suggest.
“I had a goldfish. I had to flush it down the toilet.”
I am almost afraid to ask. “Why?”
She hesitates. “Let’s just say I have proof that Hitler was reincarnated, too.”
I manage to get her off the phone by telling her that I’ll have a historian look into her case—and it’s true, I will pass this off to Genevra the next time she does something to piss me off and I want to get back at her. But no sooner do I have Miranda Coontz off my line than my secretary buzzes me again. “Is your moon out of alignment or something?” she asks. “Because I’ve got another one for you on line two. Her local FBI office referred her here.”
I look at the piles of documents on my desk—reports that Genevra has turned in. Getting a suspect to trial is a slow and laborious expedition and in my case, often a fruitless one. The last case we were able to bring to prosecution was in 2008, and the defendant died at the end of the trial. We do the opposite of what police do; instead of looking at a crime and seeing “whodunit,” we start with a name, and pore through databases to see if there’s a match—a person who’s alive with that name—and then to figure out what he did during the war.
We have no shortage of names.
I pick up the receiver again. “This is Leo Stein,” I say.
“Um,” a woman replies. “I’m not sure I have the right place . . .”
“I’ll let you know, if you tell me what you’re calling about.”
“Someone I know may have been an SS officer.”
In our office, we have a category for these calls: My Neighbor’s a Nazi. Typically, it’s the neighbor from hell who kicks your dog when he crosses the property line, and calls the town when the leaves of your oak tree fall in his yard. He’s got a European accent and wears a long leather coat and has a German shepherd.
“And your name is?”
“Sage Singer,” the woman says. “I live in New Hampshire, and so does he.”
This makes me sit up a little straighter. New Hampshire’s a great place to hide, if you’re a Nazi. No one ever thinks to look in New Hampshire.
“What’s this individual’s name?” I ask.
“Josef Weber.”
“And you think he was an SS officer because . . . ?”
“He told me so,” the woman says.
I lean back in my chair. “He told you that he was a Nazi?” In the decade I’ve been doing this, that’s a new one for me. My job has involved peeling away the disguises from criminals, who think that after nearly seventy years, they should literally get away with murder. I’ve never had a defendant confess until I’ve managed to back him so far into a corner with evidence that he has no choice but to tell the truth.
“We’re . . . acquaintances,” Sage Singer replies. “He wants me to help him die.”
“Like Jack Kevorkian? Is he terminally ill?”
“No. He’s the opposite—very healthy, for a man his age. He thinks that there’s some sort of justice in asking me to be a part of it—because my family was Jewish.”
“Are you? ”
“Does it matter?”
No, it doesn’t. I’m Jewish, but half the staff in our department isn’t.
“Did he mention which camp he was in?”
“He used a German word . . . Toten . . . Otensomething?”
“Totenkopfverbände?” I suggest.
“Yes!”
Translated, it means the Death’s Head Unit. It’s not an individual location but rather the division of the SS that ran the concentration camps for the Third Reich.
In 1981 my office won a seminal case, Fedorenko v. United States. The Supreme Court decided—wisely, in my humble opinion—that anyone who was a guard at a Nazi concentration camp necessarily took part in perpetration of Nazi crimes of persecution there. The camps operated as chains of functions, and for it to work, everyone in the chain had to perform his function. If one person didn’t, the apparatus of extermination would grind to a halt. So really, no matter what this particular guy did or didn’t
“I had a goldfish. I had to flush it down the toilet.”
I am almost afraid to ask. “Why?”
She hesitates. “Let’s just say I have proof that Hitler was reincarnated, too.”
I manage to get her off the phone by telling her that I’ll have a historian look into her case—and it’s true, I will pass this off to Genevra the next time she does something to piss me off and I want to get back at her. But no sooner do I have Miranda Coontz off my line than my secretary buzzes me again. “Is your moon out of alignment or something?” she asks. “Because I’ve got another one for you on line two. Her local FBI office referred her here.”
I look at the piles of documents on my desk—reports that Genevra has turned in. Getting a suspect to trial is a slow and laborious expedition and in my case, often a fruitless one. The last case we were able to bring to prosecution was in 2008, and the defendant died at the end of the trial. We do the opposite of what police do; instead of looking at a crime and seeing “whodunit,” we start with a name, and pore through databases to see if there’s a match—a person who’s alive with that name—and then to figure out what he did during the war.
We have no shortage of names.
I pick up the receiver again. “This is Leo Stein,” I say.
“Um,” a woman replies. “I’m not sure I have the right place . . .”
“I’ll let you know, if you tell me what you’re calling about.”
“Someone I know may have been an SS officer.”
In our office, we have a category for these calls: My Neighbor’s a Nazi. Typically, it’s the neighbor from hell who kicks your dog when he crosses the property line, and calls the town when the leaves of your oak tree fall in his yard. He’s got a European accent and wears a long leather coat and has a German shepherd.
“And your name is?”
“Sage Singer,” the woman says. “I live in New Hampshire, and so does he.”
This makes me sit up a little straighter. New Hampshire’s a great place to hide, if you’re a Nazi. No one ever thinks to look in New Hampshire.
“What’s this individual’s name?” I ask.
“Josef Weber.”
“And you think he was an SS officer because . . . ?”
“He told me so,” the woman says.
I lean back in my chair. “He told you that he was a Nazi?” In the decade I’ve been doing this, that’s a new one for me. My job has involved peeling away the disguises from criminals, who think that after nearly seventy years, they should literally get away with murder. I’ve never had a defendant confess until I’ve managed to back him so far into a corner with evidence that he has no choice but to tell the truth.
“We’re . . . acquaintances,” Sage Singer replies. “He wants me to help him die.”
“Like Jack Kevorkian? Is he terminally ill?”
“No. He’s the opposite—very healthy, for a man his age. He thinks that there’s some sort of justice in asking me to be a part of it—because my family was Jewish.”
“Are you? ”
“Does it matter?”
No, it doesn’t. I’m Jewish, but half the staff in our department isn’t.
“Did he mention which camp he was in?”
“He used a German word . . . Toten . . . Otensomething?”
“Totenkopfverbände?” I suggest.
“Yes!”
Translated, it means the Death’s Head Unit. It’s not an individual location but rather the division of the SS that ran the concentration camps for the Third Reich.
In 1981 my office won a seminal case, Fedorenko v. United States. The Supreme Court decided—wisely, in my humble opinion—that anyone who was a guard at a Nazi concentration camp necessarily took part in perpetration of Nazi crimes of persecution there. The camps operated as chains of functions, and for it to work, everyone in the chain had to perform his function. If one person didn’t, the apparatus of extermination would grind to a halt. So really, no matter what this particular guy did or didn’t
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