There, frustratingly, it halted. Hour followed hour followed hour, and nothing happened. A peek over the side showed that the whole train was surrounded by SS.
It was dusk when they finally started moving again. At some unknown, guessed‑at time during the night, the Czech countryside gave way to Austria.
Now was their time. Fritz nudged his papa and suggested that they make their break now, while it was dark. Gustav drifted awake from a doze, and tried to rise. He couldn’t get up; his freezing, aching muscles were too weak. His strength was ebbing fast now. He looked at Fritz’s eager face. His dear Fritzl, his pride and delight. “I can’t do it,” he said. Nothing Fritz said could raise him. “You have to go alone. Leave me and go.”
Fritz was appalled at the mere idea. If you want to keep living, you have to forget your father. That was what Robert Siewert had said to him that day in Buchenwald. It had been impossible then, and it was impossible now. He had followed his papa to Auschwitz, and they had both survived because of it.
Gustav was insistent; he simply couldn’t make it—he was old, the strength was gone from him at last. But Fritz refused to leave him behind.
When dawn came, they were in familiar snow‑laden countryside. They were close to Vienna now and would quite likely pass through it. If they escaped then, would it matter that Gustav was so weak? They’d be home and dry within hours. But they never got the chance. After passing through Korneuburg the train steamed along the north bank of the Danube, and in broad daylight rolled into the northern suburbs and across the river into Leopoldstadt. They scarcely dared peek as, without halting, it passed the Nordbahnhof. Home was
* Now Břeclav, Czech Republic
294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 272
05/04/2018 14:02:15
D e a t h T r a i n 273
achingly, heartbreakingly close. They hardly needed to peek to see the rim of the Riesenrad ferris wheel as they rolled by the west end of the Prater . . . and then it was past and gone, the train was rumbling over the Danube Canal, through the government district and the western suburbs, and back out into open countryside.
In the later morning they passed through the town of St. Pölten, and in the afternoon reached Amstetten, where the train halted. They were now little more than forty kilometers from Mauthausen.
When darkness fell, the journey resumed.
Gustav again urged Fritz to go. With each passing kilometer the situation in the car was getting worse, descending into savagery. Some of their comrades had reached the point where they would kill a friend for a piece of bread; several passed that point, strangling their fellow man for a single mouthful.
They got water by fishing for snow with a tin cup dangled over the side on a string. Through cold, hunger, and murder, the corpses were piling up in the corner at the rate of eight to ten every day. Fritz had to go now, before it was too late, before they reached Mauthausen and the real murder began.
This would be his last chance. By morning they would reach the end. Gustav pleaded, and at last Fritz gave way.
The pain of it would never leave him: “After five years of shared destiny, that I should now sever myself from my father,” he recalled in anguish.
Within a few kilometers of leaving Amstetten behind, the train reached its maximum speed. Fritz peeled off the hateful striped uniform with its Judenstern and camp number and flung off the cap. He embraced his papa and kissed him, then with help from a friend he climbed the sidewall.
The full force of the subzero wind buffeted him and pierced his body like knives. The train shook and thundered. He peered anxiously toward the brake house. The moon was brighter now than it had been when they’d tested the guards’ alertness: two days from the full, an eerie glow illuminating the white landscape and the trees flying past.6 Gustav felt a last squeeze of his hand, then Fritz launched himself into the air. In an instant he was gone.
Sitting alone on the floor of the car, by the light of the moon Gustav wrote in his diary: “The lord God protect my boy. I cannot go, I am too weak. He wasn’t shot at. I hope my boy will win through and find shelter with our dear ones.”
294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 273
05/04/2018 14:02:15
274 S u r v i v a l
The train sped on, hammering and clanking, as if the locomotive itself was desperate for this dreadful journey to be over. It was still dark when it passed through Linz, crossed the Danube again, and doubled back east toward the small town of Mauthausen.
