The Stone Crusher
Page 49
1. Mauthausen arrivals list, February 15, 1945, 1.1.26.1/1307365, ITS. Fritz jumped from the train on January 26, 1945 (per Gustav’s diary), but was not entered on the records at Mauthausen until February 15, 1945 (Mauthausen transport list, AMM‑Y‑50‑03‑16, PGM)—eleven days later than would be indicated by his own reckoning of his time in custody in St. Pölten. Gustav’s record of the escape date agrees (give or take one day) with the Mauthausen record, which indicates that Fritz’s transfer from Auschwitz officially took place on January 25 (Mauthausen prisoner record card, AMM‑Y‑Karteikarten, PGM). There is thus a gap of twenty‑
one days between Fritz’s official arrival at Mauthausen and his actual arrival.
2. Prisoner record card AMM‑Y‑Karteikarten, PGM; Mauthausen arrivals list, Febru‑
ary 15, 1945, 1.1.26.1/1307365, ITS. Mauthausen received no documentation from Auschwitz about the transport of prisoners (for reasons explained later in the chap‑
ter); hence the fact that Fritz was able to pass himself off as Aryan.
3. The liberation of Auschwitz attracted little attention in the international press at the time, despite Soviet attempts to publicize it (they were keen to propagandize it as an example of the inevitable end‑point of capitalism). In the eyes of the press it was a rerun of the previous summer’s revelations about Majdanek, and the whole 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 368
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affair was overshadowed by coverage of the climactic Yalta conference of Febru‑
ary 4–11. On February 16 (the day after Fritz Kleinmann entered Mauthausen) the first Western Allied serviceman to see inside Auschwitz after its liberation, Captain Robert M. Trimble of USAAF Eastern Command, was given a guided tour of Birkenau by Soviet officers (Trimble and Dronfield, Beyond the Call, p. 63ff.).
4. Prisoner record card AMM‑Y‑Karteikarten, PGM; Mauthausen arrivals list, Febru‑
ary 15, 1945, 1.1.26.1/1307365, ITS.
5. Testimony of local priest Josef Radgeb, quoted in museum guide at www
.mauthausen‑memorial.org/en/Visit/Virtual‑Tour#map||23 (retrieved July 10, 2017).
6. Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, p. 797.
7. According to an account cited in Czech, Auschwitz Chronicles, p. 797n, the trans‑
port reached Nordhausen on January 28. This seems highly unlikely, since it had arrived at Mauthausen on January 26 and was kept a whole day there. Gustav Kleinmann gives February 4 as the date, and in this part of his diary his dates are all accurate.
8. The figure of 766 comes from Gustav’s diary; the other figures are from Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, p. 797n.
9. Michael J. Neufeld in Megargee, USHMM Encyclopedia, vol. 1B, pp. 966–71.
10. Mittelbau‑Dora prisoner list, p. 434, 1.1.27.1/2536866, ITS.
11. Michael J. Neufeld in Megargee, USHMM Encyclopedia, vol. 1B, pp. 979–81.
12. According to Neufeld (in Megargee, USHMM Encyclopedia, vol. 1B, p. 980), this extremely early start was practiced during the summer months, but Gustav Kleinmann’s diary states that it was the case in February to March 1945.
13. A small camp had been established by this time at Woffleben (camp B‑12) to save the journey time for workers from Ellrich (Michael J. Neufeld in Megargee, USHMM Encyclopedia, vol. 1B, p. 981); however, Gustav and most of the other prisoners were not among those transferred here, and they continued having to make the journey to and from the site each day.
14. Michael J. Neufeld in Megargee, USHMM Encyclopedia, vol. 1B, pp. 969, 980. In his diary, Gustav gives Brinkmann’s first name as Hans; other sources give it as Otto.
15. Langbein, Against All Hope, pp. 374–5.
16. An alternative theory is that the SS intended to use the volunteers as decoys, to draw enemy fire while the real SS made their escape (Le Chêne, Mauthausen, p. 155).
17. Fritz makes no mention of this episode in either his written memoir or his 1997
interview and does not appear to have told his family about it after the war.
However, he did talk about it in a 1976 interview with fellow Austrian Auschwitz survivor and resistance member Hermann Langbein (Langbein, Against All Hope, p. 374).
