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Notes
Prologue
1 Moon phase data from http://www.timeanddate.com/moon/austria/amstetten?month=1&year=1945.
Chapter 1
1 Printed in Die Stimme, 11 March 1938, p. 1; see also G. E. R. Gedye, Fallen Bastions: The Central European Tragedy (1939), pp. 287–9, for an eyewitness account of events in Vienna that day.
2 Schuschnigg’s Fatherland Front Party was fascistic, suppressing the Nazi Party and the Social Democrats. However, it was not especially anti-Semitic. On the number of Jews in Austria see Martin Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust (2002), p. 22, and Norman Bentwich, ‘The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Austria 1938–1942’ in The Jews of Austria, ed. Josef Fraenkel (1970), p. 467.
3 Die Stimme, 11 March 1938, p. 1.
4 Some people of Jewish descent considered themselves entirely German; Peter Wallner, a Viennese, stated, ‘Nor was I ever a Jew, though all four of my grandparents were Jewish.’ But when the Nazis came he was persecuted along with the rest; ‘For according to the Nuremberg Laws I am a Jew’ (Peter Wallner, By Order of the Gestapo: A Record of Life in Dachau and Buchenwald Concentration Camps (1941), pp. 17–18). Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 a person was defined as Jewish, regardless of religion, if they had more than two Jewish grandparents.
5 Die Stimme, 11 March 1938, p. 1.
6 Jüdische Presse, 11 March 1938, p. 1.
7 The scenes on this day are described by George Gedye (Fallen Bastions, pp. 287–96), a British journalist for the Daily Telegraph and New York Times, who lived in Vienna.
8 For this reason, Schuschnigg had cynically set the minimum age for voting in the plebiscite at twenty-four; most Nazis were below that age.
9 The Times, 11 March 1938, p. 14; also Neues Wiener Tagblatt (Tages-Ausgabe), 11 March 1938, p. 1.
10 Gedye (Fallen Bastions, pp. 290–93) describes the scenes as the evening progressed.
11 Ibid., p. 290; The Times, 12 March 1938, p. 12.
12 Quoted in Gedye, Fallen Bastions, pp. 10, 293, and The Times, 12 March 1938, p. 12. According to The Times, newspapers in Berlin that evening claimed that Germany had quashed ‘treason’ by the ‘Marxist rats’ in the Austrian government who had been carrying out ‘harrowing cruelties’ against the people, who were fleeing to the German border in large numbers. With these untruths the Nazis justified their move to take over Austria.
13 The synagogue that evening is described as ‘überfüllt’ – ‘overcrowded’, ‘jam-packed’ (Hugo Gold, Geschichte der Juden in Wien: Ein Gedenkbuch (1966), p. 77; Erika Weinzierl, ‘Christen und Juden nach der NS-Machtergreifung in Österreich’ in Anschluß 1938 (1981), pp. 197–8).
14 Gedye, Fallen Bastions, p. 295. The hostility to Catholics stemmed from antagonism over issues such as Nazi attempts to suppress the Old Testament and de-Judaize Christianity, as well as the churches’ recognition of non-Aryan Christian converts and the Vatican’s condemnation of racism (David Cesarani, Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933–49 (2016), pp. 114–16, 136).
15 Quoted in Cesarani, Final Solution, p. 148.
16 Gedye, Fallen Bastions, p. 295.
17 Oswald Dutch, Thus Died Austria (1938), pp. 231–2; see also Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 12 March 1938, p. 3; Banater Deutsche Zeitung, 13 March 1938, p. 5; The Times, 14 March 1938, p. 14.
18 Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 12 March 1938, p. 3.
19 Gedye, Fallen Bastions, p. 282.
20 Arbeitersturm, 13 March 1938, p. 5; The Times, 17 April 1938, p. 14.
21 It isn’t certain which police station this was. The most likely is Leopoldsgasse, a station of the Schutzpolizei Gruppenkommando Ost, the uniformed Reich police (Reichsamter und Reichsbehörden in der Ostmark, p. 207, AFB).
22 Based on Fritz Kleinmann’s memoir: Reinhold Gärtner and Fritz Kleinmann, Doch der Hund will nicht krepieren: Tagebuchnotizen aus Auschwitz (2012); also testimony of Kurt Kleinmann and Edith’s son, Peter Patten; additional details from various contemporary sources.
