The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz

by Jeremy Dronfield

  Although Auschwitz had achieved a kind of industrial perfection, as a machine it was flawed, inefficient and liable to failure. Its very brutality created in some a will to resist, and its corruption produced the cracks and flaws which allowed resistance to thrive.

  During his first summer in Auschwitz-Monowitz, when Jupp Windeck’s dominance was at its height, the resilience and moral indignation which were defining parts of Fritz’s character led him to become involved in the resistance. In doing so he was putting his life in jeopardy. But he did that every day just by existing; every little scrape or misplaced glance or bout of freezing weather or contact with disease could start a chain reaction leading to incapacity and death. By resisting, it was at least possible to risk everything for something.

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  It began with a conversation in a quiet corner of the barrack and ended in a new job.

  Construction work in the camp was complete by summer 1943, and the need for builders at the Buna Werke was declining. Fritz was at risk of outliving his usefulness. Certain friends of his decided that he could both be preserved and be of use to them. They took him aside and spoke to him in utmost secrecy.

  They were Buchenwalders he’d known for years. There was Stefan Heymann, Jewish intellectual, war veteran and communist, who’d been like a second father to Fritz and the other boys. Also present was Gustl Herzog, along with Erich Eisler, an Austrian antifascist. They had a task for Fritz – a vital and potentially dangerous one.

  Throughout their years in the camps, these men had been involved in a covert Jewish–communist alliance against the SS. Their resistance consisted mainly of acquiring positions of influence in order to gain information useful to their comrades’ welfare and survival. It was partly through the efforts of this network that Fritz and Gustav had been moved to less dangerous work details, that Robert Siewert’s builders’ school had been set up, and that Fritz had learned of the contents of his mother’s last letter and had advance warning that his father was listed for Auschwitz.

  The resistance had re-established itself in Monowitz, placing its members in important functionary jobs thanks to the Aryanization of friends such as Gustav. But now they felt that they ought to escalate their activities. Acts of minor sabotage were all very well; Fritz participated in such acts on the building sites – a bag of cement dropped heavily so that it burst, a running hose surreptitiously hooked over the side of a truck loaded with cement – but the organized resistance wanted to do more.

  Information was the key. Functionary prisoners were able to obtain all manner of intelligence about the other Auschwitz satellite camps, prisoner movements, selections and mass killings.8 Now they wanted Fritz to help them open up another valuable source: civilian workers. It would involve having him transferred to one of the factory details inside the Buna Werke. He’d shown himself good at making friends with civilians, and thousands of them worked in the factories. A place was found for him in Schlosserkommando 90 – the locksmith section of the construction command.

  And so it happened one morning that, for the first time since arriving in Monowitz, Fritz went beyond the camp perimeter, marching with the labour force and their SS guards out of the gates, across the main road and along the lane leading to the Buna Werke.

  Only upon entering the site did he realize just how vast it was. The whole complex was a grid of streets and railway spurs. A person standing on one of the main east–west streets could scarcely make out its far end in the haze nearly three kilometres away. The cross-streets, running north–south, were more than a kilometre long. The rectangular lots were packed with factory buildings, chimneys, workshops, depots, oil and chemical storage tanks, and weird structures of pipework looking like truncated sections of fairground rides. The complex was divided into sections: the synthetic oil plant with all its supporting workshops, the Buna rubber factory, the power plant and smaller subsections to manufacture and process chemicals. Most of it was still half-dormant – the structures built but the internal workings far from complete.

  Several thousand men and women worked in the factories. About a third were prisoners, the rest civilians. The locksmith section – which in fact undertook a variety of metalworking jobs in its workshop and around the factories – turned out to be a friendly, easy-going team. The prisoners were treated kindly by most of their kapos, and encouraged to ‘work with the eyes’, taking it slow while keeping a sharp eye out for the slave drivers.9 Fritz’s kapo was a sympathetic political prisoner, a former Dachau man, who had helped arrange his work placement for the resistance.

