The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz

by Jeremy Dronfield

  29 Prisoner Walter Poller, quoted in Marco Pukrop, ‘Die SS-Karrieren von Dr. Wilhelm Berndt und Dr. Walter Döhrn. Ein Beitrag zu den unbekannten KZ-Ärzten der Vorkriegszeit’, Werkstatt Geschichte 62 (2012), p. 79.

  30 In his account of this episode (Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, p. 48), Fritz seems to imply that his ‘weeping and desperate’ (‘weinender und verzweifelter’) voice was an act.

  31 Gustav’s diary is hard to interpret here: ‘(Am) nächsten Tag kriege (ich) einen Posten als Reiniger im Klosett, habe 4 Öfen zu heizen …’ The Klosett might have been the latrine in the little camp, or perhaps in the main camp barrack blocks, which had earlier been out of order due to a water shortage (Stein, Buchenwald, p. 86). The Öfen (ovens or furnaces) are harder to pinpoint; most likely they were part of the kitchens or the shower block. They were not crematorium ovens, which Buchenwald did not acquire until summer 1942 (ibid., p. 141).

  Chapter 4

  1 Note of employment, undated, LJL; England and Wales census, 1911; description and details in passenger list, SS Carinthia, 2 October 1936, PNY; General Register Office 1939 Register, National Archives, Kew. Morris and Rebecca Brostoff were born in Białystok (now in Poland) around 1878 and emigrated to Britain prior to 1911. In 1939 they lived at 373 Street Lane.

  2 Record card 46/01063-4, HOI. No record card for Richard Paltenhoffer from this time has been found, but he was presumably also put in Category C.

  3 Wachsmann, KL, pp. 147–51; Cesarani, Final Solution, pp. 164–5; Wünschmann, Before Auschwitz, p. 186.

  4 Arriving in Dachau on 24 June 1938, Richard Paltenhoffer was prisoner number 16865 (prisoner record, PGD). He was transferred to Buchenwald on 23 September 1938, where he was assigned prisoner number 9520 and placed first in block 16, then block 14 (prisoner record, PGB).

  5 Wachsmann, KL, pp. 181–4.

  6 Ibid., p. 186.

  7 A. R. Samuel, letter to David Makovski, 25 May 1939, LJW; marriage certificate, GRO; Montague Burton, letter to David Makovski, 26 February 1940, LJL; Nicholas Mark Burkitt, British Society and the Jews (2011), p. 108. The company was Rakusen Ltd, which still exists. Richard’s first lodgings were at 9 Brunswick Terrace.

  8 Biographical history, LJW; Anthony Grenville, ‘Anglo-Jewry and the Jewish Refugees from Nazism’, Association of Jewish Refugees Journal (December 2012). The Leeds JRC was run by David Makovski, who ran a tailoring business in the city. He was known for a sometimes irascible temperament and a belief that each person should know their place in society and stick to it.

  9 B. Neuwirth, letter to Richard Paltenhoffer, 16 February 1940; Control Committee, letter to Registrar of Marriages, 20 February 1940, LJL.

  10 Gustav recorded all these imprecations in his poem ‘Quarry Kaleidoscope’ (see later in this chapter).

  11 Altogether, 1,235 prisoners died in Buchenwald in 1939, the majority of them in the last quarter of the year (Hackett, Buchenwald Report, p. 114).

  12 The sequence of events at this period (including the precise assignments to barracks) differs somewhat between Gustav’s diary and Fritz’s recollections. The account given here reconciles the two.

  13 The Goethe Oak was damaged by an Allied bomb in 1944 and was felled. However, its stump is still there.

  14 Fritz Kleinmann, 1997 interview. Jewishness in itself was not sufficient cause to be sent to the camps until much later; at this time, the Nazi regime was focused on forcing Jews to emigrate, including those being held in the camps, who were released if they obtained the necessary emigration papers.

