Now that the family was reunited, the doctor and his wife moved to a two-bedroom apartment in Kensington, west London. While they considered it more than sufficient, it was a far cry from the rabbit warren of rooms that had been their Kaiserallee home. Henny sent word to Hilde, their cook back in Berlin, and asked that all their furniture and possessions be boxed and shipped to England, a feat still possible in 1936, as the Nazis were still keen that as many Jews as possible leave Germany.
Hilde took Henny at her word and packed literally everything into crates—every book, every piece of linen, every item of furniture. Even the wastepaper baskets were sent over still filled with garbage. In one box, buried under clothes, and wrapped up in towels and blankets, the family found the Alexander Torah. Apparently, Hilde had discovered it tucked away in the cupboard in the doctor’s library. She had also included the Torah’s red velvet covering, the two silver bells and the silver breastplate embossed with the name of Moses Alexander, all of which were as old as the scroll itself.
Unable to bring any of their money into England, every member of the family now had to start from scratch. Later that autumn, the fifty-eight-year-old Dr. Alexander took a train to Edinburgh to begin his studies to requalify as a doctor. While Bella and Elsie had the advantage of husbands with significant business interests and associated wealth, Hanns and Paul began their London lives close to the poverty line.
Paul enrolled at Kensington Secretarial College to study English, but he was more interested in chatting to the girls who comprised the vast majority of the students. He then obtained an apprenticeship with Laszlo Hoenig, a fashionable interior decorator who had a gallery at 54 South Audley Street in Mayfair. Bella, who had been living in London since 1933 and therefore knew the city best, acted as guide and counselor to the others, and took care of her young son, while her husband Harold grew his stockbroker business. Elsie found a small flat with her husband, Erich, in north London. She was resentful of her change in circumstances, her inability to study at university and, to cap it all, of neighbors who sneered at her thick German accent. Her solution was to wear her expensive furs whenever she could.
Meanwhile, Hanns was quickly adapting. Having turned his back on the past he was uninterested in dwelling on all that had been lost—the house, the prestige, the servants. Perhaps it was because he was younger than Elsie, and had not yet established an independent life in Berlin, or perhaps it was simply that he was more optimistic, better able to deal with change and displacement. Whatever the reason, Hanns assimilated more easily.
Hanns and Paul were by now fully grown, handsome men. They stood six feet tall, with their thick dark brown wavy hair cut short and brushed back off their high foreheads. To most people they were impossible to tell apart. But to those who knew them, there were differences. Paul leaned forward slightly when he stood, as if anticipating the future. His chin was more pointed and when he laughed his cheeks dimpled. He appeared the more relaxed of the pair, more easygoing, more happy-go-lucky. Hanns, by contrast, stood tall, pensive and tense. He was square-jawed, serious, and could easily have been mistaken for one of the matinee idols of the day.
Once a week Hanns left his work in the City and traveled by bus to a building in Victoria. There, he climbed a long staircase to the fourth floor and knocked on the door of a flat belonging to a sixty-five-year-old German spinster named Mrs. Frank. After a few moments, Frankie, as Hanns called her, would let him into her cramped living room that overlooked St. James’s Park and which smelled a little too much of pickled onions. She taught Hanns the basics of the English language over warm tea and stale biscuits. In a German accent that was hard even for Hanns to understand, she also explained the basics of the English way of life: what to carry to work (bowler hat, umbrella, briefcase); what to serve your guests for dinner (roast beef and Yorkshire puddings, not chopped liver and ox tongue); and how to behave with strangers (stiffly and somewhat detached).
His English improved rapidly, and while he had retained a slight German accent, he was now able to tackle any situation—from swapping work banter to negotiating rent with his landlady—without feeling self-conscious.
Frankie was a tough and demanding teacher, but Hanns kept coming back. Another young German had started taking lessons with her—a leggy seventeen-year-old brunette called Anneliese Graetz. Ann, as she liked to be known, had also recently fled Nazi Germany, arriving in London with her fourteen-year-old brother, Wolfgang. Her parents, Paul and Käte Graetz, had remained in Berlin. Her father believed that he had a responsibility to continue managing one of Germany’s largest grain mills. Ann was deeply worried about them, but as she waited for news, like Hanns, she was learning how to navigate British society.
