This is the closest vehicle to the one used at Chelmno – a large capacity removal van.
Was this one of the men who were involved with discussions about the necessary ‘technical adjustments’ to the lorries in service at Chelmno? The need to reduce the lorry by one metre without changing the load capacity. A purely technical issue. And then, this man, or his colleagues, would have begun the problem-solving process. Drawings would be redraughted, scale models made, and then the new model would be created in the assembly sheds half a mile away next to the station. Perhaps one of the Saurer directors would have taken personal charge of this particular project? After all, the client could not have been more important, and if this contract went well, there would undoubtedly be greater orders from the Reich in the future …
*
24 August 2000
Our last day in Arbon. We start by visiting the local newspaper’s office, as we discussed last night. And for the first time here we meet somebody who talks openly about Saurer and the war years – the bearded editor of Tagblatt, Enrico (‘call me Rico’) Berchtold, a chain-smoking, middle-aged man of wiry energy, the archetypal journalist. He tells us that there are ‘two histories’ of the town and its relationship to Saurer – one concerned with memory and one concerned with forgetting. The first was the social democrat one; there had been a workers’ newspaper, the Thurghau Arbeiter Zeitung, which had always been anti-fascist and anti-Saurer, and it had done some research in the 1960s and 70s on Saurer’s collaboration with Nazi Germany. Sadly this paper had folded in the 1980s and only an archive was left now. Most of the town is conservative, like his newspaper, Rico adds with an apologetic shrug, and historically it has been totally dependent on Saurer, and they simply pretend that nothing happened. A town that wants to eradicate its past. He bids us farewell, warmly shaking our hands and wishing us the best of luck. He seems like an island of conscience in a sea of organised amnesia.
We walk back to the Saurer head office, animatedly discussing what we’ve just learnt from Rico. I’m determined to see if we can’t get to meet somebody senior in the company – surely there must be somebody not on vacation at the moment? By charming the two secretaries on the reception desk we manage, rather surprisingly, to get hold of the mobile phone number of the corporate communications director for Saurer, a Dr Lisa Kastelmann. A little later I call Dr Kastelmann, and she sounds a little surprised, but after trying to put me onto Herr Mickelson (I explain we’ve already tried to talk to him, but he’s on vacation), she agrees to meet us an hour later. So, pretty wired and excited by now, we get a bite to eat, and plan our approach to this interview – this is going to require some careful thought. We then return to the office next to the castle, and head up the stairs again. This time I notice one significant sign that I hadn’t seen before – a door labelled ‘Archiv’ – an intriguing detail, considering that Herr Mickelson had told me on the phone that there was no company archive.
We’re shown into Lisa Kastelmann’s office – white walls, black leather sofas, glass tables – inoffensive modern art. Lisa is mid-thirties, smartly dressed, looks slightly wary but trying not to show it: ‘Hi, so you guys are from London, yes? I had some great times there. I did my MBA at City. And do you know the guys from St Luke’s? They’re really cool. We worked on some projects together. Anyway, so what kind of artists are you? For fame or for money?!’
‘No, no,’ I say, trying desperately to think of something that won’t alarm her too much, ‘we’re environmental artists interested in education, and our organisation is currently doing work on certain companies in our society, especially looking at the relationship between the past and the present – you know, BP, Shell, Ford … also vehicle manufactuers, and we’ve heard a lot about Saurer, so that’s what brings us here.’
We start off by discussing the annual report, hoping Lisa will relax more, after all this is her area of expertise. We compliment her on its innovative look and she says, ‘Thanks, yes the design’s smart, isn’t it?’ with an engaging bob of the head. We ask several detailed questions about Saurer’s vehicle manufacturing period, but also about the company today, their employees, their expanding areas of production, textile machinery, their operations in India.
After fifteen minutes or so she’s really warmed to us, she feels safe. And then I steer the conversation onto the history of the company. She provides a printout of the official company summary. I ask her about the ‘difficult’ history of Saurer. She looks blank. I show her the memorandum discussing modifications to the Saurer lorries. I’ve never seen somebody freeze in quite this way before. She scans the page. The silence in the office becomes very loud. I say, but you must know about this surely? She says no, she’s never seen this before and then she gets defensive, angry. And she starts to question where are we coming from with all of this? What is our agenda? And then she says, rather foolishly, that she doesn’t even know if this document is genuine. I tell her the document is quite well known, and features in an important film called Shoah. We can provide her with a copy and references as to the derivation of the document if necessary. And I repeat that we’re interested in the relationship between the past Saurer and the present Saurer. There isn’t any connection, she insists. And then she says that yes, Saurer has a history, of course, but they don’t live on this history, they don’t live in the past, like some companies, Levi’s, Coca-Cola for example. They’re not proud or hung up on the past. The employees are much more interested in what’s happening right now. And at this moment, as she’s speaking, my anger grows, and I think of something John Berger writes in the Historical Afterword to Pig Earth: ‘The historic role of capitalism itself … is to destroy history, to sever any link with the past and orientate all effort and imagination to that which is about to occur.’
I also think of the distance – impossible to imagine – between this comfortable, light office, Lisa Kastelmann, her international friends, her worldly PR training and the barbarism of that memorandum, of the hundreds of thousands who choked to death in the back of perfectly designed Saurer lorries. Perhaps the engineers and the draughtsmen worked in this very building to discuss how the modifications might be made? Maybe Walter Rauff himself had lunch here one day with the Saurer directors. Did they toast the completion of the project with smiles and schnapps?
I tell Lisa that I disagree – how can a company go forward without reckoning with its past? And on a more practical level, has she not followed the work of the Bergier Commission? Have Saurer not been in contact with them already? She doesn’t know – but she’ll get back to us. And is she aware of the vast settlement that the Swiss banks had just had to pay out to Jewish groups? Over $1.25 billion? Yes, she was aware of this. She starts to take notes. J. asks about Saurer’s risks and liabilities fund. How much has the company set aside for such contingencies? She doesn’t know, she’ll get back to us on this too.