Hanns and Rudolf

by Thomas Harding

  Six companies were raised at Kitchener Camp, numbering around three hundred men. The men were given basic training: taken on runs around the camp, ordered to march in formation—called “square-bashing” by the men—and taught the basic instructional commands as well as how to polish their boots. There was no gun or rifle practice, for the men of the Pioneer Corps were not to be trusted with weapons. Only the British officers were armed; therefore the entire company’s arms amounted to five .303 rifles and five 9mm Smith & Wesson revolvers.

  On May 11, 1940, the day after Holland fell to Germany, Hanns and his company arrived in Bruz, France, as part of the British Expeditionary Force. There, they spent the next four weeks performing manual labor—digging ditches, offloading trains and building roads—and, given their lack of arms, hoping to avoid any action.

  Then, in June, the German forces pushed into western France, trapping the British around the French port of Dunkirk, and forcing the evacuation of over 300,000 Allied soldiers by a flotilla of public and private watercraft. One of the last units to be picked up, Hanns and his company found themselves waiting on the lush grassy racecourse in St. Malo, on a hot summer’s day. Most of the men had removed their jackets and napped on the ground, while other soldiers played cards in the shade offered by some pollarded willows. Hanns could hear gunfire from the German front line three miles away, and grew increasingly nervous that he would never make it back to England. To make matters worse, his name and place of birth had been written on his identification papers: “Hanns Herman Alexander. Born Berlin, 1917.” If caught, he knew that he would be shot. So Hanns and a few friends lit a bonfire and burned all their documents. They were now without identity.

  When it was finally their turn to go, German troops were already taking possession of the town’s suburbs. The Pioneers marched to the boat under a hail of rotten vegetables thrown by St. Malo residents, enraged that they were being abandoned to the Germans. The men of 93 Company left the harbor that evening on a sea that was absolutely calm. They were fortunate, for the boat was loaded so high with soldiers that the deck bobbed only inches above the waterline. Sitting cross-legged on the roof of the cockpit, the twins enjoyed a side of roast beef and a bottle of red wine, which they had “liberated” from a local shop, celebrating their last-minute departure.

  Upon arrival in England, the entire 93 Company boarded a train to the site of their new encampment, Alexandra Palace in north London. A few days later, Hanns asked his commanding officer, Lord Reading, if he might change his name to something sounding less German. He did not want to do so officially, by deed poll, he said, in case the Germans were monitoring such changes in the British papers where they were published, but he wanted his army documents to reflect his new identity. Reading thought this a sensible idea and within a few days was able to obtain permission from London. Hanns was then issued a new set of identity papers in the name of Howard Hervey Alexander, the middle name chosen not because of some affinity to unusual English forenames, but because he did not know how to spell “Harvey.”

  Hanns did not view the change as significant. Changing his name was an act of self-preservation. His family continued to call him “Hanns” and he would forever sign his name “H. H. Alexander,” which worked for both the old and the new identities. But the name change would cause some confusion, and from this point on, he would be addressed in a variety of ways, “Hanns,” “Howard” and “Alex” being the most common. Paul elected to keep his name, arguing that “Paul Alexander” sounded sufficiently English.

  In early July 1940, Hanns and Paul, who were still serving in the same unit, obtained leave and took a train to the small village of Chalfont St. Peter, in Buckinghamshire, to visit their sister Bella. It was a bright summer’s day and the family ate lunch outside, sitting at trestle tables that had been set up under a tree. After lunch, Bella’s two sons—seven-year-old Peter and four-year-old Tony—showed their uncles a pit in the garden. It was a six-foot-deep hole that had been dug for an Anderson air-raid shelter. The British government had recently advised the nation that air attacks were likely, and Bella had decided it was time to prepare their own family shelter. The men who had been working on it had gone home for the weekend, and seeing an opportunity for a prank, Hanns and Paul grabbed the two young boys, dropped them into the hole and then walked away. At first Peter and Tony thought the lark funny, but when they tried to climb out they found that the hole was just too deep. They called out for help, but nobody came. As the minutes ticked by they became increasingly alarmed and Tony started screaming. Peter, who was extremely fond of both his uncles, did not think the prank funny either. Hanns and Paul did not return to rescue them for twenty minutes.

  A few days later, the twins returned to their unit, which was still camped out at Alexandra Palace. From there they were separated. With the British anxious that the Germans were about to invade, Hanns was allotted a series of assignments aimed at bolstering his adopted nation’s defenses. In Newbury he stocked food supplies for the troops preparing for combat. In Cirencester he cleared a wood that was to be used as a training ground. In Weymouth he fixed the breakwater that protected the nearby naval base in Portland. The work was tedious, frustrating and backbreaking. Yet while it was not what he had imagined when he had enlisted, at least he was doing his duty, and he was able to arrange his leave so that he could return home for the Jewish holidays.

  Meanwhile, the other German Jews in England were not so fortunate. In May 1940, the British government, shocked by recent German military victories in France, had introduced a policy of mass internment for refugees who had recently arrived on its shores. Now viewed as potential spies and “enemy aliens,” these refugees were arrested, with the prospect of deportation to the Caribbean, Canada or Australia. Around 27,000 people—all male and mainly Jewish refugees from Nazi oppression—were now rounded up and placed in internment camps, a policy which the prime minister, Winston Churchill, defended by saying that it was necessary to “collar the lot.”

