“I don’t believe it. I just don’t fucking believe it!!! Lice!”
Seeing an insect, which I just caught on the back of my head and squished with my nail, was the last straw. I was more or less used to the exhausting work and sleeping with four of my comrades on a straw mattress with my own jacket instead of a pillow in the unheated barrack; I even got used to eating that watered-down mess, which that disgrace of a cook was calling a meal, but being constantly bit by the parasites, carrying God knows what diseases, was just above my so far angelic patience. Everything around the camp canteen, where we were sitting, started slowly turning into a red haze in front of my eyes.
“Well, yes, I mean… What did you expect?” Bruno smiled at me gingerly, seeing my facial expression and, knowing me too well, tried to prevent the approaching storm. “Everything’s infested with those damn blood-suckers here, it was only a matter of time before they would start dining on us. Hey, don’t make a big deal out of it; tomorrow’s shower day, we’ll scrub those bastards off and then we’ll try to get them out of our clothes with some matches along the seams…”
“Oh, I will make a big deal out of it,” I started in a menacingly quiet and leveled voice. “Not only are they making a mockery out of us by making us into a slave labor force for a crime that we technically haven’t even committed, but on top of it now I’m being fucking eaten alive by these bugs and you know what, Bruno? It is a big fucking deal to me!!! I’ve had enough of this crap! I’m done! Fuck Dollfuss, fuck this camp, fuck everything!”
Under everyone’s stare I rose from the bench, hurled the bowl with its watery contents across the room and, infuriated, stormed out of the canteen. Even the guard at the entrance decided against stopping me.
“Ernst! Wait up!” I heard Bruno’s voice and his hurried steps behind my back. “Where are you going? We’re supposed to be back in the quarries in ten minutes!”
“Fuck the quarries too!” I kicked a stone out of my way, sending it bouncing off the wall of one of the barracks with a loud thud.
“Alright, fuck the quarries.” Bruno finally caught up with me and tried to look into my frowning face. “But still, where are we going?”
“Back to the barrack.”
He just shrugged and followed me without asking further questions. As soon as we were back in our barrack, I sat on the wooden bunk we were sharing, stretched my legs, leaned against the wall and crossed my arms over my chest defiantly. Bruno observed me for ten seconds, looked back at the entrance and sat at my feet with his legs crossed.
“Now what?” He seemed to be amused by my sudden outburst and was looking at me expectedly.
“Nothing. I’m on a hunger strike since this very minute. I refuse to move a finger, until somebody from the Dollfuss administration shows up here and explains to me the reason why all of us have been turned into Dollfuss’s personal slaves.”
“What if they just send the guards here with batons? For disciplinary measures, you know?” Bruno chuckled.
“Oh, I would love to see them try! I pray to God they come here with their batons! I pray to God they give me just one chance…” I promised through the gritted teeth, sincerely meaning every single word. My fists were already itching to take my anger out on somebody alive, not some useless kitchen utensils or stones.
I knew that it was very improbable that they would come for me though. After the very first altercation on the day of our arrival, the guards pretty much arrived at the mutual understanding with us, the SS: they supervise the rest of the internees, I supervise my own men, and nobody gets hurt. Because, let’s face it, the numbers were not on their side in case our lot decided to cause a brawl for whatever reason, and even if they opened fire we would still kill many of them before they could take us under control. They weren’t soldiers, those guards, but regular men, who wanted to get their salary at the end of the month and go back to their wives and kids. Unlike us, predators trained to kill, they weren’t crazed daredevils with no fear of death; they knew it, we knew it, and so far we had managed to work things out amongst ourselves quite smoothly.
“Good. Hunger strike it is then.” Bruno agreed without blinking an eye and sat next to me, also leaning against the wall.
In less than two minutes several of our comrades walked in, asking what we were up to and asking if they should go back to work and what they should say to the supervisors about our absence.
