chwitz, the whole system. Then he walked away.
But the civilian wouldn’t leave the matter—or Fritz—alone. The whole business perplexed him, and throughout that day he came up to Fritz again 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 223
05/04/2018 14:02:13
224 A u s c h w i t z
and again, raising the matter of duty and Fatherland and that surely prisoners must be prisoners for a good reason. But despite his persistence, each time he raised the matter he sounded less sure of himself.
Eventually he fell silent, and for the next few days he went about his weld‑
ing work in the factory without speaking. Then one morning he approached Fritz, quietly passed him a piece of bread and a large stick of sausage, then walked off. Surprised and puzzled, Fritz hid the gifts away, and as he did so he noticed that the bread was half a long loaf of Wecken, an Austrian bread made from very fine flour. He tore off a piece and put it in his mouth. It was blissful; nothing like the military Kommisbrot they were given in the camp.
This was a taste of home and heaven—a reminder of the morsels he and his friends used to get at the close of day from the Anker bakery. There was a lot here, and the sausage was large; he would smuggle them back to camp and share with his father and friends.
Later the same morning, the civilian came back. “There aren’t many Ger‑
mans here,” he said. “It’s nice to have someone to talk to.” He hesitated, and there was a look in his face Fritz hadn’t seen before. On his way in to work that morning, he said, he’d seen a sight which had distressed him. Even as a veteran of the Eastern Front who was no stranger to atrocity, he’d been shaken by it. A prisoner’s corpse was hanging on the barbed wire of the Monowitz camp. He’d been told it was a suicide, and not uncommon—prisoners would throw themselves on the fence and die either by electrocution or shooting.
Fritz nodded; it was a common enough sight. The SS always left the bodies up for a few days to intimidate other prisoners. “This is not what I fought for,”
said the civilian. His voice shook with emotion, and Fritz saw tears in his eyes.
“Not that. I want nothing to do with that.”
Fritz was astounded—a German soldier standing before him, in tears over a dead concentration camp inmate. In Fritz’s experience, Aryan Germans—sol‑
diers, police, SS, green‑triangle prisoners—were all of a kind: with few excep‑
tions they were callous, bigoted, and brutal.
The man told Fritz his story. His name was Alfred Wocher. He was Bavarian‑born but married to a Viennese woman, and his home was in Vienna—hence the Wecken loaf. Fritz had learned discretion and didn’t mention that he was from Vienna too; instead he just listened while Wocher told him about serving in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, how he’d been awarded the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class and reached the rank of 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 224
05/04/2018 14:02:13
T h e K i n d n e s s o f S t r a n g e r s 225
sergeant. After being severely wounded he’d been sent home on indefinite leave; he would never be fit again for active service. He hadn’t actually been discharged from the army but as a skilled welder he’d been sent to IG Farben to do civilian work.5
Back in camp that evening, Fritz went to the hospital to talk it over with Stefan Heymann; he described Alfred Wocher and repeated everything he’d said. Stefan was unsettled by the whole thing. He advised Fritz to be care‑
ful—you couldn’t trust Germans, especially not a veteran soldier from Hitler’s army. After Smoliński and the deaths of Erich Eisler and Walter Windmüller, the resistance was more wary than ever about potential informers. And surely Fritz had learned his lesson the hard way—the last time he’d become friendly with a civilian it had nearly cost him his life, besides putting his friends and his father through a world of grief and risk.
Fritz understood the danger all too well and had every reason not to trust this man Wocher. Therefore, given those facts, he would never understand why he did what he did the next day. He went back to work and, in defiance of Stefan’s advice and his own good sense, continued conversing with the old soldier.
It wasn’t as if he could easily keep away from him—Wocher came to him, usually because he wanted to get something off his chest, some query or other about Auschwitz. To Fritz it seemed suspiciously like probing. Wocher would bring copies of the Völkischer Beobachter, the official Nazi Party newspaper, to show Fritz what was going on in Germany. (Fritz didn’t mind—newspaper torn into squares had a value in the camp, and it had to be said that wiping the asses of Jews was as good a use for the Beobachter as one could imagine.) Wocher brought Fritz gifts of bread and sausage, and one day he even offered to convey letters for him. If Fritz had anyone in the outside world he wanted to commu‑
nicate with, he would get messages to them.
