The Jewish DPs were long gone from Landsberg now, to Israel, Great Britain, and America, but the gallows was still there, and from time to time the guards tested it just to make sure everything was working smoothly. They were thoughtful like that. No one really believed the German federal government was planning to bring back the death penalty; then again, no one really believed the Amis gave a damn what the federal government thought about anything. They certainly didn’t give a damn about scaring the prisoners, because at the same time that they tested the gallows they rehearsed the whole ghastly procedure of an execution with a volunteer prisoner taking the place of a condemned man. These monthly rehearsals took place on a Friday, because it was an old Landsberg tradition that Friday was a hanging day. A team of eight MPs solemnly marched the condemned man into the central courtyard and up the steps to the roof where the gallows was, and there they slipped a hood over the man’s head and a noose around his neck; the prison director even read out a death sentence while the rest of them stood at attention and pretended—probably wished—it was the real thing. Or so I was told. It might reasonably be asked why anyone, least of all a German officer, would volunteer for such a duty; but as with everything else in Germany, the Amis got exactly what they wanted by offering the volunteer extra cigarettes, chocolate, and a glass of schnapps. And it was always the same prisoner who volunteered to step onto the gallows: Waldemar Klingelhöfer. Perhaps the Amis were unwise to do this, given that he’d already tried to open a vein in his wrist with a large safety pin; then again, it’s no good looking for a whole flock when you’ve only got one sheep.

It wasn’t guilt about killing Jews that made Klingelhöfer try to kill himself and volunteer for a practice execution; it was his guilt over the betrayal of another SS officer, Erich Naumann. Naumann had written a letter to Klingelhöfer instructing him what to tell his interrogators and reminding him that there were no reports for the activities of Task Group B, which he himself had commanded after Nebe; but this advice also revealed the true depth of Naumann’s own criminality in Minsk and Smolensk. Klingelhöfer, who was deeply conflicted about the collapse of the German Reich, handed Naumann’s letter to the Amis, who produced it at the Einsatzgruppen trial in 1948 and used it as prima facie evidence against him. The letter helped convict Naumann and send him to the gallows in June 1951.