The Last Checkmate

by Gabriella Saab

  Another important liberty to note is Irena’s infiltration of the SS-Helferin, or SS-Helpers, to become one of Auschwitz’s female guards. To explain this, first I must address Witold Pilecki, a prominent Polish military and resistance figure who compiled a report on Auschwitz and the camp resistance organization he formed, since translated into The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery. This invaluable primary source helped me with camp life and his resistance organization, though I simplified it for story purposes, and his intention to stage a rebellion. Because Pilecki infiltrated Auschwitz as a prisoner, it gave me the idea to have Irena infiltrate as a guard. Though far riskier and more difficult, I thought perhaps she could find a way to make this work given her family’s connections to Pilecki, the Home Army, various resistance organizations, and the way the SS recruited camp guards.

  When recruiting women for camp service, the SS advertised in newspapers, asking women to show their love of the Reich, and even hired criminals and prostitutes. Other women were recruited based on data the SS had already gathered in various ways, such as girls who joined SS organizations growing up. One of these, the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), or the League of German Girls, was the female wing of the Hitler Youth, the youth organization and indoctrination program of the Nazi Party.

  Under her false identity, Irena presents herself as a young woman who spent years in the BDM, a history that would have made her extremely pro-Nazi. Many of these women (and many of the female SS guards I studied to craft this persona) came from lower classes and were not highly educated, were not overly intelligent or skilled, and were eager to serve their country. When training for camp employment, some received no more than a brief lecture on their responsibilities, others a little more guidance, but none were fully prepared for the actual evils taking place. Once they took up their positions, many were shocked by what they encountered, but they were brainwashed by their ideals and were reassured that everything being done was for the good of the Reich. It wasn’t long before they were participating in these horrific acts and even felt them necessary.

  With help from her German resistance contact and love interest, Franz, Irena spends months learning how to be the kind of young woman the Third Reich would have formed and responds to a recruitment advertisement. Then, with additional help from the bribes that made up a huge part of camp and resistance life, she ensures she’s sent to Auschwitz so she can help Maria escape. However, given how much mystery surrounded the camps and how the SS was deliberately vague when training these brainwashed men and women volunteering for camp service, she doesn’t entirely realize what lies in store for her. While a historical stretch on my part, this was how I theorized such an infiltration might have been possible, and, if anyone were going to attempt it, I had no doubt that Irena would.

  Another significant point to address is the fate of Karl Fritzsch. Although many guards defied rules while working in the camps, the SS did conduct an investigation into internal corruption, so Fritzsch was arrested, convicted, and sent to the front lines as punishment. It is believed that he fell during the Battle of Berlin (April 16–May 2, 1945), but his remains were never recovered, so his actual fate is unknown. By having Fritzsch return to Auschwitz to face Maria and commit suicide to rob her of the justice she seeks, I wanted to illustrate that the vast majority of camp perpetrators were never caught or convicted. Not holding these men and women accountable denied their victims the justice they deserved.

  I attempted to stay true to actual dates, and many of the historical events included in the story did happen, including the Sonderkommando Uprising. I learned so much about this prisoner rebellion through Eyewitness Auschwitz by Sonderkommando survivor Filip Müller. Although I could have spent pages and pages describing every historical detail, I hope I’ve clarified some of the liberties I took and have encouraged you to uncover more of this fascinating, important history for yourself. Finally, I cannot recommend Night by Elie Wiesel or Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl enough, because both survivor accounts provide invaluable insight into the camp experience and its impacts on mental health. Any errors in history or setting are entirely my own.

  Acknowledgments

  MY ENDLESS THANKS to everyone who supported, encouraged, and assisted me in writing this book. My agent, Kaitlyn Johnson, for your brilliant insight and unending faith in me. My editor, Lucia Macro, Asanté Simons, and the entire team at William Morrow, you are a dream come true. My dad, who was my first reader and research trip companion, and my mama, who ignited my passion for literature and history. My brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and family for their love and enthusiasm. Adrian Eves, one half of the Guild. Olesya Gilmore, dear friend and incredible writer. Mary Dunn for being an early reader, and Melanie Howell for helping with Yiddish and Judaism. The Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary in Warsaw, Poland, for answering my questions, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum for such important, necessary work. Amanda McCrina for wonderful feedback and historical insight. Finally, to my grandfather. “If I could dedicate this story to the man who encourages me to keep reading, learning, and creating, it would mean more to me than all the success in the world.” Words I never shared with you, part of an academic admissions essay stating that my career goal was to write a historical novel.

  Within that essay, I described how you never doubted that I would achieve the dream I started chasing as a little girl. As I developed this story, you assisted with research material and planning my trip to Poland. Every Sunday, you called me from the bookstore to suggest historical novels you thought I’d like—many published by “that publisher you love,” William Morrow. This book, in unpublished manuscript form, was my last gift to you, though neither of us knew it would be. So, Poppy, this story is as much yours as it is mine and is my very small thank-you. Dedicating this book to you truly does mean more to me than all the success in the world. I love you, I miss you, and I am forever grateful to you.