Fritz tumbled through the air, all sense of space and direction lost for a fleeting moment, then the ground hit him violently, jarring his bones and knocking the wind out of him. He rolled over and over and came to rest with the train wheels clattering past his face, not daring to move a muscle.
The last car rushed by and faded into the distance, leaving him alone in the snow‑silence under the vault of stars. He looked around. He was lying in a thick bank of snow, which had cushioned his fall. Despite the pains in his limbs, he hadn’t broken anything, and he got to his feet without difficulty. Shaking himself down, he started walking back along the railroad toward Amstetten.7
Nearing the town, his nerve failed him. There was nothing obviously wrong with his disguise, but he wasn’t ready yet to face going into a busy town, even late in the evening. Leaving the railroad, he slithered down the embankment and struck out across an open field. It was hard going, with snow up to his hips, but eventually he came to a narrow back street on the edge of town.
It was deserted. Warily, he stepped out, and followed it to the left, heading north. This was the only direction he could go; the only other way to bypass the town was to swim across the river Ybbs, which bounded it to the south.
Moving cautiously, Fritz managed to skirt around the north of the little town without meeting anyone and was soon on a country road winding east‑
ward, parallel with the railroad. He walked through several small villages and hamlets, gradually working his way back in the direction of St. Pölten. It was slow going on the snow and ice, and strength wasn’t on his side. He’d been walking for hours and had covered about fifteen kilometers when he reached the little town of Blindenmarkt, where the road converged with the railroad.
He’d passed through this place the previous day. There was a small station where the trains from Linz to Vienna would stop. He was tired, and in his pocket were some Reichsmarks—his little stock of emergency cash scavenged in Monowitz.
294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 274
05/04/2018 14:02:15
D e a t h T r a i n 275
On an impulse Fritz turned off the main road and walked to the station.
It was still dark, so he found an empty cattle car standing on the tracks and crawled inside. It was too cold to sleep, but at least he could lie down out of the wind. Toward dawn, lights came on in the station windows. Fritz waited a few minutes, then pulled together his courage and dropped down from the car.
The station building was quiet, with just a solitary clerk behind the ticket window. Fritz wasn’t familiar with the requirements for buying a train ticket under the Nazis. Would he be asked for papers? He approached the window and, as casually as he could, asked for a ticket to Vienna. The clerk, who wasn’t accustomed to seeing strangers traveling this early, regarded him with some surprise (and suspicion, it seemed to Fritz). But he took Fritz’s money without a word and gave him the ticket.
Fritz went into the deserted waiting room and sat down. After a few min‑
utes, the clerk came in and lit the stove. Fritz moved closer to it gratefully.
It was the first warmth he’d had since leaving Monowitz, and he was cold to the marrow. The life and heat flowing into his body was both heavenly and tortuous, filling the deadened nerves with pins and needles and awakening the aches of his journey.
He lost track of time and had no idea how long he’d been there when the Vienna train finally huffed its way to a stop outside the window. Fritz went out to the platform—still the only
person there—and got into one of the third‑
class passenger cars.
It was full of German soldiers. There were no civilians at all—just a crowd of field‑gray Wehrmacht uniforms. They were too busy talking, smoking, play‑
ing cards, and dozing to take any notice of him, and it was too late to get off again—which might just attract attention anyway—so he found a seat and sat down.
As the train moved off, Fritz felt like he was in an alien world. He was, in effect, a foreigner in his own homeland, with no idea of laws or protocol and little notion of how to behave like an ordinary civilian. If he’d known more about the ways of this new world, he would have realized right away that there was something very badly wrong here.
