The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz

by Jeremy Dronfield

  At five forty-five, still in darkness, they trooped outside and formed rows in front of the building. All along the street, prisoners were spilling out of their barracks to be counted by their block seniors. Not even the sick or the dead were excused – usually each block would produce at least one or two corpses each morning. They were carried out and laid down to be counted with the rest.

  The thousands of prisoners marched along the street and wheeled into the roll-call square, lit by floodlights. They formed orderly ranks, each man with his assigned place within his block, each block in its assigned place among the others. The sick and the dead were carried along and put at the back.

  SS Blockführers prowled up and down the columns, looking for men out of place, lines not straight, counting up the men from their block, taking a tally of the dead. Any infraction of perfect drill – especially if it led to a counting error – resulted in a beating. When the Blockführers were satisfied, they took their reports to the Rapportführer on his podium at the front. While the prisoners continued to stand motionless – however cold or wet the weather – he went meticulously through the whole count.

  By the time Lieutenant Schöttl arrived on the square, they had been standing at attention for about an hour. Fritz watched warily as Schöttl took the podium; he was still afraid of being recognized and singled out, a fear that would never entirely subside.

  Recent events had put him more on edge than ever. In September, during the final weeks of the Grabner regime, an informer had been discovered among the prisoners.1 The Gestapo were constantly looking for subversive activities, and the resisters had to be constantly vigilant. A prisoner clerk in the Monowitz Gestapo had identified kapo Bolesław ‘Bolek’ Smoliński – a bigot and anti-Semite with a particular loathing for communists – as an informer working for SS-Sergeant Taute.

  This vital intelligence was discussed among the resisters. Curt Posener (known as Cupo), one of the old Buchenwalders, pointed out that Smoliński was friendly with the camp senior responsible for the hospital, a main nexus for the resistance. This was a terrible vulnerability. Cupo talked it over with Erich Eisler and Stefan Heymann. Eisler suggested that they try talking to Smoliński, to make him see the error of his ways. Stefan and Cupo argued strenuously against this dangerous idea. Nonetheless, Eisler disregarded the warnings and talked to Smoliński. The reaction was instantaneous – Smoliński went straight to the Gestapo. Immediately, Erich Eisler and Curt Posener were seized and taken to Auschwitz I, along with six others, including Walter Petzold and Walter Windmüller, both highly respected functionary prisoners and members of the resistance. They were put in the Death Block bunker and subjected to days of interrogation and torture. Smoliński was held with them.

  Eventually Curt Posener and one other returned to Monowitz, battered and physically broken. Like Fritz, they had resisted the torture and given away no information. Smoliński was also released and resumed his position. Walter Windmüller succumbed to his injuries and died in the bunker. Poor Erich Eisler, having outed himself as a resister by talking to Smoliński in the first place, was taken to the Black Wall and shot.2 Eisler had dedicated himself utterly to people’s welfare; even before becoming a prisoner himself, he’d worked for the Rote Hilfe (Red Aid), a socialist organization which provided welfare to prisoners’ families.3 In the end, it had been his humane temperament that was his downfall, thinking he could talk a man like Smoliński into behaving decently.

  ‘Attention! Caps off!’ yelled a sergeant’s voice over the tannoy, and five thousand hands whipped off their caps and folded them neatly under their arms. They stood at attention while Schöttl checked through the assembled lists of prisoners, noting new arrivals, deaths, selections and assignments.

  Finally: ‘Caps on! Work details, move!’

  The parade dissolved into chaos as each man moved to his allotted detail, coalescing into units counted off by their kapos. They marched along the street to the main gate, which swung open. Many were weak and lethargic, having reached the last of their strength; before long they would be selected for Birkenau or be among the corpses brought out to be counted at roll call.

