The Stone Crusher
Page 44
Finally, I am grateful to my literary agent, Andrew Lownie, for first bring‑
ing the Kleinmann story to my attention, and to Yuval Taylor of Chicago Review Press, for believing in the book and bringing his enthusiasm to the project. As ever, my partner, Kate, has provided the constant, patient moral support that has sustained me through every book I have ever written.
—Jeremy Dronfield, December 2017
294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 334
05/04/2018 14:02:18
N o t e s
Prologue
1. Moon phase data from www.timeanddate.com/moon/austria/amstetten
?month=1&year=1945.
Chapter 1: “When Jewish Blood Drips from the Knife . . .”
1. One occasion was in 1926, when Gustav was forced to come to a legal agreement to repay his creditor in installments ( Wiener Zeitung, September 12, 1926, p. 14; October 3, 1926, p. 1). The debt was held jointly with his brother‑in‑law and fel‑
low upholsterer, Rudolf Popper, who was married to Tini’s elder sister, Charlotte.
2. Due to shifting borders, Gustav’s home village of Zabłocie has at various times been in Silesia, but in his childhood it was in Galicia.
3. Im Werd means “in the island” in Middle High German. The island is the land between the Danube Canal and the river Danube, Vienna’s Second District, Leopold stadt, historically a center of Jewish settlement.
4. Printed in Die Stimme, March 11, 1938, p. 1; see also Gedye, Fallen Bastions, pp. 287–9 for an eyewitness account of events in Vienna that day.
5. Austria already had a form of Fascism in place; Schuschnigg’s Fatherland Front ruled repressively, suppressing not only the Nazi Party but also the Social Dem‑
ocrats and workers’ movements. However, it was not especially anti‑Semitic.
Estimates of the number of Jews in Austria vary; Gilbert ( Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust, p. 22) gives it as 183,000, while Bentwich (“Destruction,” p. 467) places it at 191,000, based on the 1934 census.
6. TIME cover story, March 21, 1938.
7. Die Stimme, March 11, 1938, p. 1. The notion of being “German” was about language and culture and had existed long before the country called Germany, created in 1871 from a cluster of independent kingdoms and duchies that did not include the German regions that were part of the Austro‑Hungarian Empire.
The newly unified state became the German Empire, which in 1918 became a republic.
335
294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 335
05/04/2018 14:02:18
336 N o t e s t o P a g e s 7 - 1 4
8. Some people of Jewish descent considered themselves entirely German; Peter Wall‑
ner, a Viennese, stated, “nor was I ever a Jew, though all four of my grandparents were Jewish.” But when the Nazis came he was persecuted with the rest; “For according to the Nuremberg Laws I am a Jew” (Wallner, By Order, pp. 17–18).
Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 a person was defined as Jewish, regardless of religion, if they had more than two Jewish grandparents.
9. Fritz Kleinmann recalls this in his 1997 interview, and remarks that his father kept his politics out of family life, especially after 1934.
10. Die Stimme, March 11, 1938, p. 1.
11. Jüdische Presse, March 11, 1938, p. 1. For both Jewish papers, that day’s edition would be the last they would ever print.
12. The scenes in the streets on this day are described by George Gedye ( Fallen Bastions, pp. 287–96), a British journalist for the Daily Telegraph and New York Times who lived in Vienna. The Austrian Youth (Österreichisches Jungvolk) was the youth arm of Schuschnigg’s Fatherland Front party. In 1938 it had about 350,000 members.
13. For this reason, Schuschnigg had cynically set the minimum age for voting in the plebiscite at twenty‑four; most Nazis were below that age.
14. The Times, March 11, 1938, p. 14; also Neues Wiener Tagblatt (Tages-Ausgabe), March 11, 1938, p. 1.
15. Gedye ( Fallen Bastions, pp. 290–3) describes the scenes as the evening progressed.
16. Gedye, Fallen Bastions, p. 290; The Times, March 12, 1938, p. 12.
17. Quoted in Gedye, Fallen Bastions, pp. 10, 293, and The Times, March 12, 1938, p. 12. According to The Times, newspapers in Berlin that evening claimed that Germany had quashed “treason” by the “Marxist rats” in the Austrian government who had been carrying out “harrowing cruelties” against the people, who were fleeing to the German border in large numbers. With these untruths the Nazis justified their move to take over Austria.
18. The synagogue that evening is described as “überfüllt”—overcrowded, jam‑
packed (Gold, Geschichte, p. 77). According to Gold the venue was the synagogue in Tempel gasse in the Second District, but Weinzierl (“Christen und Juden,”
pp. 197–8) states that it was the Stadttempel.
