The Odessa File

‘There’s reference here to a certain Olli Adler from Munich who was in Roschmann’s company during the war. It may be she survived and came home to Munich.’

Miller nodded.

‘If she did, where would she register?’

‘At the Jewish Community Centre. It still exists. It contains the archives of the Jewish community of Munich, since the war, that is. Everything else was destroyed. I should try there.’

‘Do you have the address?’

Simon Wiesenthal checked through an address book.

‘Reichenbach Strasse, Number Twenty-Seven, Munich,’ he said. ‘I suppose you want the diary of Salomon Tauber back?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid I do.’

‘Pity. I’d like to have kept it. A remarkable diary.’

He rose and escorted Miller to the front door.

‘Good luck,’ he said, ‘and let me know how you get on.’

Miller had dinner that evening in the House of the Golden Dragon, which had been in business as a beer-house and restaurant in the Steindelgasse without a break from 1566, and thought over the advice. He had little hope of finding more than a handful of survivors of Riga still in Germany or Austria, and even less hope that any might help him track Roschmann beyond November 1955. But it was a hope, a last hope.

He left the next morning for the drive back to Munich.

Chapter Ten

MILLER DROVE INTO Munich at mid-morning of January 8th, and found 27, Reichenbach Strasse from a map of Munich bought at a newspaper kiosk in the outskirts. Parking down the road he surveyed the Jewish Community Centre before entering. It was a flat-fronted five-storey building. The façade of the ground floor was of uncovered stone blocks; above this the façade was of a grey cement over brick. The fifth and top floor was marked by a row of mansard windows set in the red tile roof. At ground level there was a double door of glass panels, set at the extreme left end of the building.

The building contained a kosher restaurant, the only one in Munich, on the ground floor, the leisure rooms of the old people’s home on the one above. The third floor contained the administration and records department, and the upper two housed the guest rooms and sleeping quarters of the inmates of the old people’s home. At the back was a synagogue.

The whole building was destroyed on the night of Friday, February 15th, 1970, when petrol bombs were poured into it from the roof. Seven died, suffocated by smoke. Swastikas were daubed on the synagogue.

He went up to the third floor and presented himself at the inquiry desk. While he waited he glan

ced round the room. There were rows of books, all new, for the original library had long since been burnt by the Nazis. Between the library shelves were portraits of some of the leaders of the Jewish community stretching back hundreds of years, teachers and rabbis, gazing out of their frames above luxuriant beards, like the figures of the prophets he had seen in his scripture textbooks at school. Some wore phylacteries bound to their foreheads and all were hatted.

There was a rack of newspapers, some in German, others in Hebrew. He presumed the latter were flown in from Israel. A short dark man was scanning the front page of one of the latter.

‘Can I help you?’

He looked round to the inquiry desk to find it now occupied by a dark-eyed woman in her mid-forties. There was a strand of hair falling over her eyes, which she nervously brushed back into place several times a minute.

Miller made his request: any trace of Ollie Adler, who might have reported back to Munich after the war?

‘Where would she have returned from?’ asked the woman.

‘From Magdeburg. Before that Stutthof. Before that from Riga.’

‘Oh dear, Riga,’ said the woman. ‘I don’t think we have anyone on the lists who came back here from Riga. They all disappeared, you know. But I’ll look.’

She went into a back room and Miller could see her going steadily through an index of names. It was not a big index. She returned after five minutes.

‘I’m sorry. Nobody of that name reported back here after the war. It’s a common name. But there is nobody listed under it.’

Miller nodded.

‘I see. That looks like it, then. Sorry to have troubled you.’