The Stone Crusher

by Jeremy Dronfield

  The press—with the right‑wing Daily Mail at the forefront—had played a major role in whipping up paranoia about fifth columnists, and although the Mail claimed to speak for “the people,” in fact the majority of Britons had had no notion of what a “fifth column” even was until the Mail began its campaign.1 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.

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  Nevertheless, the paranoia had quickly evolved into hysteria, and suspi‑

  cious eyes were turned toward the German refugees who had settled in the country. At the very start of the war, thousands of German and Austrian nationals had been interned as enemy aliens. But the fifty‑five thousand Jewish men, women, and children living in Britain were hardly likely to be spying for Hitler. Most 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.2 The overwhelming majority were al owed to get on with their lives.

  But with the country under threat of imminent invasion, the Daily Mail and some politicians were strident in their demands that the government do something about the fifth column threat. All male German and Austrian nationals, regardless of status, ought to be interned for the sake of national security. When Winston Churchill took over as prime minister on May 9, he took the matter firmly in hand. Measures began for moving interned nation‑

  als to Canada and extending the categories subject to internment. Churchill’s cabinet considered them all: aside from Germans and Austrians, there were members of the British Union of Fascists and the Communist Party, and Irish and Welsh nationalists. When Italy declared war on June 10 and Italians were added to the list, Churchill lost patience and issued the order: “Collar the lot!”3

  On June 21, the government instituted a new internment policy and issued instructions to local police forces. To avoid putting too much pressure on infrastructure, it would proceed in stages. Initially, Germans and Austrians—

  Jews, non‑Jews, and anti‑Nazis alike—who did not have refugee status or who were unemployed were to be arrested and interned. The second stage would sweep up all remaining Germans and Austrians living outside London, and the third would take those in London. The first‑stage arrests began on June 24.4

  Churchill told Parliament, “I know there are a great many people affected by the orders . . . who are the passionate enemies of Nazi Germany. I am very sorry for them, but we cannot . . . draw all the distinctions which we should like to do.”5

  The Anglo‑Jewish community was equivocal on the whole affair; they shared the fifth column paranoia and worried deeply about the rise in anti‑

  Semitism that had been triggered by the influx of refugees. People in the north of England were circulating the kind of slurs that always arose against Jews in 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 85

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  times of stress: they were black‑marketeers, profiteers, evaded military service, enjoyed special privileges, had more money, better food, better clothes.6 Desper‑

  ate to curtail the growth of anti‑Semitism, the Jewish Chronicle breathtakingly recommended taking “the most rigorous steps” against refugees and supported the extension of internment.7

  In Leeds, Edith Paltenhoffer’s fears had been growing for months. After marrying Richard, they had set up home together in an apartment in a large and rather run‑down Victorian house in the Chapeltown Road district, close to the synagogue.8 Edith had left her live‑in position with Mrs. Brostoff and switched to a daily job as a cleaner with a Mrs. Green, who lived nearby.

  This was no light undertaking, as changes of employment by refugees had to be registered and approved by the Home Office.9 Richard, for the time being, continued with his journeyman cracker baking, although it was hardly his ideal metier.

  They should have been happy, but Edith was deeply unsettled. When the fifth column paranoia began in the press, life became uncomfortable for any‑

  one with a German accent. Synagogues in England stopped allowing sermons in German, and the Board of Deputies of British Jews—also keen to avoiding provoking anti‑Semitism—worked to suppress gatherings of German Jewish refugees.10

  When France fell and a German invasion looked certain, Edith and Richard were consumed by fear. They had seen how quickly Austria had fallen to the Nazis, and it was only too easy to imagine storm troopers in Chapeltown Road and Eichmann or some other SS ghoul issuing orders from Leeds Town Hall.

  Edith went through her belongings and dug out the affidavits from her relatives in America. It was time to try again to get out of Europe altogether.

  At the beginning of June, she inquired of the Refugee Committee whether her affidavits would still be valid now that she was married. It took nearly two weeks for the reply to find its way back from London: no, they were not. Edith would need to write to her sponsors and ask them to either issue new affidavits or swear a statement transferring the old ones to her married name. Because US immigration law did not give automatic entitlement to her husband, the sponsors would need to extend the affidavits to include him.11 And of course, there would remain the formalities of applying for an emigration visa at the US Embassy in London.

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  With the Battle of Britain escalating in the skies over their heads and the calls for internment growing louder in the press, Edith and Richard were looking at an excruciatingly long process. Edith had been through it before in Vienna, and it would be no better here. They would never discover just how long it would take; at the beginning of July, events overtook them. The second stage of the government’s program came into force, and the Leeds police arrested Richard.

