The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz

by Jeremy Dronfield

  Gustav and Tini weren’t particularly religious, going to synagogue perhaps a couple of times a year for anniversaries and memorials, and like most Viennese Jews, their children bore Germanic rather than Hebraic names, yet they followed the Yiddish customs like everyone else. From Herr Zeisel the butcher Tini bought veal, thinly sliced for Wiener schnitzel; she had leftover chicken for the Shabbatfn2 evening soup, and from the farm stalls she bought fresh potatoes and salad; then bread, flour, eggs, butter … Tini progressed through the bustling Karmelitermarkt, her bag growing heavier. Where the marketplace met Leopoldsgasse, the main street, she noticed the unemployed cleaning women touting for work; they stood outside the Klabouch boarding house and the coffee shop. The lucky ones would be picked up by well-off ladies from the surrounding streets. Those who brought their own pails of soapy water got the full wage of one schilling.fn3 Tini and Gustav sometimes struggled to pay their bills, but at least she hadn’t been reduced to that.

  The pro-independence slogans were everywhere, painted on the pavements in big, bold letters like road markings: the rallying cry for the plebiscite – ‘We say yes!’ – and everywhere the Austrian ‘crutch cross’.fn4 From open windows came the sound of radios turned up high, playing cheerful patriotic music. As Tini watched, there was a burst of cheering and a roar of engines as a convoy of trucks came down the street, filled with uniformed teenagers of the Austrian Youth waving banners in the red-and-white national colours and flinging out more leaflets.7 Bystanders greeted them with fluttering handkerchiefs, doffed hats and cries of ‘Austria! Austria!’

  It looked as if independence was winning … so long as you took no notice of the sullen faces among the crowds. The Nazi sympathizers. They were exceptionally quiet today – and exceptionally few in number, which was strange.

  Suddenly the cheerful music was interrupted and the radios crackled with an urgent announcement – all unmarried army reservists were to report immediately for duty. The purpose, said the announcer, was to ensure order for Sunday’s plebiscite, but his tone was ominous. Why would they need extra troops for that?

  Tini turned away and walked back through the crowded market, heading for home. No matter what occurred in the world, no matter how near danger might be, life went on, and what could one do but live it?

  בן

  Across the city the leaflets lay on the waters of the Danube Canal, in the parks and streets. Late that afternoon, when Fritz Kleinmann left the Trade School on Hütteldorfer Strasse on the western edge of Vienna, they were lying in the road and hanging in the trees. Roaring down the street came column after column of lorries filled with soldiers, heading for the German border two hundred kilometres away. Fritz and the other boys watched excitedly, as boys will, as rows of helmeted heads sped past, weapons ready.

  At fourteen years old, Fritz already resembled his father – the same handsome cheekbones, the same nose, the same mouth with full lips curving like a gull’s wings. But whereas Gustav’s countenance was gentle, Fritz’s large, dark eyes were penetrating, like his mother’s. He’d left high school, and for the past six months had been training to enter his father’s trade as an upholsterer.

  As Fritz and his friends made their way homeward through the city centre, a new mood was taking hold of the streets. At three o’clock that afternoon the government’s campaigning for the plebiscite had been suspended due to the developing crisis. There was no official news, only rumours: of fighting on the Austrian–German border; of Nazi uprisings in the provincial towns; and, most worrying of all, a rumour that the Viennese police would side with local Nazis if it came to a confrontation. Bands of enthusiastic men had begun roaming the streets – some yelling ‘Heil Hitler!’ and others replying defiantly ‘Heil Schuschnigg!’ The Nazis were louder, growing bolder, and most of them were youths, empty of life experience and pumped full of ideology.8

  This sort of thing had been going on sporadically for days, and there had been occasional violent incidents against Jews;9 but this was different – when Fritz reached Stephansplatz, right in the very heart of the city, where Vienna’s Nazis had their secret headquarters, the space in front of the cathedral was teeming with yelling, baying people; here it was all ‘Heil Hitler’ and no counter-chant.10 Policemen stood nearby, watching, talking among themselves, but doing nothing. Also watching from the sidelines, not yet revealing themselves, were the secret members of the Austrian Sturmabteilung – the SA, the Nazi Party’s stormtroopers. They had discipline, and they had their orders; their time hadn’t yet arrived.

