The Commandant of Lubizec: A Novel of the Holocaust and Operation Reinhard Read Online Free Page A

said, turning on his heel. He paused and spoke with his head half turned. “And Niemann? Thank you.”
    He walked towards his Mercedes and drove away from the glowing searchlights. A deepening dark covered the world as he bounced over the rough dirt road. His tires maneuvered around potholes and skittered into watery ruts. Gravel pinged off the undercarriage as Guth pulled onto the main road and pointed his headlights towards the village. Little cones of light shot into the leafy darkness.
    In the backseat were wrapped presents for his wife and kids.
    Wooden boxes still needed to be unpacked and there was a ghostly presence in the air of something lost. The previous owners had been made to disappear ages ago, shortly after the war began, and the house had stood empty for nearly two years. There was a mustiness in the air. The smell of attic.
    Guth dropped his SS hat onto a marble table as his kids came around a corner with whoops of joy.
    “Daddy, Daddy!”
    His daughter, Sigrid, hugged his waist while his son, Karl, embraced his leg. Guth shuffled down the wood-paneled hallwaywith outstretched arms and pretended to be a lumbering giant. He lowered his voice.
    “Who are these little people? How did they get in my castle? I must
eat
them.”
    And then this man, who, in a single week, had organized the murder of eleven thousand people, bent down and gave his children lavish kisses. He held them and didn’t mind how they stepped on his polished boots or how they argued about who was going to wear his SS hat. He made sure his pistol was snapped into its leather holster.
    “You’re here at last,” he cooed. “Now tell me about your journey. Tell me, tell me. I am one big ear.”
    Sigrid and Karl pulled him into a dining room that had a giant chandelier and an enormous marble fireplace. Ostrich feathers hung incongruously in the corner and there was a lush Persian carpet on the floor. Boxes of china plates and silver platters and crystal were stacked against a wall, and he looked at himself in a darkened window as his children tugged him forward. His wife came around the corner in a rose-colored dress and stood beside the fireplace. Her curly blond hair tumbled down to her shoulders. She held out a whiskey for him.
    “What’ve you been up to?” she asked.
    We only know about these private scenes of home thanks to Sigrid’s memoir,
The Commandant’s Daughter
, published in 1985. Her recollection of life in “the Villa” not only offers us an unusual picture of her father at rest, but it also documents her struggle to understand what it meant to be raised in the shadow of a death camp. We quickly learn that Guth was affectionate, sometimes moody, and that he often talked about how lucky he was. We also know from
The Commandant’s Daughter
that Guth’s wife, Jasmine, never called him Hans-Peter. She didn’t particularly like that hyphenated name and referred to him instead as Hans. Our understanding of life in the Guth household is further deepened by having Jasmine’s unpublished diary from this period of time. By reading both books against each other, we have the unusual opportunity of seeing how a particular moment in time transpired, and as we progress through thehistory of Lubizec these two primary sources will help us to understand Guth both as a father and as a husband.
    Guth was different at home. We know that much. But whether the man inside the Villa was the real Guth or the man running a barbed-wire kingdom was the real Guth, we will never know. What we can say with great certainty is that he slipped into the role of murderer as easily as he became a loving father at home. These two worlds never seemed to overlap in his mind, and this makes it all the more baffling that he could love his family and yet commit acts of such pure wickedness. Had Guth been a recluse who locked himself in his office and went about the business of obliterating lives it would be easier to comprehend his crimes, but this isn’t