19. Gedye, Fallen Bastions, p. 295.
20. Ibid. The hostility to Catholics (and to some Protestant churches) stemmed from a long‑standing antagonism over issues such as Nazi attempts to suppress the Old Testament and de‑Judaize Christianity, as well as the churches’ recognition of non‑Aryan Christian converts and the Vatican’s condemnation of racism, plus continued interaction between Aryans and Jews in Catholic regions of Germany (Cesarani, Final Solution, pp. 114–6, 136).
21. Quoted in Cesarani, Final Solution, p. 148.
294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 336
05/04/2018 14:02:18
N o t e s t o P a g e s 1 6 - 2 2 337
22. Dutch, Thus Died Austria, pp. 231–2; see also Neues Wiener Tagblatt (Tages Ausgabe), March 12, 1938, p. 3; Banater Deutsche Zeitung, March 13, 1938, p. 5; The Times, March 14, 1938, p. 14.
23. Neues Wiener Tagblatt (Tages Ausgabe), March 12, 1938, p. 3.
24. Gedye, Fallen Bastions, p. 282.
25. Arbeitersturm, March 13, 1938, p. 5; The Times, April 17, 1938, p. 14.
26. It isn’t certain which police station this was. The most likely is Leopoldsgasse, a station of the Schutzpolizei Gruppenkommando Ost, the uniformed Reich police ( Reichsamter und Reichsbehörden in der Ostmark, p. 207, AFB).
27. Based on Fritz Kleinmann’s memoir; also testimony of Kurt Kleinmann and Edith’s son Peter Patten; additional details from various contemporary sources.
28. Evidence of Moritz Fleischmann, vol. 1, session 17, TAE; Berkley, Vienna, p. 259; Lowenthal, Jews of Germany, p. 430; see also The Times, March 31, 1938, p. 13; April 7, 1938, p.13.
29. Gedye, Fallen Bastions, p. 354.
30. The Times, April 8, 1938, p. 12; April 11, 1938, p. 11; also Gedye, Fallen Bastions, p. 9.
31. The Times, April 11, 1938, p. 12. Even the ballot paper itself was a work of propa‑
ganda, with a big circle in the center for yes and a little one off to the side for no.
32. The Times, April 12, 1938, p. 14.
33. The Times, April 9, 1938, p. 11.
34. The Times, March 23, 1938, p. 13; March 26, 1938, p. 11; April 30, 1938, p. 11.
35. Bentwich, “Destruction,” p. 470.
36. Ibid.; Rosenkranz, “Anschluss,” p. 484.
37. Concentration camps had been a part of the Nazi regime since 1933. Dachau, established in a disused factory, was the first dedicated concentration camp. By summer 1938 there were four major operational camps in Germany (plus some smal er ones): Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Flossenbürg, with several more opened shortly after, including Mauthausen in Austria, which opened in August 1938 (see Wachsmann, KL; Cesarani, Final Solution; Rees, The Holocaust).
It was initially to Dachau and Buchenwald that the Jews of Vienna were sent.
38. Reich Ministry of the Interior regulations, August 17, 1938, in Arad et al. Documents, pp. 98–99.
39. Testimony B.306, AWK.
40. One Jewish witness said: “During August in general people still went to cafés and cinemas, and in September it appeared as if the Jewish question had been forgot‑
&
nbsp; ten, even swastikas disappeared” (testimony B.95, AWK).
41. This was the story according to the Brussels correspondent for The Times (October 27, 1938, p. 13). Associated Press via the Chicago Tribune (October 27, 1938, p. 15) added the detail about the camera and increased the number of Nazis involved 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 337
05/04/2018 14:02:18
338 N o t e s t o P a g e s 2 2 - 3 0
to four, and added the anonymous claim that the Nazis had been knocked down and kicked.
42. Neues Wiener Tagblatt, October 26, 1938, p. 1.
43. Völkischer Beobachter, October 26, 1938, p. 1, quoted in Marrus, Origins, p. 585.
44. Neues Wiener Tagblatt, November 8, 1938, p. 1.
45. “Night of broken glass” is the usual translation, but “crystal” is more accurate.
46. Telegram from Reinhard Heydrich to all police headquarters, November 10, 1938, in Arad et al., Documents, pp. 102–4.
47. UK Consul‑General in Vienna, letter, November 11, 1938, in Foreign Office, Papers, p. 16.
Chapter 2: Traitors to the People
1. The Polizeiamt Leopoldstadt, headquarters of the local uniformed police, was at Ausstellungsstrasse 171 ( Reichsamter und Reichsbehörden in der Ostmark, p. 204, AFB).
