Kleiber

Kleiber is an SS officer whose authority binds a group of soldiers to the massacre at Klooga. He recruits fifty men for the assignment; their participation in the killing of prisoners becomes a defining fact of their wartime service and a source of dread as Germany retreats toward defeat.

Command at Klooga

Kleiber’s men are later known in the III Panzer Corps of the SS as his men. Over three days, September 20–22, 1944, they assist the camp guards in murdering approximately 550 prisoners a day. The soldiers themselves are assigned four hundred killings daily, amounting to 1,200 over the three days. The scale and repeated execution turn the massacre into an organized task carried out under military command, rather than an isolated act of violence.

The narrative distinguishes Kleiber’s men by their conduct and by the identities they carry away from the site. Jan Schmitt de Wandaleer stops needing to insist after every volley that the prisoners are not human. Adrián Gallardo continues to believe that the victims had never been anything else, but no longer cares. The passage does not describe Kleiber’s private response; it establishes his role through the unit assembled under his command and the men’s participation in the killings.

Retreat and fear of discovery

On September 23, Kleiber’s men withdraw from the Narva front with the remnants of the Eastern Army. Their retreat precedes a general rout by only three days. As Soviet forces pursue them, the unit moves from Estonia into Latvia, carrying the memory of Klooga with it. The men’s earlier drunken exhilaration gives way to silence once they cross the border.

The soldiers repeatedly wonder whether the Soviets have reached Klooga, found the bodies, or discovered survivors. Some reassure themselves that Baltic Jewish prisoners would not be able to identify German military insignia; that explanation calms them for days at first, then only for hours, before the questions return. Kleiber’s command thus persists beyond the massacre in the group’s shared fear of recognition and accountability.

Adrián does not join these conversations. He expects Germany to lose the war and believes that someone will eventually discover the charred remains or hear testimony from a survivor. He is certain that the perpetrators will one day have to pay. The account presents this expectation against the unit’s recurring attempts at reassurance, making the retreat not an escape from Klooga but a flight shadowed by the possibility of its exposure.

Losses and the final flight

Of the fifty men Kleiber recruited to take part at Klooga, only five reach Berlin. During the final retreat, the danger comes not only from the enemy: soldiers abandon their uniforms, steal civilian clothing, bribe guards, and flee by train or truck. Captured deserters are shot, but many more escape than are caught. By April 1945, German civilians are waiting for surrender and are reluctant to take on the burden of reporting deserters.

The shrinking group gives Kleiber’s command a grim aftermath. Most of the men he brought to Klooga do not make it to the capital, while those who remain are carried into the final defense of the collapsing Reich. The novel’s account of Kleiber is brief but consequential: his authority gathers the perpetrators, the massacre fixes their shared past, and the retreat exposes how fear, desertion, and the prospect of defeat unravel the group he led.