  Avoiding the knots of demonstrators, Fritz crossed the Danube Canal into Leopoldstadt, and was soon back in the apartment building, his boots clattering up the stairs to number 16 – home, warmth and family.

  משפחה

  Little Kurt stood on a stool in the kitchen, watching as his mother prepared the noodle batter for the chicken soup, the traditional Shabbat Friday meal. It was one of the few traditional practices the family maintained; Tini lit no candles, said no blessing. Kurt was different – only eight years old, he sang in the choir of the city-centre synagogue and was becoming quite devout. He’d made friends with an Orthodox family who lived across the hallway, and it was his role to switch on the lights for them on Shabbat evenings.

  He was the baby and the beloved; the Kleinmanns were a close family, but Kurt was Tini’s particular darling. He loved to help her cook.

  While the soup simmered, he watched, lips parted, as she whipped the egg batter to a froth and fried it into thin pancakes. This was one of his favourite cooking duties. The very best was Wiener schnitzel, for which his mother would gently pound the veal slices with a tenderizer until they were as soft and thin as velvet; she taught him to coat them in the dish of flour, the batter of beaten egg and milk, and finally the breadcrumbs; then she would lay them two by two in the pan of bubbling buttery oil, the rich aroma filling the little apartment as the cutlets puffed and crinkled and turned golden. Tonight, though, it was the smell of fried noodles and chicken.

  From the next room – which doubled as bedroom and living room – came the sound of a piano; Kurt’s sister Edith, eighteen years old, played well, and had taught Kurt a pleasant little tune called ‘Cuckoo’, which would remain in his memory forever. His other sister, Herta, aged fifteen, he simply adored; she was closer to him in age than Edith, who was a grown woman. Herta’s place in Kurt’s heart would always be as an image of beauty and love.

  Tini smiled at his earnest concentration as he helped her roll up the cooked egg, slicing it into noodles which she stirred into the soup.

  The family sat down to their meal in the warm glow of the Shabbat – Gustav and Tini; Edith and Herta; Fritz and little Kurt. Their home was small – just this room and the bedroom which they all shared (Gustav and Fritz in together, Kurt with their mother, Edith in her own bed, and Herta on the sofa); yet home it was, and they were happy here.

  Outside, a shadow was gathering over their world. That afternoon, a written ultimatum had come from Germany, insisting that the plebiscite be cancelled; that Chancellor Schuschnigg resign; that he be replaced by the right-wing politician Arthur Seyss-Inquart (a secret member of the Nazi Party) with a sympathetic cabinet under him. Hitler’s justification was that Schuschnigg’s government was repressing the ordinary Germans of Austria (‘German’ being synonymous with ‘Nazi’ in Hitler’s mind). Finally, the exiled Austrian Legion, a force of thirty thousand Nazis, must be brought back to Vienna to keep order on the streets. The Austrian government had until 7.30 p.m. to comply.11

  After dinner, Kurt had to hurry off to the Shabbat evening service at the synagogue. He was paid a schilling a time for singing in the choir (substituted by a chocolate bar on Saturday mornings), so it was an economic as well as a religious duty.

  As usual, Fritz escorted him; he was an ideal elder brother – friend, playmate and protector. The streets were busy this evening, but the unruly noise had subsided, leaving behind a sense of lurking malevolence. Usually Fritz would ac
company Kurt as far as the billiard hall on the other side of the Danube Canal – ‘You know your way from here, don’t you?’ – and head off to play billiards with his friends. But this evening that wouldn’t do, and they walked together all the way to the Stadttempel.

