The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz

by Jeremy Dronfield

  ‘Did you tell him anything?’ Stefan asked.

  ‘Of course not. I don’t know anything.’

  That answer didn’t satisfy them any more than it had the Gestapo.

  ‘Did you reveal any names – any at all?’

  Fritz shook his head painfully.

  Despite the state he was in, his friends interrogated him over and over: had he named any names at all? No, he insisted; he’d told Grabner nothing. To their minds, it was suspicious that he’d been allowed back to camp. It was possible that Grabner hoped Fritz might unwittingly betray his accomplices somehow; or it could be simply that the cells in Auschwitz I’s Death Block were overflowing (as they often were).

  Eventually they were satisfied that Fritz hadn’t betrayed them. They were safe – for now. But Stefan and Erich were positive that Grabner wouldn’t let the matter end there. He would resume the interrogation the next day, and Fritz’s torture would continue until he either confessed or died. Something had to be done.

  For the time being, they had Fritz moved to the infectious diseases block, where typhus and dysentery patients were kept, adjoining the morgue in the farthest corner of the camp. The SS doctor and his medical orderlies rarely went in there. Fritz was put in an isolation room. So long as he didn’t pick up an infection, he’d be safe for the time being. But he couldn’t hide in here forever; in order to prevent a manhunt when he failed to show up at roll call the next morning, his name would have to be entered in the hospital records. And then the Gestapo would come for him. Whichever way they looked at the problem, they kept coming back to the only solution: Fritz Kleinmann had to die.

  Accordingly, Sepp Luger, the camp senior responsible for hospital administration, recorded the death of prisoner 68629 in the register. No details were required; the register provided only a single line for each patient, with admission number, prisoner number, name, dates of admission and departure, and reason for departure. In this column there were only three options: Entlassen (discharged); nach Birkenau for those selected for the gas chambers; or a stamped black cross for the dead. Gustl Herzog ensured that Fritz’s death was also recorded in the general prisoner records office.17

  The truth would remain an absolute secret among the conspirators. The news that Fritz had died from his injuries had to be broken to his many friends. Not even Gustav could be let into the secret – the risk was too great – and so he was given the devastating, heartbreaking news that his beloved Fritzl had been murdered by the Gestapo. The grief was so great that Gustav couldn’t bring himself to record it in his diary, which had lain untouched for weeks.

  While Gustav mourned, the conspirators faced the pressing matter of what to do with the living, breathing Fritz. While he began to recover from his injuries, he was kept in isolation in the hospital. Each time an inspection was carried out by the SS doctor or his male nurse, Fritz was helped out of his bed by his old friend Jule Meixner, who worked in the hospital laundry, and hidden in the storeroom among the bundles of linen.

  Fritz had no idea what would become of him. Watching the dysentery patients drag themselves to the latrine buckets in the outer room and the typhus patients writhing feverishly in their sweat-soaked beds, he knew he couldn’t stay in this place much longer, injuries or no injuries.

  Word eventually came through from the Monowitz Gestapo that Grabner had dropped the investigation because of Fritz’s death. It was time to move on.

  Fritz was given a new identity, taken from a deceased typhus patient. He didn’t recall the poor man’s name – only that he was a Jew from Berlin, a relatively recent arrival whose prisoner number was up in the 112,000s. It was impossible to erase Fritz’s tattoo or give him a new one with the dead man’s number, so they just bandaged his forearm and hoped that nobody would demand to see it. Stefan Heymann spent a lot of time with him, advising him on how they would need to proceed and the precautions they would have to take when assigning him to a labour detail.

  It was all one to Fritz. Since his ordeal a lassitude had entered his soul and he no longer much cared whether he was discovered or not. The long grinding of grief, starvation and hopelessness had worn down his resistance at last, and he had started to drift into the helpless mind-state that led to becoming a Muselmann. He confessed to Stefan that he was considering ending it all as soon as possible – it was so simple to rush the sentry line while on an outside work detail, or to throw oneself on the electrified fence in the camp. One gunshot – a single fleeting instant – and the pain and wretchedness would all be over.18

  Stefan had no patience with these thoughts. ‘Can you imagine what killing yourself would do to your father?’ he said. ‘He believes right now that his son is dead, but in time – perhaps soon – he’ll learn the truth. Imagine if he were to discover that you’ve been alive all this time only when you commit suicide – just think of that.’