23 Evidence of Moritz Fleischmann, vol. 1, session 17, TAE; George E. Berkley, Vienna and Its Jews: The Tragedy of Success, 1880s–1980s (1988), p. 259; Marvin Lowenthal, The Jews of Germany (1939), p. 430. See also The Times, 31 March 1938, p. 13; 7 April 1938, p. 13.
24 Gedye, Fallen Bastions, p. 354.
25 The Times, 8 April 1938, p. 12; 11 April 1938, p. 11; also Gedye, Fallen Bastions, p. 9.
26 The Times, 11 April 1938, p. 12. Even the ballot paper itself was a work of propaganda, with a big circle in the centre for ‘yes’ (to the Anschluss) and a little one off to the side for ‘no’.
27 The Times, 12 April 1938, p. 14.
28 The Times, 9 April 1938, p. 11.
29 The Times, 23 March 1938, p. 13; 26 March 1938, p. 11; 30 April 1938, p. 11.
30 Bentwich, ‘Destruction’, p. 470.
31 Ibid.; Herbert Rosenkranz, ‘The Anschluss and the Tragedy of Austrian Jewry 1938–1945’ in The Jews of Austria, ed. Josef Fraenkel (1970), p. 484.
32 Dachau, established in 1933 in a disused factory, was the first dedicated concentration camp. By summer 1938 there were four major operational camps in Germany (plus some smaller ones): Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg, with several more opening shortly after – including Mauthausen in Austria, which opened in August 1938 (see Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (2015); Cesarani, Final Solution; Laurence Rees, The Holocaust: A New History (2017)).
33 Reich Ministry of the Interior regulations, 17 August 1938, in Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman and Abraham Margaliot, Documents on the Holocaust, 8th edn, transl. Lea Ben Dor (1999), pp. 98–9.
34 Testimony B.306, AWK.
35 Testimony B.95, AWK.
36 This was the story according to the Brussels correspondent for The Times (27 October 1938, p. 13). Associated Press via the Chicago Tribune (27 Octob
er 1938, p. 15) added the detail about the camera, increased the number of Nazis involved to four, and added the anonymous claim that the Nazis had been knocked down and kicked.
37 Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 26 October 1938, p. 1.
38 Völkischer Beobachter, 26 October 1938, p. 1, quoted in Peter Loewenberg, ‘The Kristallnacht as a Public Degradation Ritual’ in The Origins of the Holocaust, ed. Michael Marrus (1989), p. 585.
39 Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 8 November 1938, p. 1.
40 ‘Night of broken glass’ is the usual translation, but ‘crystal’ is more accurate.
41 Telegram from Reinhard Heydrich to all police headquarters, 10 November 1938, in Arad et al., Documents, pp. 102–4.
42 UK consul-general in Vienna, letter, 11 November 1938, in Foreign Office (UK), Papers Concerning the Treatment of German Nationals in Germany 1938–1939 (1939), p. 16.
Chapter 2
1 The Polizeiamt Leopoldstadt, headquarters of the local uniformed police, was at Ausstellungstrasse 171 (Reichsamter und Reichsbehörden in der Ostmark, p. 204, AFB).
2 Narrative based on the memoir of Fritz Kleinmann in Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, p. 188; additional details: witness testimonies B.24 (anon.), B.62 (Alfred Schechter), B.143 (Carl Löwenstein), AWK; also testimonies of Siegfried Merecki (Manuscript 166 (156)), Margarete Neff (Manuscript 93 (205)) in Uta Gerhardt and Thomas Karlauf (eds), The Night of Broken Glass: Eyewitness Accounts of Kristallnacht, transl. Robert Simmons and Nick Somers (2012); Wallner, By Order of the Gestapo.
3 UK consul-general in Vienna, letter, 11 November 1938, in Foreign Office (UK), Papers Concerning the Treatment of German Nationals in Germany, 1938–1939 (1939), p. 16.
4 The exact number of documented arrests is 6,547 (Melissa Jane Taylor, ‘Experts in Misery’? American Consuls in Austria, Jewish Refugees and Restrictionist Immigration Policy, 1938–1941 (2006), p. 48).