“You can go back to work if you want, but we’re staying here and officially declaring a hunger strike,” Bruno told them. “You can tell that to the supervisors.”
“Can we stay here too?” they asked indecisively, shifting from one leg to another and exchanging looks.
“Whoever wants to stay here should be prepared to starve themselves to death.” I warned them of the possible consequences. I was personally too angry to give a damn about my own life, but ordering my men to follow my example was simply dishonorable in my eyes. I wanted them to make their own choice. “We don’t know how long it will last, and whether anybody will yield to our demands for release. We’ll either win this, or die. I refuse to be anybody’s free working force, and my honor as an SS man is above death. I don’t ask you to support my decision, but to decide for yourselves what you want to do.”
“We’re staying.” The immediate reply followed.
My grin, mirrored by the one on Bruno’s face, was getting wider and wider as more and more SS men poured into the barrack, sat around and started exchanging sly smiles like conspirators. In a matter of only a few hours the rebellious strike had engulfed half the population of the camp, and while the guards were working on taking control over the regular criminals, incarcerated in the same camp, who joined us just because it meant not working, we were granted a visit by the camp Kommandant himself.
He came inside, followed by five armed guards – the biggest ones he could find no doubt – looked around, sighed and addressed me, of course.
“Kaltenbrunner, what kind of pain in the neck have you decided to cause me this time?” he asked me with a pained expression on his face.
I didn’t feel any personal resentment towards him. The Kommandant was actually quite a decent fellow, an older man in his early fifties, but still in the perfect health of the healthy southern farmer he used to be in his early days, as I suspected. He reminded me of my own father with his patronizing, but good-humored attitude.
“I’m not causing you any pain, Herr Kommandant. It’s me, who’s been having constant pains in the neck – and not in the metaphorical sense of the word either – day after day, and only because I happen to belong to the political opposition.” I got up from the wooden bunk and stood in front of the six men delegation to make my announcement sound more official. “We, the Austrian SS and the Nazi Party members incarcerated here in KZ Kaisersteinbruch, are all on hunger strike from today. We refuse to eat and work until we see the official representatives of Chancellor Dollfuss’s administration. We demand our immediate release in the view of the ungrounded arrest and unfair sentencing. Our pardon should be unconditional and isn’t a subject for any discussion.”
The Kommandant sighed even heavier and shook his greying head.
“Boy, why are you doing this to me?” he asked so that only I could hear him.
I shrugged and smiled with the corner of my mouth.
“I don’t have another choice, Herr Kommandant. I’m sorry.”
“Alright. If that’s what you want… I will delegate your demands to the people in charge,” he said louder this time. “I just hope they don’t decide to execute you all to set an example.”
With those words he turned around and left our barrack. We celebrated our first small victory.
_______________
Nuremberg prison, March 1946
“It’s too early to celebrate the victory yet, young man!”
Reichsmarschall Göring lifted his head from his dish and rolled his eyes at Julius Streicher’s remark. The former editor-in-chief of Der Sturmer was b
ack onto his favorite subject, a subject he couldn’t seem to let go off – the Führer and racism. Everyone else in the canteen also started shooting warning glares at Streicher, but he was too busy explaining his fanatical obsessions to one of the MP Officers.
“You’re all laughing at us now, laughing at how stupid we were, according to you, to elect Hitler as our leader. But I tell you what, there will come a day when you Americans will find yourself in the same exact situation as we were in in the twenties, when you’re outnumbered by all those beggars you’re welcoming now with open arms, then you’ll see that you are outnumbered, and you’ll want to take it all back. Because, no matter how much you pride yourself in your generosity and rightfulness, deep inside you still want to be in charge of your own country, like we did, you still want to be the dominant race, like we did, and when the fear of losing that control and that power begins to overcome you, then you’ll welcome a leader who’ll be exactly like Hitler was, because they’ll promise to return that power back into your hands. He won’t have to overturn the government, he won’t have to march inside the capital with troops, no. You’ll elect him with the majority of voices, like we did, despite all those who would scream in terror at you and try to put some sense into your heads, pointing to his audacious, hateful statements. But you won’t listen; you’ll elect him peacefully and submissively, like we did, because he’ll promise to keep you in charge. And he will, and history will repeat itself, you’ll see how it will, and when your country is brought into the next bloody war, and we put you down on your knees and our children judge yours, then I’ll laugh at you from my grave.”
