The idea was to show me the consequences of what I had done.
The Ohrdruf gallows were capable of hanging six at a time. When I saw them, there was a dead camp guard at the end of each rope.
And it was expected that I would hang soon, too.
I expected it myself, and I took an interest in the peace of the six guards at the ends of their ropes.
They had died fast.
My photograph was taken while I looked up at the gallows. Lieutenant O’Hare was standing behind me, lean as a young wolf, as full of hatred as a rattlesnake.
The picture was on the cover of Life, and came close to winning a Pulitzer Prize.
8: Auf Wiedersehen …
I did not hang.
I committed high treason, crimes against humanity, and crimes against my own conscience, and I got away with them until now.
I got away with them because I was an American agent all through the war. My broadcasts carried coded information out of Germany.
The code was a matter of mannerisms, pauses, emphases, coughs, seeming stumbles in certain key sentences. Persons I never saw gave me my instructions told me in which sentences of a broadcast the mannerisms were to appear. I do not know to this day what information went out through me. From the simplicity of most of my instructions, I gather that I was usually giving yes or no answers to questions that had been put to the spy apparatus. Occasionally, as during the build-up for the Normandy invasion, my instructions were more complicated, and my phrasing and diction sounded like the last stages of double pneumonia.
That was the extent of my usefulness to the Allied cause.
And that usefulness was what saved my neck.
I was provided with cover. I was never acknowledged as an American agent, but the treason case against me was sabotaged. I was freed on nonexistent technicalities about my citizenship, and I was helped to disappear.
I came to New York under an assumed name. I started a new life, in a manner of speaking, in my ratty attic overlooking the secret park.
I was left alone ĄX so much alone that I was able to take back my own name, and almost nobody wondered if I was the Howard W. Campbell, Jr.
I would occasionally find my name in a newspaper or magazine ĄX never as an important person, but as one name in a long list of names of war criminals who had disappeared. There were rumors of me in Iran, Argentina, Ireland… . Israeli agents were said to be looking high and low for me.
Be that as it may, no agent ever knocked on my door. Nobody knocked on my door, even though the name on my mailbox was plain for anybody to see: Howard W. Campbell, Jr.
Until the very end of my purgatory in Greenwich Village, the closest I came to being detected in my infamy was when I went to a Jewish doctor in the same building as my attic. I had an infected thumb.
The doctor’s name was Abraham Epstein. He lived with his mother on the second floor. They had just moved in.
When I gave him my name, it meant nothing to him, but it did mean something to his mother. Epstein was young, fresh out of medical school. His mother was old ĄX heavy, slow, deeply lined, sadly, bitterly watchful
‘That is a very famous name,’ she said. ‘You must know that.’
‘Pardon me?’ I said.
‘You do not know about anybody else named Howard W. Campbell, Jr.?’ she said.
‘I suppose there are some others,’ I said.
‘How old are you?’ she said.
I told her.
‘Then you are old enough to remember the war,’ she said.
‘Forget the war,’ her son said to her, affectionately but sharply. He was bandaging my thumb.
‘And you never heard Howard W. Campbell, Jr., broadcasting from Berlin?’ she said to me.
‘I do remember now ĄX yes,’ I said. ‘I’d forgotten. That was a long time ago. I never listened to him, but I remember he was in the news. Those things fade.’
‘They should fade,’ said young Dr. Epstein. ‘They belong to a period of insanity that should be forgotten as quickly as possible.’
‘Auschwitz,’ said his mother.
‘Forget Auschwitz,’ said Dr. Epstein.
‘Do you know what Auschwitz was?’ his mother asked me.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘That was where I spent my young womanhood,’ she said. ‘And that was where my son the doctor here spent his childhood.’
‘I never think about it,’ said Dr. Epstein abruptly. ‘There ĄX that thumb should be all right in a couple of days. Keep it warm, keep it dry.’ And he hustled me toward the door.
‘Sprechen Sie Deutseh?’ his mother called after me as I was leaving.