  As privates in the British Army, Hanns and Paul were of course exempt from internment, unlike their poor brother-in-law Erich Hirschowitz, who had by now adopted the name Harding and was also a refugee from Berlin. On July 19, 1940, Erich was arrested at his place of work and taken to Tottenham Police Station, where, for the first and only time in his life, he spent a night in the cells. The next day he was driven to his small flat in west London, where he gathered a few items and was then loaded onto a coach along with thirty other refugees. Five hours later they arrived at Prees Heath, a hastily erected internment camp near Whitchurch in Shropshire, close to the Welsh border. This “camp” was, however, no more than a desolate field surrounded by barbed wire. At its center stood a dozen or so large white canvas tents, open at one end, containing long wooden benches and tables, plus offices, a kitchen and toilets. Conditions at Prees Heath were basic, with no running water and minimal rations.

  As soon as they arrived, the internees were told that they could go free if they joined the Pioneer Corps. Erich agonized over whether he should follow his brothers-in-law’s lead, and enlist with the British Army. But he wasn’t convinced that doing so was the best way to help his adopted country. Elsie agreed, arguing that it was, if anything, Erich’s duty to grow his leather business. In one letter Elsie explained how Hanns and Paul were filling their time in the Pioneers:

  20 August 1940

  Erich,

  I hope you are all right and I wish so much to have you back. I saw Hanns this afternoon. He is so busy he can hardly see us. In the morning he played darts, in the afternoon ping-pong. At 5:30 he had a date with a girl, and at 8 with another. Then he is going to Oxford and tomorrow he oversleeps. What a life, they get bored stiff. He telephoned Paul today who is back with the company and waiting for Hanns there, and he too does not know how to fill his days. How very idiotic!

  Lots of love, Elsie

  Erich was finally released four months later, on November 9, 1940, following the British gover
nment’s realization that the German refugees were unlikely to pose any threat. He returned to his family and started working once again in the leather business, sticking to his position that it would be more productive than serving with the Pioneers.

  Hanns thought this decision cowardly. But the truth is that no one knew at the time whether it would be Erich or Hanns and Paul who would contribute more to the war effort.

  *

  During 1941 and 1942, the Alexanders somehow managed to contact their friends and family in Germany. They received news by letter, which could still be sent through, or by word of mouth, carried by a friend or acquaintance newly arrived in England.

  One person they were all concerned about was the steely Cäcilie Bing. At sixty-nine, Auntie Bing didn’t feel she could cope with the adjustment of moving to an English-speaking country. On November 11, 1941, she wrote to her cousin in New York, describing the fate of some she knew, confirming who was alive and asking questions about others she had not heard from. She ended the letter: “My eyes are growing tired and my hands are shaking so I must finish. I look forward to hearing from you soon. I know that you will provide all the help you can, wishing you all the best . . . Cäcilie Bing.”

  The letter made it all the way to America, and then to London, despite being inspected by the censor. That was the last they had heard from Auntie Bing. Reports of roundups, deportations and Nazi concentration camps had started appearing in newspapers in Britain and America earlier that year; indeed Hanns knew that Ann’s father had spent some time in Sachsenhausen, and while the details were murky and often contradictory, the idea that Auntie Bing had been taken to one of these places was frightening. Hanns hoped that she was still living in Frankfurt.

  *

  Hanns and Paul understood that the only way they were going to be treated with respect by the British Army was to become officers. By the end of 1942 they had spent two years in the army performing little more than manual labor. They had seen as much fighting as their brother-in-law Erich, who continued to sell leather from his workshop in east London. It was then that the twins’ applications were finally accepted and they were sent to the Officer Cadet Training Unit in Lincolnshire.

  They arrived at OCTU on January 3, 1943. The first four weeks comprised theoretical training. They were taught about field tactics, communications, giving and receiving orders, and, perhaps most important, how to discipline those under their command. Then they were faced with “battle drills and tactics,” which meant running through rivers and crawling through mud, sometimes during the night, demonstrating how they might lead while experiencing physical hardship. Hanns told his parents, “We are not looking forward to it but that won’t help much. We will try our best but we have both decided that we won’t kill ourselves, it is quite strenuous but if the others, who are most of them much older, can do it, why should not we?”

  Two months later they graduated and, following the army rule that officer siblings could not serve in the same company, they were again separated, with Paul assigned to the British Army’s Northern Command and Hanns assigned to the Southern. Both now lieutenants, they were delighted to have finally won the respect they felt they deserved, and wore their guns with pride. The newly commissioned officers joined their units, and awaited orders.

  It was not until July 20, 1944, that Hanns, now part of 239 Company, finally returned to France as part of the Normandy landing, the first stage of the Allied ground attack on Germany. Even though he reached French soil six weeks after the first American and British soldiers had fought for control of the Normandy beaches near the small town of Arromanches, the area was still a hub of activity: thousands of soldiers swarmed around the sand on Gold Beach; long lines of men carried supplies from the enormous man-made harbor up the low grassy cliffs a hundred yards from the breaking surf; teams of men, their trousers rolled up above the knee, unloaded tanks and armored vehicles; troops, who had been living on the beach for some time, ran in formation along the water’s edge. By the war’s end, this beachhead would act as a gateway for over 2,500,000 soldiers.