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18. Prisoner record card AMM‑Y‑Karteikarten, PGM; Gusen II transfer list, March 15, 1945, 1.1.26.1/1310718; Mauthausen transfer list, March 15, 1945, 1.1.26.1/1280723; Gusen II prisoner register, p. 82, 1.1.26.1/1307473, ITS. Langbein’s sources ( Against All Hope, p. 384) indicate that the plan to infiltrate the SS units occurred in “mid‑
March” 1945, but the episode must have been in early March, before Fritz’s transfer to Gusen on March 15.
19. Robert G. Waite in Megargee, USHMM Encyclopedia, vol. 1B, pp. 919–21.
20. Gusen II transfer list, March 15, 1945, 1.1.26.1/1310718, ITS; Haunschmied et al., St Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen, pp. 144, 172. In his memoir ( Doch der Hund, p. 170), which is very sketchy at this point, Fritz erroneously identifies the aircraft as Me 109.
21. Haunschmied et al., St Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen, pp. 198, 210–1.
22. Quoted in Dobosiewicz, Mauthausen-Gusen: obóz zagłady, p. 384.
23. Dobosiewicz, Mauthausen-Gusen: obóz zagłady, p. 386.
24. Haunschmied et al., St Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen, p. 134ff.
25. Ibid., p. 219ff.
Chapter 20: The End of Days
1. Gustav gives no further details about Erich or his sources of food; presumably, as with Fritz Kleinmann’s system of contacts in the Buna Werke, it came from civilians employed in armament production in the tunnel complex.
2. Michael J. Neufeld in Megargee, USHMM Encyclopedia, vol. 1B, p. 980.
3. Ibid., p. 970.
4. Ibid., p. 980.
5. In his diary, Gustav writes that this stopover was at Schneverdingen, a town to the north of Munster. This seems unlikely, since it would have necessitated immedi‑
ately doubling back south to the ultimate destination, which was Bergen‑Belsen.
However, given the chaotic nature of concentration camp evacuations at this time, that would not be out of the question.
6. David Cesarani, “A Brief History of Bergen‑Belsen” in Bardgett and Cesarani, Belsen 1945, pp. 19–20.
7. Sington, Belsen Uncovered, pp. 14, 18, 28; Phillips, Trial, p. 195.
8. Langbein, People, p. 406.
9. Josef Rosenhaft, quoted in Sington, Belsen Uncovered, pp. 180–1; testimony of Harold le Druillenec in Phillips, Trial, p. 62.
10. Quoted in Sington, Belsen Uncovered, p. 182.
11. An American air raid on Celle on April 8 killed many concentration camp prisoners en route to Belsen; there followed a massacre of prisoners by local SS and towns‑
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witnessed, which was on the night of April 10/11. What he saw must have been fighting in the vicinity of Celle, which was liberated by British forces on April 12.
12. Testimony of Captain Derrick A. Sington in Phillips, Trial, pp. 47–53; Sington, Belsen Uncovered, pp. 11–3.
13. Testimony of Captain Derrick A. Sington in Phillips, Trial, pp. 47, 51; Sington, Belsen Uncovered, pp. 14–5.
14. Sington, Belsen Uncovered, p. 16.
15. Ibid., p. 18.
16. Ibid., p. 187.
17. The original message itself has not survived, but Edith did receive it. It told her little other than that her father was alive and in block 83 of Bergen‑Belsen (Sam‑
uel Barnet, letter to Leverett Saltonstall, June 1, 1945, War Refugee Board 0558
Folder 7: Requests for Specific Aid, FDR).
18. Molly Silva Jones in “Eyewitness Accounts” in Bardgett and Cesarani,
Belsen 1945, p. 57.
19. Major Dick Williams, “The First Day in the Camp” in Bardgett and Cesarani, Belsen 1945, p. 30.
20. Ben Shepard, “The Medical Relief Effort at Belsen” in Bardgett and Cesarani, Belsen 1945, p. 39.
21. Molly Silva Jones in “Eyewitness Accounts” in Bardgett and Cesarani, Belsen 1945, p. 55.
22. Gerald Raperport in “Eyewitness Accounts” in Bardgett and Cesarani, Belsen 1945, pp. 58–9.
23. Haunschmied et al., St Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen, p. 219ff; Dobosiewicz, Mauthausen- Gusen: obóz zagłady, p. 387.