‘Pardon me?’ I said.
‘I asked if you spoke German,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘No ĄX I’m afraid not,’ I said. I experimented shyly with the language. ‘Nein’ I said. ‘That’s no, isn’t it?’
‘Very good,’ she said.
‘Auf wiedersehen,’ I said. ‘That’s goodbye, isn’t it?’
‘Until we meet again,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, ĄX auf wiedersehen.’
‘Auf wiedersehen,’ she said.
9: Enter My Blue Fairy Godmother …
I was recruited as an American agent in 1938, three years before America got into the war. I was recruited one spring day in the Tier garden in Berlin.
I had been married to Helga Noth a month.
I was twenty-six.
I was a fairly successful playwright, writing in the language in which I write best, German. I had one play, ‘The Goblet,’ running in both Dresden and Berlin. Another play of mine, ‘The Snow Rose.’ was then in production in Berlin. I had just finished a third one, ‘Seventy Times Seven.’ All three plays were medieval romances, about as political as chocolate ?clairs.
I was sitting alone on a park bench in the sunshine that day, thinking of a fourth play that was beginning to write itself in my mind. It gave itself a title, which was ‘Das Reich der Zwei’ ĄX ‘Nation of Two.’
It was going to be about the love my wife and I had for each other. It was going to show how a pair of lovers in a world gone mad could survive by being loyal only to a nation composed of themselves ĄX a nation of two.
On a bench across the path from me a middle-aged American now sat down. He looked like a fool and a gasbag. He untied his shoelaces to relieve his feet, and he began to read a month-old copy of the Chicago Sunday Tribune.
Three handsome officers of the S.S. stalked down the walk between us.
When they were gone, the man put his paper down and spoke to me in twanging Chicago English. ‘Nice looking men,’ he said.
‘I suppose,’ I said.
‘You understand English?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Thank God for somebody who can understand English,’ he said. ‘I’ve been going crazy trying to find somebody to talk to.’
‘That so?’ I said.
‘What do you think of all this ĄX ‘ he said, ‘or aren’t people supposed to go around asking questions like that?’
‘All what?’ I said.
‘The things going on in Germany,’ he said. ‘Hitler and the Jews and all that.’
‘It isn’t anything I can control’ I said, ‘so I don’t think about it’
He nodded. ‘None of your beeswax, eh?’ he said.
‘Pardon me?’ I said.
‘None of your business,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ I said.
‘You didn’t understand that, when I said ‘beeswax’ instead of ‘business’?’ he said.
‘It’s a common expression, is it?’ I said.
‘In America it is,’ he said. ‘You mind if I come over there, so we don’t have to holler?’
‘As you please,’ I said.
‘As you please,’ he echoed, coming over to my bench. ‘That sounds like something an Englishman would say.’
‘American,’ I said.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Is that a fact? I was trying to guess what maybe you were, but I wouldn’t have guessed that’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘You figure that’s a compliment?’ he said. ‘That’s why you said, “Thank you?”’
‘Not a compliment ĄX or an insult, either,’ I said. ‘Nationalities just don’t interest me as much as they probably should.’
This seemed to puzzle him. ‘Any of my beeswax what you do for a living?’ he said.
‘Writer,’ I said.
‘Is that a fact?’ he said. ‘That’s a great coincidence. I was sitting over there wishing I could write, on account of I’ve thought up what I thinks a pretty good spy story.’
‘That so?’ I said.
‘I might as well give it to you,’ he said. ‘I’ll never write it.’
‘I’ve got all the projects I can handle now,’ I said.
‘Well ĄX some time you may run dry,’ he said, ‘and then you can use this thing of mine. There’s this young American, see, who’s been in Germany so long he’s practically a German himself. He writes plays in German, and he’s married to a beautiful German actress, and he knows a lot of big-shot Nazis who like to hang around theater people.’ He rattled off the names of Nazis, great and small ĄX all of whom Helga and I knew pretty well.