It was not long before Hanns and Ann attended afternoon tea dances together and went for walks through one of London’s many parks. He took her to dinner at his favorite restaurant, the Lyons Corner House, where Hanns excitedly pointed out the tablecloths and iced water. Ann introduced Hanns to Wolfgang, a pupil at St. Paul’s School. On Friday nights, they went over to Hanns’s mother’s for Shabbat—Dr. Alexander was still in Edinburgh—where they were often joined by Paul, Bella, Elsie and Erich. In addition to the usual family matters, they caught up on the latest news from Berlin.
*
As the Alexander family made the best of their strange new life, the situation in Germany was getting worse. On November 9, 1938, over 250 synagogues and 7,000 stores and businesses were attacked in what became known as Kristallnacht, the night of the broken glass. One was the Fasanenstrasse Synagogue, where Hanns and the rest of the family had enjoyed celebrating Simchat Torah. Nazi supporters smashed their way into the synagogue and, upon the orders of Joseph Goebbels, set fire to the building. Firemen and local residents gathered at the scene, watching as the flames grew higher. These were the same men and women whom the Alexanders had counted as friends and neighbors, whose children had attended the same community school. Many had even been Dr. Alexander’s patients. The massive gold-domed Neue Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse—where Hanns had been bar mitzvahed—was also attacked, its furniture smashed, its Torahs set ablaze. This synagogue would also have burned to the ground if it hadn’t been for the actions of Otto Bellgardt, a local policeman, who pulled out his gun and instructed the mob to leave. That the Neue Synagogue in Berlin had refused to accept the Alexander Torah as a loan back in 1906 turned out to be its salvation.
The Kristallnacht attacks were not limited to buildings that the Alexanders knew and loved. Hanns’s girlfriend’s family had also been caught up in the night’s terror. Early on November 10, 1938, on the morning after the burning of the synagogues, armed thugs had come to Ann’s parents’ house in Berlin and arrested her father. He was then taken to the street, where he joined a group of over a thousand Jewish men, who were marched to a train station and transported to the Sachsenhausen camp just outside the city. Upon arrival, her father had been commanded to remove his clothes, his head had been shaved, and he was given a black-and-white-striped prison uniform on which was stamped his prison number: 010065. At the camp he witnessed and experienced the horror and violence of the concentration camps, which were still not known to the outside world. However, Paul Graetz was lucky. Eighteen days after his arrival he, along with hundreds of other Jews, were told that they were free to go, but on one condition: that as soon as they returned to their homes, they must pack their bags and leave the country. As he walked out of the camp he was handed an exit document, bearing his photograph, date of birth, address and the signature of one of the camp’s senior guards: Rudolf Höss.
As soon as Ann’s father made it home, he transferred his remaining funds to the German government to pay the escape tax, secured a visa from the British consulate, and bought a train ticket to London.
Over the course of that winter, Ann and Hanns continued to see each other, but as winter turned to spring, they drifted apart and eventually agreed to stop seeing each other. While Ann tried to move on, accompanying ot
her men to dances and concerts, Hanns was preoccupied by the continued persecution of the Jews, which was now spreading throughout continental Europe.
*
Between 1934 and 1939, more than 70,000 Jews fled Nazi-controlled countries—Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland—for Britain. These figures included the thousands of unaccompanied children who arrived in Britain on the Kindertransport, or children’s transport—a last-minute rescue mission of nearly 10,000 Jewish children. In Britain, these Jewish refugees were greeted with a mixture of grudging acceptance by some and open hostility by others. In an attempt to improve their assimilation, the refugees—Hanns among them—were handed flyers made by the indigenous English Jewish community with advice on how to behave. They were told not to “criticize any government regulations” because that is “not the way things are done here.” Furthermore, they were advised that they should “not speak of how much better this or that is done in Germany,” because while “it may be true in some matters, it weighs nothing against the sympathy and freedom and liberty in England which are now given to you.”
