The Stone Crusher

by Jeremy Dronfield

  For Gustav, his skil s came together with his luck that January. The SS

  finally recognized his trade and decided they had a use for it. He was appointed camp saddler, with responsibility for all saddlery and upholstery work in Monowitz—mostly repairs for the SS. It was indoor work, out of the savage weather, and once the heating system became operational, he was even warm.

  This felt almost like safety. Gustav was acutely conscious that others were not so fortunate, and that safety never lasted long.

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  13

  T h e E n d

  o f G u s t a v

  K l e i n m a n n , J e w

  BRICK BY BRICK, COURSE BY COURSE, the buildings rose in the Monow‑

  itz camp. The double electrified fence was up, the barrack blocks were all but complete, and the barracks for the SS were under way. Through the early weeks of 1943, Fritz helped build the headquarters garage and a command post for the SS Blockführers beside the main gate.

  He worked beside a civilian bricklayer. Like many of the others, this man didn’t speak to the prisoners, but whereas most avoided conversation, this man wouldn’t even acknowledge Fritz’s existence. The two of them laid bricks next to each other day in, day out, and he never said a word, never even noticed any gesture of Fritz’s. Fritz grew accustomed to his eerily silent presence until one day, out of the blue, the man murmured, without looking up, “I was in the moors at Esterwegen.” It was almost inaudible, but made Fritz jump. The man carried on working without missing a beat, as if he hadn’t spoken.

  That evening Fritz told his father and friends about this cryptic pronounce‑

  ment. They understood immediately. Esterwegen had been one of the Nazis’

  earliest concentration camps, part of a group established in the sparsely popu‑

  lated moors of Emsland in northwest Germany in 1933. The Emsland camps had been set up by the local authorities to incarcerate political enemies—mostly members of the Socialist party. They were run by the SA and were so notori‑

  ously, chaotically brutal that when the SS took the camps over in 1934 their behavior seemed civilized by comparison—at least their viciousness was dis‑

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  ciplined.1 Many of those early political prisoners had later been released, and Fritz’s silent workmate must have been one of them. No wonder he was so reluctant to associate with the inmates here—he must be in a state of constant fear of being singled out and incarcerated again.

  In confiding to Fritz, the man had broken the spell. He maintained his Trappist silence, but each morning Fritz would find little gifts beside his mortar tub—a piece of bread and a few cigarettes. Little things, but truly heartwarm‑

  ing, and in this environment potentially lifesaving.

  Working alongside free civilians, receiving acts of charity, finding his feet in this new camp, and enjoying the privileged existence of a skilled worker who didn’t have to slave on the Buna sites, Fritz began to grow more relaxed about life. A great deal too relaxed, in fact; after more than three years in the camps he should have known better.

  One day he was at work on the scaffolding around the shell of the half‑

  finished Blockführers’ building. He was musing on a remark his grandfather had once made; old Markus Rottenstein had been a bank clerk specializing in shorthand with Austria’s prestigious Boden‑Credit‑Anstalt (bankers to the imperial family, no less),2 and had firm views on the status of his people, believing that Jews shouldn’t be in manual trades. Just then, a friend of Fritz’s who worked on the haulage column arrived with a load of building materials and called up to him, “Hey Fritz, what’s new?”

  “Nothing,” Fritz replied, and indicated his surroundings. “My grandfather always used to say, ‘A Jew belongs in the coffee house, not on a builder’s scaf‑

  folding.’”

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when a furious voice called from below, “Jew! Down from that scaffolding!”

  Heart racing, Fritz hurried down the ladder and found himself facing SS‑Lieutenant Vinzenz Schöttl, director of the Monowitz camp, a terrifying nemesis with snake eyes in a face like dough. Schöttl was usually reserved, a father of four from Bavaria whose main interest was in acquiring booze and luxuries for himself through the black market; yet he had a capricious, volatile nature and was absolutely ruthless in ordering punishments.3 On one occasion, when an inspection discovered some inmates in block 22 with lice, Schöttl had the whole block—including the seniors—sent to the gas chambers. He glared at Fritz. “What did you say?” he shouted.

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  Jumping to attention and whipping off his cap, Fritz repeated mechanically:

  “My grandfather said, ‘A Jew belongs in the coffee house, not on a builder’s scaffolding.’”

  He stood, scarcely daring to breathe, while Schöttl stared at him. Suddenly the dough face split and let loose a guffaw. “Clear off, Jew‑pig!” With that, Schöttl walked off laughing.

  Sweating and palpitating, Fritz climbed back up the ladder. He had nearly paid the price for complacency. There was no safety.

  With twenty‑five blocks now complete, the influx of new Jewish prisoners to Monowitz was growing. Fritz and the other veterans were troubled by how naive some of them were. They had been through the selection at Birkenau, and their wives, mothers, children, and fathers had been sent one way, while they—the young men—had been sent the other. That was all they knew. They had no inkling of what would happen to their families, and hoped they would see them again. Although they appealed to the veteran prisoners for informa‑

  tion, Fritz and the others couldn’t bear to reveal the truth and shatter their hopes of being reunited. Eventually, inevitably, they found out that their wives and little ones, their mothers and sisters and fathers, had all been gassed. Some of these men fell into a depressed, helpless torpor. In their hearts, they died.

