In Lublin, as in Cracow, I put up at the Deutsches Haus. The taproom, when we arrived, was already animated; I had called ahead, and my room was reserved; Piontek would sleep in a dormitory for enlisted men. I took my things up and asked for some hot water to wash with. Twenty minutes later there was a knock on my door, and a young Polish servant came in with two steaming buckets. I pointed to the bathroom, and she went in to put them down. Since she didn’t come back out, I went in to see what she was doing: I found her half naked, undressed to the waist. Stunned, I looked at her red cheeks, her little breasts, tiny but charming; fists on her hips, she was staring at me with a bold smile. “What are you doing?” I asked severely.—“Me…wash…you,” she answered in broken German. I picked up her blouse from the stool where she had put it and handed it to her: “Get dressed and leave.” She obeyed with the same naturalness. That was the first time such a thing had happened to me: the Deutsches Häuser I knew were strictly run, but obviously this must have been a common practice here, and I didn’t think for an instant that it was restricted to the bath. After the girl had gone, I got undressed, washed, and, having changed into a dress uniform (for long journeys, because of the dust, I wore a gray field uniform), I went downstairs. A noisy crowd was now filling the bar and the restaurant. I went out into the backyard to smoke and found Piontek standing, cigarette dangling from his mouth, watching two teenagers wash our car. “Where did you find them?” I asked.—“Not me, Sturmbannführer. The Haus. The garage owner complains about it, actually—he says he could have Jews for free, but that the officers made scenes if a Jew touched their car. So he pays Poles like them, one reichsmark a day.” (Even in Poland, that was a ridiculous amount. A night at the Deutsches Haus, although subsidized, with three meals, came to about 12 RM; a coffee in Cracow cost 1.50 RM.) I watched the young Poles wash the car with him. Then I invited him to have dinner with me. We had to clear our way through the throng to find a free spot at a table. The men were drinking, shouting as if for the pleasure of hearing their own voices. There were SS there, Orpos, men from the Wehrmacht and from the Organisation Todt; almost everyone was in uniform, including many women, probably typists or secretaries. Polish waitresses threaded their way with difficulty with trayfuls of beer and food. The meal was plentiful: sliced roast beef, beets, seasoned potatoes. As I ate I observed the crowd. A lot of people were just drinking. The waitresses were having trouble: the men, already drunk, groped the girls’ breasts or buttocks as they went by, and since they had their hands full, they couldn’t defend themselves. Near the long bar was a group in SS-Totenkopf uniforms, probably personnel from the Lublin camp, with two women among them, Aufseherinnen, I imagine. One of them, who was drinking brandy, had a masculine face and laughed a lot; she held a riding crop with which she tapped her tall boots. At one point, one of the waitresses was blocked near them: the Aufseherin held out her whip and slowly, to the laughter of her comrades, lifted the girl’s skirt from behind, up to her buttocks. “You like that, Erich!” she exclaimed. “But her ass is filthy, like all Poles.” The others laughed louder: she let the skirt fall and whipped the backside of the girl, who let out a cry and had to make an effort not to spill her glasses of beer. “Go on, move, sow!” the Aufseherin shouted. “You stink.” The other woman chuckled and rubbed shamelessly against one of the noncoms. In the back of the room, under an arch, some Orpos were playing billiards, shouting loudly; near them, I noticed the young servant who had brought me hot water; she was sitting on the lap of an OT engineer, who had his hand slipped under her blouse and was feeling her up while she laughed and stroked his balding forehead. “Well,” I said to Piontek, “it’s definitely lively here, in Lublin.”—“Yeah. It’s known for that.” After the meal, I had a Cognac and a little Dutch cigar; the Haus had a full shelf at the bar; you could choose from many quality brands. Piontek had gone to bed. They had put music on, and couples were dancing; the second Aufseherin, obviously drunk, was holding her partner by the buttocks; an SS secretary was letting her neck be kissed by a Supply Corps Leutnant. This stifling, cloying, lewd, noise-filled atmosphere got on my nerves and ruined the pleasure I took from traveling, the joyful feeling of freedom I had felt during the day on the long, almost deserted roads. And it was impossible to escape this grating, sordid atmosphere; it followed you even into the john. The large room, though, was remarkably clean, tiled in white up to the ceiling, with thick oak doors, mirrors, fine porcelain sinks, and brass taps for running water; the stalls too were white and clean, they must have scrubbed the seatless Turkish-style toilets regularly. I undid my trousers and squatted down; when I had finished, I looked for paper, but there didn’t seem to be any; then I felt something touch my backside; I jumped and turned around, trembling, already reaching for my service revolver, my underpants ridiculously lowered: a man’s hand was stretched out through a hole in the wall and was waiting, palm up. A little fresh shit was already staining the tips of his fingers, where they had touched me. “Go away!” I screamed. “Go away!” Slowly, the hand withdrew from the hole. I burst into nervous laughter: it was vile, they had really gone mad, in Lublin. Fortunately I still had some squares of newspaper in my tunic, a good precaution when traveling. I quickly wiped myself and fled, without pulling the chain to flush. When I went back into the main room I had the impression that everyone would look at me, but no one was paying any attention, they were drinking and shrieking, with brutal or hysterical, crude laughter, like a medieval court. Shaken, I leaned on the bar and ordered another Cognac; as I drank, I looked at the fat Spiess from the KL, with the Aufseherin, and, repulsive thought, imagined him squatting down, having his ass wiped with delight by a Polish hand. I also wondered if the women’s bathroom benefited from a similar arrangement: looking at them, I thought the answer was yes. I finished my Cognac in one gulp and went up to go to bed; I slept poorly, because of the noise, but still better than poor Piontek: some Orpos had brought Polish girls back to the dormitory, and spent the night fornicating in the beds next to his, without any qualms, trading girls and making fun of him because he didn’t want one. “They pay them in canned food,” he explained to me laconically over breakfast.