  15 From ‘Quarry Kaleidoscope’ by Gustav Kleinmann. I have translated Gustav’s German as faithfully as possible:

  Klick-klack Hammerschlag,

  klick-klack Jammertag.

  Sklavenseelen, Elendsknochen,

  dalli und den Stein gebrochen.

  16 Gustav’s original:

  Klick-klack Hammerschlag,

  klick-klack Jammertag.

  Sieh nur diesen Jammerlappen

  winselnd um die Steine tappen.

  17 Gustav and Fritz both record Herzog’s first name as ‘Hans’ but according to Stein (Buchenwald, p. 299) it was Johann. For other eyewitness accounts of Herzog’s character and behaviour see statements given in Hackett, Buchenwald Report, pp. 159, 174–5, 234. Although rumoured to have later been murdered by a former prisoner, Herzog went on to have a long criminal career.

  18 Gustav’s original:

  Klatsch – er liegt auf allen Vieren,

  doch der Hund will nicht krepieren!

  19 Gustav’s original is more perfectly structured than my translation:

  Es rattert der Brecher tagaus und tagein,

  er rattert und rattert und bricht das Gestein,

  zermalt es zu Schotter und Stunde auf Stund’

  frißt Schaufel um Schaufel sein gieriger Mund.

  Und die, die ihn füttern mit Müh und mit Fleiß,

  sie wissen er frißt nur – doch satt wird er nie.

  Erst frißt er die Steine und dann frißt er sie.

  Chapter 5

  1 Edith Kurzweil, Nazi Laws and Jewish Lives (2004), p. 153.

  2 Report in Arad et al., Documents, pp. 143–4.

  3 Rabinovici, Eichmann’s Jews, pp. 87ff.

  4 Passenger list, SS Veendam, 24 January 1940, PNY; United States census, 1940, NARA; Alfred Bienenwald, US passport application, 1919, NARA. Tini’s cousins were Bettina Prifer and her brother Alfred Bienenwald. Their mother, Netti, who was Hungarian-born, appears to have been a sister of Tini’s mother, Eva née Schwarz (Bettina Bienenwald, birth record, 20 October 1899, Geburtsbuch and Geburtsanzeigen, IKA).

  5 United States census, 1940, NARA.

  6 US State Department memo, 26 June 1940, in David S. Wyman, America and the Holocaust (1990), vol. 4, p. 1; also ibid., p. v.

  7 Fritz and Gustav never understood where Tini got the money from, as she wasn’t allowed to work. In fact she did get occasional jobs (letters to Kurt Kleinmann, 1941, DKK), and otherwise presumably depended on better-off relatives.

  8 Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, p. 69; Buchenwald prisoner record card 1.1.5.3/6283376, ITS; Jeanette Rottenstein birth record, 13 July 1890, Geburtsbuch, IKA.

  9 Fritz transferred into the garden detail on 5 April 1940 (prisoner record card 1.1.5.3/6283377, ITS).

  10 Stein, Buchenwald, pp. 44–5, 307; Hackett, Buchenwald Report, p. 34. Hackmann’s first name is variously given as Hermann and Heinrich. He was later convicted of embezzlement by the SS.

  11 Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, pp. 47, 49. Fritz gives his height at this time as 145 cm (about 4 feet 9 inches). But in the 1938 family photograph, when he was fourteen, he is measurably only slightly shorter than the adult Edith (who was 5 feet 2 inches according to her passport: DPP). He must have grown a little in the following eighteen months, so would have been over 5 feet tall (more than 152 cm) by late 1939.

  12 Gustav Herzog was born in Vienna, 12 January 1908 (entry for Gustav Herzog, 68485, AMP).

  13 Stefan Heymann was born in Mannheim, Germany, 14 March 1896 (entry for Stefan Heymann, 68488, AMP).

  14 Anton Makarenko, Road to Life: An Epic of Education (A Pedagogical Poem), vol. 2, ch. 1. Translation available online at www.marxistsfr.org/reference/archive/makarenko/works/road2/ch01.html (retrieved 2 May 2017).