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

  About the Author

  * * *

  Meet Gabriella Saab

  About the Book

  * * *

  Historical Figures in the Novel

  Miscellaneous Facts and Info

  About the Author

  Meet Gabriella Saab

  GABRIELLA SAAB graduated from Mississippi State University with a bachelor’s of business administration in marketing and now lives in her hometown of Mobile, Alabama, where she works as a barre instructor. While researching The Last Checkmate, she traveled to Warsaw and Auschwitz to dig deeper into the setting and the experiences of those who lived there.

  This is her first novel.

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  About the Book

  Historical Figures in the Novel

  Karl Fritzsch

  On July 10, 1903, Karl Fritzsch was born in Bohemia; in 1930, at the age of twenty-seven, he joined the Nazi Party and the SS. He held a position at the Dachau concentration camp from 1934 to 1939, then moved to Auschwitz in May 1940 to serve as camp deputy under Rudolf Höss.

  Actively involved in the prisoners’ lives, Fritzsch—described as small, slight, unintelligent, and sadistic—became known for brutality and psychological torture. According to testimony from Höss, Fritzsch suggested using Zyklon B, a poisonous gas, for mass murder and tested it on Soviet prisoners of war (POWs). On January 15, 1942, he was transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp.

  After the SS conducted an internal corruption investigation, Fritzsch was arrested in October 1943 and charged with murder; whether he murdered an inmate without authorization or a fellow SS man is not clear. He was sent to the front lines as punishment (SS-Panzergrenadier-Ersatzbatallion 18). According to For He Is an Englishman: Memoirs of a Prussian Nobleman by Captain Charles Arnold-Baker, an MI6 (British foreign intelligence) officer, Arnold-Baker arrested Fritzsch in Oslo, Norway, after the war: “We picked up, for example, the deputy commandant of
Auschwitz, a little runt of a man called Fritzsch whom we naturally put in the custody of a Jewish guard—with strict instructions not to damage him, of course.” In a 1966 report from the German Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, Berlin inhabitant Gertrud Berendes claimed that on May 2, 1945, Fritzsch shot himself in the basement of a house at Sächsische Strasse 42 in Berlin. Berendes said that her father and a neighbor buried Fritzsch in the Preussenpark and that she sent his personal belongings to his wife. In a separate 1966 report by the Kriminalpolizei Regensburg, Fritzsch’s wife stated that she had received his wedding ring and personal letters and was convinced of her husband’s death; however, Fritzsch’s true fate has never been determined.

  Matylda Getter

  Matylda Getter was born in 1870 and grew up to become the mother provincial of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary in Warsaw. The sisters ran orphanages and educational facilities for children in Warsaw and its surrounding towns, including Anin, Wilno, and Ostrówek. During the war, they aided civilians and members of the Polish underground; arranged work, shelter, and false documents; and smuggled children from the Jewish ghetto. In this work they cooperated with Irena Sendler and members of Żegota—an underground Polish resistance organization tied to the Polish Underground State, established specifically to aid Jews. During the Warsaw Uprising, the provincial house at Hoża St. 53 became a paramedical station, a soup kitchen, and later a hospital.

  During the war, the sisters rescued more than five hundred Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto. To determine if someone was willing to accept a Jewish child, Mother Matylda would speak in code by asking, “Will you accept God’s blessing?” The Jewish children adored Mother Matylda and called her Matusia, a term of endearment similar to “Mommy.” The sisters never forced conversions on Jews, unlike some Catholic civilians or religious, though forcing conversions was never an official practice of the Catholic Church during this time. As Mother Matylda simply stated, “I’m saving a human being who’s asking for help.”

  Mother Matylda died in 1968 and was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from Nazi extermination.

  Rudolf Höss

  Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss was born on November 25, 1901, in Baden-Baden and grew up in a strict extremist family that emphasized the central role of duty in moral life. During World War I, at age fourteen, he enlisted in the German Army’s Twenty-First Regiment of Dragoons. After the armistice of November 11, 1918, he joined the Freikorps (German military volunteer unit), then joined the Nazi Party in 1922 after listening to Hitler speak in Munich.

  Höss joined the SS in 1934, then the Totenkopfverbände, and served at Dachau and Sachsenhausen before joining the Waffen-SS in 1939 after the German invasion of Poland. He was appointed commander of Auschwitz on May 1, 1940. He served for three and a half years and was responsible for the Auschwitz-Birkenau expansion. In June 1941, Heinrich Himmler told Höss that Hitler had ordered the “final solution of the Jewish question” and that Auschwitz had been chosen for a mass extermination site, so Höss began testing extermination techniques. According to his autobiography and eyewitness testimony, Höss accepted anything, even violence and brutality, as long as it was ordered by an authority figure.

