“Definitely,” I said. “My health is good although I took a piece of shrapnel in the leg. And I had a bump on the head a couple of years ago. It gives me an itchy scalp sometimes. Usually when something doesn’t make sense. Like now, for example.”

“Oh? What doesn’t make sense?”

“Why a Jew cares what happens to a few lousy war criminals?”

“That’s a fair question,” he said. “Yes, I’m a Jew. But that doesn’t mean I’m interested in taking revenge, Herr Gunther.” He got out of his chair and went over to the window, summoning me to his side with a peremptory nod of the head.

On my way over I took in the photograph of Kaufmann in the uniform of a German soldier in the first war, and a framed doctorate from the University of Halle. Standing beside him I saw that his light gray pinstripe suit was even better than I had imagined. It rustled silkily as he removed his light tortoiseshell-framed glasses and polished them vigorously on a white handkerchief that was as immaculate as his shirt collar. I was more interested in him than in the bird’s-eye view of Karlsplatz his office window afforded him. I felt like Esau standing next to his smoother brother, Jacob.

“That’s the Justice Palace and the New Law Courts,” he said. “In a year or two—maybe less, God willing, because the noise drives me mad—they’ll be just like they were before. You’ll be able to walk in there and see a trial and not know that the building was ever destroyed by Allied bombs. That might be okay for a building. But the law is something different. It grows out of people, Herr Gunther. Placing mercy ahead of justice, with an amnesty for all war criminals, will foster a new beginning for Germany.”

“Does that include war criminals like Otto Ohlendorf?”

“It includes all prisoners,” he said. “I’m just one of a number of people, Jews included, who believe that the political purge imposed upon us by the occupation authorities has been unjust in virtually every respect, and has failed monstrously. The pursuit of so-called fugitives needs to be ended as quickly as possible, and the remaining prisoners released so that we can all draw a line through the sad events of an unfortunate era. I and a group of like-minded lawyers and church leaders intend to petition the American high commissioner regarding these prisoners at Landsberg. Gathering any evidence of prisoner ill-treatment is a necessary prelude to our doing so. And my being Jewish has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Do I make myself clear?”