  Fritz was made a general assistant in a subsection on one of the main factory floors,10 where there were a great number of German civilians – mostly engineers, technical workers and foremen. The majority of their labourers were Polish and Russian prisoners, who found it hard to follow instructions in German and were treated abominably by their kapos. If the civilian foremen weren’t satisfied with the workers’ performance, IG Farben had them sent to Auschwitz I for ‘re-education’. German-speaking prisoners had it much easier; Fritz became known to the civilian foremen, and gained their trust.

  He developed a sympathetic relationship with one in particular. Again he received discreet gifts of bread and cigarettes, or occasionally a newspaper. From time to time the German stopped by for a brief chat, and Fritz listened eagerly to his news about the war, which flatly contradicted the propaganda. Things were going badly for Germany on all fronts; having lost Stalingrad, they were being battered ferociously in the east, besides getting kicked out of North Africa by the British and Americans, who would soon be in Italy and driving north towards Germany. It was clear to Fritz that this German was no Nazi; he hoped fervently that the war would end soon, and that Germany would lose. Each day, Fritz carried back verbal reports to his comrades (along with the valuable gifts of bread and newspapers).

  Although he knew his task was important as well as hazardous, Fritz had little idea of the scale of the operation he’d become involved in. From disorganized beginnings, the Auschwitz prisoner resistance had lately become an efficient, coordinated network. On 1 May 1943 – a Nazi holiday when the SS operated a skeleton staff – a secret meeting had been convened in Auschwitz I, at which two resistance factions agreed to cooperate. They were dominated by a Polish group, including a number of former army officers, under the leadership of Jósef Cyrankiewicz, who persuaded his people to cooperate with the Jews and the Austro-German politicals. This combined all their various advantages – the Germans’ understanding of Germany and the Nazis, which was vital in intelligence, and the fact that Polish prisoners were allowed to receive mail, which enabled them to bring in supplies and communicate with local partisans.

  They called themselves Battle Group Auschwitz – a measure of their militancy11 – and soon established contact with Stefan Heymann and the Monowitz resisters. Inter-camp cooperation was facilitated by the constant shuffling of prisoners and labour details around the complex. What the Monowitz group brought to the table was its ability to cultivate relationships with civilians and disrupt production at the Buna Werke. Sabotage was extensive and constant. Prisoners in the electricians’ detail had managed to short-circuit a turbine in the power plant. Another group, taking advantage of the reduced guard on 1 May, had caused an explosion in the half-complete synthetic fuel plant, while others destroyed fifty vehicles.12 These acts, together with a general go-slow, had helped delay the completion of the various factories.

  Of all resistance activities, civilian contact was among the most dangerous. The camp Gestapo was constantly endeavouring to penetrate the resistance and expose its leaders and members. Thus the work of spotting and weeding out informers was unending. This was especially vital when it came to the most sensitive resistance operation: the planning and execution of escapes.

  While Fritz went back and forth between factory and camp each day, carrying his little snippets of intelligence, he was only dimly aware of his connection with this network and the significa
nce of his role in it.

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  It was a Saturday in June, and the working day was over. At evening roll call, the prisoners stood to attention in the knowledge that tomorrow, although not exactly a day of rest, was at least a day of less toil and reduced danger.

  Fritz stood in his place, uniform buttoned neatly, cap on straight and flattened to one side in the approved beret style, ready to whip it off mechanically at the ‘Caps off!’ order. Everything was normal, the same slow, monotonous, grinding, day-in, day-out repetition he had known twice daily since October 1939, almost without variation.