24. It is unclear how many prisoners were herded into the Kellerbau tunnels, partly because of widely varying figures for the number of prisoners in the Mauthausen complex at the time. The total prisoner population of Mauthausen and Gusen has been given variously as 21,000 (Robert G. Waite in Megargee, USHMM
Encyclopedia, vol. 1B, p. 902), 40,000 (Haunschmied et al., St Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen, p. 203), and 63,798 (Le Chêne, Mauthausen, pp. 169–70). Fur‑
thermore, not all went to the tunnels—such as the seven hundred who were too sick to be moved.
25. Fritz Kleinmann in Doch der Hund, p. 171; Langbein, Against All Hope, p. 374; Le Chêne, Mauthausen, p. 165.
26. Krisztián Ungváry, “The Hungarian Theatre of War” in Frieser, Eastern Front, pp. 950–4.
27. Le Chêne, Mauthausen, pp. 163–4.
28. George Dyer, quoted in Le Chêne, Mauthausen, p. 165.
29. Haunschmied et al., St Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen, p. 226.
30. Quoted in Langbein, Against All Hope, p. 82.
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31. In his diary, Gustav erroneously identifies this place as Ostenholz, a village to the southwest of Bergen‑Belsen, well away from the route he and Josef Berger took, which did not have a POW camp near it.
Chapter 21: The Long Way Home
1. Samuel Barnet, letter to Leverett Saltonstall, June 1, 1945, War Refugee Board 0558 Folder 7: Requests for Specific Aid, FDR.
2. O’Dwyer, letter to Samuel Barnet, June 9, 1945, War Refugee Board 0558 Folder 7: Requests for Specific Aid, FDR.
3. Fritz does not identify the hospital, but it must have been the 107th EH, which established a facility at Regensburg on April 30, 1945, and remained there until May 20 (www.med‑dept.com/unit‑histories/107th‑evacuation‑hospital; retrieved July 16, 2017). No other American military hospital units have been identified in Regensburg at that time.
4. In later years, Fritz recorded the names and fates of fifty‑five Jewish and non‑Jewish children who had been playmates in the Karmelitermarkt before 1938 ( Doch der Hund, p. 179). Of the twenty‑five Jews, five, including Fritz himself, survived the camps, and eight, including Kurt and Edith Kleinmann, either emigrated or hid.
Twelve were murdered in the concentration camps. Of the thirty non‑Jewish children, nineteen stayed in or around Vienna throughout the war, and eleven served in the Wehrmacht during the war; of these, only three survived.
5. Gustav had apparently taken up smoking since leaving Auschwitz; Fritz mentions that his father had no use for his bonus coupons because he neither smoked nor wished to use the brothel.
6. Gustav gives the women’s names as Elly Offermann and Gerti Zimmermann, but no further information about them. He doesn’t name any of his other traveling companions, except for one, identified only in one place as “G.”
7. Gustav names one of them as Fritz Heymann; this may be a mistaken reference to Stefan Heymann. There was a Fritz Heymann in Monowitz, but neither Fritz nor Gustav Kleinmann ever refer to him in their writings.
8. Gustav identifies this man only as “G.”
Epilogue: Jewish Blood
1. Naturalization records for Richard and Edith Patten, May 14, 1954: Connecticut District Court Naturalization Indexes, 1851‑1992: NARA microfilm publication M2081.
2. On their testimony for the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials given in 1963, Gustav gave his religion as “Mosaic” (Jewish) and Fritz as “no religious affiliation” (Abt 461
Nr 37638/84/15904–6; Abt 461 Nr 37638/83/15661–3, FTD).
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3. Statistics given in Gold, Geschichte der Juden, pp. 133–4.
4. Israelitische Kultusgemeinde list of surviving Jews in Vienna, 1946, 3.1.1.3/78805412, ITS. This document gives Gustav’s address as Im Werd 9 (Olly’s building) and Fritz’s as Im Werd 11 (their old home) but doesn’t give apartment numbers.
5. Displaced person registration card for Gustav Kleinmann, file 1655, AJJ.
6. Pendas, Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, pp. 101–2.
7. Trials of Burger et al. and Mulka et al., Frankfurt, 1963; testimony of Gustav Klein‑
mann (Abt 461 Nr 37638/84/15904–6, FTD) and Fritz Kleinmann (Abt 461 Nr 37638/83/15661–3, FTD). Gustav was interviewed mainly about the death march and camp senior Jupp Windeck; Fritz’s statement is mostly concerned with Win‑
deck and SS‑Sergeant Bernhard Rakers.
