Historical characters in The Death’s Head Chess Club
The main characters – Emil, Paul, Willi, Bodo Brack – are fictitious. Some of the supporting characters are historical figures. These are:
• Rudolf Höss – first Kommandant of Auschwitz
• Arthur Liebehenschel – his successor
• Richard Bär – the third (and last) Auschwitz Kommandant
• Otto Brossman – guard commander
• Eduard Wirths – chief garrison physician at Auschwitz
• Vinzenz Schottl – Lagerführer of the Monowitz camp
• Richard Glücks – head of the Concentration Camps Inspectorate
Klaus Hustek’s character is based on SS (Gestapo) Oberscharführer Josef Erber.
After the war, a series of war crimes trials took place. Between 1946 and 1948 about 1,000 former members of the Auschwitz SS were extradited to Poland where a number of special courts were set up, including the Supreme National Tribunal which tried the most important criminals. In March 1947, the first Auschwitz Kommandant, Rudolf Höss, was tried in Warsaw and sentenced to death. In November and December of the same year, in Kraków, forty former members of the Auschwitz SS were tried. Of these, twenty-three were sentenced to death, including the second Auschwitz Kommandant, Arthur Liebehenschel. Others received sentences ranging from three years to life imprisonment. In 1950, following numerous appeals, the former SS Hauptsturmführer Otto Brossman was acquitted of war crimes by the Kraków court.
Some former SS personnel from Auschwitz were tried and convicted for crimes other than those that were committed at Auschwitz, including Vinzenz Schottl who, as early as 1945, was convicted by a US war crimes tribunal and sentenced to death.
Eduard Wirths and Richard Glücks committed suicide.
Between 1949 and 1980 other former SS personnel were tried in the Federal Republic of Germany. The last Auschwitz Kommandant, Richard Bär, was arrested in 1960 and died in detention awaiting trial. Former SS Oberscharführer Josef Erber (who had changed his name from Houstek) was arrested in 1962 and brought to trial in Frankfurt in December 1965. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and released in 1986. He died one year later.
Chess
Most of the chapter headings relate to chess moves. The moves were chosen to reflect some aspect of the chapter content. I do not know whether or not there was a chess club for the SS in Auschwitz, and in my research I have found no evidence to confirm it either way. The unofficial Chess Olympiad did take place in Munich in 1936, in circumstances as described in Chapter 21, though, of course, Wilhelm Schweninger’s involvement is fictitious. The teams from Poland and Hungary were made up of Jews, and they both beat the German team. Hungary won the tournament with ease with twenty wins in a row, something that wasn’t repeated until 1960. Poland finished second, with Najdorf winning an individual gold medal.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am indebted to many who have inspired or helped me on this journey.
I found great inspiration in the harrowing and courageous personal accounts of those who survived Auschwitz, particularly Primo Levi, Filip Müller and Elie Wiesel, and also of those who did not survive and whose names are all but forgotten today: Zalman Gradowski, Dayan Langfus and Zalman Leventhal were among the numbers of the Sonderkommando; their diaries were unearthed after the war. In addition, I could never have written this book without the meticulous scholarship of numerous historians who have documented various aspects of the Nazi state, the SS, the Holocaust and Auschwitz.
I would like to express my thanks to the people who helped to make this book a reality: my agent, Carolyn Whitaker, for having faith, Ravi Mirchandani, for giving me a hearing and James Roxburgh, Belinda Jones and Ileene Smith for their endless patience and constructive editing suggestions.
And to my family – Barbara, Hannah, Laura, Andrew and Jack – thank you always for your constant love and understanding.
To all those who suffered or died as a result of the Holocaust, this book is respectfully dedicated.
NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
John Donoghue has worked in mental health for over twenty years and written numerous articles about the treatment of mental illness in a variety of medical journals. He is married and lives in Liverpool
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