  The Rapportführer had completed his duties and was about to dismiss the parade when he noticed a small knot of figures entering the square, and paused. As the figures reached Fritz’s field of vision, he made out two SS sergeants force-marching a man who limped and stumbled ahead of them. Fritz peered curiously, sidelong, keeping his face to the front. They shoved and hit the man as they would a prisoner, but he wasn’t in uniform and his head wasn’t shaved. He appeared to be a civilian, but he’d been violently worked over, his face bloodied and swollen. As they came closer, with a sickening jolt Fritz recognized his German contact from the factory. The SS men escorting him were Staff Sergeant Johann Taute, head of the Monowitz subdivision of the camp Gestapo, and his subordinate Sergeant Josef Hofer.

  Fritz watched in silent, mounting horror as they forced the civilian to face the assembly and ordered him to identify any and all prisoners he’d had contact with at the factory.

  The man peered at the thousands of faces before him. Fritz, buried deep in the mass, was well out of sight. With the two SS men pushing him along, the civilian went between the ranks, back and forth, studying the faces up close. He came along Fritz’s row. Fritz stared straight ahead, heart thumping. The bruised, bloodshot eyes looked at him reluctantly, and a hand rose and pointed. ‘This one.’

  Fritz was seized and, together with the civilian, force-marched past his friends and comrades, past the horrified eyes of his father, and out of the square.

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  He was bundled into the back of a truck and driven from the camp. The truck drove the few kilometres to Auschwitz I, but instead of entering the camp compound it pulled up in front of the Gestapo building, which stood outside the fence, opposite the SS hospital and beside a small underground gas chamber. Fritz was marched along a corridor by Sergeants Taute and Hofer and pushed into a large room.

  In sick terror, Fritz took in the spartan fittings of the room. There was a table with straps attached to it, and hooks embedded in the ceiling above. He’d lived long enough in the camps to know what these things were for.

  After a while an SS officer entered the room. He looked at Fritz with lively, smiling eyes in a gentle, patrician face. Prematurely bald and greying, SS-Lieutenant Maximilian Grabner didn’t look at all threatening; indeed, he looked like a university professor or a genial clergyman. Rarely can a man’s appearance have been more at odds with his character; the affable-looking Grabner was head of the Auschwitz Gestapo, and his reputation for coldly, pitilessly instigating mass murder was unsurpassed in this or any other camp. He regularly purged the hospital and the camp bunker – ‘dusting off’ he called it – sending the inmates to the gas chambers or the Black Wall. He’d instituted a programme of exterminating pregnant Polish women, and was reckoned personally responsible for over two thousand murders. There were few men in Auschwitz as feared as Maximilian Grabner.13 He terrified even the SS.

  He studied Fritz a moment; then he spoke. His voice was eerily soft, and his accent was redolent of the rural areas outside Vienna, simple and uneducated.14

  ‘I know,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘that you, prisoner 68629, are involved in planning a large-scale escape from the Auschwitz-Monowitz camp, and that you’ve been doing so with the collaboration of the German civilian who pointed you out. Sergeant Taute’s men have been keeping an eye on him. His irregular behaviour caught your attention, didn’t it, sergeant?’

  Taute nodded, and Grabner turned his friendly gaze back to Fritz. ‘What d’you have to say about that?’

  Fritz had no idea what to say. He couldn’t deny knowing the civilian, but the stuff about an escape was a total mystery.

  Grabner took out a notepad and pencil. ‘You will now give me the names of all the prisoners involved in this plot.’

  Taking Fritz’s stunned silence for a refusal, Grabner nodded to Taute and Hofer.

  The first blow of Hofer’s cudgel bent Fritz double and knocked the breath out of him; then came a second and a third.

  But no confession was forthcoming. Grabner was surprised. Although little more than a boy, it seemed that prisoner 68629 would be harder to break than the civilian had been. At a gesture from Grabner, the sergeants pushed Fritz face down on the table and fastened the straps over his body, pinning him. The cane rose and flashed down, humming, lashing him across the buttocks. And again, and again, until his backside was lacerated and on fire with agony. Even in this extremity of fear and pain he kept count of the lashes: twenty searing blows before they unstrapped him and stood him up.

  ‘Admit what you’ve done,’ Grabner said, indicating the notepad. ‘Give me the identities of the prisoners you were planning to help escape.’

