“Hardly surprising when you see the miscegenation that’s gone on,” he said. “I’ve never seen such a racially diverse people.” He shook his head wearily. “The Amis are a curious lot. In some ways, of course, they’re quite admirable. But in others, they’re completely stupid. Take this place. Landsberg. To put us here, of all places. Where the Führer wrote his great book. There’s not one of us who doesn’t take a certain amount of comfort in that. I myself came here before the war to look at his cell. They’ve removed the bronze plaque that was placed on the Führer’s cell door, of course. But we all know exactly where it is. In the same way that a Muslim knows the direction of Mecca. It’s something that helps to sustain us. To keep up our spirits.”

“I was on the Russian front myself,” I said. I was showing him some credentials. It didn’t seem appropriate to mention my sometime service with the German War Crimes Bureau, in Berlin. Where we had investigated German atrocities as well as Russian ones. “I was an intelligence officer, with General Schorner’s army. But before the war, I was a policeman, at the Alex.”

“I know it well,” he said, smiling. “Before the war I was a lawyer, in Wilmersdorf. I used to go to the Alex now and then to interview some rogue or other. How I wish I was back there now.”

“Before you joined the Waffen-SS,” I said, “you went to a labor camp. Lemberg-Janowska.”

“That’s right,” he said. “With the DAW. The German Armament Works.”

“It’s your time there that I wanted to ask you about.”