VERY Gravity's Rainbow.

[Mark Kohut]

>From The Paris Review interview with George Steiner, 1994.



STEINER

Then the war comes and my father is asked by the French prime minister to
go with a mission to negotiate with the Germans for the purchase of Grumman
fighter planes. A totally amazing story happened. Everybody has forgotten
that New York was a *neutral* city in 1940. It was full of Nazi purchasing
missions, bank missions, engineers. My father was at lunch in honor of the
Trade Purchasing Commission at the Wall Street Club. At his table were
representatives of the American treasury, the banks and the French
delegation. The waiter brings my father a folded sheet of paper saying that
a gentleman at another table has asked that I bring this to you. My father
whirls around and sees a Nazi purchasing mission, with the swastikas in
their lapels. Perfectly legitimate: they too were buying equipment and
arranging oil loans with the Chase Bank and many others. Father recognizes
a man who had been one of his closest friends in business, and with whom he
has had no contact whatever since 1933 when Hitler took over. So my father
ostentatiously tears up the note, the piece of paper, and drops it on the
floor. He goes to the john; the man is waiting there, grabs my father and
says, “You better listen to me whether you like it or not. I can give you
no details, I don't know any. We're coming into France very soon.” (This is
in 1940.) “Get your family out at any price.”

Now, this was one of the heads of the most important electrical concerns in
Europe, Siemens. The “final solution” meeting had not yet taken place. But
in Poland the massacres were already on, and the heads of Siemens knew
something. They didn't know the details, because you were shot immediately
if you were on leave and talked about it; but it was filtering through the
high command, through diplomats, and this man, thank God, believed it, and
my father believed him.

My father got in touch with the prime minister and asked him if his family
could join him for a while since the negotiations were going to be longer
than he had thought. The prime minister said, “Yes, of course, let them
join you.” That's what saved us. We came out with the last American boats.

This story will be of considerable interest to historians, because it means
that *early* in 1940 — the Germans came through in May, whereas this was in
January — an informed senior German knew something.
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