  Back in the apartment, the radio was playing. The programme was interrupted by an announcement. The plebiscite had been postponed. It was like an ominous tap on the shoulder. Then, a little after half past seven, the music broadcast was halted, and a voice declared: ‘Attention! In a few moments you will hear an extremely important announcement.’ There came a pause, empty, hissing; it lasted for three full minutes, and then Chancellor Schuschnigg came on. His voice wavered with emotion: ‘Austrian men and Austrian women; this day has placed us in a tragic and decisive situation.’ Every person in Austria who was near a radio at that moment listened intently, many with fear, some with excitement, as the chancellor described the German ultimatum. Austria must take its orders from Germany or be destroyed. ‘We have yielded to force,’ he said, ‘since we are not prepared even in this terrible situation to shed Germanic blood. We decided to order the troops to offer no serious …’ He hesitated ‘… to offer no resistance.’ His voice cracking, he gathered himself for the final words. ‘So I take my leave of the Austrian people, with a German word of farewell, uttered from the depths of my heart: God protect Austria.’12

  Gustav, Tini and their daughters sat stunned as the national anthem began to play. In the studio, unseen and unheard by the people, Schuschnigg broke down and sobbed.

  בן

  The sweet, exalting phrases of the ‘Hallelujah’, led by the cantor’s tenor and fleshed out by the voices of the choir, filled the great oval space of the Stadttempel, embracing the marble pillars and the gilded ornamentation of the tiered balconies in harmonious sound. From his place in the choir on the very top tier behind the ark,fn5 Kurt could look right down on the bimahfn6 and the congregation. It was far more crowded than usual, packed to bursting – people driven by uncertainty to seek comfort in their religion. The religious scholar Dr Emil Lehmann, unaware of the latest news, had spoken movingly about Schuschnigg, exalting the plebiscite, closing with the now deposed chancellor’s rallying cry: ‘We say yes!’13

  After the service, Kurt filed down from the balcony, collected his schilling and found Fritz waiting. Outside, the narrow cobbled lane was thronged with the departing congregation. From out here there was little to show the synagogue’s presence; it appeared to be part of a row of apartment houses – the main body was behind the façade, squeezed between this street and the next. While Leopoldstadt was nowadays the Jewish quarter of Vienna, this little enclave in the old city centre, where Jews had lived since the Middle Ages, was the cultural heart of Jewish life in Vienna. It was in the buildings and the street names – Judengasse, Judenplatz – and their blood was in the cobblestones and in the crevices of history, in the persecutions and the medieval pogrom that had driven them to live in Leopoldstadt.

  By day the narrow Seitenstettengasse was insulated from much of the noise of the city, but now, in the Shabbat evening darkness, Vienna was bursting to life. A short distance away, in the Kärtnerstrasse, a long thoroughfare on the other side of the Nazi enclave in Stephansplatz, a mob was gathering. The brown-shirted stormtroopers of the SA, free now to bring out their concealed weapons and put on their swastika armbands, were on the march. The police marched with them. Lorries rolled along filled with stormtroopers; men and women danced and yelled by the light of flaming torches.

  Across the city came the full-throated roar – ‘Heil Hitler! Sieg Heil! Down with the Jews! Down with the Catholics! One people, one Reich, one Führer, one victory! Down with the Jews!’ Raw, fanatical voices rose in song: ‘Deutschland über alles’ and chanted: ‘Today we have all Germany – tomorrow we have the world!’14 The playwright Carl Zuckmayer wrote that ‘The netherworld had opened its portals and spewed out its basest, most horrid, and filthiest spirits … What was being unleashed here was the revolt of envy; malevolence; bitterness; blind, vicious vengefulness.’15 A British journalist who witnessed it called the procession ‘an indescribable witches’ sabbath’.16

  Echoes reached the Seitenstettengasse, where the Jews outside the Stadttempel were dispersing. Fritz shepherded Kurt down the Judengasse and across the bridge. Within minutes they were back in Leopoldstadt.

  The Nazis were coming, along with hordes of newfound weathercock friends, flooding in tens of thousands through the city centre towards the Jewish district. The tide poured across the bridges into Leopoldstadt, washing into Taborstrasse, Leopoldsgasse, the Karmelitermarkt and Im Werd – a hundred thousand chanting, roaring men and women, filled with triumph and hate. ‘Sieg Heil! Death to the Jews!’ The Kleinmanns sat in their home, listening to the tumult outside, waiting for it to burst in through the door.

