As winter came on, Gustav used his position to achieve the unthinkable—
he had Fritz transferred to join him in block 7. Now they could be together in the evenings without worrying about being seen by suspicious SS men. It was a socially tricky situation; because of his low status, Fritz wasn’t permitted to sit in the block day room when his papa went there to talk with his friends; instead he had to sit on his bunk alone.
Still, at least it was warm and safe. It was certainly better than the place he’d been in before his death, where his block senior, a man named Paul Schäfer, hadn’t been able to stomach the stench of men’s bodies in the bunk room—an unavoidable ingredient of concentration camp barrack life—and had kept all the windows open to ventilate it, even in the cold weather. Simply for sadism’s sake, he’d also turned off the heating, so the men’s damp clothes wouldn’t dry. If anyone was caught trying to keep warm by sleeping in his clothes, Schäfer would beat him up and confiscate his bread and margarine ration. Confinement in the bunk room of block 7 was luxury by comparison.
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“And so the year of 1943 goes by,” Gustav wrote. Winter was upon them again; snow began to fall, and the ground hardened. This would be his and Fritz’s fifth winter since being taken from their home. That it would not be their last was both a blessing and a curse.
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15 The Kindness of
S t r a n g e r s
“CATCH!”
Fritz leapt in the air, stretching to reach the ball as it sailed over his head; it bounced off the bracket of one of the empty market stalls and skittered into the road. Fritz ran after it, whipped it up, and glanced up to see a police‑
man coming around the corner into Leopoldsgasse. The policeman stared hard at him, and he stood up straight, hiding the ball behind his back. Soccer wasn’t allowed on the streets. When he’d gone, Fritz turned and ran back into the market, dropping the ball—just a tightly wrapped bundle of rags—onto the cobblestones and kicking it back toward his friends.
It was the end of the day and the last of the farmers were clearing away their unsold wares. As each one finished, he mounted his cart and chucked the reins, clopping off along the street. Fritz and his friends ran among the empty stalls, tossing the ball back and forth. Only Frau Capek the fruit seller was still at her post; she never packed up until it got dark. In the summer she would give the kids corn cobs. A lot of them were poor and would take all the free leftovers they could get—ends of sausage from the butcher, bread crusts from Herr König at the Anker bakery, whipped cream from Herr Reichert’s cake shop in the Grosse Sperlgasse, just around the corner from the Sperlschule where they all went to school.
Fritz caught the ball as it came his way and was about to toss it back when they al heard the distant, familiar hooting of horns: ta-raa ta-raa. The fire truck was on its way to a fire. In a welter of excitement they ran back through the market and along Leopoldsgasse, following the sound, dodging among the 217
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passersby—the late housewives with their shopping, the Orthodox Jews in their black coats and beards hurrying home for the start of Shabbat before the light began to fade. “Wait!” Fritz turned and saw the little figure, legs pumping, running after him. Kurt! He’d forgotten all about him. He waited for his little brother, but by the time he caught up, Fritz’s friends were out of sight and the fire truck was inaudible.
Kurt was only seven—a whole generation apart from Fritz, who was nearly fourteen, but they were close already, and Fritz let the kid tag along when he played with his friends, learning their games and the ways of the streets around the Karmelitermarkt and beyond. Kurt had his own gang of little pals, and Fritz’s gang acted as their guardians.
Fritz noticed old Herr Löwy, who’d been blinded in the Great War, trying to cross the street, which was busy with trucks and heavy wagons from the coal sellers and breweries, clattering along pulled by massive Pinzgauer horses.
Fritz took Herr Löwy’s hand, waited for a gap, and helped him across. Then, beckoning Kurt to follow, he took off after his friends.
They caught up with them coming back along Taborstrasse, their faces streaked with cream and icing sugar. They hadn’t found the fire, but they’d passed by Gross’s confectioners in the Novaragasse and bagged about a ton of leftover cream cakes. One of them—his schoolfriend Leo Meth—had saved a cream slice and gave it to Fritz, who divided it with Kurt.
Cheeks bulging with pastry and cream, they walked back toward the Karmelitermarkt, Fritz holding Kurt by his sticky, sugary hand. Fritz enjoyed the comfort of comradeship; the fact that some of his friends were different, that while his parents neglected to go to synagogue, their parents stayed away from church, or that Christmas meant something slightly more to them than it did to him—these things seemed of no significance, and the thought that he and Leo and the other Jewish kids might ever be divided from their friends by these trivial things never crossed their minds.
It was a warm evening; summer was well on its way. Tomorrow was Sat‑
urday—perhaps they’d go swimming in the Danube Canal. Or they might join with the girls to play theater in the basement of number 17. Frau Dworschak the building supervisor—whose son Hans was one of Fritz’s playmates—often let them light the place up with candles, and Herta and the other girls would put on a fashion show, dressing up in scavenged clothes and parading up and down like great ladies, or they’d all do a version of William Tell in front 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 218
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of an audience who paid two pennies each for admission. Fritz loved these burlesques.