  As the columns passed, the prisoner orchestra, in their little building beside the gate, played stirring tunes. The musicians were led by a Dutch political, with a German Roma on violin; the rest were Jews from various nations. It struck Fritz that they never seemed to play German tunes – only Austrian marches from the days of the empire. His papa had once marched to these tunes on the parade grounds of Vienna and Cracow, and gone to war accompanied by the same martial airs. The camp orchestra were good musicians, and sometimes on a Sunday Schöttl permitted them to put on a concert for the more privileged prisoners. It was a surreal sight – the motley musicians playing classical music to an audience of standing prisoners, with SS officers in chairs to one side.

  The sky was growing light as they marched along the road towards the checkpoint at the gates of the Buna Werke, each column guarded by an SS sergeant and sentries. Depending on where in the factory complex they worked, some of them had up to four kilometres still to march, and then a twelve-hour shift and a four-kilometre march back to another several hours of roll call in the floodlit cold and rain.

  Fritz went to his work in the warehouse and began another dull but safe day of moving stock about. He had no way of knowing that today would mark the beginning of a transformation in his existence.

  He was chatting to another Jewish prisoner when one of the German civilian welders who happened to be nearby broke in on their conversation.

  ‘Nice to hear German spoken,’ he said. ‘I haven’t come across many Germans since I came to work here – most of you lot are Poles or other foreigners.’

  Fritz looked at the man in surprise. He was fairly young, and moved with a lame, halting gait.

  The man glanced at their uniforms. ‘What are you in for?’ he asked.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘What crime?’

  ‘Crime?’ said Fritz. ‘We’re Jews.’

  He had to repeat himself several times to get the concept across. The man was mystified. ‘But the Führer would never lock up anyone who hasn’t done anything wrong,’ he said.

  ‘This is Auschwitz concentration camp,’ said Fritz. ‘Do you know what Auschwitz stands for?’

  The man shrugged. ‘I’ve been in the army, on the Eastern Front. I’ve got no idea what’s been going on at home.’ That explained his lameness; he’d been wounded and invalided out.

  Fritz pointed to his badge. ‘This is the Judenstern – the Jewish star.’

  ‘I know what it is. But you don’t get put in a camp just for that.’

  This was incredible, and vexing. ‘Of course we do.’

  The man shook his head in disbelief. Fritz’s temper began to fray. Such blindness was stupefying – the man might have missed the escalation since 1941 while he was at the front, but where had he been since 1933 when the persecutions began, or 1938 when Kristallnacht happened? Did he believe that Jews had all emigrated of their own free will?

  It wasn’t safe to argue with a German, so Fritz gave up trying to convince him.

  Later that day, the man approached him again. ‘We’ve all got to pull together, you know,’ he said. ‘We all have to defend the Fatherland and work for the common good – even you lot have got your part to play.’

  Fritz bit his tongue. The man rambled on about attitude and duty and the Fatherland until Fritz couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Can’t you see what’s happening here?’ he said angrily, gesturing to take in the factories, Auschwitz, the whole system. Then he walked away.

  The civilian, perplexed by Fritz’s attitude, wouldn’t leave it alone. All that day he kept coming up to Fritz. Duty and Fatherland were his repeated themes, and how prisoners must be prisoners for a good reason. But, despite his persistence, with each repetition he sounded less sure of himself.

  Eventually he fell silent, and for the next few days went about his welding without
speaking. Then one morning he approached Fritz, surreptitiously passed him a chunk of bread and a large stick of sausage, then walked off.

  The bread was half a loaf of Wecken, an Austrian bread made from very fine flour. Fritz tore off a piece and put it in his mouth. It was blissful; nothing like the military Kommisbrot they were given in the camp. This was a taste of home and heaven, bringing back memories of the morsels he and his friends used to get at the close of day from the Anker bakery. He squirrelled it away, along with the sausage, intending to smuggle them back to camp to share with his father and friends.

  An hour or two later, the civilian passed his way again and stopped. ‘There aren’t many Germans here,’ he said. ‘It’s nice to have someone to talk to.’ He hesitated, and there was a troubled look on his face that Fritz hadn’t seen before. ‘I saw something,’ he said awkwardly. ‘This morning on my way in to work …’ Visibly upset, he haltingly described how he’d seen the corpse of a prisoner hanging on the electric fence of the Monowitz camp. Even as a veteran of the Eastern Front and no stranger to atrocity, he’d been shaken. ‘They tell me it was suicide. They say it happens now and again.’

