Читаем Soldaten полностью

KITTEL (very excited): They seized three-year old children by the hair, held them up and shot them with a pistol and then threw them in. I saw that for myself. One could watch it; the SD [Sicherheitsdienst, the Security Service of the SS] had roped the area off and the people were standing watching from about 300 m. off. The Latvians and the German soldiers were just standing there, looking on.

FELBERT: What kind of SD people are they, then?

KITTEL: Nauseating! I’m convinced that they’ll all be shot.

FELBERT: Where were they from, from which formation?

KITTEL: They were Germans and they were wearing the SD uniform with the black flashes on which is written “Sonder-Dienst.”

FELBERT: Were all the executioners Latvians?

KITTEL: Yes.

FELBERT: But a German gave the order, did he?

KITTEL: Yes. The Germans directed affairs and the Latvians carried them out. The Latvians searched all the clothes. The SD fellow saw reason and said: “Yes, we will do it somewhere else.” They were all Jews who had been brought in from the country districts. Latvians wearing the armband—the Jews were brought in and were then robbed; there was a terrific bitterness against the Jews at DVINSK, and the people simply gave vent to their rage.¹⁹³

At Felbert’s insistence, Kittel continues his narrative, and the story takes further surprising turns. His explanation for why the killings are carried out by Latvians, on command from Germans, is the popular anger that allegedly accumulated in Daugavpils. This is one of countless examples in the protocols of obvious contradictions—or even sheer nonsense.¹⁹⁴ In the same breath as Kittel talks about popular resentment as a motivation for the executions, he also says that the Latvians were following orders by the German Security Service.

Contradictions crop up all the time in human conversations without disconcerting the participants to any great degree. Transmitting information isn’t the only reason people converse. Communication has two discrete functions: passing on information and establishing social relations between participants. To speak in the language of classical communications theory, narratives are as much about relationships as they are about content. The situation in which stories are told is thus often more important than whether what is narrated makes either historical or logical sense. Listeners often forgo questions and requests for explanations because they don’t want to disrupt the narrative flow or interrupt the speaker. When captivated by a narrative, they often do not even register whether details can possibly be true or not.

But Felbert in this excerpt is an attentive listener, asking “Against the Jews?”¹⁹⁵ Significantly, another person jumps in to answer that question, perhaps because he has registered a contradiction in Kittel’s narrative. He tries to put a positive spin on the story and then invites the general to resume his story: