The Stone Crusher Read online

  HISTORY / HOLOCAUST / BIOGRAPHY

  THE

  “Heart-wrenching yet compelling, The Stone Crusher is STONE CRUSHER

  the vivid true story of a father and son’s survival of abso-N 1939, Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish

  lute horror. Beautifully written, deeply poignant in its upholsterer in Vienna, was arrested by

  detail, it is a necessary testament today in the fi ght against Ithe Nazis. Along with his sixteen-year-old

  Holocaust denial.”

  son Fritz, he was sent to Buchenwald in

  Germany, where a new concentration

  — Helen Fry, author of The London Cage: The Secret History of Britain’s camp was being built. It was the beginning of a

  World War II Interrogation Center

  six-year odyssey almost without parallel. They

  helped build Buchenwald, young Fritz learning

  construction skills that would help preserve him

  PRAISE FOR JEREMY DRONFIELD’S PREVIOUS BOOKS:

  from extermination in the coming years. But it

  was his bond with his father that would ultimately

  “Vivid and engaging . . . a moving

  “This book could read like a thriller, yet

  and appalling tale of the full horror

  the thorough research here provides a

  THE STONE

  keep them both alive. When the fi fty-year-old

  of World War II’s last year on the

  weightier feast . . . a well-researched

  Gustav was transferred to Auschwitz—a certain

  eastern front.”

  and well-ordered biography.”

  death sentence—Fritz was determined to go with

  him. His wiser friends tried to dissuade him—“If

  — Randall Hansen, author of Fire

  — Spectator

  JEREMY DRONFIELD is a biographer, historian,

  and Fury: The Allied Bombing of

  you want to keep living, you have to forget your

  novelist, and ghostwriter. Following a career in

  Germany, 1942–1945

  “Meticulously researched and written

  father,” one said. But that was impossible, and

  archaeology, he began writing fi ction. His titles

  with great verve, this biography is

  Fritz pleaded for a place on the Auschwitz trans-

  include the bestselling thriller The Locust Farm

  “An elegant and sensitive biography . . .

  about as good as it gets.”

  port. “He is a true comrade,” Gustav wrote in his

  and The Alchemist’s Apprentice. His recent non-

  [an] absorbing book.”

  CRUSHER

  — Neil McKenna, author of

  secret diary, “always at my side. The boy is my

  fi ction includes the bestselling Beyond the Call

  — Times (London)

  The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde

  and Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her

  The True Story of a Father and Son’s

  greatest joy. We are inseparable.” Gustav kept his

  diary hidden throughout his six years in the death

  Time. His website is jeremydronfi eld.com.

  “Immensely enjoyable. It’s a fascinating

  “A scintillating portrait . . . that feels

  camps—even Fritz knew nothing of it. From this

  story, told with verve, sensitivity, and

  almost Dickensian in style.”

  JEREMY DRONFIELD

  Fight for Survival in Auschwitz

  diary, Fritz’s own accounts, and other eyewitness

  skill—the result of an awe-inspiring

  — Guardian

  testimony, Jeremy Dronfi eld has constructed a

  amount of research and detective

  riveting tale of a father-son bond that proved

  work, managed with delicacy and

  “A riveting, tense, and ultimately

  stronger than the machine that sought to break

  fl air. . . . A marvellous read, and a

  satisfying account.”

  them both.

  story worth telling.”

  — Booklist

  — Rodney Bolt, author of

  The Librettist of Venice

  JEREMY DRONFIELD

  Jacket design: Joan Sommers Design

  Cover photo: © Paul Bucknall /Arcangel Images, Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America

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  4/9/18 10:43 AM

  THE STONE

  CRUSHER

  The True Story of a Father and Son’s

  Fight for Survival in Auschwitz

  JEREMY DRONFIELD

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  The Kleinmann family in April 1938. From left: Herta, Gustav, Kurt, Fritz, Tini, Edith.

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  THE STONE

  CRUSHER

  The True Story of a Father and Son’s

  Fight for Survival in Auschwitz

  JEREMY DRONFIELD

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  Copyright © 2018 by Jeremy Dronfield

  All rights reserved

  First edition

  Published by Chicago Review Press Incorporated

  814 North Franklin Street

  Chicago, Illinois 60610

  ISBN 978‑1‑61373‑963‑1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Dronfield, Jeremy, author.

  Title: The stone crusher : the true story of a father and son’s fight for survival in Auschwitz / Jeremy Dronfield.

  Description: First edition. | Chicago, Illinois : Chicago Review Press Incorporated, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018005240 (print) | LCCN 2018005978 (ebook) | ISBN

  9781613739648 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781613739655 (Epub) | ISBN 9781613739662

  (Kindle) | ISBN 9781613739631 (hardback)

  Subjects: LCSH: Kleinmann, Gustav, 1891‑1976. | Kleinmann, Fritz, 1923‑ |

  Jews‑‑Austria‑‑Vienna‑‑History‑‑1933‑1945‑‑Biography. | Holocaust, Jewish (1939‑1945)‑‑Austria‑‑Vienna‑‑Personal narratives. | Buchenwald (Concentration camp)‑‑Biography. | BISAC: HISTORY / Holocaust. | HISTORY /

  Jewish. | HISTORY / Military / World War II. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY /

  Historical.

  Classification: LCC DS135.A93 (ebook) | LCC DS135.A93 K574 2018 (print) | DDC

  940.53/18092243613aB‑‑dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018005240

  Typesetting: Nord Compo

  Printed in the United States of America

  5 4 3 2 1

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  C o n t e n t s

  Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

  Prologue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

  Part I: Vienna

  1 “When Jewish Blood Drips from the Knife. . .”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

  2 Traitors to the People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

  Part II: Buchenwald

  3 Blood and Stone: Konzentrationslager Buchenwald . . . . . . . . . . . 43

  4 The Stone Crusher. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

 
5 The Road to Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

  6 A Favorable Decision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

  7 The New World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

  8 Unworthy of Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

  9 A Thousand Kisses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

  10 A Trip to Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

  Part III: Auschwitz

  11 A Town Called Oświęcim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

  12 Auschwitz‑Monowitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

  13 The End of Gustav Kleinmann, Jew. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

  14 Resistance and Collaboration: The Death of Fritz Kleinmann. . . 198

  15 The Kindness of Strangers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

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  16 Far from Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

  17 Resistance and Betrayal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246

  Part IV: Survival

  18 Death Train. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

  19 Mauthausen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

  20 The End of Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294

  21 The Long Way Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

  Epilogue: Jewish Blood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317

  Bibliography and Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

  Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

  Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

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  To Kurt

  and

  in memory of

  Gustav

  Tini

  Edith

  Herta

  Fritz

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  P r e f a c e

  THIS IS A TRUE STORY. Every person in it, every event, twist, and incredible coincidence is taken from historical sources. One wishes that parts of it were not true, that they had never occurred, so terrible and painful are they. But it all happened, within the memory of the still living, the survivors.

  There are many Holocaust stories, but not like this one. The tale of Gustav and Fritz Kleinmann, father and son, contains elements of all the others but is quite unlike any of them. Very few Jews experienced the Nazi concentra‑

  tion camps from the first mass arrests in the late 1930s through to the Final Solution and eventual liberation. None, to my knowledge, went through the whole inferno together, father and son, from beginning to end, from liv‑

  ing under Nazi occupation, to Buchenwald, to Auschwitz and the prisoner resistance against the SS, to the death marches, and then on to Mauthausen, Mittelbau‑Dora, Bergen‑Belsen. Fewer still went through all that and made it home again alive. Luck and courage played a part, but what ultimately kept Gustav and Fritz living was their love and devotion to each other. “The boy is my greatest joy,” Gustav wrote in his secret diary. “We strengthen each other.

  We are one, inseparable.”

  This book tells not only their story, but also that of their family: Gus‑

  tav’s wife, Tini; their daughters, Herta and Edith; and younger son, Kurt.

  Two escaped to freedom overseas; two met their end in a Nazi death camp.

  Between them, the Kleinmann family’s experiences track all those who lived through the Shoah or perished in it. This single family’s story is a history of a people’s suffering in microcosm, from invasion to liberation, by way of Auschwitz, English internment, American immigration, and the death camps of the Reichskommissariat Ostland.

  Remembering the Kleinmanns’ experiences is timely now more than ever.

  Like hundreds of thousands of other Jews, they did all they could to escape ix

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  x P r e f a c e

  the Nazi regime but were frustrated by other nations’ hostile immigration policies—Britain and America shunned all but a handful, while the press and public condemned and disparaged the foreign refugees.

  I have brought the story to life with all my heart. It reads like a novel. I am a storyteller as much as historian. And yet I haven’t needed to invent or embellish anything; even the fragments of dialogue are authentic, quoted or reconstructed from primary sources. The bedrock is the concentration camp diary written by Gustav Kleinmann between October 1939 and July 1945, supplemented by a memoir by Fritz and a lengthy interview he recorded in 1997. None of these sources makes easy reading, either emotionally or liter‑

  ally—the diary, written under extreme circumstances, is sketchy, often making cryptic allusions to things beyond the knowledge of the general reader (even Holocaust historians would have to consult their reference works to interpret some passages). Gustav’s motive in writing his diary was not to inform the public but to help preserve his own sanity; its references were comprehensible to him at the time. Once unlocked, it provides a rich and harrowing insight into living the Holocaust week by week, month by month, and year after year.

  Most strikingly, it reveals Gustav’s unbeatable strength and spirit of optimism:

  “. . . every day I say a prayer to myself,” he wrote in the sixth year of his incar‑

  ceration. “Do not despair. Grit your teeth—the SS murderers must not beat you.”

  Interviews with surviving members of the family have provided additional personal detail. The whole—from Vienna life in the 1930s to the functioning of the camps and the personalities involved—has been backed up by documentary research, including survivor testimony, camp records, and other official docu‑

  ments, which have verified the story at every step of the way, even the most extraordinary and incredible.

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  The witness has forced himself to testify. For the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow. He does not want his past to become their future.

  —Elie Wiesel, Night

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  P r o l o g u e

  Austria, January 1945

  Fritz Kleinmann shifted with the motion of the train, shuddering convulsively in the subzero gale roaring over the sidewalls of the open freight car. Huddled beside him, his father watched, face drawn, exhausted. Around them sat dim figures, moonlight picking out the pale stripes of their uniforms and the bones in their faces. It would soon be time for Fritz to make his escape; if he left it any longer, it would be too late.

  Eight days had passed since they’d left Auschwitz on this journey. They had walked the first sixty kilometers, the SS driving the thousands of surviving prisoners westward through the snow, away from the advancing Red Army.

  Fritz and his father had heard intermittent g
unshots from the rear of the column as those who couldn’t keep up were murdered. Nobody looked back.

  At Gleiwitz they’d been put on trains for other camps deeper inside the Reich. Fritz and his father managed to stay together, as they had always done.

  Their transport was for Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where the SS would carry on the task interrupted by the Russian advance, draining the last dregs of labor from the prisoners before finally exterminating them.

  One hundred and forty men were crammed into each open‑topped freight car.

  At first they’d had to stand, but as the days passed and the cold killed them off one by one, it gradually became possible to sit down. The corpses were stacked at one end of the car and their clothing taken to warm the living.

  They might have been on the brink of death, but these prisoners were the lucky ones, the useful workers—most of their brothers and sisters, wives, mothers, and children had been murdered or were being force‑marched west‑

  ward, dying in droves.

  Fritz had been a boy when the nightmare began, seven years ago; now he was twenty‑one, grown to manhood in the Nazi camps, learning, maturing, 1

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  2 P r o l o g u e

  resisting the pressure to give up hope. He had foreseen this day and prepared for it. Beneath their camp uniforms he and his papa wore civilian clothing, which Fritz had obtained through his network of friends in the Auschwitz resis‑

  tance. (Unfortunately, in the hurry of the evacuation he’d had to leave behind the guns he’d acquired.) Besides the clothing they had full heads of hair, having avoided the regular head‑shaving for two months. They were back in their homeland now, and once they were free they could pass for local workmen.

  The train had paused at Vienna, the city that had once been their home, then turned west through St. Pölten, then Amstetten, and now they were only fifteen kilometers from their destination. It was now or never. Fritz had been delaying the decision, worried about his father.