  Fritz nodded. ‘It happens pretty often. The SS leave the bodies up for a few days to intimidate the rest of us.’

  The man’s voice shook with emotion: ‘This is not what I fought for,’ he said. There were tears in his eyes. ‘Not that. I want nothing to do with that.’

  Fritz was astounded – a German soldier in tears over a dead concentration camp inmate. In Fritz’s experience, Germans – whether they were soldiers, police, SS, green-triangle prisoners – were all of a kind. The only exceptions were the socialist political prisoners: otherwise they were callous, bigoted and brutal.

  The man began to tell Fritz his story. His name was Alfred Wocher. He was Bavarian-born, but married to a Viennese woman, and his home was in Vienna – hence the Wecken loaf. Fritz didn’t mention that he was from Vienna; instead he listened while Wocher talked about serving in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, how he’d been awarded the Iron Cross and reached the rank of sergeant. After being severely wounded he’d been sent home on indefinite leave; he hadn’t been discharged from the army, but he would never again be fit for active service. As a skilled welder he’d been sent to IG Farben to do civilian work.

  It occurred to Fritz that Wocher might be a useful contact. Back in camp that evening, he went to the hospital to talk it over with Stefan Heymann; he described Alfred Wocher and repeated everything he’d said. Stefan was unsettled by the whole thing. He advised Fritz to be careful – you couldn’t trust Germans, especially not a veteran from Hitler’s army. After Smoliński, the resistance was more wary than ever about potential informers. And the last time Fritz had become friendly with a civilian it had nearly cost him his life – not to mention putting his friends and his father through a world of grief.

  Fritz understood all too well. He knew that Wocher should not be trusted. But somehow – maybe it was the Viennese bread or his obviously genuine upset over the dead prisoner – somehow Fritz couldn’t help it. He went back to work and, in defiance of Stefan’s advice and his own good sense, continued talking with the old soldier.

  It was hard to avoid him. Wocher came to Fritz, usually because he wanted to get something off his chest, some question or other about Auschwitz. To Fritz it seemed suspiciously like probing, and the sensible thing to do would be to turn his back and refuse to even listen. But he answered, without going into detail, with facts about Auschwitz. Wocher would bring copies of the Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party newspaper, to show Fritz what was going on in Germany. Fritz didn’t mind – newspaper had a value in the camp, and it had to be said that wiping the arses of Jews was as good a use for the Beobachter as one could imagine. More welcome were the gifts of bread and sausage. One day, out of the blue, Wocher offered to convey letters for Fritz. If there was anyone in the outside world he wanted to communicate with, Wocher would get messages to them.

  So there it was – entrapment. Or so it seemed. The temptation to get in touch with relatives still in Vienna – and hopefully find out what had become of his mother and Herta – was extremely strong. Fritz’s instinct was to test the man in some way. But to what purpose? If Wocher was a Nazi informer, what good would it do to prove it? He’d still end up in the bunker.

  Fritz discussed the matter again with Stefan Heymann. Knowing that Fritz would always go his own way, Stefan told him that it was up to him alone; he couldn’t help him with this.

  Not long afterwards, Wocher happened to mention that he was about to go on leave. Here was Fritz’s opportunity; Wocher had mentioned that he’d be passing through Brno and Prague en route to Vienna, so next day Fritz came to work with a couple of letters directed to fictional addresses in both Czech cities, claiming he had family there. Wocher took them happily, promising to deliver them personally. (He wouldn’t entrust them to the postal system, which was subject to spying.) Fritz guessed that if Wocher was false, he naturally wouldn’t bother trying to deliver the letters and wouldn’t discover that the addresses weren’t real.

  When Wocher reappeared at work a few days later, he was livid. He’d tried to deliver both letters, and been unable to find either address. He assumed Fritz had duped him just to make a fool of him, and was hurt as well as angry. Fritz apologized, concealing his delight and relief; he was now almost sure that Wocher wasn’t a provocateur.