As more and more German Jews arrived in London, it became obvious that they needed a new synagogue of their own. It wasn’t just that they spoke German, or that they felt uncomfortable attending the services put on by the English Jews. It was more that they missed the style and mannerisms of their own ceremonies. The Berlin synagogues were based upon a Liberale tradition which, unlike those in London, relied almost entirely on singing the ancient Hebrew text, rather than reading it aloud, as the English Orthodox and Liberal Jews did.
But the new synagogue had two problems: they had no space in which to pray, and they had no Torah. The first was solved by one of the founding members, a Mrs. Gluckman, who offered the use of her dining room in Belsize Park. The second was solved by Dr. Alexander, who loaned the Alexander Torah to the nascent synagogue. Soon there was not enough room to accommodate all those wishing to attend. So, starting in March 1939, a regular Friday evening service was held for the German refugees at a synagogue in St. John’s Wood. In June 1939, this group then formed the New Liberal Jewish Association (later becoming known as the Belsize Square Synagogue). Hanns’s father was one of its founding board members, and the family Torah was handed over to the synagogue as a semi-permanent loan.
Then, one month later, on July 24, 1939, the Alexanders learned that there was no going back home. The names of Hanns, Paul, Bella, Elsie, Henny and Alfred Alexander were published in the Reich Gazette as part of the Ausbürgerungslisten, lists of those (mostly Jews) whose German naturalization had been officially revoked. Furthermore, the Nazis had declared that the state now owned all possessions previously belonging to the Alexanders. The German government now considered the family stateless.
Official announcement showing that the Alexanders had been stripped of German nationality
Although there was a disturbing finality to this announcement, Hanns was neither surprised nor disappointed. For with every appalling story that arrived from Germany, his affection for its people had diminished, in tandem with his growing resolve to build a new life in England.
Five weeks later, on September 1, 1939, Hitler’s tanks rumbled into Poland, provoking outrage around the world. Britain’s prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, sat in front of a large microphone in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street and—wearing a starched white collar, tails and a bow tie—explained that diplomacy had failed. Britain was now at war with Germany.
When he heard that his adopted country was at war with the country of his birth, Hanns felt an immediate urge to act. Perhaps it was a desire for adventure, or for revenge. Or perhaps it was out of loyalty to England for taking him in and his duty to fight, as his brother-in-law Harold had told him a few weeks before. Whatever the cause, Hanns only knew that to do nothing was impossible.
The next day he left his apartment, determined to enlist.
7
RUDOLF
OŚWIĘCIM, UPPER SILESIA
1939
* * *
Rudolf was working in Sachsenhausen when war broke out. He followed the dramatic events fervently—the invasion of Poland, the bellicose rhetoric broadcast each evening on the radio, the orchestrated nationalistic marches in Berlin—but the war made little difference to his life. As adjutant at a camp for political prisoners, his daily tasks and responsibilities went unchanged: supplies were still readily available, transportation lines ran smoothly to and from Berlin, and there were no wartime drills to interrupt his routine.
The one difference he witnessed was a shift in the camp’s population. In the first few weeks of September 1939, more than five thousand Berlin Communists had been rounded up by the Gestapo, the secret police force, and sent to Sachsenhausen as a wartime national security measure. Soon after that, nine hundred Jews arrived. These were business owners and professionals who had refused or been unable to leave the country. Then, in November 1939, in the aftermath of anti-German demonstrations in Prague, 1,200 Czech university students were delivered to the camp. By the end of the year Sachsenhausen’s population had increased to 11,000 prisoners.