“He’s insane,” Göring remarked calmly, as if stating an obvious fact. “Will you just listen to his senseless statements? How embarrassing it is.”
“The United States is a democratic country which will never fall under the power of a madman like Hitler.” The MP Officer shrugged off Streicher’s predictions. “It is impossible. We embrace all nationalities, religions and races, and we all coexist very comfortably. Our strength is in our diversity.”
“So we thought, until that diversity started to outnumber us, the Germans. You’ll see what will happen to you, you’ll see how you cheer the new Führer, you’ll all see,” Streicher murmured inaudibly.
_______________
KZ Kaisersteinbruch, May 1934
“Ernst,” Bruno murmured inaudibly, pressing his forehead to my shoulder. “I don’t feel well… Everything’s spinning again…”
“I know, Bruno. I know,” I replied comfortingly, without opening my eyes.
Two days ago, the official delegation from Vienna arrived, more concerned with the newspaper gossip about our strike than with our well-being. They were all wearing the official uniform of the Dollfuss army, with smug expressions as they inspected our barrack, smirking at our faces, pale from the famine, asking who was responsible for the ‘mess.’ I forced myself to sit up with my feet on the floor, partly because I wasn’t going to honor them with getting up, and partly because I would have most likely dropped unconscious if I did.
“I am in charge here,” I announced in the firmest voice I could manage.
“Name?”
“Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner.”
The man standing over me stretched his lips in a venomous smile and turned to the Kommandant, who was accompanying him.
“Kommandant, I prohibit you to give Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner and his men water, starting this instant. Report to me when they end their strike. I bet they won’t last two days, pigheaded lumberjacks.”
The Dollfuss’s man sneered once again, looking me up and down with an air of haughtiness, and left. The Kommandant threw a begging glance at me. I shrugged indifferently and lowered myself back onto my bunk. If I were to die, so be it. They wouldn’t break my spirit with some water.
“Who needs water anyway?” I chuckled at Bruno then, who was now dying next to me because of my arrogance.
“Bruno.” I slightly moved my shoulder that he was breathing heavily onto. “Give it up, brother. They’ll come soon to check on us, I’ll tell them to take you to the medical block.”
“No,” he protested in a weak voice. “Don’t you dare…I’m with you till the end… We all are… Just hold my hand, will you?”
“Don’t be such a girl.” I chuckled softly, but still found his cold, lifeless hand and squeezed it tightly.
I kept checking on him all night, waking up from time to time, when it seemed to me that his breathing was too shallow. I nudged him with my elbow the following day every time I thought that he was slipping into unconsciousness, and I smiled thankfully each time he was opened his eyes at me and nodded slightly.
“I was just taking a little nap, Ernst.”
Hearing his voice, harsh from dehydration, I, relieved, would close my own eyes and get lost in an anxious dream, until Bruno in his turn would shake my arm, making sure that I was still alive. We would then lay awake for several short moments, just looking into each other’s eyes, and I would say something comforting to him, and he would nod and smile with his parched lips, still believing me even with death standing over us.
“Just one more day, Bruno.” I was whispering using the last of my strength. “Just one more day… It will all be over with.”
We closed our eyes because we simply weren’t strong enough to hold them open anymore, and the only thing that was still real, that still kept us aware that we were still alive, was the warm breath on each other’s face.