  15 Fritz Kleinmann in Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, p. 54.

  16 Hackett, Buchenwald Report, pp. 42, 336; Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, p. 55.

  17 Stein, Buchenwald (German edition), p. 78.

  18 Stein, Buchenwald, pp. 78–9.

  19 Ibid., p. 90.

  20 Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, p. 57. Schmidt’s general temperament and habits are documented by many witnesses quoted in Hackett, Buchenwald Report.

  Chapter 6

  1 Although they claimed to speak for ‘the people’, in fact most Britons had had no notion of what a ‘fifth column’ was until the Daily Mail began its campaign (Peter Gillman and
Leni Gillman, ‘Collar the Lot!’ How Britain Interned and Expelled Its Wartime Refugees (1980), pp. 78–9). The term ‘fifth column’ originated during the Spanish Civil War (1936–9), when a general told the press that he had four columns of troops plus a ‘fifth column’ within the enemy camp.

  2 Roger Kershaw, ‘Collar the lot! Britain’s policy of internment during the Second World War’, UK National Archives Blog (2015). Most Jewish refugees were placed in Category C (exempt from internment) although 6,700 had been categorized B (subject to some restrictions), and 569 were judged a threat and interned. In fact there were spies and saboteurs at work in Britain, and dozens were eventually caught and convicted, but most were natural-born British citizens, not immigrants.

  3 Gillman, ‘Collar the Lot!’, p. 153; Kershaw, ‘Collar the lot!’.

  4 Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 4 June 1940, Hansard vol. 364 c. 794.

  5 Gillman, ‘Collar the Lot!’, pp. 167ff, 173ff; Kershaw, ‘Collar the lot!’.

  6 Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945 (1999), p. 108.

  7 Ibid., p. 83.

  8 The address was 15 Reginald Terrace (various letters, LJL). At the time of their marriage, Richard had had lodgings at number 4 (marriage certificate, GRO). The Victorian houses in Reginald Terrace were demolished in the 1980s.

  9 Leeds JRC, letter to Home Office, 18 March 1940, LJL. Mrs Green lived at 57 St Martin’s Garden.

  10 Leeds and London JRC, letters, June 7 and 13, 1940, LJL.

  11 Gillman, ‘Collar the Lot!’, pp. 113, 133. Edith had equipped herself with a certificate from her physician, Dr Rummelsberg (24 April 1940, LJL), presumably obtained for some purpose connected with her work or emigration application.

  12 London, Whitehall, p. 171.

  13 There is no record of where Richard Paltenhoffer was interned. His case file appears to have been among the majority which were later routinely destroyed by the Home Office (discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C9246: retrieved 30 September 2017).

  14 Joint Secretary, letter to Edith Paltenhoffer, 30 August 1940, LJL.

  15 Joint Secretary, letter to Edith Paltenhoffer, 4 September 1940, LJL.

  16 Home Office, letter to Leeds JRC, 16 September 1940, LJL.

  17 Victor Cazalet, House of Commons, 22 August 1940, Hansard vol. 364 c. 1534.

  18 Rhys Davies, House of Commons, 22 August 1940, Hansard vol. 364 c. 1529.

  19 Home Office, letter to Leeds JRC, 23 September 1940, LJL. Richard’s release had been approved on 16 September (record card 270/00271, HOI).

  20 Quoted in Jerry Silverman, The Undying Flame: Ballads and Songs of the Holocaust (2002), p. 15.

  21 Quoted in ibid., p. 15.

  22 Manfred Langer in Hackett, Buchenwald Report, pp. 169–70.

  23 Quoted in Silverman, Undying Flame, p. 15. Leopoldi survived the Holocaust, but Löhner-Beda was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942.