  Fritz had no argument against this. After all they had been through together, for Fritz to not only cave in to the SS but to allow them to finish him off – it was too much. ‘They cannot grind us down like this,’ his papa always said; endurance was everything, misery was only for a time, hope and spirit were undying.

  Stefan promised to do everything he could to keep Fritz safe in the hospital. When he was well enough to work, a place would be found in some outside detail where he could remain unnoticed. The death rate and turnover of prisoners was such that few ever got to know the others well.

  Fritz understood this and trusted Stefan with his life, but he had doubts. People knew his face – including some of the SS. And sooner or later his father must find out. At least seven men in the resistance knew Fritz’s secret, and his papa was their friend as well. Gustav was prominent in the camp now, and his high profile would make the possession of so explosive a secret extremely dangerous for him.

  After three weeks, Fritz was well enough to leave the hospital. His friends smuggled him to block 48, where the senior was Chaim Goslawski, a resistance member. His block was mainly populated by Germans and Poles who didn’t know Fritz.

  Next day, he went to work. A position as a warehouseman had been found for him in a different section of the locksmith detail. One of the kapos, a man named Paul Schmidt, was in on the secret, and kept an eye on him. Marching out through the gates each morning and back in the evening, Fritz went through suffocating terror, expecting to be recognized by a guard or a hostile kapo. He kept in the middle of the group, marching with his eyes fixed forward and his face expressionless while his heart pounded.

  As the weeks passed and nobody seemed to notice him, he began to feel more settled at work. For the time being, his secret appeared safe.

  אבא

  One evening Gustav was sitting in the day room of block 7 when one of his block-mates tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Gustl Herzog’s outside,’ he said. ‘Wants to see you.’

  Gustav stepped outside and found his old friend in a state of suppressed excitement. Follow me, he indicated, and led Gustav down the path beside the building, away from the road. Behind the first row of barrack blocks stood some smaller buildings – latrines, the Gestapo bunker and a small bathhouse. Herzog led Gustav towards the bathing block. A figure emerged from the gloom inside the doorway, whom Gustav recognized as the bath supervisor, a young Buchenwald veteran who had been a friend of Fritz’s. He glanced around and, seeing that the coast was clear, gestured for Gustav to go inside.

  Wondering, Gustav entered the building alone, inhaling the familiar smell of musty, soapless damp. In the low light, he saw the outline of a man standing back in the shadows of the boiler room. The figure came forward, his features resolving into the face of Fritz.

  It was unbelievable, miraculous. For Gustav, who made it an article of faith never to abandon hope, no matter how desperate the circumstances, the astonishment was indescribable. To hold his son in his arms again, to inhale the smell of him, to hear his voice, was beyond hope, beyond everything.19 Their survival had not been in vain after all.

&n
bsp; After that first reunion, they met whenever they could, always at night in the bathhouse. Now that his grief and loss were taken away, Gustav’s mind was invaded anew by all the cares of fatherhood, redoubled now that Fritz was in so much more danger than he’d ever been before. Gustl Herzog and the others assured him that they were doing all they could to safeguard him, but would it be enough?

  אב ובן

  In the autumn, some marvellous news came from Auschwitz I. The SS had suddenly removed Maximilian Grabner from his post as head of the camp Gestapo.

  It was more than just a dismissal. For a long time, there had been questions in Berlin about Grabner’s conduct. Even by SS standards the number of deaths he ordered raised an eyebrow – not so much at the scale of the murder but the disorderly way in which it was done. In Himmler’s mind, the Final Solution – and killing generally – was an industrial business, to be conducted cleanly, efficiently and systematically. It wasn’t a game or a personal fetish. Grabner’s sadism and bloodthirstiness placed a black mark against his name. However, his fall was ultimately brought about by his corruption.