  They didn’t look after themselves in body or soul; they moved about in a state of utter apathy, and gradually joined the ranks of the wasted and hopeless, starved, skin and bone, scabbed, with lifeless eyes and empty souls. In camp slang these walking dead were known cryptically as Muselmänner—Muslims.

  The origin of this term was lost in camp lore, but some said it was because when these poor souls could no longer stand, their collapsed posture resembled a Muslim at prayer.4 They were doomed. Once a man became a Muselmann, the other prisoners would avoid him; their hearts closed, partly in disgust, partly in dread at the thought that they too might become like this.

  Once the building work he’d been assigned to was complete, Fritz was among a group of six construction workers selected by SS labor manager Stolten for transfer to the camp bath block and its heating plant. He found himself cementing and mounting heating units for another civilian company whose foreman nearly drove Fritz mad. Jakob Preuss was all noise and bluster in front of the SS. If a guard or an officer came near, Preuss would throw out a salute and cry, “Heil Hitler!” He never ceased berating and yelling at the prisoners working under him. He grated on Fritz’s nerves. After a while, Preuss called 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 188

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  Fritz into the foreman’s office, and screamed at him: “What do you think you’re doing, with your work rate?” Fritz was taken aback; he knew better than to slack, and his performance had never been criticized before. Preuss lowered his voice and said, “If you keeping working this fast, we’ll be finished soon, and I’ll be sent to the front!”

  So that was the secret of his bad temper: fear. Fritz slowed his work rate, and Preuss became positivel
y friendly, wangling extra food for his inmate workers.

  He was joined in this by another of the German civilian workers, a welder from Breslau called Erich Bukovsky. Both Preuss and Bukovsky, despite the former’s ostentatious salutes, confessed that they hoped the Nazis would be defeated.

  It was beginning to look as if they might. Until now it had seemed that Germany would go on winning and crushing and destroying without end, irresistible. And then, in February 1943, news came through the grapevine that the Germans had surrendered to the Russians at Stalingrad. The Nazis were not invincible. Fritz heard about this through a French worker, a man with an extravagant waxed mustache, whom Fritz only ever knew as Jean (the others just called him Mustache). Jean also told him about the Resistance in France. It was all heartening news, which Fritz shared eagerly with his father and friends when they met up in the evenings. And yet, Stalingrad, England, and Africa—all the places where the Allies were beating the Germans—were a very long way from Auschwitz.

  Gustav’s fingers worked deftly at a leather panel, trimming, pushing the heavy needle through the tough, pliant material. He was content in his day‑to‑day existence, if not in his heart. There was no shortage of work, and he was, in effect, a kapo now, with the privileges of a kapo and a handful of semi‑skilled workers under him. He had no cause to complain about them and plenty to occupy his hands. Being indoors had been a boon during the winter months, and even now, with May beginning and summer on its way, it was infinitely better than being on the haulage column or in the factories. He got on well with his block senior, Bernd Grath, a veteran Communist Party activist. Grath was a decent man; food was shared fairly in his block, and any inmate who came to him with a complaint or a request would always go away satisfied.

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  Taking each day as it came, Gustav doggedly reassured himself that he would survive—these Nazis might bend him but could not break him. Fritz didn’t share his father’s sanguine, dogmatic principle of determined optimism; he never ceased worrying about everything—his friends, his papa, the future.

  He wondered about Edith and Kurt; it was a year and a half now since America had joined the war and the last communication with Kurt had closed down.

  Fritz also fretted about what had become of his mother and Herta. There was no way of finding out where they’d been sent or what had become of them—all he’d ever learned was that it was to the Ostland, a vast, vague region. Hearing the tales that came out of Birkenau—especially the terrible rumors leaked by the Geheimnisträgern (bearers of secrets) who served in the Sonderkommando in the crematoria—it was sickeningly easy to imagine what might have been waiting for them in the east. Fritz longed for information.

  Unlike in Buchenwald, where they’d been able to communicate with home, here they were cut off entirely, unable even to write to the relatives and friends who (they hoped) still lived in Vienna. An anger was growing in Fritz, born out of helplessness. His nature was not like his father’s. Gustav tried not to dwell on things. He kept his head down, did his work, and lived from day to day. Fritz couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be long before his hatred of the Nazis became too great to contain.

  While Gustav stitched, a short distance away, across the road and rail tracks, a decision was brewing that could bring his comfortable existence to an abrupt end. Progress at the Buna Werke was still lagging far behind schedule, despite Himmler having been assured that the factories would be finished by now.5 Anxious to find out what the problem was, a commission had been sent from the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA)* in Berlin, the umbrella organiza‑

  tion for all SS security and policing. The RSHA was Himmler’s enforcement and intelligence arm, and it wanted answers.