  Hanns and his company were asked to supervise a small group of German officers who had been captured the day before. They held the POWs in an open field without barbed wire. The only boundaries to this makeshift camp were white anti-mine ribbons that they had strung between some trees. These German Jews, who had been forced out of their homes and were now wearing British uniforms, were tasked with controlling their oppressors. It was a strange, awkward situation.

  Two weeks after Hanns’s arrival in France, Paul’s company disembarked onto the beach. Paul immediately started looking for his identical twin. He walked around aimlessly for a few minutes before a private came up to him and saluted.

  “Have you seen me recently?” asked Paul.

  “Over there,” said the man, pointing down the shore. “Five minutes ago.”

  Paul found Hanns taking part in a parade a few hundred yards down the beach.

  “Which one of you is mine?” shouted Hanns’s major.

  “I am,” said Paul, feeling cheeky.

  “You are mine?”

  “No, I am,” replied Hanns. The twins hadn’t had this much fun since swapping classrooms back in Berlin.

  After a few hours together, Hanns and Paul went their separate ways: Paul to Caen, where he was to load and unload railway supplies, Hanns to the medical units that operated out of a sea of enormous cream-colored canvas tents known as “Harley Street.” There he was put in charge of the non-medical orderlies, which meant organizing the stretcher carriers and scheduling the cleanup crews. His biggest problem was a lack of food and drink. They had packets of dried potatoes, for instance, which were inedible without drinkable water. With so many mouths to feed and an overstretched supply chain, Arromanches was a logistical nightmare. The soldiers on the ground would simply have to make do until the next supply ship arrived.

  A few weeks later, Hanns learned that Paul’s company was close by and sent word that they should meet in a cafe on the main square of Bayeux, a small town near Arromanches. Hanns was delayed, however, and arrived a little after 7 p.m. He walked past the empty round tables on the street’s edge and into the cafe, which, though dimly lit, was filled with laughter and smoke; it was Friday night and people were ready to part with the money in their pockets.

  With Paul nowhere to be seen, Hanns ordered a beer and asked a British officer standing at the bar if he had seen anybody who looked liked him.

  “Yes, I did,” said the officer. “He left a message. He said he was sorry he had to leave and he’ll meet you at seven tomorrow night.”

  The officer invited Hanns to drink with his friends at a table in the corner. Hanns sat next to a woman named Jenine, a petite young brunette in a flowery dress that fell to just below her knees.

  “Enchanté,” he said.

  This was one of the four French words he knew. Jenine smiled back and continued her conversation with the person next to her. A few hours later the group staggered back to her house for dinner and Hanns, who had barely exchanged a word with his host all evening, was invited to spend the night.

  The next evening Paul was waiting at the agreed time by the bar in the cafe when his twin walked in.

  “What happened to you yesterday?” asked Paul.

  Hanns apologized for his lateness, and explained what had happened. “All I had to say was “enchanté” to a girl and I slept with her!”

  “That’s not surprising,” laughed Paul, “I was chatting her up all afternoon.”

  This was September 1944. The Allies now had a foothold on the European continent. Before the war would end they would need to capture the rest of France, Belgium and the Netherlands, and then move into Germany and Berlin. Hanns’s war was about to become much more serious.

  9

  RUDOLF

  OŚWIĘCIM, UPPER SILESIA

  1942

  * * *

  The first trainload of Jews to be transported to Auschwitz arrived
in the spring of 1942. Tired and disorientated by their journey, these men, women and children were taken off the train in Birkenau, where those judged able to work were led away, and the rest were marched six hundred yards to one of the small farmhouses at the back of the camp. Here they were told to undress behind specially erected screens, all the while unaware of the fate that awaited them. On one of the farmhouse doors had been written the words “Disinfection Room,” and towards this the guards directed the prisoners, telling them, with the assistance of interpreters, that they should remember where they had stowed their luggage so that they could locate it after being deloused. Now naked, the prisoners were ushered into the disinfection room, two or three hundred at a time, before the doors were screwed tight. Then guards on the roof dropped two canisters of granulated Zyklon B into the room below. After ten minutes all the prisoners were dead. An hour later, the doors were opened by the Sonderkommandos—Jewish prisoners forced to assist with the operations—who pulled gold teeth and rings from the bodies, and piled them high in deep pits next to the farmhouses. With one hundred bodies in each pit, they were set on fire using old bits of cloth doused in gasoline. Once the bodies were aflame, additional corpses were added. As they burned, fat from the bodies was collected from the edges of the pit using metal buckets and added to the top of the pile to accelerate the inferno. The fires took seven or eight hours to burn out. Once cooled, any remaining bones were removed by the Sonderkommandos and crushed using heavy wooden pestles on flat concrete mortars. The resulting ash was then loaded onto trucks and dumped in the River Vistula a few miles away.