The Kindly Ones

by Jonathan Littell

the Sonderkommando set to work in earnest. One squad, under Callsen and Kurt Hans, shot three hundred Jews and twenty looters in the castle garden.

There’s just Adolf Hitler, our Führer, and the invincible power of the German Reich. We are in the process of amassing the largest army in the history of humanity. We will crush them in a few weeks.”

the Kommando had emptied the ghetto the day of our arrival in Kiev and liquidated the 3,145 remaining Jews.