Despite the sudden influx, life in the camp proceeded as it had done in the months before. Of more consequence to Rudolf was a rapid change in leadership. At the end of 1939, Himmler had replaced Kommandant Baranowski with Walter Eisfeld, a thirty-five-year-old former member of the Artamanen League. Eisfeld would not last long. Following Himmler’s official visit in January 1940—in which he found the guards to be ill-disciplined—Eisfeld was dismissed and replaced with Hans Loritz, an experienced officer who had been Rudolf’s supervisor in Dachau. Rudolf benefited from this revolving leadership, being made second in command of the camp.
Yet Rudolf bridled under the new administration. For Loritz immediately set about imposing the same brutal regime that he had overseen in Dachau. Worse, Loritz carried a grudge against Rudolf for leaving him to work under Baranowski. As a result, Rudolf was sidelined and quickly became frustrated.
Richard Glücks
Then, in April 1940, Rudolf received a telephone call from Richard Glücks, the recently appointed Chief Inspector of Concentration Camps. A heavyset man with a head that appeared too small for his body and a brain that moved as languidly as his oversized feet, Glücks was a man employed for his loyalty. He was considered somebody who would do what he was told. Glücks said that Himmler wanted Rudolf to set up a new camp in Upper Silesia (the part of southern Poland that had been annexed by Germany in September 1939) near the small town of Oświęcim—or “Auschwitz,” as the Germans called it—and that he needed someone to survey the site, build the facility and then run the camp. They were looking for an energetic and effective Kommandant.
Rudolf was wary. He knew that Glücks viewed him with mistrust, partly for his zealous commitment to completing whatever task was handed to him, and partly because of his relationship with Himmler. Nevertheless, Rudolf accepted the offer. Here at last was his opportunity to manage things on his own terms, to work hard and to prove himself.
It was a cold and damp evening when the newly appointed Kommandant stepped off the train in Oświęcim. A town of 15,000 inhabitants, over half of whom were Jewish, Oświęcim stood forty miles west of Krakow, and was close enough to the pre-1939 German border to fall firmly within the Reich’s military control. Carrying his suitcase, Rudolf stepped across the tram tracks to his new headquarters, a small hotel opposite the station.
The next day, May 1, 1940, Rudolf left the hotel and inspected the grounds that Himmler had chosen for the camp. Situated on rocky land a hundred yards from the narrow Sola River, the site was surrounded by marshy and poorly cultivated fields dotted with a few run-down peasant cottages. All that existed were a few dilapidated brick barracks built for seasonal workers. The buildings were crumbling: the red-tiled roofs leaked in the rain; almost all the windows were broken; the floorboards had been torn up; what was left of the plumbing didn’t work; and the few remaining doors hung askew on the
ir hinges. This would be a huge task. Rudolf’s workforce consisted of only thirty professional criminals and a handful of guards who had been brought in from Sachsenhausen and Dachau.
One of these guards was Josef Kramer. With no more than a primary school education, Kramer had joined the Nazi Party in 1931 and, after being accepted into the SS, trained as a camp guard alongside Rudolf in Dachau. At six foot four, he was a powerfully built man who projected intimidating physicality. His dark brown hair was swept back from his high forehead and the thick vertical crease that divided his bushy black eyebrows. He also had a three-inch crescent scar that hovered just above his thin-lipped mouth. Kramer had been sent to Auschwitz to work as Rudolf’s adjutant.
Another guard was Franz Hössler, a thirty-four-year-old former photographer and warehouse worker who, like Rudolf, grew up in the conservative southwest region of Germany. Like Rudolf and Kramer, Hössler had worked in Dachau before being transferred to Auschwitz. He was put in charge of the camp’s kitchens.
The camp at Auschwitz had first been planned as a quarantine facility for Polish prisoners suffering from typhus. Now, however, Berlin wanted to use the camp to house Polish political prisoners arrested by the General Government of Poland, the occupational body that the Germans had put in place to run the country. In June, the first prisoners arrived, 728 inmates from a prison in Tarnow. The first order of business was to rebuild the old barracks to lodge the 10,000 inmates that were anticipated to arrive by the year’s end. Accommodation would have to be prepared, the water supply secured, security fences installed, roads laid, and offices and cooking facilities built.
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