The soldiers continued to take no notice of him. After a couple of hours and a few more stops (at which nobody else got on), the train reached the station at St. Pölten, where it halted. Two German soldiers stepped aboard, both in the distinctive steel chains and gorgets of the Feldgendarmerie—the Wehrmacht 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 275
05/04/2018 14:02:15
276 S u r v i v a l
military police. They came along the aisle. “Passes,” they said. The soldiers took their identity cards and passes from their breast pockets. Fritz took out his ticket—it was all he had. The group of soldiers sitting near him bundled their documents and handed them all at once to the policeman. Desperately seizing his opportunity, Fritz slipped his ticket in among the sheaf of cards.
Shuffling through them, the policeman glanced in turn at each of the sol‑
diers and handed back their documents. Then he came to the solitary rail ticket and frowned. He looked at Fritz and gestured peremptorily. “Papers,” he said.
Heart pounding, Fritz made a show of rifling through his pockets. He shrugged helplessly. “I’ve lost them.”
The policeman’s frown deepened to grave suspicion. “Come with us.”
Fritz’s heart sank, but he knew better than to argue. He got up and fol‑
lowed the Feldgendarmes off the train. They led him out of the station to a Wehrmacht outpost, telling him they needed to establish his identity before they could let him continue on his journey.
They put him in a room where he was questioned sternly, although not aggressively, by an NCO who explained that his presence on the train had aroused curiosity. It dawned on Fritz that boarding that particular train had been a terrible error. If he’d known the ways of the world outside the concentration camps, he would have recognized, as soon as it pulled in at Blindenmarkt, that the train was a front‑line special, taking troops home on leave, and he’d have known better than to board it. If he’d waited, a regular train would have come along, on which his civilian attire would have blended in instead of standing out like a beacon.
“What is your name?”
“Fritz Kleinmann.” He saw no point in lying about that, at least. It was a perfectly acceptable German name and hardly unique.
“Where are your papers?”
“I must have lost them.”
“Home address?”
On the spur of the moment, Fritz gave a fictional street address in a town near Weimar. The NCO wrote it down and stood up.
“Stay there,” he said, and left the room.
He was gone a long time, and when he reappeared he was accompanied by a superior. They had checked—the address Fritz had given did not exist.
He was asked to give his real address. Claiming a faulty memory, Fritz gave 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 276
05/04/2018 14:02:15
D e a t h T r a i n 277
them a different address. They checked it, and again found it was false. By now, Fritz was just desperately playing for time. The Feldgendarmes went through the charade again, disposing of a third fake address before finally losing their patience.
Two guards were summoned and ordered to take Herr Kleinmann to the security section at the local Wehrmacht barracks.
They drove him through the streets to a smal barrack complex, where he was taken to a building resembling a Gestapo bunker, with an office and cells. Fortunately, it wasn’t the Gestapo—just a regular Wehrmacht garrison.
An officer looked over the note from the Feldgendarmerie and asked Fritz to identify himself. “If you lie to me, I will lock you up.” What else could Fritz do? He gave a fourth imaginary address. It was checked, and he was placed under formal arrest. The officer was calm and quiet. He didn’t yell or rage or threaten torture; he simply directed his men to lock Herr Kleinmann in a cell.
“Perhaps the truth will come to you in there,” he said.
The cell was large, with three soldiers already in residence waiting to be court‑martialed for minor offenses. Fritz fell into desultory conversation with them, explaining that he was a civilian who’d lost his papers and was waiting for verification.
It was pleasantly warm in the cell, with a bed for each man, a table and chairs, and a basin and toilet in the corner. Fritz hadn’t been in such a comfort‑
able environment in years. When an orderly brought their evening meals—the first hot food Fritz had had in nearly a week, and his first full meal for as long as he could remember—he had to fight down his ravening hunger, forcing himself to eat in normal mouthfuls rather than gobbling it down like a dog.
After dinner, when Fritz turned back the blanket on his bed, he could hardly believe his eyes—there were sheets underneath. Sheets! What kind of a cell was this? Easing his exhausted body into bed was little short of heaven, and he slept soundly and blissfully through the night.