  It was only by luck that they didn’t take Edith too. Women with chil‑

  dren were not exempt, but pregnant women were. This, the politicians reasoned, was where the public might draw a line; if they saw pregnant women being subjected to barrack‑room life in camps, they might turn against the whole idea of internment. The same applied to mothers with very sick children.12

  Edith wasn’t standing for this outrage. Her poor husband, only twenty‑one years old, with the scars of a Nazi concentration camp on his body, had fled to this country seeking sanctuary. And now, to be torn from his wife and unborn child and sent to some awful internment camp by the very people who should be shielding him from the Nazis . . . It was beyond belief.

  Applications for release could be submitted to the Home Office; it was no easy process, as the internees had to prove that they were not only no threat to security but that they could make a positive contribution to the war effort.13 Edith immediately lodged an application and submitted a medical report. Meanwhile, both the Leeds and London branches of the Jewish Refugee Committee lobbied the Home Office on behalf of the thousands now incarcer‑

  ated. Many weren’t even in real camps with proper facilities—the numbers had been too great for existing camps to hold, and improvised centers had been set up in derelict cotton mills, disused factories, racecourses, anywhere that could be found. Many went to the main internment center on the Isle of Man, a small island between the coasts of northern England and Ireland, a popular vacation spot before the war.14

  The weeks of July and August went by, Edith’s pregnancy advanced, and no word came. She wrote again to the JRC in late August. The secretary in London replied, advising her against pressing the matter: “We . . . feel that you have done everything possible at the present time and think it would be most unwise for our Committee to intervene. We have been advised by the 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 87

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  Home Office that additional appeals and letters of enquiry . . . can result in delaying any decision.”15

  A few days later, the decision was reached—and it went against Richard.

  He would stay in the camp.

  For a concentration camp veteran, life in an internment camp could be relatively mild. There was no forced labor, no real punishments, no sadistic guards; internees—many of whom were scholars, scientists, and artists—played sports, set up newspapers, concerts, and educational circles.

  But they were prisoners nonetheless. And although there was no SS, Jews sometimes found themselves confined in the same camps—or even the same rooms—as Nazi sympathizers. Richard had the additional torment of knowing that Edith was having to cope with her pregnancy alone and without his wages.

  In early September, now well into her third trimester, Edith submitted a second application for Richard’s release. The JRC assured her, “We sincerely trust that the application will receive a favourable decision.”16 The waiting began again. After two weeks, a brief note came from the Aliens Department of the Home Office, telling her that Richard’s case would come before com‑

  mittee “as soon as possible.”17

  Two days later Edith’s contractions started. In no fit state to give birth at home, she was taken to the Maternity Hospital in Hyde Terrace in the center of Leeds. On Wednesday, September 18, 1940, she gave birth to a healthy boy, and named him Peter John. A real Yorkshire‑born English baby son. Peter was five days old when the news came through from the JRC—his father had been released.18

  The public mood had turned against interning harmless refugees. The catalyst had come in July, when a ship bound for Canada carrying several thousand internees—including some Jews—was sunk by a U‑boat. The loss of life made Britain look at itself and realize what it was doing to innocent people. The policy was gradually reversed, and by the end of the year most interned refugees had been released. In Parliament, politicians expressed regret for what they had done in a fit of panic; one Conservative mem‑

  ber said, “We have, unwittingly I know, added to the sum total of misery caused by this war, and by doing so we have not in any way added to the efficiency of our war effort.”19 A Labour member added: “We remember the horror that sprang up in this country when Hitler put Jews, Socialists 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 88

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  and Communists into concentration camps. We were horrified at that, but somehow or other we almost took it for granted when we did the same thing to the same people.”20

  Gustav opened his notebook and leafed through the pages. So few of them—

  just three sides covered in his strong script summed up the eons of the year 1940. “Thus the time passes,” he wrote, “up early in the morning, home late in the evening, eating, and then straight to sleep. So a year goes by, with work and punishment.”

  A new punishment had been devised for the Jews by the deputy comman‑

  dant in charge of the main camp, SS‑Major Arthur Rödl, a bumptious crook whose low intelligence had not hindered his rise to senior rank. Each evening, when they returned from the quarry and the gardens and the construction sites, exhausted and hungry, while all the other prisoners went to their barracks, the Jews—thousands of them—were made to stand on the roll‑call square under the glare of the floodlights and sing.

  The “choirmaster” stood on top of a gravel heap at the edge of the square and conducted. “Another number!” Rödl would call out over the loudspeak‑

  ers, and the weary prisoners would draw breath and struggle though another song. If the singing wasn’t good enough, the loudspeakers would bark out:

  “Open your mouths! Don’t you pigs want to? Lie down, the whole rabble, and give us a song!”

  And down they had to lie, whatever the weather, in the dust, the dirt, muddy puddles or snow, and sing. The Blockführers would walk between the rows, kicking any man who didn’t sing loudly enough. The ordeal often went on for hours. Sometimes Rödl would grow bored and announce that he was going for dinner, but the prisoners would have to stay and practice: “If you can’t get it right,” he said, “you can stay and sing all night.” The SS guards, who resented having to stand by and supervise, would take out their wrath on the prisoners, administering kickings and beatings.

