Hanns and Rudolf: The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz

by Thomas Harding

When the Alexanders finally reached the capital in early December, they were greeted with scenes of chaos. Three weeks earlier, on November 9, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm’s abdication had been announced and the German Empire officially came to an end. Since then, a loose alliance between Social Democrats and members of the armed forces had filled the political vacuum, led by the Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert. But this provisional government was unable to maintain order for long. Left-wing radicals took to the streets seeking a swifter pace of change, while right-wing groups, angered at the loss of the war, formed informal units and fought battles with the Communists and workers’ committees. In response, the military created brigades of recently demobilized veterans to suppress the left-wing uprising; their brutality did little more than fan the flames of revolt.

  It was too dangerous to go out at night, food was scarce and Alfred was unable to resurrect his medical practice given the violence erupting across the city. To make matters worse, the economy, already ruined by four years of war, looked set to collapse.

  The external situation felt like a pressurized drum ready to explode, but inside the Alexander apartment, all was calm and in good order. It didn’t take Henny long to remove the sheets from the furniture, to wipe down the walls and to restock the pantry as best she could. Within a few days it once again felt like home. For the nineteen-month-old Hanns and Paul the apartment was the center of their world and, regardless of the volatility outside, they set about exploring it.

  The Alexander residence took up the entire second floor of 219/220 Kaiserallee, midway between Schaperstrasse and the junction of Spichernstrasse and Regensburger Strasse. The Kaiserallee was one of the smartest addresses in Berlin, and a road that served as a main artery of the city, running as it did from the working-class Friedenau district in the south all the way to the affluent Wilmersdorf district in the northwest. The apartment was vast, even by the generous standards of the area. In total, it had twenty-two rooms, including five bedrooms, three living rooms, one bathroom, two rooms for the maids, and a large kitchen. The apartment doubled as Dr. Alexander’s consulting rooms, and it was in the new year that he started seeing his patients in the salon, just off the front hallway. The front room was as wide as the entire apartment, large enough to comfortably seat forty people for dinner, and had two balconies overlooking the Kaiserallee.

  The front door of the building was two stories high and made of thick brown oak, and, as with most Berlin structures built in the mid-nineteenth century, the building possessed a courtyard at its center, allowing light to stream into the apartment’s interior. Behind the building was a communal garden with a small lawn and a few trees. Here Bella, Elsie, Hanns and Paul played with the other children from the neighboring apartments.

  Their home was ideally situated in the heart of the west Berlin Jewish community. And it was with this community that the Alexanders spent most of their time, chatting in one of the department stores that lined the Kurfürstendamm, having picnics on the manicured lawns of the Tiergarten park or visiting the animals at the Berlin Zoologischer Garten, all of which were only a short walk from their apartment.

  *

  Although he came from a comfortable, upper-middle-class family of doctors and lawyers, Hanns’s father was no stranger to hardship. When Alfred was just five his own father had died of leukemia and his sister had succumbed to pneumonia. Then, when he was in his twenties, his mother had suffered a severe asthma attack, and died shortly afterwards. Despite these setbacks, Alfred had managed to graduate as a doctor from one of Germany’s most prestigious universities and set up his own practice in Berlin. He was a moody man, at times prone to shouting at his wife and withdrawing to his library and his collection of well-thumbed detective novels, at others ebullient and affectionate. He was also sentimental, perhaps even a soft man, often to be seen with his lips trembling and tears running down his cheeks, when overcome by the emotion of an aria playing on the gramophone or during a heartfelt speech delivered at a birthday party.

  His wife, Henny, in contrast, had a far easier upbringing, as the descendant of two of Europe’s most successful Jewish families. Her father, Lucien Picard, was a highly respected banker and the Swiss consul in Frankfurt, while her mother, Amalie, came from the wealthy Schwarzschild clan, a family so well known in their hometown that the local children sang a song about them:

  In Frankfurt, in Frankfurt, if you can’t be as rich as the Rothschilds,

  You can always hope to be as rich as the Schwarzschilds.