  24 Hackett, Buchenwald Report, p. 42.

  25 Fritz appears to have been transferred to the construction detail on 20 August 1940, after four months in the garden (prisoner record card 1.1.5.3/6283377, ITS).

  26 In Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, p. 72.

  27 The Prominenten of block 17 were of middling status. The Nazi regime kept its very highest-ranking political prisoners – former prime ministers, presidents and monarchs of conquered countries – in isolation, often in special secret compounds within concentration camps. Buchenwald’s was a walled compound in the spruce grove in front of the SS barracks.

  28 Gedenkstätte Buchenwald, www.buchenwald.de/en/1218/ (retrieved 14 May 2017); Ulrich Weinzierl, Die Welt, 1 April 2005. Transferred to Dachau in October 1940, Fritz Grünbaum died there on 14 January 1941.

  29 Tomas Plänkers, Ernst Federn: Vertreibung und Rückkehr. Interviews zur Geschichte Ernst Federns und der Psychoanalyse (1994), p. 158. Ernst Federn survived in Buchenwald until liberation in 1945; he continued his career in psychoanalysis and died in 2007.

  30 In Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, p. 59.

  31 Wachsmann, KL, pp. 224–5.

  32 Ibid., p. 225. Cremation is forbidden in Jewish law, and cremated remains prohibited from cemeteries. However, exceptions are made for those cremated against their will, and ashes sent back from the concentration camps were permitted into Jewish cemeteries from the start.

  33 Tini Kleinmann, letter to German Jewish Aid Committee, New York, March 1941, DKK.

  34 Margaret E. Jones, letter to AFSC, November 1940, in Wyman, America, vol. 4, p. 3.

  35 The consuls themselves, who didn’t have to face the applicants, were generally callous, and even supported anti-Semitic immigration restrictions despite speaking publicly against Nazi anti-Semitism (Bat-Ami Zucker, In Search of Refuge: Jews and US Consuls in Nazi Germany, 1933–1941 (2012), pp. 172–4). The Vienna consulate was more sympathetic than most, and willing to bend the rules a little (ibid., p. 167).

  36 Tini Kleinmann, letter to German Jewish Aid Committee, New York, March 1941, DKK.

  Chapter 7

  1 This episode is based in part on interviews with Kurt Kleinmann, accounts written by him, and letters from Tini Kleinmann, July 1941, DKK; notes by Fritz Kleinmann, DRG; also data from passenger and crew list, SS Siboney, 27 March 1941, PNY.

  2 There is an account of such a departure from Vienna in Ruth Maier, Ruth Maier’s Diary: A Young Girl’s Life under Nazism, transl. Jamie Bulloch (2009), pp. 112–13. If Kurt’s train left in the evening, Tini and Herta would not have been allowed to accompany him to the station at all, due to the curfew; a non-Jewish friend or relative would have had to go with him.

  3 Passenger and crew list, SS Siboney, 27 March 1941, PNY.

  4 Efforts have been made by the author, by Kurt himself, and by the One Thousand Children organization to trace Karl Kohn and Irmgard Salomon, but no information has yet been found about their subsequent lives.

  5 Description: records of the Selective Service System, Record Group Number 147: NARA.

  Chapter 8

  1 In all the accounts of this murder (Gustav Kleinmann’s diary; Emil Carlebach, Herbert Mindus in Hackett, Buchenwald Report, pp. 164, 171–2; Erich Fein and Karl Flanner, Rot-Weiss-Rot in Buchenwald (1987), p. 74) no mention is made of what triggered Abraham’s actions.

  2 Cesarani, Final Solution, p. 317; Stein, Buchenwald, pp. 81–3; Fritz Kleinmann in Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, pp. 77–9.