  Höss was described as cold and unemotional, though in his autobiography he claimed that he’d hoped to lead by example to encourage prisoners to work hard but that his “good intentions” were dashed by “the inadequacy and sheer stupidity” of the men posted to him. He thought it “. . . might have been possible to control men and bring them to my way of thinking if those in charge of the prison camp”—i.e., men such as Karl Fritzsch—“obeyed my wishes . . . this neither they could nor would do, owing to intellectual limitations, obstinacy, and malice.” Höss constantly emphasized that he was the only one competent enough to get anything done, but prisoners were left in the hands of Fritzsch and other “distasteful persons” who didn’t run the camp the way Höss wanted.

  Obsessed with his position, efficiency, and order, Höss would burst into occasional fits of rage, particularly when he observed his subordinates bending his rules. Regarding the Final Solution, Höss said, “the reasons behind the extermination order seemed right,” “I had been given an order, and I had to carry it out,” and “what the Führer or his second-in-command ordered was always right.” He claimed that the gas experiments made him “uncomfortable,” but the killing “did not cause much concern.” He felt that gassing was the most effective procedure because the guards were spared “blood baths” and the victims were “spared suffering.” This was not true: it took the victims up to fifteen minutes to die, and the guards knew everyone was dead “when the screams stopped.” The only regrets Höss ever expressed in his autobiography were not spending more time with his family; he never expressed any regret about his camp crimes.

  As the war came to an end, Höss went into hiding before being arrested on March 11, 1946. He was put on trial for war crimes at Nuremberg and wrote his autobiography in prison. He was sentenced to death by hanging on April 2, 1947, and the sentence was carried out on April 16 in Auschwitz next to a crematorium near the camp’s Gestapo building.

  Maksymilian Kolbe

  Raymund Kolbe was born in 1894 to a humble, poor family. In 1907 he joined the Conventual Franciscans and took the name Maksymilian in 1910 when he entered the novitiate, then Maria in 1914 when he professed final vows. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1918 and maintained a strong devotion to the Blessed Mother. After the German invasion of Poland, he stayed in the monastery in Niepokalanów to organize a temporary hospital. He was arrested in September 1939 but released in December; he sheltered refugees, hid two thousand Jews in the friary, and published anti-Nazi materials. The testimony of a Niepokalanów local stated, “When Jews came to me asking for a piece of bread, I asked Father Maksymilian if I could give it to them in good conscience, and he answered me, ‘Yes, it is necessary to do this, because all men are our brothers.’”

  On February 17, 1941, the Germans shut down the monastery. Kolbe was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Pawiak, then transferred to Auschwitz on May 28. He arrived on May 29 and received prisoner number 16670. Even in the camp, he retained his humility and compassion and performed priestly duties in secret. On July 29, 1941, an inmate from Block 14, Father Kolbe’s block, escaped. As punishment, Fritzsch sentenced ten prisoners to immurement. One young man, Prisoner 5659, Franciszek Gajowniczek, said he had a family and begged for mercy. Father Kolbe stepped forward and said in German, “I’m a Catholic priest. I’d like to take this man’s place, because he has a wife and children.” Everyone, even Fritzsch, was speechless, but Fritzsch permitted the exchange, because religious were some of the most hated prisoners.

  Father Kolbe spent two weeks in the starvation bunker in Block 11, and eyewitnesses could hear him praying, singing, and calming his fellow captives. According to a janitor who worked in the block, Kolbe was always calmly standing or kneeling in the middle of the cell each time the guards checked on him. After two weeks, Father Kolbe was the only one still alive, but the guards were impatient to empty the bunker so it could be used for other prisoners. On August 14, 1941, he was killed by a lethal injection of carbolic acid. Kolbe offered his arm to the guard, and some say his final words were “Ave Maria.”

  Maksymilian Kolbe was elevated to sainthood by Pope John Paul II on October 10, 1982. The man he saved, Franciszek Gajowniczek, was present at his canonization.

  Maria Mandel (also spelled Mandl)

  Born on January 10, 1912, in Münzkirchen, Upper Austria, Mandel served at Lichtenburg and Ravensbrück concentration camps, rising through the ranks until she succeeded Johanna Langefeld as SS-Lagerführerin of Auschwitz-Birkenau. She reported only to the kommandant and participated in selections and other abuses. It is estimated that she sent half
a million women and children to die in the gas chambers. At Auschwitz, Mandel was known as the Beast. She was fond of Irma Grese, a guard whom prisoners nicknamed the Hyena of Auschwitz and the Beautiful Beast, and promoted Grese to head of the Hungarian women’s camp at Birkenau (Grese was accused of war crimes during the Belsen trial and hanged at the age of twenty-two). Mandel created the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz and was awarded the War Merit Cross Second Class for her services.