  Like many senior concentration camp officers Grabner had used his position to enrich himself with the valuables taken from Jews murdered in Birkenau, which were intended for SS profit. Unlike most, he had done so on a colossal scale, sending home whole suitcases crammed with misappropriated loot. The scale of his corruption had prompted an SS investigation. He was suspended from his post and placed under arrest along with several accomplices, including the insouciant mass-murderer Gerhard Palitzsch.20 Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz, who had aided and abetted Grabner, was also removed.

  The new commandant, Arthur Liebehenschel, took over in November 1943.21 He initiated a shake-up of the whole Auschwitz complex; staff were replaced and order and discipline were imposed more firmly on the SS.

  What was important to Fritz was that the gravest threat to his safety had been unexpectedly lifted. Grabner was gone, and amidst all the turmoil there was little chance of one prisoner in Monowitz being taken much notice of by the Gestapo. Shortly afterwards, on the night of 7 December, a fire broke out in the Gestapo building at Auschwitz I, destroying the records of Grabner’s misdeeds.22

  Eventually, as obscurity settled over the whole Grabner episode and the need for concealment faded, Fritz Kleinmann came quietly back to life. His entry in the camp register was reinstated, and the Berlin Jew who had died of typhus was forgotten.

  But although the need for absolute secrecy had passed, Fritz still had to be careful; if he were noticed by any SS guards who had been aware of his death – especially the Gestapo sergeants Taute and Hofer – there would be trouble. But among the thousands in Monowitz, and the hundreds of thousands who entered and were transferred back and forth between the Auschwitz camps, and the tens of thousands murdered, who would take notice of one prisoner’s discreet resurrection?

  As winter came on, Gustav used his position to have Fritz transferred to join him in the VIP block. Now they could be together in the evenings without resorting to risky meetings outdoors. It was a socially tricky situation; because of his low status, Fritz wasn’t permitted to sit in the block day room when his papa went there to talk with his friends; instead he had to sit on his bunk alone, which was also technically illegal as bunks were for sleeping only.

  Still, it was warm and safe. It was certainly better than the place he’d been in before his death; his block senior, a man named Paul Schäfer, hadn’t been able to stomach the stench of men’s bodies in the bunk room and had kept all the windows open in all weathers. Simply for sadism’s sake, he also turned off the heating, so the men’s damp clothes wouldn’t dry. If anyone was caught trying to keep warm by sleeping in his uniform, Schäfer would beat him up and confiscate his rations.

  ‘And so the year of 1943 goes by,’ Gustav wrote. Winter was upon them again; snow began to fall and the ground hardened. This would be his and Fritz’s fifth winter since being taken from their home, their fifth year of relentless nightmare. And yet, as much as they had endured and suffered so far, the worst was yet to come.

  15. The Kindness of Strangers

  אחים

  ‘Catch!’

  Fritz leapt in the air, stretching for the ball as it sailed over his head; it bounced off one of the empty market stalls and skittered into the road. He ran and whipped it up, glancing up to see a policeman coming round the corner into Leopoldsgasse. The constable stared hard at him, and Fritz stood up straight, hiding the ball – really a tightly wrapped bundle of rags – behind his back. Football wasn’t allowed on the streets. When he’d gone, Fritz turned and ran back into the market, dropping the ball and kicking it towards his friends.

  It was the end of the day and the last of the farmers were clearing away their unsold wares. They mounted their carts and, chucking the reins, clopped off along the street. Fritz and his friends ran among the empty stalls, tossing the ball back and forth. Only Frau Capek the fruit seller was still at her post; she never packed up until it got dark. In the summer she would give the kids corn cobs. A lot of them were poor and would take all the free leftovers they could get – ends of sausage from the butcher, bread crusts from Herr König at the Anker bakery, whipped cream from Herr Reichert’s cake shop in the Grosse Sperlgasse, just round the corner from the school.