Fritz and Kurt walked home in the warm summer dusk. Today had had been a good day in an unbroken string of good days. The kids of Vienna picked their joy from the streets like apples from a tree; all you had to do was reach up and it was there for the taking. Life was outside of time, invincible.
Fritz was torn from a pleasant dream by the shrill screech of the camp senior’s whistle. His eyes opened, staring into darkness, and his nostrils woke to the stench of three hundred unwashed bodies and three hundred sets of sweat‑
soured clothes. His brain, startled out of its bliss, registered the shock of his situation—as it did every dark pre‑dawn morning.
The man in the bunk below climbed down and pulled on his jacket, as did about a dozen others who were on coffee duty. Fritz wrapped his blanket tightly about him and closed his eyes, settling into the straw mattress, squeezing the last embrace out of sleep and chasing the tatters of his dream.
An hour and a quarter later he was woken again by the bunk room lights flicking on. “All up!” barked the room orderly. “Up, up, up!” In an instant the three‑tiered bunks sprouted legs, arms, bleary faces, clambering, treading on one another, pulling on striped uniforms. Fritz took down his mattress, shook it out, then folded his blanket and laid it all straight. After the men had splashed and scrubbed their faces in cold water in the washhouse—jam‑packed with the inhabitants of the six surrounding blocks—and polished their shoes from the barrel of greasy boot‑polish scavenged from the Buna Werke, they lined up in the bunk room for their acorn coffee, brought in in huge thirty‑liter thermos canisters. They drank it standing up (sitting on the bunks was forbid‑
den). Those who’d managed to save a bit of bread from the evening before ate it now, washing it down with the sweet, lukewarm coffee. The orderly inspected them to see that their bunks were in order, their uniforms presentable, and their shoes clean and polished.
The atmosphere was less anxious, more convivial than in any block Fritz had been in before. The Prominenten of block 7 looked after themselves in greater comfort. His
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new prisoners during the summer that they’d slept two to a bed.1 The foremen, the kapos, the block senior, and the orderlies had treated the rest of them as second‑class, especially the Jews. In block 7 there was more mutual respect, although Fritz, here only on sufferance and the influence of his father, was excluded.
At 5:45, still in darkness, they all trooped outside and formed rows in front of the building. All along the street prisoners were spilling out of their blocks and lining up to be counted by their block seniors. Every man had to be there, without exception. Not even the sick or the dead were excused—usually each block would produce at least one or two corpses of men who’d died in the night. They were carried out and laid down to be counted with the rest. The assembled prisoners marched along the street and wheeled into the roll‑call square, lit by floodlights. Columns of hundreds came from each block, form‑
ing up on the open parade ground in orderly ranks of ten, each man with his assigned place within his block, each block in its assigned place among the others. The sick and the dead were carried along and put at the back.
The SS Blockführers prowled up and down the columns, looking for men out of place, lines not straight, counting up the prisoners of their block, taking a tally of the dead. Any infraction of perfect drill—especially if it led to a count‑
ing error—resulted in a beating; whole rows were made to lie down, stand up, lie down, until they got their lines perfectly straight. When the Blockführers were satisfied, they took their reports to the Rapportführer, who watched over the whole proceeding from a podium at the front. Then, while the prisoners continued to stand motionless—however cold or wet the weather—he went meticulously through the whole count.
By the time SS‑Lieutenant Vinzenz Schöttl, the dough‑faced director, arrived on the square to take roll call, they had been standing at attention for about an hour. Fritz watched warily as Schöttl took the podium; with the whole Auschwitz complex still going through the process of transitioning from the Höss‑Grabner regime he was still afraid of being recognized and singled out; it was a fear that would never entirely leave, and recent events had put him more on edge than ever.
During the final days of the Grabner regime in September, an informer had been discovered among the prisoners.2 The Gestapo were constantly put‑
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kinds of kapos and civilian workers. Fritz Beck, who was an orderly in block 7 and particularly alert to traitors, had made the discovery. Beck had learned from a fellow prisoner who was a clerk in the Monowitz Gestapo that Polish kapo Bolesław “Bolek” Smoliński—one of the heavy‑handed kapos, a bigot and anti‑Semite with a particular loathing for communists—was a stool pigeon working for SS‑Sergeant Taute.
This vital intelligence was passed among the resisters. They realized at once the acute danger Smoliński presented; Curt Posener (known as Cupo), one of the old Buchenwalders, knew that Smoliński was friendly with the camp senior responsible for the prisoner hospital, which was a main nexus for the resistance. This was a terrible vulnerability. Cupo talked it over with Erich Eisler and Stefan Heymann. Eisler suggested that they try talking to Smoliński, to make him see the error of his ways. Stefan and Cupo argued strongly against this; it was far too dangerous. Nonetheless, for reasons which nobody would ever discover, Eisler disregarded the warnings and went ahead and talked to Smoliński. The reaction was instantaneous—Smoliński went straight to the Gestapo and gave them the names of several conspirators, including Erich Eisler and Curt Posener, as well as six others, including Walter Petzold and Walter Windmüller, both of whom were well‑liked, highly respected func‑
tionary prisoners and members of the resistance. All were seized and taken to Auschwitz I, where they were put in the block 11 bunker and subjected to days of interrogation and torture. Despite being the Gestapo’s informer, Smoliński was held with them.
