The Kindly Ones

by Jonathan Littell

the specialists in the Ministry of Food saw the evacuation of the Jews by the RSHA as a measure that would allow Hungary to free up a surplus of wheat for Germany, corresponding to our needs, and as for the fate of the evacuated Jews, who in principle would have to be fed elsewhere if they weren’t killed, that didn’t concern this young and all in all pleasant expert, a little obsessed with his figures though, for there were other departments in the Ministry of Food to take care of that, feeding the inmates and other foreign workers in Germany, that wasn’t his business, and for him the evacuation of the Jews was the solution to his problem, even if it became someone else’s problem in turn. And he wasn’t the only one, this man, everyone was like him, I too was like him, and you too, in his place, you would have been like him.