  He began to reveal more about what Auschwitz really was, describing how Jews came in transports from Germany, Poland, France, the Netherlands and countries in the east; about the selections in Birkenau: how children, the old, the unfit and most of the women were sent to the gas chambers, while the others became slaves. Wocher had seen glimpses of it for himself; now he understood the long trains of closed wagons he’d seen coming in along the southeastern railway past Monowitz, heading towards Oświęcim. On the factory floors he’d heard civilians talking about such things, and was beginning to realize that he’d missed a lot while at the front.4

  It was hard to miss what was going on. Like a metastasizing cancer, Auschwitz was spreading and growing. Sweeping changes and expansions had been initiated, and Auschwitz III-Monowitz was now the administrative hub of a growing number of sub-camps pustulating throughout the countryside around the Buna Werke. A commandant had been installed above camp director Schöttl, a pallid, blank-eyed captain called Heinrich Schwarz, who liked to participate in beating and murdering prisoners, working himself into a foaming rage in the process. Schwarz was devoted to the Final Solution, raging against Berlin whenever there was a lull in the flow of Jews into Auschwitz.5

  New transports for the IG Farben sub-camps sometimes came directly to Monowitz now, and for the first time Fritz witnessed with his own eyes what he had previously only heard about – the bewildered people herded from the freight wagons on to the ground near the camp, loaded down with luggage. Men, women and children, thinking they had come to be resettled.6 Many were frightened, others happy and relieved to find friends again among the mass after days in the suffocating wagons. The healthy men were separated and marched to the camp, while the women, children and elderly were put back on the train, which rolled on to Birkenau.

  In Monowitz the men were made to strip in the roll-call square. Many tried to keep hold of precious possessions, but they were nearly always found. Everything was taken to the storage block known as ‘Canada’ (which was believed to be a land of riches) for sorting and searching. The prisoner detail responsible for handling the plunder, working under close SS oversight, searched through it like prospectors panning dirt, teasing open seams to look for concealed valuables.7

  Fritz took a particular interest in newcomers arriving from the ghetto at Theresienstadt, many of whom were originally from Vienna. He begged them for news of home, but they had little to tell. More up-to-date news came when deportations directly from Vienna began arriving. Virtually all the registered Jews had gone from the city now, and the Nazi autho
rities had begun deporting Mischlinge – people who were born from the intermarriage of Jews and Aryans and were therefore both and neither. Frustratingly, nobody could tell him anything about his remaining relatives and friends, if any were still alive.

  When Alfred Wocher mentioned that he was shortly going to Vienna on leave, Fritz saw his chance. He felt he could trust him now, and hoped the trust was reciprocated. Fritz gave him the address of his Aunt Helene, who lived in Vienna-Döbling, an affluent suburb across the Danube Canal from Leopoldstadt. She had married an Aryan and been baptized a Christian. Helene’s husband was now an officer in the Wehrmacht, and so far she had remained secure from the Nazis. Her son, Viktor, was the cousin from whom Kurt had acquired his hunting knife. Rather than write a letter, Fritz gave Wocher a verbal message – simply informing her that he and his papa were still alive and well, and asking her to pass the news on to any other surviving relatives. Wocher took the address and set off.

  He returned a few days later. The mission hadn’t been much more fruitful than the previous one. The address had been genuine enough, but the lady who’d answered the door to him had been decidedly unfriendly – she’d denied all knowledge of anyone by the name of Kleinmann, and slammed the door in Wocher’s face.

  Fritz was mystified, and questioned Wocher closely. Was he sure he’d gone to the right address? Eventually he discovered what had gone wrong. What he hadn’t realized was that when he was away from the factory, Alfred Wocher reverted to army uniform. His appearance on Aunt Helene’s doorstep, asking about her Jewish relations, must have scared the poor woman out of her wits. In truth, it was worse even than Fritz guessed. Helene’s officer husband had died in the war, and she felt terrifyingly exposed without the protection his status had given her.

  One thing at least had come of it: Fritz now trusted Alfred Wocher completely.