The next morning was, if possible, even better. The orderly brought break‑
fast, and simple as it was by the standards of the regular world, it was enough to make Fritz’s head spin. There was real hot coffee, bread, margarine, sausage, and plenty of it. While his cellmates chatted idly, Fritz kept his head down and concentrated on the food.
Shortly afterward, he was brought before the officer again, who demanded to know who Fritz really was. As the questioning went on, Fritz began to realize 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 277
05/04/2018 14:02:15
278 S u r v i v a l
that the officer was working on the theory that he was an army deserter. His age, appearance, and accent were all consistent with it, as were the circum‑
stances of his apprehension. Believing that he’d caught his prisoner in a minor deception, it didn’t occur to the officer to look for an enormous one—that this young man with the full head of dark hair, chiseled features, civilian dress, and Viennese accent might actually be a Jew on the run from a concentration camp. Perhaps there was some hope in that.
Fritz refused to answer any further questions and was put back in his cell.
Perhaps his years in the camps had institutionalized him, or perhaps it was just the food and warmth and the comfortable bed, but he felt contented in there. Lunch consisted of a simple but very good stew and a piece of bread.
Despite these luxuries, the part of Fritz’s mind that had kept him alive in the camps was fully aware of the danger he was in, and as the day wore on, he groped around for a way out. After dinner that evening, while his cellmates were busy talking, he surreptitiously pilfered a stick of shaving soap from one of them, and ate it. By the next morning, he was violently unwell: hot, sweat‑
ing, and with terrible diarrhea.8 His cellmates called the guard, and Fritz was carried out.
They took him to a military hospital. During the examination—which discovered nothing more serious than stomach cramps and a raised tempera‑
ture—he managed to conceal the tattooed number on his left forearm. He was put in a side ward by himself and kept under observation.
It was even better in the hospital than in the cell: crisp white bedlinen, female nurses bringing him tea and medication. After a while he was able to eat, although the diarrhea persisted. Illness was a small price to pay for this degree of comfort and the postponement of his interrogation. A
doctor who visited him on the third day, evidently sharing the assumption that Fritz was a deserter, mentioned that there was a sentry outside the door with a machine‑
pistol, so he’d better not be thinking of making a run for it.
After several days in the hospital, Fritz’s fever had passed and the diarrhea was gone. Fritz was immediately returned to the barracks security section. He was met by the officer, whose patience was wearing thin. “It’s time for this case to be closed,” he said. “If you don’t confess, I shall hand you over to the Gestapo.” Fritz said nothing. The officer, seething with frustration, ordered him back to his cell. “Two more days,” he promised, “and then I’m done with you.”
294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 278
05/04/2018 14:02:15
D e a t h T r a i n 279
When the two days had expired, Fritz was brought back to the interroga‑
tion room.
“I have guessed who you are now,” said the officer, to Fritz’s alarm. “You are an Austrian émigré; you are on a mission on behalf of the English and have been dropped by parachute to engage in covert operations.” Having delivered this astonishing revelation, the officer stated flatly: “You will be treated as a spy.”
Fritz was horrified; this was worse than if he’d been identified as a con‑
centration camp escapee. He denied the accusation strenuously, but the officer refused to listen. In his mind, only a trained secret agent would be sneaking about in the way Fritz had been, associating with German troops, and able to resist interrogation for so long. No deserter or civilian could do that. Despite his strident denials, Fritz was force‑marched back to his cell. Suddenly it didn’t feel quite so congenial. Should he confess? No, that would be asking for a death sentence; he’d be returned to the SS and shot or hanged. But the outcome would be the same if they believed him to be a spy. On the other hand, even if he confessed, would they believe him now? The officer’s notion of him as a German Austrian was so fixed, even if he saw his tattoo he might not believe it.
The next day, Fritz was taken before the officer once more. He noticed that two armed soldiers were waiting there. “I’m through with your denials,” the officer announced, “and I’m done with you. You are going to Mauthausen.”
The Stone Crusher Page 36