So there it was—entrapment. Or so it seemed. Fritz’s instinct told him to test this man in some way. But to what purpose? If Wocher was a Nazi informer, what good would it do to prove it? Fritz discussed the matter again with Stefan Heymann. Knowing that Fritz would always go his own way, Stefan told him that it was up to him alone; he couldn’t help him with this.
Not long afterward, Wocher happened to mention that he was about to go on leave and would be traveling through Brno and Prague—cities in what had formerly been Czechoslovakia, now German‑occupied. Here was Fritz’s 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 225
05/04/2018 14:02:13
226 A u s c h w i t z
opportunity; he came to work next day with a couple of letters directed to fictional addresses in both cities, claiming he had family there. He guessed that if Wocher was false, he naturally wouldn’t bother trying to deliver the letters and wouldn’t discover that the addresses weren’t real.
When Wocher reappeared at work a few days later, he was livid. He’d tried to deliver both letters, and been unable to find either address. He’d guessed right away that Fritz had duped him—presumably for no better reason than to make a fool of him—and was hurt as well as angry. Fritz was apologetic, concealing his delight and relief; he was now almost sure that Wocher wasn’t an agent provocateur.
Although he still didn’t wholly trust the man, Fritz began to reveal more to him about what Auschwitz really was; gradually, over several days, he told Wocher about how Jews came in transports from Germany, Poland, France, the Netherlands, and countries in the east; about the selections in Birkenau; the children, the old, the unfit, and most of the women sent to the gas chambers, while the others were put to slave labor. Wocher had seen glimpses of it for himself; now he understood the long trains of closed cattle cars he’d seen coming in along the southeastern railroad past Monowitz, heading toward Oświęcim. Also, on one of the big factory floors he’d heard civilians talking about these things. He was beginning to realize that he’d missed a lot being in the army at the front.6
It was becoming harder to miss what was going on. Like a metastasizing cancer, Auschwitz was spreading and growing. With a new commandant in overall charge, sweeping organizational changes had been made, and Aus‑
chwitz III‑Monowitz (its official name as of November 1943) became a prin‑
cipal camp along with Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II‑Birkenau. Monowitz was now the administrative hub for a growing number of subcamps pustulating throughout the countryside around the Buna Werke. Accordingly it had a commandant installed above camp director Schöttl, a pallid, blank‑eyed man called SS‑Captain Heinrich Schwarz who liked to take a personal hand in the beating and murder of prisoners, working himself into a foaming rage in the process. Former commandant Rudolf Höss called Captain Schwarz
“the choleric type, easily aroused and irascible” and praised his enthusiastic, meticulous devotion to enacting the Final Solution, often raging against Berlin if ever there was a lull in the number of transports of Jews.7
294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 226
05/04/2018 14:02:13
/> T h e K i n d n e s s o f S t r a n g e r s 227
New transports for the IG Farben camps sometimes came directly to Monowitz now, and for the first time Fritz witnessed with his own eyes what he had previously only heard about—the bewildered people herded from the freight cars onto the ground near the camp, loaded down with luggage: men, women, and children, thinking they had come to be resettled.8 Many were frightened, others happy and relieved to find friends again among the mass after days in the dark, suffocating cars. The healthy men were separated and marched to the camp. Meanwhile, the women, children, and elderly were put back on the train, which rolled on to Birkenau. In Monowitz the men were made to strip naked in the roll‑call square, leaving all their clothes and belongings in a heap. Many tried to keep hold of precious possessions, but they were nearly always found out. Everything was taken to the special storage block for sorting and searching. This place, like its larger counterpart in Birkenau, was known as “Canada” (which was believed to be a land of riches). The prisoner detail responsible for handling the plunder were very thorough.9 Working under close SS oversight, they searched through it like prospectors panning dirt, prying open seams to look for concealed valuables.