Eventually Walter Petzold and Curt Posener were brought back to Monow‑
itz, battered and physically broken. Like Fritz, they had resisted the torture and given up no information. Smoliński was also released and resumed his position. Walter Windmüller and Erich Eisler did not come back. Windmüller had succumbed to his injuries and died in the bunker. Poor Erich Eisler, who had outed himself as a resister by talking to Smoliński in the first place, was taken to the Black Wall and shot on October 21, 1943.3 The rest were also shot.
Eisler’s death was heartbreakingly tragic. He had dedicated himself utterly to people’s welfare; even before becoming a prisoner himself, he’d worked for the Rote Hilfe (Red Aid), a socialist organization that provided welfare to prisoners’
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him. In the end, it had been his humane temperament that was his downfall, thinking he could talk a man like Smoliński into behaving decently.
“Attention! Caps off!” yelled a sergeant’s voice through the loudspeakers, and five thousand hands whipped the caps off five thousand heads and folded them neatly under their arms. They stood at attention while Schöttl checked through the assembled lists of prisoners, noting new arrivals, deaths, selec‑
tions, and assignments.
Finally: “Caps on! Work details, move!”
The parade dissolved into chaos as each man ran to his allotted detail, coalescing into units and forming up in columns, counted off by their kapos.
They marched along the street to the main gate, which swung open. Many were lethargic, Fritz noted—as always, there was a percentage who had reached the last of their strength; before long they would be selected for Birkenau or be among the corpses brought out to be counted at roll call.
As the columns passed, the prisoner orchestra, in their little building beside the gate, played stirring tunes. They were an international ensemble, led by a Dutch political, with a German Roma on violin, and the rest Jews from various countries. Yet it struck Fritz that they never seemed to play German tunes—only Austrian marches from the days of the empire. When his papa had been Fritz’s age, he had marched to exactly these tunes on the parade grounds of Vienna, Cracow, and Kenty. He’d gone to war accompanied by the same martial airs. The camp orchestra were good musicians, and sometimes on a Sunday Schöttl permitted them to put on a concert for the more privileged prisoners on the roll‑call square. It was a surreal sight—the motley musicians playing classical music to an audience of prisoners standing in uniforms, with SS officers in chairs to one side.
The sky was starting to grow light now as they marched along the road toward the checkpoint at the gates of the Buna Werke, each column guarded by an SS sergeant and sentries. Depending on where in the factory complex they worked, some of them had up to four kilometers to march, and then a twelve‑hour shift and a four‑kilometer march back to another several hours of roll call in the floodlit cold and rain. Each day the same as the last, each day another pit of gloom in an unbroken landscape of gray hopelessness.
Fritz went to his work in the warehouse: another day of moving stock about. As it turned out, this day was not entirely like all the others, although Fritz had no way of knowing it just yet.
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He was chatting to another Jewish prisoner when one of the civilian welders who happened to be nearby broke in on their conversa
tion. He was German and had noticed they were speaking his language. He hadn’t come across many fellow Germans since coming to work here—most of the prisoners seemed to be Poles or other foreigners. Glancing at their prison uniforms he asked, rather impolitely and presumptuously, what crimes they had committed.
Fritz looked at the civilian in surprise. He was a youngish man who moved with a lame, halting manner suggesting some kind of disability. That would explain why he wasn’t in the army. “Crime?” Fritz said. “We’re Jews.”
The man was mystified. “But the Führer would never lock up anyone who hasn’t done anything wrong,” he said.
“This is Auschwitz concentration camp,” said Fritz. “Do you know what Auschwitz stands for?”
The man shrugged. “I’ve been in the army, on the Eastern Front. I’ve got no idea what’s been going on at home.” So that explained his lameness: wounded, presumably.
Fritz pointed out his and his friend’s Jewish stars, explaining what they denoted, but the man refused to believe that that was the sole reason for their imprisonment. For Fritz, this blindness was stupefying—the man might have missed the escalation since 1941 while he was at the front, but where had he been since 1933 when the persecutions began, or 1938 when Kristallnacht happened and they started sending the Jews en masse to the concentration camps? Presumably he’d bought into the propaganda that Jews had merely been deported or emigrated of their own free will, and that those in the camps were criminals and terrorists.
Eventually Fritz accepted that it was hopeless and gave up trying to con‑
vince him of the truth. When the former soldier tried to restart the conversation again later, with the stunningly glib and pompous observation that everyone must pull together to defend home and Fatherland, and that even prisoners had their part to play, Fritz bit his tongue. Here was a man whose company he could grow extremely tired of very quickly indeed. The man went on and on, and at last Fritz couldn’t stand it any longer. “Can’t you see what’s happening here?” he cried angrily, gesturing around him to take in the factories, Aus‑
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