  Henny was a buxom woman with a round face and strong arms. Though neither slim nor fashionable she cast an attractive figure and was possessed of a keen sense of humor. She was known for her kindness and willingness to help others. She was also a committed smoker, more often than not to be seen with a cigarette dangling almost vertically from her lower lip, even in the kitchen, where she liked to meddle with the cook’s dishes. It was not unknown for Henny to tap the end of her cigarette butt on a saucepan and for the ash to end up in whatever happened to be cooking. Strong-willed and opinionated, she was the matriarch and heart of the family.

  While Hanns and Paul spent much of their time with their parents and siblings, they were cared for, day to day, by their beloved nanny, Anna. Though from the conservative southwestern region of Germany, Anna believed that children should be allowed to develop their individual personalities, taking a more liberal attitude compared with the fixed regimen of many of her contemporaries.

  Calm lasted until the twins could walk. By the age of five “the boys,” as they had become known, had already developed a reputation for childhood high jinks, driving their red Hollander, a kind of go-kart, at great speed along the passageway into the dining room, around the table, through to the living room, back up the passageway, running into walls as they went, chipping off the plaster, damaging the paint and screaming at startled servants.

  Hanns and Paul were also quick to take advantage of their similar appearance. When guests visited, the twins were expected to wait in the hallway and welcome them. Instead, just one of the twins would stand on duty in an apron, shake a visitor’s hand, leave the room, remove his apron, and then double back to shake another person’s hand. The other brother would meanwhile be in the kitchen, gorging on whatever delights Hilde the cook had prepared that day.

  One of the boys’ favorite books was Max und Moritz, a popular children’s story in which two naughty brothers play increasingly outrageous pranks on their friends and neighbors. They partially cut the planks of a bridge, and laugh when a tailor falls through and is washed downstream. They sneak into their teacher’s house, fill his pipe with gunpowder, and watch as it explodes and singes his hair.

  This book inspired the boys to ever more audacious behavior. They let the bathwater overflow, flooding their father’s consulting room; they set off firecrackers in the kitchen, causing Hilde to spill the perfectly roasted lunch on the floor; and they built a fire in the living room and danced around it like Native Americans, until their sister Elsie smelled the smoke, rushed in and put the fire out with a bucket of water. At other times they simply enjoyed making mischief, particularly with Bella, who considered herself mature and sophisticated and liked to put on airs. When she invited guests over for tea, Hanns and Paul would hide under the table, reach up and steal the expensive chocolates and slices of cake and, when they could, sneak a look up the girls’ skirts. The girls would shriek and Bella would shoo the boys away, but in no time at all they would be back.

  The twins were never severely punished for their bad behavior. Instead they were indulged. Beyond the occasional outburst, Dr. Alexander left discipline to his wife, and Henny, feigning shock at her sons’ pranks but failing to check them, encouraged more and more outlandish acts.

  Dr. Alfred Alexander with Iron Cross, 1918

  When not causing trouble, Hanns liked to spend time exploring the apartment, seeking out relics from his father’s time in the First World War. In the salon, he flipped through the photograph albu
ms: Alfred astride a cavalryman’s horse; posing in a trench during a field trip to the front line; outside the hospital in Alsace. He examined his father’s army uniform—neatly pressed gray jacket and trousers, a shiny silver pike helmet and knee-high leather boots—which hung in the hallway closet. But his favorite object of all was his father’s Iron Cross First Class, a bronze medal attached to a black-and-white-striped ribbon, which was kept in a small green box on top of his father’s desk. When nobody else was around Hanns liked to open the green box, and, hoping that no one would see him, he would place the ribbon around his neck and imagine what it was like to be a German wartime hero.