5 B.62 (Alfred Schechter), AWK. At this time, Mauthausen camp was for convicts; Jews were not imprisoned there prior to the war, but it was believed at the time that they were (e.g. The Scotsman, 14 November 1938; cf. Kim Wünschmann, Before Auschwitz: Jewish Prisoners in the Prewar Concentration Camps (2015), p. 183).
6 B.143 (Carl Löwenstein), AWK.
7 New York Times, 15, 26 November 1938, p. 1.
8 Quoted in Swiss National Zeitung, 16 November 1938.
9 The Spectator, 18 November 1938, p. 836.
10 Westdeutscher Beobachter (Cologne), 11 November 1938.
11 Ibid.
12 Unnamed German newspaper, quoted by UK consul-general in Vienna, 11 November 1938, in Foreign Office, Papers, p. 15.
13 Cesarani, Final Solution, p. 199.
14 The Spectator, 18 November 1938, p. 836.
15 David Cesarani, Eichmann: His Life and Crimes (2005), pp. 60ff.
16 Heydrich, quoted in Cesarani, Final Solution, p. 207.
17 Doron Rabinovici, Eichmann’s Jews: The Jewish Administration of Holocaust Vienna, 1938–1945, transl. Nick Somers (2011), pp. 50ff.; Cesarani, Final Solution, pp. 147ff.
18 The Spectator, 29 July 1938, p. 189.
19 Ibid., 19 August 1938, p. 294.
20 Adolf Hitler, speech to the Reichstag, 30 January 1939, quoted in The Times, 31 January 1939, p. 14; also in Arad et al., Documents, p. 132.
21 Daily Telegraph, 22 November 1938; also House of Commons Hansard, 21 November 1938, vol. 341, cc1428–83.
22 Daily Telegraph, 22 November 1938; also House of Commons Hansard, 21 November 1938, vol. 341, cc1428–83.
23 Testimony B.226, AWK.
24 The Times, 3–12 December 1938.
25 Fritz Kleinmann, 1997 interview.
26 Manchester Guardian, 15 December 1938, p. 11; 18 March 1939, p. 18.
27 Letter from Leeds JRC to Overseas Settlement Dept, JRC, London, 7 June 1940, LJL.
28 The Times, classified ads, 1938–9 passim.
29 Louise London, Whitehall and the Jews, 1933–1948: British Immigration Policy, Jewish Refugees and the Holocaust (2000), p. 79.
30 The Times, 8 November 1938, p. 4.
31 The system could only cope with investigating a limited number of applicants; women applying to be servants were easier to vet than men, and so over half of the Jews entering Britain in 1938–9 were women (Cesarani, Final Solution, p. 158). The Home Office expedited the process by having Jewish refugee agencies process the applications, which increased the rate to 400 a week (ibid., p. 214).
32 Letter from UK consul-general in Vienna, 11 November 1938, in Foreign Office, Papers, p. 15.
33 This building, at Wallnerstrasse 8, now houses the Vienna Stock Exchange.
34 M. Mitzmann, ‘A Visit To Germany, Austria and Poland in 1939’, document 0.2/151, YVP.
35 Harry Stein (compiler), Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945, ed. Gedenkstätte Buchenwald (2004), pp. 115–16; Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, pp. 80–81.
36 Fritz recalled (1997 interview) that the third man was called Schwarz, although no record has been found of a person of that name living in Im Werd 11. Fritz was unable to recall the name of the fourth member of the group (the building’s Nazi leader).
37 The dialogue here is from interviews given by Fritz and Kurt Kleinmann. They both recalled these scenes quite vividly.
38 Buchenwald prisoner record card 1.1.5.3/6283389, ITS.
Chapter 3
1 This account is based primarily on Gustav Kleinmann’s diary and Fritz’s recollections, with additional circumstantial details from other sources (e.g. Jack Werber and William B. Helmreich, Saving Children (1996), pp. 1–3, 32–6; Stein, Buchenwald, pp. 115–16; testimonies B.82, B.192, B.203, AWK).
2 Fritz Kleinmann (in Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, p. 12) gives a figure of 1,048 Viennese Jews in this transport, but other sources (Stein, Buchenwald, p. 116) give 1,035.