8. Along with his father’s diary and commentaries by Reinhold Gärtner, Fritz’s memoir was included in the book Doch der Hund will nicht krepieren (Innsbruck University Press, 1995, 2012).
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I n d e x
able‑bodied (categorization), 26–27, 29
Death Block, 173
Abraham (SS‑Sergeant), 115, 126
evacuation, 261
Acker (civilian worker), 239
resistance, 205–206
Action 14f13, 124–125
tattoos, 172–173
Action 14f14, 126–128
transfer from Buchenwald, 156–158
air raids, 238, 240, 249–250, 257–259
work at, 174–177
Aleksiak, Johann, 166, 167
during WWI, 162, 165, 174
Ansbacher, Walter, 242
Auschwitz II‑Birkenau concentration
Anschluss, 15–17, 30
camp
anti‑Semitism
bombing of, 252
Austria, 20–21, 168
evacuation, 269
of friends and neighbours, 18, 25,
as killing machine, 173, 234–236
38, 74, 321
theft and rape at, 184
Hungarian army, 297
Auschwitz III–Monowitz concentra‑
Hungary, 234
tion camp
immigration policies of West,
as administrative hub, 226
31–32, 71, 99–100, 120
air raids, 238, 257–258
Polish orderlies in Auschwitz,
barbering, 201
173–174
barrack conditions, 180, 184
Soviet Union, 164
black market, 201
as systematized, 22
block 7, 194–195
Vienna, 8, 16–17, 18, 21, 319–320
bonus coupons, 232, 255
Arlt (SS‑Lieutenant), 147–149
brothel, 232–233
Arndt, Rudi, 98
“Canada,” 227
“asocial” prisoners, 195
coat making, 244–245
Aumeier, Hans, 172, 173, 191
contraband, 244
Auschwitz I concentration camp
dentist, 201
air raids, 252
description of, 193–194
arrival at, 170–177
disease, 200
375
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376 I n d e x
escape, 246–248, 252
Austrian Sturmabteilung (SA), 11,
evacuation, 261–263
exchange of badges, 191–192
186–187
families at, 236
Avoda summer camp, 122
feet, 200–201
hangings in, 248–249
Baer, Richard, 288
hospital, 210, 212, 261–262
ballistic missiles, 287
informers, 220–221
Barnet, David, 113, 122
leaving, 1
Barnet, Philip, 113, 122
life expectancy at, 202
Barnet, Samuel, 111–113, 121–122,
liquidation of prisoners, 251
131, 318
location of, 178–179
Battle Group Auschwitz, 205–206
messages carriers, 240–241 ( see also
Battle of Britain, 84
Wocher, Alfred)
Bauer, Fritz, 323
new prisoners, 188, 227, 233–234
Beck, Fritz, 221
Becker (SS‑Sergeant), 92
orchestra, 222
Belgium, 22–23
prisoners of war, 243, 251–252
Bergen‑Belson concentration camp
resistance, 202–206, 242, 244–249,
burying bodies, 302
250–251
liberation, 297–302
roll call, 206–207, 220, 222, 237, 261
number of deaths, 295
showering, 199–200
starvation, 296–297
starvation, 200, 242
Berger, Josef, 307
toilet paper, 200
Berkovits, Jenö, 244
work at, 179–183, 185, 186–187,
Berkovits, Laczi, 244
188–191, 204–205, 222, 237, 238 Bienenwald, Alfred, 71
Austria. see also Vienna
Birkenau concentration camp. see
after war, 318
Auschwitz II‑Birkenau concen‑
Allies closing in, 305–306
tration camp
anti‑Semitism, 20–21, 168
Blank, Johann, 53–54, 81–82
army of, 161–167
Blies, Ludwig, 56, 64
independence, 6–8, 9–10, 12–13,
Blutstrasse/Blood Road, 45–46
18–19, 20, 321
Bolshevism. see communists
Nazi Germany invasion, 15–17
Boplinsky, Petrek, 179–180, 183
Nazi sympathizers, 12, 14, 15, 17–18
Brinkmann, Otto, 288
Nazi uprising, 10–11, 12–13, 14–15
Britain
Austria‑Hungary, 162, 167–168