“You mind telling me what you are doing?” the director inquired. It was amazing that a man of his girth had managed to walk up right behind Rudolph without him hearing a thing. Rudolph was startled as well as a tad bit embarrassed. Rudolph was, as promised, at the worksite as requested, sort of. At this point in the construction process his surveyors were carefully marking out the outer boundaries of the Tabernacle and also roping off and making divisions for some of the inner sanctum rooms.
Other workers had piled the assorted building materials in conjunction to the areas to which they were to be employed. Rudolph thought things moving along reasonably enough and had taken retreat atop one of the adjacent desert sand dunes that overlooked the worksite.
He was in the process or at least in the attempts at channeling his energy. Rudolph had contorted himself into an amateurish lotus position. Unable to unknot himself promptly he almost tipped over at the shock of being suddenly interrupted by the director. The director found this most amusing and emitted a bellowing laugh at Rudolph’s expense. Rudolph attempted to briefly explain but was waved off by the director.
“I believe it would be most nice if your presence was confined to the worksite during working hours Rudolph.” The directive from the director was firm without a hint of being harsh. The two man gingerly made their way back down the dune. Rudolph could only imagine how the director had gotten himself up the precarious slope in the first place. Rudolph even looked to see if maybe the director had brought a boom truck onto the premises. Once back at the site the director looked a little disappointed as he watched Geraldo, the Foreman and, a couple of workers mull over a crisp and newly executed architectural blueprint outlining the proposed Tabernacle.
“So I see the plans I gave you were insufficient?” Mr Merguedithian inquired somewhat sarcastically. Rudolph hesitated a minute; after all, this was a Hollywood type, capable he thought of extreme sensitivity and mood swings. He did not want to give the wrong answer.
“Not in the least sir.” Rudolph reported back. They were more than adequate. They were however worn and I thought they may be of sentimental value so we had a blueprinting firm translate the documents into modern form. The men are kind of used to working from modern transcripts, that’s all. He paused to size up the director’s response. Finding none he continued. “ In fact I have your originals right…”
“So there was nothing absent or deficient in the original huh?” The director interrupted.
“No sir.”
“Good. Very well I will just take the blueprinted translations with me.” He gestured to Rudolph to retrieve the blueprints from the men. That’s why I need a man, capable and with your skills, on site everyday my dear Rudolph. If Bezaleel and Aholiab could do from God’s instructions so can you Rudolph, so can you. He mounted a wide brimmed fedora and with scarf theatrically flying in the desert wind, he bode Rudolph farewell. “By the way, Rudolph, things look fine so far, good work.”
Rudolph could surmise that unannounced visits such as these might very well become a trend for the future. He reasoned that he’d better take things up a notch. Rudolph had been surprisingly taking things up a notch as well in his personal life. That night in desert with Laila actually turned out to be quite memorable. Although not in the manner and method which Rudolph had craved and anticipated; they did in fact sleep together that night. After Laila had run Rudolph through the basics of her New-age beliefs, the two found themselves sparring in fun quasi-spiritual, pseudo religious talk followed by the usual grand finale question ‘Just what exactly is the meaning of life’. As the night grew the now cozy couple decided to make a night out of it. Rudolph, with his truck now cleared, had ample space for them to sleep in the back. Laila, the ever naturalist and romantic, wanted to sleep outdoors under the celestial canopy. Rudolph took a more cautious approach to that idea, fearing coyotes and worse. A compromise was made thanks to Rudolph’s ingenuity. He took out an extension ladder from the storage trailer. Together, the two of them hauled up to the trailer’s roof enough blankets to keep warm and comfy for the night. Laila slept warmly and safe in Rudolf’s arms. Tantric or not, Rudolph enjoyed having her there and felt closer to her than another women he had ever spent the night with regardless of what activities may have proceeded the actual sleep-in.
Quote from the Nuremberg “I still cannot see how Hitler could have known about all those ugly details. Now that I know what I know, I wish I could just have Himmler here for ten minutes to ask him what he thought he was pulling off there. If only some of the SS generals had protested” (March 9, 1945)
Hermann Goering is the speaker. He was Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, as Hitler’s second in command he held the title of Reichsmarschall. This quote alleges that Goering was against the “Final Solution” yet he did nothing to stop it. Also, the rest of his actions contradict the ideals from this quote (Glibert 185-191).
Otto’s Tale
Otto had regained a semblance of peace to his conflicted soul. He had suffered a loss by giving up the rent free dwelling provided to him on the compound. Yet he felt this was a necessary trade off and he would definitely sleep more soundly, not being awakened in the middle of the night by the crackle of snaps and pops which he was told was simply target practice. The untimely practice was conducted near the off limits SS garrison which he had helped to build during the early days. Otto had convinced the camp’s mid-level bureaucrats that the move was necessarily in order that he may share some of the responsibilities of taking care of an ailing aunt.
The work in the section of camp labeled as area B began as any other project, be it the Dachau compound or some neighborhood beer brewery. Yet there was something in the blueprints that troubled Otto from the start. He assumed the often rushed Architects and Engineers had made certain calculation and functionality errors. Since he no longer saw the men in the informal settings of dinners and drinks, he hesitated in filing an official challenge to what he perceived as flaws in their designs.
The dinners and merriment making that Otto enjoyed with his professional colleagues had tapered off unto the point of non-existence. Each man confronted what was obviously going on all around them with a certain self preserving blindness and deafness. Companionship would ultimately demand conversation, so each man retreated to his own psyche. Hans Erich looked forward to the redesign of the Reichstag to which he had been promised upon completion of all buildings at Dachau. He spent most of his time in his room with manic and meaningless drawings of what he had attempted to accomplish there. Karl Mauer merely sat in a dark room whenever away from the work sites. He even ate his meals in the darkness. He was celebrating. Upon completion of the all the architectural designs he would be appointed Professor Emeritus of the Architectural Science at the prestigious Schumacher's Institute at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Like Germany, Austria had begun to root out Jewish Professors from important positions. This left many vacancies and prized positions to be filled by true blood Germans. Karl did have mixed feeling about this appointment. The ousted Professor, Hiram Kertschel, was his former teacher, then mentor, and there was a time he even considered him a professional friend.
Otto merely became fixated with his growing and well-fed accounts to escape the madness of the day. He kept an insignificant amount of various small bills and coins at home just so he could distract himself with counting them over and over again. Otto found the discrepancies in the blueprints of Section B to be a welcome if not annoying distraction. He kept notes as to what he thought were the errors. If calamity should befall the structure at some future date, he wanted to have a clear record of the events. This new SS bureaucracy were not to be placated; they were sticklers for details and they had the power of the gun as well as the pen. Otto’s notes recorded the following:
Regarding the showering facilities in the proposed building; since the act of showering should be, in as much as possible, a private affair, Otto thought it would have been of small expense to provide some type of privacy barriers.
He found it odd that the pipes outfitting the showers, instead of being designed to travel to one of the main reservoirs at the camp, instead led to an internal storage tank that could not possibly facilitate the amount of water needed for such service.
The Russian-made showerheads which had already arrived on compound seemed oddly defected and not suited for water transmission at all.
The proximity of the showers to the proposed new and central crematorium seemed poor planning and improper placement, especially since there was so much available land at Dachau. In later designs the two areas were actually connected by tunnel.
By the time the plans were updated to include the connecting tunnel, Otto had taken to solitary drinking and no longer wrote notes about any of the projects or his concerns. He was a man under authority; he just did as he was told.
Tabernacle