Any that were found were often pocketed by the SS supervisors. Everything else was held in storage.
Among the new arrivals, Fritz took a particular interest in the Jews from the ghetto at Theresienstadt, many of whom had been deported there from Vienna. Fritz sought them out, looking for news of home. They had little to tell; they’d been away from Vienna a long time. More up‑to‑date news came when deportations directly from Vienna began arriving. Virtually all the registered Jews had gone from the city now, and the Nazi authorities had begun deporting those who fell in the no‑man’s‑land between Jewish and Aryan—the Mischlinge, those who were born from the intermarriage of Jews and Aryans and were therefore both and neither. The Nuremberg Laws defined two categories of Mischling: those with two Jewish grandparents (“half Jewish”) were of the first degree, and those with only one (“quarter Jewish”) were of the second degree. The Nazis had never reached a consen‑
sus on how they felt about Mischlinge, especially whether those of the first degree should be treated as Jews if their parents practiced Christianity. Jews married to Aryans lived in a world of fearful uncertainty; those who had converted to Christianity could never be sure that the state would recognize their conversion or the special status they gained from their Aryan spouses.
294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 227
05/04/2018 14:02:13
228 A u s c h w i t z
With the extermination of the Jews approaching a climax, more and more Mischlinge were being deported to the camps. Fritz talked to those who came from Vienna but could get no more than general information about life there—nobody could tell him anything about his remaining relatives and friends, if any were still alive.
When Alfred Wocher mentioned that he would be going to Vienna on a short leave, Fritz saw his chance. He felt he could trust him now, and hoped the trust was reciprocated. Fritz gave him the address of his aunt Helene, who lived in Vienna‑Döbling, a suburb on the northern outskirts, across the Danube Canal from Leopoldstadt. Helene had married an Aryan and been baptized a Christian, so had remained secure from the Nazis. Her son was Viktor, the cousin from whom Kurt had acquired his hunting knife, and her husband was a German officer. Fritz wanted her to know that he and his papa were still alive and well, and to pass the news on to any other surviving relatives.
Wocher took the address and set off.
He returned a few days later. The mission hadn’t been much more fruitful than the previous one. The address had been genuine enough, but the lady who’d answered the door to him had been decidedly unfriendly—she’d denied all knowledge of any Fritz Kleinmann and slammed the door in Wocher’s face.
Much later, Fritz pieced together what had happened. What he hadn’t realized was that when he was away from the factory, Alfred Wocher reverted to army uniform. His appearance on Aunt Helene’s doorstep had scared the poor woman out of her wits. Her husband had died in the war, and she felt terrifyingly exposed without the protection his Aryan status had given her.
What if the Nazis decided she was a Jew after all? When this total stranger in a Nazi sergeant’s uniform came knocking on her door and mentioned Fritz being in Auschwitz, she’d thought her time had come, and she panicked.
One thing at least had come out of the affair: Fritz now trusted Alfred Wocher completely. With Christmas approaching, he was off to Vienna again.
This time Fritz gave him some more addresses—a cousin and some friends of his papa’s from the local neighborhood. He also gave him the address of Im Werd 11/16, his home, and a letter for his mother; despite everything he knew now about what was going on in the world, and despite having heard nothing from his mother or Herta for a year and a half, Fritz couldn’t give up hope completely. He needed to believe that they were all right.
294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 228
05/04/2018 14:02:13
T h e K i n d n e s s o f S t r a n g e r s 229
Leopoldstadt had lost its heart. It was still a populous area, but the excision of its Jewish people had taken the life quite literally out of it. Shops were still untenanted, businesses still boarded up. When Alfred Wocher ascended the stairs of the apartment building at Im Werd 11, the apartments where Jews had lived—around half of the twenty‑three in the building—were unoccupied.10
So much for the Nazi claim that Jews were taking up scarce living space that was needed for true Germans. There was no answer when he knocked on the door of number 16.11 It had probably never been opened since Tini Kleinmann turned the key in the lock in June 1942. Wickerl Helmhacker, who’d overseen her eviction, was still living in the building. But so was Karl Novacek, an old friend of Gustav’s. Karl worked as a cinema projectionist and was one of the handful of Aryan friends who had remained loyal to the Kleinmanns through‑
out the Nazi persecutions.12 He was overjoyed to learn that Gustav and Fritz were still alive in body and spirit.