  Fritz knew that denying it would be useless, and so he said nothing. Again he was forced down on the table, again the straps were fastened, again the cane hummed in the air.

  He lost track of how many times he was strapped down, but he doggedly kept count of the blows: altogether, sixty searing weals on his flesh.

  They unstrapped him and hauled him to his feet again. He could hardly hold himself upright. Grabner studied him closely. ‘Tell me the names.’

  Sooner or later, the point would come – as it would to any human being trapped in this nightmare – when Fritz would crack and say whatever it took to make it stop. Truth or lies – it wouldn’t matter, so long as the torture ended. He could name his friends who were involved in the resistance. It would be simple, and he wouldn’t be human if he didn’t feel the temptation. Stefan, Gustl, Jupp Rausch and the other resisters, his friends and mentors: he could condemn them to torture and death. Fritz retained sense enough to know that it wouldn’t really save his life, but it would at least halt the torment.

  He said nothing. Grabner nodded at Taute and Hofer, and indicated the hooks in the ceiling.

  Fritz’s wrists were yanked behind his back and tied so tightly that the circulation was cut off. The long end of the rope was thrown up over a hook, and the two sergeants hauled on it. Fritz’s arms were wrenched backwards and upwards, and with an indescribable, blinding agony he was lifted off his feet. He hung with his toes a foot above the floor, his bodyweight wrenching his shoulders in their sockets, filling his mind with screaming pain. He had seen many poor souls suspended like this from the Goethe Oak, but the experience of it was worse than could ever be imagined.

  ‘Give me the names,’ Grabner repeated, again and again. Fritz hung for nearly an hour, but all that came out of his mouth was incoherent squeaks and drool. ‘You won’t live through this,’ Grabner’s voice said softly in his ear. ‘Give up the names.’

  At a nod from Grabner, the rope was let go, and Fritz crashed to the floor. Grabner repeated his question over and over: name names and it would be finished. Still Fritz said nothing. They dragged him to his feet, hauled again on the rope, and raised him screaming into the air.

  Three times they hung him, without result. Grabner was losing patience. It was Saturday night, and he was keen to get home. This interrogation was wasting his precious leisure time. Fritz had hung for an hour and a half all told when they let go and he crashed to the floor a third time. He was dimly aware of Grabner leaving the room, ordering the two sergeants to take the prisoner back to the camp. The interrogation would resume later.15

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  After Fritz had been taken away, Stefan Heymann and the other resisters fretted and talked over what they should do. How
long did they have before Fritz was broken and the Gestapo came back for the rest of them? All that evening they debated, trying to plan for the catastrophe heading their way.

  Gustl Herzog was still up and about when he heard that Fritz was back in camp. He rushed to meet him, and found him being carried along the street by two old Buchenwald friends: Fredl Lustig, an old comrade of Gustav from the haulage column, and Max Matzner, a near-victim of the infamous typhus experiments.

  Fritz couldn’t stand; aside from the visible bruises and blood, his joints and back were in excruciating pain. Gustl told Lustig and Matzner to take him to the hospital, then went in search of the other resisters.

  The hospital occupied a group barrack block in the northeast corner of the camp. It had several departments: medical, surgical, infectious diseases and convalescence. Although an SS doctor was in overall command, he rarely appeared and it was staffed mainly by prisoners.16 By concentration camp standards the hospital was good, but starved of medical resources.

  Fritz was taken to a room in the general medical ward. He was half-paralysed, his arms useless and senseless, his backside welted and bleeding, and his whole body shot through with pain. A Czech doctor gave him some strong painkillers and massaged his arms.

  After a while, Gustl Herzog came in with Erich Eisler and Stefan Heymann. All three regarded Fritz with both pity and foreboding. When the doctor had gone, they questioned him anxiously about what the Gestapo had wanted with him. Fritz described Grabner’s accusations and the alleged escape plan.