  *

  By 1922, Dr. Alexander’s practice had grown sufficiently for extra space to be needed to accommodate his business. Although worried about his finances, he decided to invest in a large new medical building. He found a suitable property at 15 Achenbachstrasse, a four-story structure that stood off the Rankeplatz, just around the corner from the apartment. He commissioned an architect and, borrowing funds from Henny’s parents, converted the property into a sanatorium furnished with the very latest equipment, including X-ray machines, a laboratory and a roof garden where patients could convalesce in the open air. He invited three other doctors to join him in the venture, along with a team of nurses and technicians, and officially opened the doors in 1923. Within a short time each bed was full. He made a habit of conducting rounds every day and the nursing staff always knew where they could find him, as he would leave his cigar burning in the ashtray outside a patient’s door.

  This was a risky time to be making large investments. The economy was in turmoil after the war. By the early 1920s, the currency had undergone a dramatic devaluation: one gold mark was worth ten paper marks in late 1921; a year later a gold mark was worth 10,000 paper marks; and by late 1923 the rate was one to one hundred million. This hyperinflation led to the exponential rise in the price of goods, making it virtually impossible to carry out day-to-day shopping. Like everyone else, the Alexanders had to adjust to this reality, which affected both their income—as the doctor struggled to keep his prices in line with inflation—and their expenses.

  Dr. Alexander was soon feeling the strain. Many of his patients had died or moved away during the war and, increasingly afterwards, a large number of those who remained were unable to settle their bills. The doctor still treated them, in what he called a harachaman, or “act of mercy,” believing that nobody should be denied medical attention because of lack of funds. However, such charity did not help to pay the bills. Dr. Alexander’s solution was to work still harder, dedicating long hours to his practice and rarely eating meals with his children.

  *

  As he was growing up, Hanns became increasingly aware of his Jewish identity. Like many other Berlin Jews, the Alexanders were not particularly religious, calling themselves “Three-Day-a-Year Jews.” They attended the Neue Synagogue in the center of Berlin for the most holy of days: the two days of Rosh Hashanah and the one day of Yom Kippur, and visited their local synagogue on Fasanenstrasse for the occasional Saturday-morning Shabbat service.

  Neue Synagogue, Berlin

  The Alexanders also celebrated Christmas, each year driving to Frankfurt to spend the holidays with Henny’s parents, Lucien and Amalie Picard. The Picards tended to orthodoxy, and so the Berlin family had to be diplomatic when it came to Christmas, which Alfred had always celebrated as a child. A compromise was struck under which Dr. Alexander was allowed to purchase a modestly sized Christmas tree and install it upstairs, in the staff quarters, away from his in-laws’ disapproving eyes. Once it was in place, Hanns and his siblings decorated the tree with beautifully carved wooden figures—a reindeer, an elf, a sled, glass balls filled with snowmen and angels, chocolate money wrapped in gold, bright-colored velvet boxes that hung from red ribbons—as well as a delightfully shiny silver star that sat on the tip of the very highest branch.

  It was during these early years that Hanns was told about the family Torah, or the “Alexander Torah,” as it was known, which was stored in a cupboard in his father’s library. After Alfred died, according to family custom, the scroll would be passed down to Hanns as the oldest son.

  The Alexander Torah had been commissioned in 1790 by Hanns’s great-great-great-grandfather, Moses Alexander, while he was living in Thalmässing, a small town near Nuremberg. Every aspect of its manufacture was specifically prescribed by Jewish tradition. Each day, before he picked up his quill, the scribe would have washed his hands, put on the leather straps of his tefillin, and then spent a few minutes in meditative silence. As he copied each of the 304,805 Hebrew characters from another Sefer Torah, he would have spoken each and every letter. When he made a mistake, he would have to scratch away the dried ink with a knife. However, if he had erred when writing the word “God,” he would have been obliged to cut out that entire section of parchment and start again. Typically, the writing of a Sefer Torah took six to twelve months, but given the intricate calligraphy used by this particular scribe—the ornate swirls, the perfection of the lines, the neatness of the parchment’s stitching—the creation of the Alexander Torah would have taken longer. The production of the Torah was a holy task, or mitzvah, which brought a blessing upon the man who commissioned it, along with the entire family through the ages. It also meant, rather unusually for Jews in Berlin, that the Alexander family and not the synagogue owned the Torah.