  What the commission found didn’t please them at all. The vast complex of factory buildings rising out of the construction sites was still only half‑complete, and none of its units were ready to begin production. The methanol plant was almost set to go online—actually a few months ahead of schedule—but the far more important rubber and fuel factories were nowhere near finished, and wouldn’t be for months, maybe another year. Accompanied by Monow‑

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  itz director Schöttl, the SS top brass stalked around the site, scrutinizing and inspecting, under the guidance of managers and engineers from IG Farben.

  They grew more displeased by the minute. They noticed that about a third of the construction workers were camp inmates, who were visibly weaker and less efficient than the paid civilians. Their effectiveness was hampered further by the necessity of constantly guarding them and keeping them together, which prohibited splitting them off and spreading them out more effectively. As if that weren’t enough, they also noticed that many of the prisoner foremen were Jews. They quizzed Schöttl about this highly undesirable arrangement.

  He told them that there weren’t enough Aryans in Monowitz; nearly all the prisoners he was sent were Jews, so he had little choice but to make some of them foremen. The visitors glowered and insisted that it would not do; Jews must not be put in positions of responsibility. They ordered Schöttl to do something about it.

  A few days later, on May 10, the Monowitz prisoners were at evening roll call when Schöttl appeared in company with SS‑Captain Hans Aumeier, the malignant murderer in overall charge of protective custody. They were armed with a list and looked grave, as if they had a very serious task to perform. From the list Schöttl read out the numbers of seventeen prisoners. As they stepped forward, they all turned out to be Jews who had foreman positions—mostly veteran Buchenwalders and Sachsenhauseners—and among them was pris‑

  oner 68523: Gustav Kleinmann. Everyone knew what this usually signified.

  Selections like this happened all the time, and typically meant one thing: the Birkenau gas chambers.

  Aumeier inspected the selected men, looking with distaste at the Jewish stars on their uniforms. In most cases, they were of the two‑color kind: a Star of David made up of a red triangle over a yellow triangle, a practice dating from the time when the Nazis still felt they had to have a pretext for sending Jews to the camps.

  “Get rid of them,” Aumeier ordered.

  A kapo who was standing by unpicked Gustav’s star from his jacket, sepa‑

  rated the two triangles, and gave the red one back to him. The same was done to the other sixteen men, leaving them clutching their red triangles, utterly mystified.

  “You are political prisoners,” Aumeier announced. “There are no Jews in positions of authority here. From this moment you are all Aryans.”

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  And that was that. As far as the regime was concerned, Gustav Kleinmann was officially no longer a Jew. Nobody cared that he was still the same man, with the same birth, the same character, thoughts, and history. By the mere alteration of a list and a badge, Gustav Kleinmann was no longer a threat and burden to the German people. And there, neatly played out in one simple, self‑satirizing ritual, was the whole towering idiocy of Nazi racial ideology.

  From that moment, life for the Jews in Monowitz was transformed. The seventeen who had been Aryanized were now on a higher plane, and although they weren’t immune from punishment, they were safe from outright persecu‑

  tion and no longer disgusting in the eyes of the SS. From their positions as foremen and kapos, they were able to gain influence and help their fellow Jews acquire good positions. Gustl Herzog became a clerk in the prisoner records office, an enormously important position, and eventually rose to be its head functionary.6 This office was where the master list of Monowitz prisoners used at roll call was maintained, updated, and organized accordin
g to block and labor assignments. Gustl oversaw a staff of several dozen prisoners, most of them women, who undertook this mammoth clerical task. Jupp Hirschberg, who’d been a block senior in Buchenwald, became kapo of the SS headquarters garage, where staff cars and other vehicles were maintained and washed; he became privy to all manner of gossip from the officers’ chauffeurs, as well as intelligence about events in the wider camp and the world outside. Another Jew became a clerk assigned to labor detail organization, and another was made a block senior in the “re‑educational” enclosure of the camp where Soviet pris‑

  oners of war were kept. Others acquired jobs ranging from carpenters’ kapo to camp barber. Between them, they brought the conditions for other Jews to a new level of humaneness. They were able to speak out to prevent beatings, obtain decent rations, and resist the influence of the brutal green‑triangle kapos.

  For Gustav it meant his comfortable working life was given an additional security. There was no danger now of his being selected for the gas chambers, and so long as he continued to take reasonable care, he was safe from random acts of violence by the SS.

  But his change of status brought with it an unexpected complication. He and Fritz were now living in different blocks and would meet in the evenings to talk. They had grown so used to this arrangement that they thought nothing of it. One evening they were deep in conversation—reminiscing about the old days, weighing up the future, discussing their inner thoughts, exchanging news 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 192

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  about the camp—and failed to notice an SS Blockführer eyeing their intimate conversation with deep suspicion.

  He interrupted, jabbing at Fritz. “Jew‑pig, what do you think you’re doing, talking to a kapo like that?”