2. Memoir of Fritz Kleinmann in Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, p. 188; additional details: witness testimonies B.24 (anon.), B.62 (Alfred Schechter), B.143
(Carl Löwenstein), AWK; also: testimonies of Siegfried Merecki (Manuscript 166
(156)), Margarete Neff (Manuscript 93 (205)) in Gerhardt and Karlauf, Night of Broken Glass; Wallner, By Order of the Gestapo.
3. UK Consul‑General in Vienna, letter, November 11, 1938, in Foreign Office, Papers, p. 16.
4. The exact number of documented arrests is 6,547 (Taylor, “Experts in Misery”? , p. 48).
5. B.62 (Alfred Schechter), AWK. At this time, Mauthausen camp was for convicts; Jews were not imprisoned there prior to the war, but it was believed at the time that they were (e.g. The Scotsman, November 14, 1938; cf. Wünschmann, Before Auschwitz, p. 183).
6. B.143 (Carl Löwenstein), AWK.
7. New York Times, November 15, 26, 1938, p. 1.
8. Quoted in Swiss National Zeitung, November 16, 1938.
9. Quoted by Kyle Jantzen in Mazzenga, American Religious Responses, p. 44.
10. Spectator, November 18, 1938, p. 836.
11. Westdeutscher Beobachter (Cologne), November 11, 1938.
12. Ibid.
13. Unnamed German newspaper, quoted by UK Consul‑General in Vienna, Novem‑
ber 11, 1938, in Foreign Office, Papers, p. 15.
14. Cesarani, Final Solution, p. 199.
15. Spectator, November 18, 1938, p. 836.
294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 338
05/04/2018 14:02:18
N o t e s t o P a g e s 3 0 - 3 6 339
16. Cesarani, Eichmann, p. 60ff. It was a position of enormous authority for a mere Untersturmführer (second lieutenant). Eichmann had only just been commissioned, having acquired his expertise with the SD while only a clerical NCO. In June he was promoted to Obersturmführer (first lieutenant).
17. Quoted in Cesarani, Final Solution, p. 207.
18. Rabinovici, Eichmann’s Jews; Cesarani, Final Solution, p. 147ff.
19. Évian invitation, quoted in Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, p. 248.
20. Spectator, July 29, 1938, p. 189.
21. Ibid., p. 190.
22. Spectator, August 19, 1938, p. 294.
23. Neues Wiener Tagblatt, November 16, 1938, p. 2.
24. Adolf Hitler, speech to the Reichstag, January 30, 1939, quoted in The Times, January 31, 1939, p. 14; also in Arad et al., Documents, p. 132.
25. Chicago Tribune, November 21, 1938, p. 2.
26. Chicago Tribune, November 20, 1938, p. 3.
27. Daily Telegraph, November 22, 1938; also House of Commons Hansard, November 21, 1938, vol. 341, cc1428–83.
28. Testimony B.226, AWK.
29. The Times, December 3–12, 1938.
30. Fritz Kleinmann, 1997 interview.
31. Manchester Guardian, December 15, p. 11; March 18, p. 18.
32. Letter from Leeds JRC to Overseas Settlement Dept., JRC, London, June 7, 1940, LJL. From whom the affidavits came isn’t known; the Kleinmanns had several rela‑
tives and friends in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts (see later chapters).
33. The Times, classified ads, 1938–9 passim.
34. London, Whitehall, p. 79.
35. The Times, November 8, 1938, p. 4.
36. It isn’t clear what the connection was. In his 1997 interview, Fritz Kleinmann is vague about it: The contact was “man von einem Burschen in unserem Haus.”
37. The system could only cope with investigating a limited number of applicants; women applying to be servants were easier to vet than men, and so over half of the Jews entering Britain in 1938–9 were women (Cesarani, Final Solution, p. 158).
Britain’s Home Office expedited the process by having Jewish refugee agencies process the applications, which increased the rate to four hundred a week (ibid., p. 214).
38. Letter from British Consul‑General, November 11, 1938, in Foreign Office, Papers, p. 15.
39. This building, at Wallnerstrasse 8, now houses the Vienna Stock Exchange.
40. Maier, Ruth Maier’s Diary, p. 110.
294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 339
05/04/2018 14:02:18
340 N o t e s t o P a g e s 3 6 - 4 8
41. M. Mitzmann, “A Visit To Germany, Austria and Poland in 1939,” document 0.2/151, YVP.
42. Ibid.
43. This is the probable reason. He states (in Doch der Hund, p. 70, and in unpublished notes) that his Kennkarte was issued in August 1939; for unknown reasons, the place of issue was Schwechat, a town on the outskirts of Vienna.