3 Stein, Buchenwald, pp. 27–8.
4 See e.g. testimony B.203, AWK.
5 Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, p. 15n.
6 Stein, Buchenwald, p. 35.
7 Buchenwald prisoner record cards 1.1.5.3/6283376, 1.1.5.3/6283389, ITS. There were no tattoos; this practice was begun at Auschwitz in November 1941 and was not employed at any other camp (Wachsmann, KL, p. 284).
8 Werber and Helmreich, Saving Children, p. 36.
9 Testimony B.192, AWK.
10 The basic concentration camp badge was an inverted triangle, the colour of which denoted a category: red for political prisoners, green for criminals, pink for homosexuals, and so on. For Jewish prisoners the category badge was combined with a second, yellow, triangle, making up a Star of David; if the Jewish prisoner didn’t fit into any of the other categories, both triangles were yellow.
11 Emil Carlebach, in David A. Hackett (ed., transl.), The Buchenwald Report (1995), pp. 162–3.
12 This is not the same as the ‘little camp’ set up in 1943 to the north of the barracks (Stein, Buchenwald, pp. 149–51). There is a detailed description of the original little camp in 1939–40 by inmate Felix Rausch in Hackett, Buchenwald Report, pp. 271–6.
13 Hackett, Buchenwald Report, pp. 113–14. Following Kristallnacht, new arrivals totalled 10,098. There were over 9,000 subsequent departures due to release, transfer or death (about 2,000 deaths in total in 1938–9, not including those who died between Weimar and the camp; ibid., p. 109). The prisoner population of Buchenwald declined steeply from 1938–9, exploding again with the autumn 1939 intake (8,707 during September–October).
14 Fritz wrote later: ‘I know that my father risked his life with this diary. None of the other prisoners had encouraged him to do this, as he was putting not only himself but all of us at risk. And even today, questions remain unanswered: Where did my father hide the diary? How did he get it through the controls?’ (Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, pp. 12–13). Gustav did reveal that at one point, when he was a room orderly in his barrack, he hid it inside the bunks, and when he was on outdoor work he carried it on his person (Fritz Klein
mann, 1997 interview).
15 This account is based primarily on Gustav Kleinmann’s diary and Fritz’s recollections, with additional circumstantial details from other sources (e.g. Hackett, Buchenwald Report; Stein, Buchenwald; testimony B.192, AWK).
16 In Himmler’s words, the kapo’s task was ‘to see that the work gets done … As soon as we are no longer satisfied with him, he is no longer a kapo and returns to the other inmates. He knows that they will beat him to death his first night back’ (quoted in Rees, Holocaust, p. 79).
17 Based on size of wagon and density of broken limestone = 1,554 kg/m3. Different sources give the number of men assigned to pull each wagon as between sixteen and twenty-six.
18 Gustav refers to this place as the ‘Todes-Holzbaracke’ (‘death barrack’), probably a nickname for a building used for sick Jews after they were barred from the prisoners’ infirmary (block 2, in the southwest corner of the camp facing on to the roll-call square) in September 1939 (see Emil Carlebach in Hackett, Buchenwald Report, p. 162).
19 Stein, Buchenwald, p. 96.
20 Stefan Heymann in Hackett, Buchenwald Report, p. 253.
21 Nigel Jones, Countdown to Valkyrie: The July Plot to Assassinate Hitler (2008), pp. 103–5.
22 Wachsmann, KL, p. 220.
23 Hackett, Buchenwald Report, p. 51; Stein, Buchenwald, p. 119.
24 Hackett, Buchenwald Report, pp. 231, 252–3; Wachsmann, KL, p. 220.
25 Fritz Kleinmann, quoted in Monika Horsky, Man muß darüber reden. Schüler fragen KZ-Häftlinge (1988), pp. 48–9, reproduced in Gärtner and Kleinmann, Doch der Hund, p. 16n.
26 Stein, Buchenwald, pp. 52, 108–9; testimony B.192, AWK.
27 Heller later served as a doctor in Auschwitz. He survived the Holocaust and emigrated to the United States. ‘He was a very decent man. If he could help a person, he would,’ recalled one of his fellow prisoners (obituary, Chicago Tribune, 29 September 2001).
28 Hackett, Buchenwald Report, pp. 60–64.
The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz Page 34