However, Dollfuss’s people weren’t pleased with our almost unhuman will power, nor with the possibility of unwillingly making us into martyrs for the rest of the SS and the Nazi Party members both in Austria and, what was much worse, in the neighboring German Reich. The following day, when most of us were barely conscious but still refusing to give up, they walked inside our barrack and gave the order to take us to the city hospital to save our ‘worthless lives.’
They had to carry us out on stretchers as we couldn’t walk ourselves, and as we lay next to each other in the van transporting us to the city, Bruno found my hand once again and said, a beaming expression lightening up his face, “I knew you would win this one for all of us, brother. We all did. We all believed you, and you did as you promised. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I should thank all of you for not leaving me.”
“We would never leave you. You’re our rightful leader. We will be forever loyal to you.”
We weren’t blood brothers, but our bond was much stronger than even the closest blood ties, no matter what my father had to say against it.
A week later my father picked me up from the hospital, after all of us had been treated and were free to go. As I was saying goodbyes to my comrades, I couldn’t count all the handshakes and words of gratitude I received from them. My father, however, kept suspiciously quiet and sulky, even when I got into the front seat next to him and motioned my head in the direction of the hospital.
“Did you see that? They all love me! Your son got everybody out! Am I a great damn lawyer or what? Isn’t it the best advertisement for your law firm?” I winked at him, trying to affect his gloomy mood with my overly cheerful one. “You should make me a partner, you know.”
“I can’t make you anything now,” he replied in a cold voice, a deep frown wrinkling his dark brow. “Not a partner, not an apprentice, not anything. It’s all over with.”
“What do you mean, it’s all over with?” I asked him, an uneasy feeling creeping inside me for the first time.
“Did you really think that they would let you get away with it, son? Did you think it was all fun and games, your Party and your SS?”
“What are you saying?” I asked him again. “I don’t understand… they let us out, Father. I won.”
“He won,” he sneered, mockingly. “They banned you from the bar, boy! For the rest of your life. Or for as long as the current administration lasts, if you wish. You’re done for. All these years, everything I invested in you, all
the studies, all the work – all gone. Wasted. You’re nobody now. You are banned from practicing law, you won’t have any means for existence, and you will have to give up your fancy lifestyle, your restaurants, your nice little apartment and your car, because you won’t have money to pay for it all. I have no idea how you’re going to support your new wife on top of it, and where the two of you are even going to live. I hope it was worth it, your ideals and your precious Party.”
I was staring at him with my mouth open for over a minute, trying to comprehend his words. That couldn’t be true! They couldn’t have possibly done that! How could they ban me from practicing law? That was the only thing I knew, the only thing I had been working for all these years… No, it just couldn’t be right… They couldn’t take away what was my only bread… What was I supposed to do without my practice?
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” I asked my father quietly.
He threw a heavy glance at me, shook his head disappointingly with a deep sigh and looked back at the road in front of him. I sank back into my seat, grim reality hitting me with all its force. They couldn’t have let me starve to death and couldn’t have executed me, since it would have made too many waves in the press, both Austrian and German. So, they decided to destroy me by other means, taking away my only profession, harming not only me, but also all my comrades who I used to provide free legal help. My father was right through and through: without it I was nothing.
“What am I supposed to do now?” I thought out loud.
“I don’t know,” my father replied bitterly, thinking that I was addressing him. “Why don’t you go to Berlin or Munich and ask your beloved Führer for work? Maybe, he needs a driver or a butler, you never know. After all, serving him was all you ever wanted, wasn’t it? Well, congratulations, you’re one step closer to your dream coming true, boy.”
“It’s not funny,” I muttered defensively.
“Of course, it’s not! How can it be funny, when my oldest son, who I always had such high hopes for, who I was going to hand the business of my whole life…” He choked up on his words and shook his head severely. “What have you done, Ernst? What have you done? And why? How am I going to look into your mother’s eyes now? Huh?! Answer me!”
The Austrian: A War Criminal's Story Page 21