  The most common tune was the “Buchenwald Song.” Composed by two Austrian prisoners, it was a stirring march tune, with words extolling cour‑

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  have a song,” he had declared in 1938. “We must get a Buchenwald song.”21

  He offered a prize of ten marks to the successful composer (which was never paid) and was delighted by the result. The prisoners sang it when they marched out to work in the mornings:

  When the day awakens, ere the sun smiles,

  The gangs march out to the day’s toils

  Out into the breaking dawn.

  And the forest is black and the heavens red,

  In our packs we carry a scrap of bread

  And in our hearts, in our hearts, just sorrow.

  Oh Buchenwald, I cannot forget you,

  For you are my fate.

  He who has left you, he alone can measure

  How wonderful freedom is!

  Oh Buchenwald, we do not whine and moan,

  And whatever our fate may be,

  We will say yes to life,

  For the day will come when we are free!

  The song had been composed by the Viennese songwriter Hermann Leo‑

  poldi with words by celebrated lyricist Fritz Löhner‑Beda, both of whom were prisoners. The SS, including Major Rödl himself, abjectly failed to rec‑

  ognize the spirit of defiance. “In his weakness of intellect he absolutely did not see how revolutionary the song actually was,” recalled Leopoldi.22 Rödl had also commissioned a special “Jewish Song” with defamatory lyrics about the crimes and pestilence of the Jews, but it had been “too stupid” even for him, and he banned it. Some other officers later resurrected it and forced the prisoners to sing it late into the night.23 But still it was the rousing “Buch‑

  enwald Song” more often than not. The Jews sang it times without count on the roll‑call square under the lights; “Rödl enjoyed dancing to the melody,”

  said Leopoldi, “as on one side the camp orchestra played, and on the other side the people were whipped.”24 They sang it marching to work in the red dawn, investing it with all their loathing and hatred of the SS. Many died singing it. “They cannot grind us down like this,” Gustav wrote in his diary.

  “The war goes on.”

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  Buchenwald continued to expand, month by month. The forest was eaten away and logged, and among the littered waste the buildings rose like pale fungus on the blighted back of the Ettersberg. The SS barracks were gradually completing their arc—a semicircular fan of sixteen two‑story blocks, with the administra‑

  tive building at one end and an officers’ casino in the center, all encompassing a large spruce grove.25 There were handsomely designed villas with gardens for the officers, a small zoo, riding and stable facilities, garage complexes and a gas station for SS vehicles, and even a falconry. This strange addition, which stood among the trees on the slope between the commandant’s villa and the quarry, comprised an aviary, a gazebo, and a Teutonic hunting hall of carved oak timbers and great fireplaces, stuffed with trophies and heavy furniture.

  It was intended for the personal use of Hermann Goering, in his capacity as Reich Hunt Master, but he was destined never to even visit the place, let alone use
it. The SS was so proud of it that for a fee of 1 mark local Germans could come in and look around.26

  All of this—houses, barracks, garages, offices, entertainment facilities—was built from the bones and timbers of the hill on which it stood, and fashioned with the blood of the prisoners whose hands transported and laid the stones and bricks and lumber.

  Along the roads between the construction sites, Gustav Kleinmann and his fellow slaves hauled their wagons of materials, and his son was now one of those whose hands put up the buildings. Fritz’s nightmare period in the gardens had ended. His tireless benefactor, Leopold Moses, had used his influ‑

  ence again to have Fritz transferred to the construction detail building the SS

  garages, a sprawling complex laid out around a huge open area.27 The kapo of Construction Detachment I, which was undertaking the project, was Robert Siewert, a friend of Leo Moses.

  Siewert, a German of Polish extraction, wore the red triangle of a politi‑

  cal prisoner. He’d been a bricklayer in his youth, and he had served in the German army in the last war. A dedicated communist, he’d been a member of Saxony’s parliament in the 1920s. In 1935 the Nazis had imprisoned him for treason, transferring him to Buchenwald in 1938. Siewert was in his fifties but had an air of resilient strength and energy: thickset, with a broad face and 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 91

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  narrow eyes under dark, heavy brows. On Leo’s request, he arranged Fritz’s transfer to his detachment.

  At first the labor was as arduous as any Fritz had known. Again it was all about carrying—bring this here, bear this burden, and run! A sack of cement weighed fifty kilograms,* whereas Fritz himself weighed little over forty. Other laborers in the yard would lift the sack onto his shoulders, and he would carry it, staggering, trying to run, to wherever it was needed. But even this was better than the gardens or the quarry, for there was no abuse, no beatings—only gru‑

  eling, crippling work. The SS valued the construction detachment highly, and therefore Siewert was able to prevent them abusing the prisoners under him.