  Once a year the whole family traveled to their local synagogue on Fasanenstrasse to take part in the Simchat Torah service, a ceremony which celebrates the community’s religious texts. Dr. Alexander stood in line with the other men holding Torahs on their shoulders, with Hanns, Paul and the rest of the children trailing behind. The men paraded around the synagogue as the congregation bellowed out jubilant songs, and the men and women bowed as the scrolls were carried past. After the service, the rabbi handed sweets to the children and wished them a good holiday.

  *

  As the tumultuous 1920s tolled by, so Alfred Alexander’s practice recovered and grew, with Alfred quickly recognized as one of Berlin’s finest society doctors. Being gregarious and appreciative of good company, Alfred invited many of his patients home, where they were entertained by Henny at one of her sumptuous dinner parties. They now spent less time with members of the synagogue and community acquaintances, and more time mingling with some of Germany’s most famous scientists, artists and film stars.

  As their milieu evolved, the Alexanders’ affluence, financial security and opportunities improved. But as their fortunes changed, so another side of postwar Germany was beginning to emerge.

  3

  RUDOLF

  BERLIN, GERMANY

  1918

  * * *

  On October 30, 1918, the Ottoman Empire agreed to a cessation of hostilities. Austria-Hungary followed suit on November 3. Then, at 5 a.m. on the morning of November 11, the Germans finally agreed to an armistice in a railroad carriage parked in a French forest. The war was finally over. It had lasted four years, had involved more than seventy million people and had cost the lives of over nine million combatants.

  When news of the armistice broke, Rudolf was leading his own platoon in long-range reconnaissance missions in Damascus. The German Army Corps advised him to surrender, but Rudolf vowed that he would never be captured, and was determined to avoid the prisoner-of-war camps. By this time Rudolf was a sergeant—indeed one of the youngest officers in the army—and informed the men in his cavalry platoon about his plans to make it home. The band of experienced soldiers, mostly in their twenties and thirties, immediately swore allegiance to their sixteen-year-old commander and committed themselves to fighting their way back to Germany, come what may.

  It took Rudolf and his colleagues three months. From Syria they traveled through Turkey, where they hitched a ride on a decrepit boat from Istanbul across the Black Sea, to the little port of Varna in Bulgaria. From there, they headed west and fought against Allied troops still active in Romania.
Traveling by horse, mostly by night, to avoid military police and mobs of vigilantes, they drove their horses through the deep Transylvanian snows and alpine peaks into Serbia, and then up through Hungary and Austria, before finally reaching Mannheim.

  When Rudolf arrived back in Mannheim, however, he discovered that everything had changed. His mother had succumbed to an unspecified illness a year before, on April 8, 1917, dying at the relatively youthful age of thirty-seven, and his uncle and guardian had sent his sisters to a convent, sold the family home and disposed of all of Rudolf’s personal belongings. Rudolf was shocked, but could hardly be surprised. He had been overseas for two years, and maintained infrequent contact with his family, who fully expected the headstrong youth to embark on a long-planned religious career upon his return. He was not left destitute. The sale of the family house had generated some funds, of which a portion had been set aside to support Rudolf’s stay in the seminary. Such an option should not have been unattractive given the precarious state of Germany’s postwar economy. Yet Rudolf had no intention of following the family’s wishes by becoming a priest. The man whom Rudolf had become during the war didn’t have the temperament for study and prayer. He walked away from what little inheritance there might have been, looking for something more familiar.

  A little later, he heard from one of his old army comrades that some German veterans had formed a Freikorps and were still fighting the Russians in Latvia. If he wanted to join, then he should travel to Berlin and find Gerhard Rossbach.

  The Freikorps were paramilitary units, independent of government control, composed of armed men espousing doctrines of nationhood and discipline. The Freikorps promised to bring stability back to the country. If they were successful, its members would be able to keep any land they conquered. By year’s end the Freikorps would include over 200,000 men.