  But it didn’t come. For hours the mobs ruled the streets, all noise and fury, but doing little physical harm; some unlucky Jews were caught outdoors and abused; people who ‘looked Jewish’ were beaten up; known Schuschnigg loyalists were attacked; a number of homes and businesses were invaded and plundered, but the storm of destruction did not break over Vienna that night. Amazed, some people wondered whether the legendarily genteel nature of the Viennese people might temper the behaviour even of its Nazis.

  It was a vain hope. The reason for the restraint was simple: the stormtroopers were in charge, and they were disciplined, intending to strip and destroy their prey methodically, not by riot. Together with the police (now wearing swastika armbands), the SA took over public buildings. Prominent members of the governing party were seized or fled. Schuschnigg himself was arrested. But this was just a prelude.

  By next morning, the first columns of German troops had crossed the border.

  The European powers – Britain, France, Czechoslovakia – objected to Germany’s invasion of sovereign territory, but Mussolini, supposedly Austria’s ally, refused to consider any military action; he wouldn’t even condemn Germany. International resistance fell apart before it had even formed. The world left Austria to the dogs.

  And Austria welcomed them.

  אבא

  Gustav woke to the sound of engines. A low drone that entered his skull with the stealth of an odour and grew in volume. Aeroplanes. For a moment it was as if he were in the street outside his workshop: it was still yesterday; the nightmare had not happened. It was scarcely breakfast time. The rest of the family, apart from Tini, clattering quietly in the kitchen, were still in their beds, just stirring from their dreams.

  As Gustav rose and dressed, the droning grew louder. There was nothing to be seen from the windows – just rooftops and a strip of sky – so he put on his shoes and went downstairs.

  In the street and across the Karmelitermarkt there was little sign of the night’s terrors – just a few stray ‘Vote Yes!’ leaflets, trampled and swept into corners. The traders were setting out their stalls and opening their shops. Everyone looked to the sky as the rumbling engines grew louder and louder, rattling windows, drowning out the sounds of the streets. This wasn’t like yesterday at all – this was an oncoming thunderstorm. The planes came into view over the rooftops. Bombers, dozens of them in tight formation, with fighters darting loose above them. They flew so low that even from the ground their German markings could be picked out and their bomb-bay doors could be seen opening.17 A ripple of terror swept across the marketplace.

  What came out, though, was not bombs but another snowstorm of paper, fluttering down over the roofs and streets. Here was a political climate that produced actual weather. Gustav picked up one of the leaflets. It was briefer and simpler than yesterday’s message. At the head was the Nazi eagle, and a declaration:

  National Socialist Germany greets her National Socialist

  Austria and the new National Socialist government.

  Joined in a faithful, unbreakable bond!

  Heil Hitler!18

  The storm of engines was deafening. N
ot only the bombers but over a hundred transport planes flew over; while the bombers banked and circled, the others headed southeast. Nobody knew it yet, but these were troop-carrying aircraft, heading for Aspern Aerodrome just outside the city – the first German spearhead into the Austrian capital. Gustav dropped the slip of paper as if it were toxic and went back indoors.

  Breakfast was bleak that morning. From this day forward a spectre would haunt every move, word and thought of every Jewish person. They all knew what had happened in Germany in the past five years. What they didn’t yet know was that in Austria there would be no gradual onset; they would experience five years’ worth of terror in one frantic torrent.

  The Wehrmacht was coming, the SS and Gestapo were coming, and there were rumours that the Führer himself had reached Linz and would soon be in Vienna. The city’s Nazis were mad with excitement and triumph. The majority of the populace, wanting only stability and safety, began to sway with the times. Jewish stores in Leopoldstadt were systematically plundered by squads of SA stormtroopers, while the homes of wealthier Jews began to be raided and robbed. Envy and hatred against Jews in business, in skilled trades and in the legal and medical professions had built to a head during the economic depression, and the boil was about to be violently lanced.

  There was a myth that it wasn’t in the nature of the Viennese to conduct politics through street-fighting and rioting – ‘The real Viennese,’ they said in dismay as the Nazis filled the streets with noise and fury, ‘discusses his differences over a café table and goes like a civilized being to the polls.’19 But in due course ‘the real Viennese’ would go like a civilized being to his doom. The savages ruled this country now.