frankfurt/Oder, Posnan, Warsaw and so on.
Did you know that Treblinka meant extermination?
No, of course not!
You didn’t know?
Good God no! How could we know? I never went to Treblinka. I stayed in Krakow, Warsaw, just sat at my desk.
A desk man?
I was a desk man, just a desk man.
But it’s astonishing that people in the department of special trains had no inkling about the ‘Final Solution’.
We were at war.
Because others working for the railways knew, people like the train guards.
Yes, they saw it. They did. But as to what happened …
What was Treblinka for you? Or Auschwitz?
For us Treblinka, Belzec and all that were concentration camps.
A destination.
Nothing more.
But not the end?
No. People were put there. We were told: ‘A train is coming from Essen, or Cologne, or elsewhere. Room had to be made, what with the war, and the Allies advancing and these people had to be concentrated in camps.’
When did you find out?
Well, when the word got around, when it was whispered.
It was never said openly.
Good God, no! You’d have been hauled off at once. We heard things.
Rumours?
Yes, rumours.
During the war?
Towards the end.
Not in 1942?
Good God, no. Not a clue! Towards the end of 1944 perhaps.
End of 1944?
Not before. It was said that people were being sent to these concentration camps and those in poor health probably wouldn’t survive.
The extermination was a big surprise to you?
A complete surprise.
You had no idea?
None at all. That camp – what was its name? In the Oppeln district…. yes – Auschwitz.
Auschwitz was in the Oppeln district of the railway?
Yes. Auschwitz wasn’t far from Krakow. We never heard a word about that.
It’s sixty kilometres from Krakow.
Yes, it’s not very far.
And you knew …?
Nothing, not a clue.
14
The Oilman and the Broken Wing
This man’s name has been in my head for a long time. A former oilman, Dutch. Now in his fifties. With that curious first name that sounds like a dance. Bopp van Dessel. For more than fifteen years I have told myself, at regular intervals: ‘Why don’t you try to contact him? There must surely be a way of getting hold of him.’ But then, in the way that life works, other tasks that are shouting louder, with deadlines attached, get the attention, and my Dutchman gets buried again, somewhere deep in my frontal cortex, not forgotten exactly, but lost in a crowd of a million other impulses, jostled out of sight.
He trained as a marine biologist and worked in this field for some years, before becoming an environmental advisor for Shell in 1989. In this capacity he worked for three years in the Netherlands, and then in 1992 he was sent to work in Nigeria as head of environmental studies for Shell. The next two and a half years shocked him deeply, and changed the course of his life. He tried to reconcile his work with Shell with what he was experiencing on a daily basis in the Niger Delta – the vast plumes of fire of the gas flaring right next to villages, the once ecologically rich mangrove swamps now thick and blackened by oil, and also the suffering of the people of the Delta. He became furious with the Nigerian government, but also baffled that the Western oil companies could allow all this to go on in their names: ‘Wherever I went I could see that Shell were not operating their facilities properly. They were not meeting their own standards, they were not meeting international standards. Any Shell site I saw was polluted. Any Shell terminal I saw was polluted. It was clear to me that Shell was devastating the area.’fn1