He wasn’t alone. There were other true friends in the same street—Olga Steyskal, a shopkeeper who had an apartment in the building next door, and Franz Kral, a locksmith who lived in the next building along. The reaction was the same from all of them. As soon as they heard the news, Olga, Franz, and Karl hurried across the street to the Karmelitermarkt and came back with baskets of food for Wocher to take back to Auschwitz for Gustav and Fritz.
Word also reached Fritz’s cousin, Karoline Semlak—Lintschi, as she was better known—who lived a few streets away from the Karmelitermarkt. Lintschi was Aryan by marriage, but unlike poor Helene in Döbling she had no qualms about exposing her Jewish origins. She put together a package of food and wrote a letter in which she enclosed photographs of her children. The food assembled by the three friends, together with Lintschi’s package and letter, filled two suitcases.
Olga also wrote a letter for Gustav. She was deeply fond of him, as he was of her; there might have been sparks between them if he hadn’t already been married.
It was an incongruous, improbable occasion: a group of Aryan friends and a converted Jew packing off a Bavarian soldier in Wehrmacht uniform with suitcases full of loving gifts for two Jews in Auschwitz. It was strangely beautiful, but it left Wocher with a problem: conveying all this bounty to Fritz in safety was going to be quite a challenge.
294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 229
05/04/2018 14:02:13
230 A u s c h w i t z
Somehow he overcame the problem, smuggling the gifts into the factory and passing them over to Fritz.13 The food was very welcome, but even more so was the news of Lintschi and their friends. Fritz asked eagerly after his mother and sister, but Wocher shook his head gravely. Everyone he’d spoken to had said the same—Tini Kleinmann and her daughter had gone with the deporta‑
tions to the Ostland and never been heard of since. Fritz’s disappoin
tment was bitter; his last hope had been taken away from him. But he still clung to the faint possibility that they weren’t dead. Fritz’s aunts, Jenni Rottenstein and Bertha Teperberg, had been deported too; after a few months’ anxious suspense, in September 1942 they had both been summoned and put aboard one of the last Ostland transports to leave Vienna. Jenni had no family of her own other than her talking cat, but Bertha left behind her daughter and grandson. The two sisters went to their end together among the pines at Maly Trostinets.14
Fritz shared the food among his comrades in his work detail and took the news and the letters back to his papa. Despite the crushing news about Tini and Herta, Gustav was heartened to hear from his dear friends. His nature rebelled against giving up hope, and it gave him joy to think that he would be able to write to people he loved.
There was a much bleaker reaction from Gustl Herzog and Stefan Hey‑
mann when Fritz told them what he’d done; despite his own confidence in Alfred Wocher’s trustworthiness, Stefan in particular was deeply suspicious. It was too soon after Erich and Walter and the others. He warned Fritz against any further involvement with the German. Fritz’s respect for Stefan was great, but his longing for the old world and his family was greater.
294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 230
05/04/2018 14:02:13
16 Far from Home
“DEAREST OLLY,” Gustav wrote, “Your kind letter to me is received with many thanks, and you must forgive me for leaving you for so long with no word from me and Fritzl, but I have to take great care not to cause any trouble for you. For your kind package I thank you many times over, and also Franzl.
It makes me so glad that I have such kind and good friends when I am so far from home.”1
It felt good to be able to write without constraint. Today was the third day of the new year of 1944, and there was a faint whiff of hope in the air. His pencil darted rapidly across the ruled squares of the sketch paper.
The Stone Crusher Page 30