44. Stein, Buchenwald, pp. 115–6; Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, pp. 80–1.
45. Fritz recalled (1997 interview) that the third man was called Schwarz, although no record has been found of a person of that name living in Im Werd 11. Fritz was unable to recall the name of the fourth member of the group (the building’s Nazi leader).
46. The dialog here is from interviews given by Fritz and Kurt Kleinmann. They both recalled these scenes quite vividly.
47. Buchenwald personal record card 1.1.5.3/6283389, ITS.
Chapter 3: Blood and Stone: Konzentrationslager Buchenwald 1. This account is based primarily on Gustav Kleinmann’s diary and Fritz’s recol‑
lections, with additional circumstantial details from other sources (e.g., Werber, Saving Children, pp. 1–3, 32–6; Stein, Buchenwald, pp. 115–6; testimonies B.82, B.192, B.203, AWK).
2. Fritz Kleinmann (in Doch der Hund, p. 12) gives a figure of 1,048 Viennese Jews in this transport, but other sources (Stein, Buchenwald, p. 116) give 1,035.
3. Stein, Buchenwald, pp. 27–8.
4. The camp was intended to be called Konzentrationslager Ettersberg, but strident local objections to this appropriation of the cultural history of the place made Himmler relent and name it Buchenwald instead.
5. See e.g. testimony B.203, AWK.
6. KZ Buchenwald (its remains now preserved as a memorial) is 8.1 kilometers (5 miles) from Weimar train station. In October 1939 it was still in its initial expansion phase, having begun in July 1937.
7. Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, p. 15n.
8. Stein, Buchenwald, p. 35.
9. Buchenwald personal record cards 1.1.5.3/6283389, 1.1.5.3/6283376, ITS. There were no tattoos; this practice began at Auschwitz in November 1941 and was not employed at any other camps (Wachsmann, KL, p. 284).
10. Werber, Saving Children, p. 36.
11. Testimony B.192, AWK.
12. Protective custody, Schutzhaft, had been introduced in Germany in February 1933
(a month after Hitler came to power). Schutzhäftlinge were political prisoners.
/> 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 340
05/04/2018 14:02:18
N o t e s t o P a g e s 4 8 - 5 0 341
The basic concentration camp badge was an inverted triangle, the color of which denoted a category: red for political prisoners, green for criminals, pink for homo‑
sexuals, black for “asocials” (the disabled, addicts, Roma, pacifists, etc.), and purple for Jehovah’s Witnesses. For Jewish prisoners the category badge was combined with a second, yellow, triangle, making up a Star of David; if the Jewish prisoner didn’t fit into any of the other categories, both triangles were yellow.
13. Emil Carlebach, in Hackett, Buchenwald Report, pp. 162–3.
14. This is not the same as the “little camp” set up in 1943 to the north of the barracks (Stein, Buchenwald, pp. 149–51). There is a detailed description of the original little camp in 1939–40 by inmate Felix Rausch in Hackett, Buchenwald Report, pp. 271–6.
15. Hackett, Buchenwald Report, pp. 113–4. Following Kristallnacht, new arrivals totaled 10,098. However, the camp population actually decreased thereafter, with over 9,000 departures due to release, transfer, or death (about 2,000 deaths in total in 1938–9, not including those who died between Weimar and the camp; ibid., p. 109). The prisoner population of Buchenwald declined steeply from 1938–9, exploding again with the autumn 1939 intake (8,707 during September–October).
16. Gustav never revealed how he kept his diary hidden. Fritz wrote many years later:
“I know that my father risked his life with this diary. None of the other prisoners had encouraged him to do this, as he was putting not only himself but all of us at risk. And even today, questions remain unanswered: Where did my father hide the diary? How did he get it through the controls? . . . My father neither wished nor was able to burden me or the other prisoners with this knowledge” ( Doch der Hund, pp. 12–13). However, Gustav did reveal that at one point, when he was a room orderly in his barrack block, he hid it inside the bunks, and when he was on outdoor work details he generally carried it on his person (Fritz Kleinmann, 1997 interview).
17. This account is based primarily on Gustav Kleinmann’s diary and Fritz’s recol‑
lections, with additional circumstantial details from other sources (e.g. Hackett, Buchenwald Report; Stein, Buchenwald; testimony B.192, AWK).