  3 Herbert Mindus (in Hackett, Buchenwald Report, pp. 171–2) states that Hamber was in the construction detail and implies that the incident occurred on the SS garage site. However, that account was written four years later, whereas Gustav Kleinmann’s diary is contemporary and probably more accurate, albeit less detailed; Gustav states that Hamber was in the haulage column (see also Fein and Flanner, Rot-Weiss-Rot, p. 74) and that the incident took place in an excavated part of the Economic Affairs department. Some accounts (Stein, Buchenwald, p. 288) date the incident to late 1940; in fact it was spring 1941.

  4 Eduard’s registered name appears to have been Edmund (Stein, Buchenwald, p. 298), but everyone knew him as Eduard (e.g. Fritz Kleinmann in Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, p. 81; Herbert Mindus in Hackett, Buchenwald Report, p. 171).

  5 Reported by Emil Carlebach in Hackett, Buchenwald Report, p. 164.

  6 Ibid.

  7 Stein, Buchenwald, p. 298.

  8 Gustav is enigmatic here; he uses the word ‘Aktion’, meaning a ‘campaign’ or ‘special operation’, implying that he had in mind some kind of concerted resistance among the haulage column, led by Eduard Hamber. However, his writing is extremely elliptical – probably because, while keeping a diary would no doubt be fatal for him if found out, the consequences would be even worse if it contained evidence of anti-SS activities.

  9 Tini Kleinmann, letter to Kurt Kleinmann, 15 July 1941, DKK.

  10 Order of 14 May 1941, quoted in Gold, Geschichte der Juden, pp. 106–7.

  11 Cesarani, Final Solution, p. 443.


  12 Rabinovici, Eichmann’s Jews, p. 136.

  13 Cesarani, Final Solution, p. 418.

  14 Tini Kleinmann, letter to Kurt Kleinmann, 5 August 1941, DKK.

  15 Tini Kleinmann, letter to Kurt Kleinmann, 15 July 1941, DKK.

  16 Tini Kleinmann, letters to Kurt Kleinmann, July–August 1941, DKK.

  17 Prisoner record cards 1.1.5.3/6283389, 1.1.5.3/6283376, ITS. The record indicates four packages signed for during 1941 – one each for Gustav and Fritz on 3 May, one for Fritz on 22 October, and one for Gustav on 16 November. All contained items of clothing.

  18 Gustav writes: ‘Wir sind die Unzertrennlichen’ – ‘We are the inseparables.’ There is no exact equivalent of Unzertrennlichen in English. In German it is used for the bird species known in English as lovebirds, and is also the German title of the David Cronenberg film Dead Ringers.

  19 William L. Shirer, quoted in Cesarani, Final Solution, p. 285.

  20 Stein, Buchenwald, pp. 124–6; Wachsmann, KL, pp. 248–58; Cesarani, Final Solution, pp. 284–6.

  21 SS-Doctor Waldemar Hoven, quoted in Stein, Buchenwald, p. 124.

  22 Gustav gives the date as August 1941; he is normally totally reliable on dates, but it seems that he described the events of spring and summer 1941 retrospectively – probably at the end of the year – and his chronology and figures are sometimes unreliable for this period.

  23 Stein, Buchenwald, p. 59.

  24 Otto Kipp in Hackett, Buchenwald Report, p. 212.

  25 SS nurse Ferdinand Römhild, quoted in Stein, Buchenwald, p. 126.

  26 It was true that many of the leading Bolshevik revolutionaries of 1917 had been Jews, and it was also true that the Soviet regime had liberated Russian Jews from the anti-Semitic repression of the tsars. But the alleged connection between Jewishness and communism was just a fantasy in the minds of Nazi ideologues, a banal modern equivalent of the blood libel.

  27 Wachsmann, KL, p. 260.

  28 Gustav Kleinmann’s diary says that this occurred on 15 June. This is impossible, as war between Germany and the USSR did not begin until 22 June. This is another instance of his misattributing the date of a 1941 event due to writing about it from memory (see note 22 above). Aside from the date, all the other details of his account are corroborated by multiple sources.