  Fritz caught the ball as it came his way, and was about to toss it back when they all heard the distant, familiar hooting of horns: ta-raa ta-raa. The fire engine going out on a call! In a welter of excitement they ran, dodging among the passers-by – the late housewives with their shopping, the Orthodox Jews in their black coats and beards hurrying home for the start of Shabbat before the light began to fade. ‘Wait!’ Fritz turned, and saw the little figure, legs pumping, running after him. Kurt! He’d forgotten all about him. He waited for his younger brother, and by the time he caught up his friends were out of sight.

  Kurt was only seven – a generation apart from Fritz, who was fourteen, but they were close. Fritz regularly let him tag along, learning their games and the ways of the streets. Kurt had his own gang of little pals, and Fritz’s gang acted as their guardians.

  They passed old Herr Löwy, who’d been blinded in the Great War, trying to cross the street, which was busy with trucks and heavy wagons from the coal sellers and breweries, clattering along pulled by massive Pinzgauer horses. Fritz took the old man’s hand, waited for a gap, and helped him across. Then, beckoning Kurt to follow, he took off after his friends.

  They caught up with them coming back along Taborstrasse, their faces streaked with cream and icing sugar. They hadn’t found the fire, but they’d passed by Gross’s confectioner’s and bagged a ton of leftover cakes. Fritz’s schoolfriend Leo Meth had saved a cream slice for Fritz, who divided it with Kurt.

  Cheeks bulging with pastry, they walked back towards the Karmelitermarkt, Fritz holding Kurt by his sticky, sugary hand. Fritz enjoyed the comfort of comradeship; the fact that some of his friends were different, that while his parents neglected to go to synagogue, their parents stayed away from church, or that Christmas meant something more to them than it did to him – these things seemed of no significance, and the thought that he and Leo and the other Jewish kids might ever be divided from their friends by these trivial things never crossed their minds.

  It was a warm evening, and tomorrow was Saturday – perhaps they’d go swimming in the Danube Canal. Or they might join with the girls to play theatre in the basement of number 17. Frau Dworschak, the building supervisor, whose son Hans was one of Fritz’s playmates, often let them illuminate the place with candles, and Herta and the other girls would put on a fashion show, dressing up in scavenged clothes and parading up and down like models. Or they’d all do a version of William Tell for an audience who paid two pfennigs each for admission. Fritz loved those burlesques.

  He and Kurt reached home in the warm summer dusk. Today had been a good day in an unbroken string of good days. The kids of Vienna picked their jo
y from the streets like apples from a tree; all one had to do was reach up and it was there for the taking. Life was outside of time, inviolable.

  בן

  Fritz was torn from a pleasant dream by the shrill screech of the camp senior’s whistle. His eyes opened into darkness, and his nostrils woke to the stench of three hundred unwashed bodies and three hundred musty, sweat-soured uniforms. His brain, startled out of bliss, registered the shock of his situation, as it did every pre-dawn morning.

  The man in the bunk below climbed down and pulled on his jacket, along with the dozen others who were on coffee duty. Fritz wrapped his blanket tightly about him and closed his eyes, settling into the straw mattress and chasing the tatters of his dream.

  An hour and a quarter later he was woken again by the bunk-room lights flicking on. ‘All up!’ barked the room orderly. ‘Up, up, up!’ In an instant the three-tiered bunks sprouted legs, arms, bleary faces, clambering, treading on one another, pulling on striped uniforms. Fritz and his papa took down their mattresses, shook them out, then folded their blankets and laid it all straight. After the men had splashed and scrubbed their faces in cold water in the wash-house – jam-packed with the inhabitants of the six surrounding blocks – and polished their shoes from the barrel of greasy boot-polish scavenged from the Buna Werke, they lined up in the bunk room for their acorn coffee, brought in in huge thirty-litre thermos canisters. They drank it standing up (sitting on the bunks was forbidden). Those who’d managed to save a bit of bread from the evening before ate it now, washing it down with the sweet, lukewarm coffee. The orderly inspected their bunks, uniforms and shoes.

  The atmosphere was more convivial than in any block Fritz had been in before. The Prominenten of block 7 looked after themselves well.